Guest MaxiP Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 If I connect up my USB pen drive (or hard drive), I can browse to it using explorer and there is even a nice icon in iFileManager. However, I want to make things as easy as possible for the kids as the Vega will replace the headrest mounted DVD players when travelling in the car and also our portable DVD player when on holiday. I'm currently converting my media to M4V at a suitable quality that can be played by the native player in the Vega and when finished, my external hard drive (USB powered) should contain 100+ movies. Does anyone know if there is an app / tool that can either index these in such a way that the kids can open an app, select a movie and it plays rather than having to browse through the folder structure ? I could probably do this with a symlink as the folder location / name isn't going to change but it would be very nice if it could be achieved through a nice GUI, particularly if metadata could be stored / accessed as well. As a comparison, I use metabrowser & Media Brower to index & present my media on HTPC. As more tablet devices become available with USB host functionality, I can see this being quite a useful utility / tool / app if one exists. As a secondary question, Android insists on creating 2 folder in removable media (.android_secure & LOST.DIR), neither of which should be needed for 'read only' devices. Is it possible to stop these folders being created or can they be hidden by the system ?
Guest thedicemaster Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 actually, .android_secure is hidden. it's just that both windows, and ifilemanager ignore the linux-method of hiding files. what you could use for easy movie access is es file explorer. it allows you to set a custom starting-folder which you could set to /mnt/usb/system_usb/movies/
Guest newbe5 Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 If I connect up my USB pen drive (or hard drive), I can browse to it using explorer and there is even a nice icon in iFileManager. However, I want to make things as easy as possible for the kids as the Vega will replace the headrest mounted DVD players when travelling in the car and also our portable DVD player when on holiday. I'm currently converting my media to M4V at a suitable quality that can be played by the native player in the Vega and when finished, my external hard drive (USB powered) should contain 100+ movies. Does anyone know if there is an app / tool that can either index these in such a way that the kids can open an app, select a movie and it plays rather than having to browse through the folder structure ? I could probably do this with a symlink as the folder location / name isn't going to change but it would be very nice if it could be achieved through a nice GUI, particularly if metadata could be stored / accessed as well. As a comparison, I use metabrowser & Media Brower to index & present my media on HTPC. As more tablet devices become available with USB host functionality, I can see this being quite a useful utility / tool / app if one exists. As a secondary question, Android insists on creating 2 folder in removable media (.android_secure & LOST.DIR), neither of which should be needed for 'read only' devices. Is it possible to stop these folders being created or can they be hidden by the system ? Technically, those folders are hidden, anything beginning with a "." is supposed to be a hidden file (.android_secure etc). If you de-select "show hidden files" in your file explorer then these should disappear from view. Also, I'm not sure about you, but I can play all of my xvid and divx (as well as WMV) videos on my Vega, without the need to re-encode, this was a huge boon for me, very impressed. If you arent worried about having pictures on the Vega, then you should just be able to use the stock "Gallery 3D" app to navigate through movies I think, it is pretty easy, and you can hide folders that you don't want to be indexed for images/videos by added a .nomedia file to these folders, unless of course the Gallery app won't see USB mounted media? I haven't tried this myself :/. newbe5
Guest MaxiP Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 I'm having to re-encode as all my media is in MKV format Gallery works OK for media on the SD but doesn't show anything stored on USB (unless I'm missing something). However, that type of app / view would work for now - all my media has 'sensible' names so as long as they can be displayed, movies can be easily found.
Guest Bobbler Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 XBMC ported to Android tablets, even a "lightweight" version would be perfect for this usage. I really haven't got a clue how one would go about doing such a thing though, I am techy but not a programmer/coder
Guest MaxiP Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 XBMC ported to Android tablets, even a "lightweight" version would be perfect for this usage. I really haven't got a clue how one would go about doing such a thing though, I am techy but not a programmer/coder Completely agree - I use Media Browser instead of XBMC as it handles parental controls a bit better...but the same idea.
Guest MaxiP Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 I've just come across mVideoPlayer and from my first play, looks very good ! You can add 'default' folders where your videos are and lists these in a (sort of) GUI. Downside is that it won't let me add a custom location of /mnt/usb/system_usb :unsure:
Guest newbe5 Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 (edited) I've just come across mVideoPlayer and from my first play, looks very good ! You can add 'default' folders where your videos are and lists these in a (sort of) GUI. Downside is that it won't let me add a custom location of /mnt/usb/system_usb :unsure: Couldn't you create a symbolic link? I know you can't create symbolic links ON FAT32 partitions, but I'm unsure if you can create them going TO FAT32 partitions. However, if you created a symblink somewhere on your device memory, pointing TO the USB stick, that would work maybe? Edited January 5, 2011 by newbe5
Guest thedicemaster Posted January 5, 2011 Report Posted January 5, 2011 (edited) little problem with showing video's from usb in gallery: the media-scanner scans for media before android mounts USB devices. although it would perhaps be possible for an app/script to mount the USB device as a sub-folder of the sdcard, and then force a media scanner rescan. you would have to do this every time you turn on the tablet, or add/remove a usb device though. EDIT: got it working, but isn't something you can easily automate. in a terminal emulator use: mount -o rw -t vfat /dev/block/vold/$.$ /mnt/sdcard/# replace $.$ with the number assigned to the usb device. you can find it by using the mount command once without any options, and checking which entry is tied to /mnt/usb/system_usb and replace # with the name of an EMPTY! folder on the root of your sdcard. after that use an app to force the media-scanner to do a scan. the problem with automating this is that the number for your usb device can vary(i tested remounting of a usb stick twice, first time i plugged it in the number was 8.1 and the second time it was 8.17) also: don't just pull out your usb device or microSD like this. it might give unexpected results such as being unable to access your microSD/USB device untill after a reboot, and/or damage to files. EDIT2: more usable solution, i managed to automate it a bit. gscript_USB_in_gallery.zip these are gscript scripts which can be easily placed on your desktop. a mount script will make files on the usb stick/hard drive visible in the gallery and music apps and through the file browser under (/mnt)/sdcard/usbmount an unmount script will "clean up" afterwards(use this! WILL cause problems if you don't unmount after use!) the unmount script does a clean unmount ONLY for the "USB to sdcard" part, there is no way yet to do a proper unmount for the usb stick itself. oh, and READ THE README! it contains some very important instructions, if you don't follow those it can cause loss of data and/or make the scripts fail. Edited January 6, 2011 by thedicemaster
Guest MaxiP Posted January 7, 2011 Report Posted January 7, 2011 Last night I had a chance to play with external media (USB stick) and mVideoPlayer. I said in my earlier post that you couldn't add a USB drive as a default video directory BUT I WAS WRONG !! Don't know why, but I tried this again last night and it works !! I'm able to add /mnt/usb/system_usb as a media folder meaning that the app will scan (automatically if you want) that folder and present the media to be played. Going a stage further, the app also allows you to add posters to media (movies & TV series) meaning that the interface becomes very nice to use - it also has the capability to access IMDB and presents the metadata but doesn't (AFAIK) store the data locally. And if needed, it can download & store subtitles on the SD card So now my external storage drive looks like this; USB/TV USB/TV/The Mentalist USB/TV/NCIS USB...... USB/Movies USB/Movies/Avatar USB/Movies/300 USB...... mVideoPlayer will then scan all the subfolders and present these to be played using the native player. All in all, a very neat solution and an app that I will definitely pay for when it appears back as a paid app on the market.
Guest ArthurMachen Posted January 7, 2011 Report Posted January 7, 2011 a mount script will make files on the usb stick/hard drive visible in the gallery and music apps and through the file browser under (/mnt)/sdcard/usbmount Excellent work thedicemaster, just what I am looking for as have alot of media on a 320gb hard drive that system is not seeing :unsure: My only thing is you have it pointed at /mnt/sdcard/usbmount. On my system the usb drive is found at /mnt/usb/system_usb. I have not installed the files yet as i imagine they will need to be adapted first. Sorry if this is a bit basic but still a bit of a noob.
Guest thedicemaster Posted January 7, 2011 Report Posted January 7, 2011 it will work the way it is now. the usbdrive can be pointed to 2 locations at the same time, and what my script does is simply adding a 2nd location from where the usbdrive can be accessed(/mnt/sdcard/usbmount) just make a usbmount folder on your sdcard, and the script will work fine.
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