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Help Nexus 7 Media playback

S

sleezecheeze

Well-Known Member
Hey guys, I've done a search of the forum and even google but I'm yet to discover answers, so please excuse me if something like this does already exist.

I'm having trouble with media playback on the nexus 7, in particular .avi files. I've been putting the files onto a USB and then watching them via USB OTG.

The stock video player apparently can't handle .avi which I did initially suspect. So I went to the marketplace and downloaded VLC beta. I've used this before and it's worked wonders but what it seems to lack now is sufficient seeking ability. I'm still on 4.1 so every half an hour or so I receive a nag telling me to update, and if I'm halfway into a movie with VLC it simply starts again after cancelling the nag. It then takes 5-6 minutes of 4x playback just to get back where I was. I tried dragging the nob and tapping the timeline but nothing worked.

So to try and solve this I downloaded MX player. It works perfectly and even paused when the nag screen came up instead of resetting to the beginning of the video. The only problem with MX player is the quality of the playback. VLC was almost crystal clear and playing the same file on MX player resulted in choppy, huge pixeled colour confused crap. I've fiddled with all of the settings and it still looks like monkey ****.

I guess what I'm asking is if any app (preferably free) features the 3 key aspects that I'm looking for :

-.avi compatibility
- Quality playback
- Decent seek controls / time selection tool

Also, would it help if I copied the .avi file to the devices memory previous to watching it?

I'm also having issue with 'popping' audio that occurs every 5-10 seconds whilst watching .avi files but it's no biggie and I assume it's because of the un-stability of .avi files.

I've also noticed that MX player offers different codecs for ARMv5 and ARM v6, if this was the fix for the nexus 7 which codec would be needed?

Thanks guys.
 
I don't have any problem with the MX Player. It is crisp and clear. But all my video files are .mp4. I always convert them before loading on the N7. That is such a small task.
 
whs37 said:
I don't have any problem with the MX Player. It is crisp and clear. But all my video files are .mp4. I always convert them before loading on the N7. That is such a small task.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. Which converter do you use to convert to .mp4 and overall is there much quality loss? This could be a very good idea because I believe .mp4 files are also slightly smaller in size.
 
If you're reading from external storage anyway I wouldn't bother converting all your movies for the slightly smaller size. As mentioned above, MX Player is the way to go.
 
Teknologic said:
If you're reading from external storage anyway I wouldn't bother converting all your movies for the slightly smaller size. As mentioned above, MX Player is the way to go.
Click to expand...
But apparently he has a problem with the .avi files. Converting to .mp4 is a small task. My videos are mostely music clips of 3 to 5 minutes. I can convert 10 of them in 5 minutes. Big movie files take apparently longer. But then I let the conversion run in the background.
 
whs37 said:
But apparently he has a problem with the .avi files. Converting to .mp4 is a small task. My videos are mostely music clips of 3 to 5 minutes. I can convert 10 of them in 5 minutes. Big movie files take apparently longer. But then I let the conversion run in the background.
Click to expand...

Converting a 700mb movie from .avi to .mp4 now and it does take an extremely long time.

After 10 minutes it's currently sitting at 2%.

Are there any other players that people can recommend or is there some way to disable the nag for system update?
 
That is impossible. Something is wrong with your system. Just an hour ago I converted a 2.1GB movie to .mp4 and it took less than 10 minutes.
 
It's probably my system I'm on a 4 year old laptop with minimal processing power. I did stumble across dice player on the play store and it looks promising. Quality is good, it's got good seek ability and it plays most extensions.

Thanks everyone for your help, I'll leave converting until I have a more powerful computer :)
 
sleezecheeze said:
It's probably my system I'm on a 4 year old laptop with minimal processing power. I did stumble across dice player on the play store and it looks promising. Quality is good, it's got good seek ability and it plays most extensions.

Thanks everyone for your help, I'll leave converting until I have a more powerful computer :)
Click to expand...
You are probably right. A laptop with a slow duo core and not enough RAM does not lend itself to video encoding. I use Windows 7 that is on a SSD and the CPU is an i7 plus I have 8GBs of RAM. I would not try to use one of my laptops for that kind of work - Not enough muscle.
 
jhsrennie said:
Try the RC3 version of XBMC from Index of /releases/android

I'm biased because I used XBMC on my HTPC (and I'm on the development team :-) but I genuinely think it's the best media player I've used.
Click to expand...

I love XBMC on my PC. I don't think that the Android XBMC is usable yet as it doesn't support hardware encoding so is quite choppy. I highly recommend MXPlayer. It plays MKV's very well as long as you choose software encoding for the audio only.
 
Now that I've got playback sorted I've encountered another problem.

Whenever using the device with headphones I get a terrible static noise and it's only present whilst playing .avi files.
 
Are you playing from a hard drive or flash memory? Could you copy over one of he movies to your device and see if the problem persists? Or maybe you're charging the tablet while playing?
My guess is you're hearing static interference because the USB is right next to the audio port. I can sometimes hear it while charging, but only on the minimum volume and only when I'm topping off the charge. Try increasing the volume, see if it scales up too.
If it's none of those all I can think of is to make sure your jack is all the way in, it takes some force the first few times.
 
Teknologic said:
Are you playing from a hard drive or flash memory? Could you copy over one of he movies to your device and see if the problem persists? Or maybe you're charging the tablet while playing?
My guess is you're hearing static interference because the USB is right next to the audio port. I can sometimes hear it while charging, but only on the minimum volume and only when I'm topping off the charge. Try increasing the volume, see if it scales up too.
If it's none of those all I can think of is to make sure your jack is all the way in, it takes some force the first few times.
Click to expand...

Playing files from flash memory device.
Playing files copied to devices memory still presents static.
I've been using the tablet on battery power whilst watching the files.

Increasing volume scales up static. Static:Sound ratio is around the same non-dependant on volume.

I've had enough of this device, I really have. It was fine until they released 4.2 ever since I installed that I've had nothing but trouble.
 
The static may come from the .avi decoding. Try a small .mp4 file to see whether that problem persists.
 
whs37 said:
The static may come from the .avi decoding. Try a small .mp4 file to see whether that problem persists.
Click to expand...

I'm converting a movie to .mp4 now. I figure that I may as well do it properly! You should feel how hot my laptop is, I could fry an egg on the bottom of this baddie :p

I think it will be fine playing .mp4 files as I've suspected the .avi playback was the issue but I've also been having trouble whilst watching youtube videos through the youtube app. Although still present it's not nearly as annoying or obvious so it's ignorable for that.

I also get static when launching any app with headphones in but that disappears as soon as the app loads up.

I'll report back shortly after playing a .mp4 file!

EDIT:

Device still produces static noise whilst playing .mp4 files from flash drive. After copying files from flash drive to devices memory the static noise lowers and is still present but the video quality is terrible compared to the .avi files.

How do I return this? Surely google won't take it from me because they aren't the manufactures but I've heard ASUS have terrible inspection squads and they'll just send it straight back telling me there is no issue. I just want someone to put their headphones on and listen. Surely there is something wrong.
 
Teknologic said:
Have you tried a factory reset yet? It's a fix for most of the update-related issues.
Click to expand...

Yes I've reset the tablet and restored to 4.1 and these issues are still present. The reset was 2-3 days ago when I encountered problems booting the tablet but these issues were still present previous to resetting.
 
I am sorry you are having so much trouble. But that is really a tough one. After you tried with several software configurations and the problem persisits, I would also think that there is something wrong with the hardware. I assume the crackling occurs both on speakers and on headphones.

Since you have a warrenty, I would try to get Asus to honor that warrenty. Just put your foot down. I once had a tough warrenty problem with a Sony PC. They did not want to budge. Then I wrote a letter to their CEO - I tell you, I got my money back within 3 days.
 
whs37 said:
I am sorry you are having so much trouble. But that is really a tough one. After you tried with several software configurations and the problem persisits, I would also think that there is something wrong with the hardware. I assume the crackling occurs both on speakers and on headphones.

Since you have a warrenty, I would try to get Asus to honor that warrenty. Just put your foot down. I once had a tough warrenty problem with a Sony PC. They did not want to budge. Then I wrote a letter to their CEO - I tell you, I got my money back within 3 days.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all of your help guys I really appreciate it. I guess I'll be trying to return the device now because I do agree that it's looking like a hardware error.

I'll certainly put my foot down as you mentioned because it's really not good enough. If they advertise a warranty they have to honour it. I just worry that if I have to send it in (I will) they won't test it properly and it will just be returned to me with a 'sorry, but your device is perfectly fine' letter.

It's going to be a long journey but I'm off to the Asus home page now. Wish me luck.
 
Yeah, go for it. Let us know (one day) how you made out. Would be interesting to know how they handle warrenty cases.
 
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