Based on what I've seen today it still has no:
- system dictionary for definition lookup(only for predictive text). The Kindle App does nothing when I press & hold on a word, unlike on my iOS device.
- hi-speed media scrubber for music. you know the little round knob on the progress bar that allows you to move the time index to any point in a song or video.
- unified search aka Local Search(apps, music, videos, contacts, emails)
The music app is pretty bad. I had several attempts to build a proper one, but the developer can not interact with the music library, other than playing existing playlists or songs.
You can't make custom playlists(actually you can, but it very, very, VERY complicated and prone to error and simply does not worth the shot), change the order of music inside the list and stuff like that for a third party app, and that sucks.
There are no new APIs for XNA (which is used to access the songs in the phone) so there is no way of making one.
If there is something I can say it is not right on WP, that's the music app.
mcosmin222 said:
The music app is pretty bad. I had several attempts to build a proper one, but the developer can not interact with the music library, other than playing existing playlists or songs.
You can't make custom playlists(actually you can, but it very, very, VERY complicated and prone to error and simply does not worth the shot), change the order of music inside the list and stuff like that for a third party app, and that sucks.
There are no new APIs for XNA (which is used to access the songs in the phone) so there is no way of making one.
If there is something I can say it is not right on WP, that's the music app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does that imply that there´s the same limitation for video? ...and ...as a result of that a videoplayer with support for more codecs is very unlikely to ever happen?
TarKin said:
Does that imply that there´s the same limitation for video? ...and ...as a result of that a videoplayer with support for more codecs is very unlikely to ever happen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The File-Assosciation feature in WP8 works like this. Your App can define certain file endings (e.g. .mkv) which it can handle. If those are found on a SD-Card or downloaded the according registered App is then started for those files. The App can then do whatever it is it does as long as it keeps to reading the file (the original can't be manipulated although the app could copy it into it's isolated storage and manipulate it their). But there is one Caveat - there are several file extensions that are reserved for the OS which means that 3rd party Apps can't register for them. One of them is .mp3. Avi is another one of those (you can look them up in MSDN).
.mkv on the other hand is an extension that Windows Phone itself does not know so people could build Apps that would be able to consume them. Given that we now have Native Code capabilities writing a decoder or recompiling one written for another platform is possible, though it remains to be seen wether anyone will put the effort into it.
StevieBallz said:
The File-Assosciation feature in WP8 works like this. Your App can define certain file endings (e.g. .mkv) which it can handle. If those are found on a SD-Card or downloaded the according registered App is then started for those files. The App can then do whatever it is it does as long as it keeps to reading the file (the original can't be manipulated although the app could copy it into it's isolated storage and manipulate it their). But there is one Caveat - there are several file extensions that are reserved for the OS which means that 3rd party Apps can't register for them. One of them is .mp3. Avi is another one of those (you can look them up in MSDN).
.mkv on the other hand is an extension that Windows Phone itself does not know so people could build Apps that would be able to consume them. Given that we now have Native Code capabilities writing a decoder or recompiling one written for another platform is possible, though it remains to be seen wether anyone will put the effort into it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok. i was mainly into psp dev. before, and never had a winphone in my hands so far.
but if you say that´s possible, then i´ll go for the lumia920, reg. for a dev account and see what i can do
StevieBallz said:
The File-Assosciation feature in WP8 works like this. Your App can define certain file endings (e.g. .mkv) which it can handle. If those are found on a SD-Card or downloaded the according registered App is then started for those files. The App can then do whatever it is it does as long as it keeps to reading the file (the original can't be manipulated although the app could copy it into it's isolated storage and manipulate it their). But there is one Caveat - there are several file extensions that are reserved for the OS which means that 3rd party Apps can't register for them. One of them is .mp3. Avi is another one of those (you can look them up in MSDN).
.mkv on the other hand is an extension that Windows Phone itself does not know so people could build Apps that would be able to consume them. Given that we now have Native Code capabilities writing a decoder or recompiling one written for another platform is possible, though it remains to be seen wether anyone will put the effort into it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't had the chance to look over what the native code can do and what it can't do, but it is to be expected that it will have limitations, just like C# has.
You can render images (obviously) and output them using Direct3D which is pretty much what e.g. VLC does on the Desktop. You have complete read access to files on the SD-Card for your registered filetypes. MKV could be registered, MP3 or AVI could not (because they are in use by the system already).
But of course you would not be able to offload processing to the dedicated decoding units like with the built-in Codecs, which will mean more processor utilization and worse battery life. Still as a programmer I don't see too many actual road blocks (but it's a bumpy road to do this to be sure).
@TarKin: before you drop the money perhaps it would be best to start looking into the SDK. I'm not an expert in Multimedia-programming by any measure so you might be able to spot problems in there beforehand.
If you're still going for a L920 with these uncertainties for your use-case: welcome to the family, I'm anxiously awaiting mine.
Related
I've noticed a number of games that don't work right at the start, eg Pocket Lemmings, Guitar Hero. Now they basically seem to drop out as soon as they try to initialise the screen.
Today I started looking at beginning a bit of game development, and with that in mind download microsofts "skitime" starter pack. Basically this is a rubbish game demonstrating the structure and layout to build a DirectDraw based C++ game for windows mobile 6.
The interesting thing about it is that it works in the emulators, but not on the diamond so I spent a lot of time digging into where and why it doesn't work. In a nut shell, the directdraw initialisation stuff calls the "GetCaps" function (presumably this is somewhere in ddi.dll) and the relevant "capabilities" it returns are:
DDSCAPS_BACKBUFFER | DDSCAPS_FLIP
Basically these tell my application that I can do double buffering in video ram (good for performance)
However, when it then tries to create the structures for the primary surfaces, it fails with an E_OUTOFMEMORY. Dig a bit deeper and the info about the device suggests there is only 614400 video memory available, enough for 640x480x16bits.
So the problem is that it is telling the app that it supports double buffering, but it doesn't have the video memory to allocate 2 full frames worth of buffers. In terms of my own app, this is easily worked around, in fact putting in a better check against memory as well fixes it properly. But what I'm really wondering is whether this is what stops other games from working as well.
So, a potential fix would be to make the device not report that it can do double buffering, I did some searching of the registry, but I don't think this device info is stored there, my current guess is that the information is hard coded into the ddi.dll driver file. So, either a hacked ddi.dll file, or maybe it's getting the information from elsewhere.
Thoughts? I would really like to see if we can get more "standard" apps working by fixing this.
I want to write my own c#/XAML/javascript code for phone 8 (so that I learn a bit of coding related o phone 8) for keeping all my videos safe by a password.
I want to create a app which will ask user a numeric password when user tries to play a video from my phone. So, how can I implement it ?
p.s. I'm not asking for exact code to do it. I want to know how I can achieve this feature through c#/XAMl/javascript code
1. Create screen for entering password on open of App
2. If it's true, open the Application isolated Storage area
3. If not, quit it.
4. If you want to add a video [secure it], open the library and ask user to select the video, copy it to your app isolated storage area and remove from original library.
5. to un-secure it, you can follow the reverse step.
That is not locking a video .
I want to lock a video in its present location, I mean without cut-paste soln. you gave. . But my intent behind asking question was, is it possible to have a lock on a video or all videos together without copy-paste or cut paste from it's original location ?
Apps have no way of interfering with system functions: that includes access to the image/video library. So: you can't implement that feature in the way you described.
there are some apps in the store that can insert media into the system media folders like music videos etc..
How do they do it? That's a very good question....
They do something similar, that is they import files and then you have delete the video from original location .
And this is one reason for me to develop my own app to protect my videos.
StevieBallz said:
Apps have no way of interfering with system functions: that includes access to the image/video library. So: you can't implement that feature in the way you described.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, you mean I cant develop it . So, is it possible to develop something like applock (for android) which lock apps but not individual video. I'll lock the video player itself if it is possible
First of all, hello to everybody. I have just joined xdaDevelopers.
To business now..
I recently bought my first Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 520). One of the reasons for getting it was for developing my own WP8 apps.
I would like to start with a music player app - one that can play mp3 files from phone memory and SD card; arrange songs according to name, albums and artists; create playlists; have capabilties of fast foward and rewind (seeking); and recognise album arts.
What do I need to know before I can start building it?
I have zero experience in app development; I am a web designer.
I noticed that there are very few "polished" music players (which function properly as well as have a nice UI) in the WP store. Any particular reason for that (other than the platform being relatively new)?
I created this post mainly because the lack of quality music players appeared a bit strange to me. I have heard that a particular file type can be accessed by only one app (please correct me if I am wrong). So does it mean that one has to somehow uninstall the default music player in order to use the newly downloaded one?
For instance, I have "Adobe Reader" which can read PDFs from my MicroSD card. But the "PDF Reader" app (which I installed just yesterday) cannot even find them! So I had to uninstall the latter.
So I wanted to know if there was something about WP8 that doesn't allow such things - if these "security measures", which render apps like file managers less useful, are also responsible for the lack of music players in this otherwise very fantastic platform.
Please note that I come from Android, and am very new to Windows Phone platform. So kindly point out if there's something incorrect about my assumptions.
Thanks and regards.
Hi,
Welcome to Windows Phone. The Lumia 520 is a great choice in my humble opinion. In regards to why there are so few music apps, there are probably several reasons. One such is the fact, that the easiest way to make one is to integrate with the built-in music features, which however limits you in several ways, like not being able to add more file types, not being able to customize the experience too much, playlisting is limit as far as I know, which basically puts you in the position, that the only actual improvement you can do upon that is implementing a new streaming service. The other route is to implement your own music player, but then you're going to have issues making it work in the background (not to mention, that implementing a music player isn't entirely simple).
gdebojyoti said:
What do I need to know before I can start building it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Make sure you have hardware for it. I recommend a minimum of Windows 8 Pro 64bit, but you can find instructions for Windows 7 on this forum as well. You'll need VT-x support on your CPU, plenty of RAM.
2. Download and install the WP8 SDK.
3. Once you open Visual Studio, you can start by creating a new project, you'll need a UI project (I recommend Windows Phone App or HTML5 App templates) and a music playback project (WP Audio Playback Agent -OR- WP Audio Streaming Agent).
4. For tutorials on how to get started I usually go to Pluralsight.com, because I have a subscription there, and they're plain awesome, but I'm sure there are a bunch of other sources as well, which are for free.
gdebojyoti said:
For instance, I have "Adobe Reader" which can read PDFs from my MicroSD card. But the "PDF Reader" app (which I installed just yesterday) cannot even find them! So I had to uninstall the latter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have both Adobe Reader and PDF Reader installed, once you tap on a PDF file (say after downloading one in IE) an option should appear for you to select which app you wanna open it with.
gdebojyoti said:
So I wanted to know if there was something about WP8 that doesn't allow such things - if these "security measures", which render apps like file managers less useful, are also responsible for the lack of music players in this otherwise very fantastic platform.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can install and use as many audio/music apps you like, but obviously only one can have the background music feature used at one time. (You can only have one music playing in the background).
Also:
"Developers must pay an annual subscription fee of $99, (this, according to Todd Brix, the General Manager for Windows Phone Apps and Store team, is currently on an ongoing promotion at $19) to become an App Hub member and submit apps to the Windows Phone Store. There's no limit on the number of free submissions for paid apps. There's a limit of 100 free submissions for free apps; thereafter, there's a fee of $19.99 per submission for free apps." - Wikipedia
Hope I helped, and happy coding!
:fingers-crossed:
@TheGoldrocker: Thank you for your reply. It did clear up quite a few things.
As of now, I am okay with "integrating with the built-in music features" as you said.
What I want to do is modify the UI and UX a bit. Some of the features can be as follows -
1. Introducing a scroll bar;
2. Option to get rid of the grouping system by name;
3. Control over the font size;
4. Allowing the currently playing song to continue if I select the song (currently it starts playing from the beginning);
5. Enabling the seeking feature (tapping the timeline of the song so as to play from that point of time);
6. Having a tile feature in the start screen with options to pause, change song, etc (number of options would depend upon the length of the song);
7. Showing the album art of the currently playing song in the tile;
8. Having an animated background in the app (just a wide photo which slowly slides from left to right).
Am I allowed to do the above?
You're welcome.
"Integrating with the built-in music features" doesn't mean you get to rewrite the UI/functionality of the current Music+Videos app. What it means is, you get to use the built-in classes for simplifying music playback in your new app. You'll still have to build up a new UI around your classes, you'll also have to write quite a few lines of code for the playback functionality (but obviously way less than if you tried to write your own music player from scratch).
Now sadly I cannot answer all of your questions with absolute certainty, because I haven't tried writing a music player yet, but I'll give them a shot.
I numbered your list:
gdebojyoti said:
1. Introducing a scroll bar;
2. Option to get rid of the grouping system by name;
3. Control over the font size;
4. Allowing the currently playing song to continue if I select the song (currently it starts playing from the beginning);
5. Enabling the seeking feature (tapping the timeline of the song so as to play from that point of time);
6. Having a tile feature in the start screen with options to pause, change song, etc (number of options would depend upon the length of the song);
7. Showing the album art of the currently playing song in the tile;
8. Having an animated background in the app (just a wide photo which slowly slides from left to right).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Yes, since you'll have to make a new UI from scratch, and you'll have the ability to include any logic behind it you want.
2. Yes, the grouping can be avoided AFAIK.
3. Same as 1.
4. Same as 1.
5. Don't think so. Someone else with more knowledge will have to answer this to be sure, though.
6. If you mean a tile on the start screen, which, when tapped will play/stop/next/prev/whatever and STAY on the start screen? No. Tiles (sadly) always open a program (even if for only a millisecond). You can use this for deeplinking to favorite songs/playlists/streaming services though, which is cool.
7. Same as 1.
8. Same as 1.
Hope I helped.
Thank you for your reply.
TheGoldrocker said:
6. If you mean a tile on the start screen, which, when tapped will play/stop/next/prev/whatever and STAY on the start screen? No. Tiles (sadly) always open a program (even if for only a millisecond). You can use this for deeplinking to favorite songs/playlists/streaming services though, which is cool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By "deeplinking", do you mean pinning songs to the start screen by 'long pressing' on them?
I do hope that Microsoft introduces interactive tiles in some future update. Sort of start screen widgets.
gdebojyoti said:
By "deeplinking", do you mean pinning songs to the start screen by 'long pressing' on them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deeplinking is launching an app with a link toward a specific page with parameters. Imagine it as a URL to a specific page on a website. If your app and pages support it, you could tap on a tile (say on the start screen), which opens your app, and instantly navigates to a playlist, album, song, whatever you made that tile link to.
Pinning items to the start screen can be triggered by anything you want. You, the coder, decides how you're gonna allow the user to pin their songs/albums/playlists/artists/whatever.
Here's a little tutorial on this topic:
http://wp.qmatteoq.com/first-steps-...-links/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Okay, thanks. I'll have a look at that.
To make a media player for windows phone is to know insanity.
Why we no join forces?
There are a couple fo things the guys here forgot to tell you:
You can not read Mp3 files from SD card.
You can not read mp3 files from the user music folder.
You only have access to web resources or your app's isolated storage.
You basically have to engineer a way to get them to the app storage.
mcosmin222 said:
To make a media player for windows phone is to know insanity.
Why we no join forces?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think I have enough knowledge to be able to help you. I am just a beginner.
mcosmin222 said:
You can not read Mp3 files from SD card.
You can not read mp3 files from the user music folder.
You only have access to web resources or your app's isolated storage.
You basically have to engineer a way to get them to the app storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that's why I will try to "integrate with the built-in music features". Hopefully it will be okay then.
I am not trying to make the next best thing in the music player app category.
I am just trying to make one which has a slightly different UI and is able to play mp3s.
Sort of a project of mine.
By the way, can someone please tell me if I can use technologies like HTML5 to create this app? Actually I don't know C#.
Or should I learn C# before attempting this app?
gdebojyoti said:
I don't think I have enough knowledge to be able to help you. I am just a beginner.
Well, that's why I will try to "integrate with the built-in music features". Hopefully it will be okay then.
I am not trying to make the next best thing in the music player app category.
I am just trying to make one which has a slightly different UI and is able to play mp3s.
Sort of a project of mine.
By the way, can someone please tell me if I can use technologies like HTML5 to create this app? Actually I don't know C#.
Or should I learn C# before attempting this app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can not integrate with the built-in player.
There are too many limitations to explain. You will see.
Yes, learn C#
Okay.
Cast ALL your PC movie to HDTV through Google ChromeCast without quality loss
Free app for chromecast: cast ALL your PC movie to HDTV through Google ChromeCast without quality loss
Rich video format support:MP4、AVI、MP4、MOV、WMV、MP3、M4A and much more
http://labs.wondershare.com/project/wondershare-media-center.html
http://download.wondershare.com/dreamstream_full1694.exe
Dreamstream is apparently the same product that was released March 10 as "Wondershare Media Center" version 1.0.0, and then abandoned a few days later (see http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2676575). Presumably mini_wan can tell us, since he was the original poster in that thread too, and he seems to be a company rep.
Funny, the download file name still ends in _full1694, same as the Wondershare Media Center installer. Is that a build number or something else? I hope it's an improved version, since the original showed lots of promise, but too many bugs.
Unfortunately it looks like it will take a while to find out. Setup file corrupted.
...and now the links have been removed. I guess it's not quite ready. Check back later!
DJames1 said:
Dreamstream is apparently the same product that was released March 10 as "Wondershare Media Center" version 1.0.0, and then abandoned a few days later (see http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2676575). Presumably mini_wan can tell us, since he was the original poster in that thread too, and he seems to be a company rep.
Funny, the download file name still ends in _full1694, same as the Wondershare Media Center installer. Is that a build number or something else? I hope it's an improved version, since the original showed lots of promise, but too many bugs.
Unfortunately it looks like it will take a while to find out. Setup file corrupted.
...and now the links have been removed. I guess it's not quite ready. Check back later!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Previous versions has some problems in our program, but the current version we have made a lot of changes in the quality of cast .we have great improvements, have solved the audio and video sync issues. We will launch a better version in the near future and look forward to your suggestions
Ok, now the installer works. Not much different from Wondershare Media Center but the name though.
- It still crashes in DeviceDiscovery.dll on startup if there's a Roku device present on the network
- It still wants to automatically index all drives on the system, with no choice of folders to be indexed, file types to be indexed, or location to store the index
- Transcoding works, but there's a lot of pauses and the Chromecast often freezes permanently
- It still leaves WSHelper running, although at least it doesn't seem to install it to auto-run on startup
So, not much to show for a month's work.
DJames1 said:
Ok, now the installer works. Not much different from Wondershare Media Center but the name though.
- It still crashes in DeviceDiscovery.dll on startup if there's a Roku device present on the network
- It still wants to automatically index all drives on the system, with no choice of folders to be indexed, file types to be indexed, or location to store the index
- Transcoding works, but there's a lot of pauses and the Chromecast often freezes permanently
- It still leaves WSHelper running, although at least it doesn't seem to install it to auto-run on startup
So, not much to show for a month's work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What version of the product you are using?
mini_wan said:
What version of the product you are using?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DreamStream 1.1.0.17
exe date 2014/4/8 17:14
.avi played fine, small quality loss though
DJames1 said:
DreamStream 1.1.0.17
exe date 2014/4/8 17:14
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you send the products log file to us?
The log path is Program Files\Wondershare\DreamStream\Log
Actually it's in C:\Program Files (x86)\Wondershare\DreamStream\Log on my Win7 64-bit system. How do you want me to send it to you?
The log file doesn't show where the program crashes in DeviceDiscovery.dll. I already reported the details of that crash in the old thread about Wondershare Media Center.
Do you want the log entries for the media items where the transcoder had problems and the Chromecast froze?
mini_wan said:
Cast ALL your PC movie to HDTV through Google ChromeCast without quality loss
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I read this and then I read comments about transcoding. If this app is transcoding then there in quality loss. Does this support mkv? Including vc1 video? What about audio formats.
I've tried to run this but it will not run on my 8.1 laptop, so before I waste anymore time is it really "ALL with NO quality loss"?
I'm sorry if I sound confrontational, but when you make claims like that, you're gonna get held to it.
Work for me!
I have a netbook, acer aspire one, 2g of ram, and it work very well!!
The only thing is that subtitles are not suported.
I only try with .avi
New Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 user . . . question: why does the tablet's OS see a difference between media files that have their file type suffixes in capital letters rather that lower case? My tablet can play self loaded media that has lower case file suffixes, such as filenameX.mp4, but if the same filename has its suffix in caps, I get an error message stating the file type is not supported, i.e., filenameX.MP4 will not play, while filenameX.mp4 will. Same with other file types such as pdf's; filenameY.pdf will work fine; filenameY.PDF produces an error.
I can't say why but I;ve had the same issue - a video with MKV won't play but mkv will (when renamed).
I also not that finding a file manager that doesn't hide the damn extension is hard!
Fluffbutt said:
I can't say why but I;ve had the same issue - a video with MKV won't play but mkv will (when renamed).
I also not that finding a file manager that doesn't hide the damn extension is hard!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fluffbutt I'd like to see the video you posted in your response, however, the popups and ads simply won't allow. Can you perhaps post a shortened ur? Back to my question, it's less a 'why' and more of a validation effort. My background is in Apple's iOs / MacOS and this is a 'forced' migration to Google's Android OS device. So, I guess what I'm looking for is some kind of confirmation that what I'm seeing is just the way it is in Samsung world - no capitalized filename extensions. Thank you for your time.
Umm - I didn't post an url. Honest, nothing... I don't even know if I have the video any more (and, even if I did I doubt XDA would want a link posted.. *cough* "downloaded video".)
If you're on windows you might have virus... if on tablet/phone it's a browser advert?
It might be a function of how the players "see" the files - when they were written the developer set ".mkv" and ".mp4" as playable files but didn't think to do ".MKV" and ".MP4".
Case-sensitivity in filenames (and extensions) is typical of Linux. Since Android is Linux-based, I would guess that's the underlying issue. And yes, it's short-sighted of developers to not account for this. Renaming the files is the quickest/easiest workaround.