Can the Android App Play Video?

[eatmybiglazer]

Are any words not filtered out in the search function?

I tried searching. Does the Android app handle video playback? I have only used the android Opera browser to play video on my tablet/phone, and I do not have any trial time left to make sure it works. It was clunky navigating subsonic via browser, whereas I loved the interface for the app.

[ytechie]

Just to chime in... I have always been dissatisfied with the poor search functionality of phpBB. Perhaps a Google engine can be integrated, or something similar? The search is very difficult to satisfy, and produces poor results.

[BKKKPewsey]

The search is very difficult to satisfy, and produces poor results.

That's being polite

However to the op read http://www.subsonic.org/pages/apps.jsp#android
But I think it depends if your device supports flash
Perhaps a Droid user can give a definitive answer.

[dik23]

I have a desire, which definitely has flash, and although I can log in and see the name of the directory I can't see any of the files.

This makes it rather difficult for me to comment on whether it will play video.

Any ideas?

[rboshuis]

Are you sure you enabled flv/h264 video in your user/device specific player config within the server?

I didn't have flash player installed and it showed me the movie, but then with the download link in stead of the movie. Once I installed Flash Player it showed the movie.

[dik23]

flv/h264 definitely enabled

Can see name of dir, but no file names.

Where are the relevant log files?

Server ubuntu 10.04

[dik23]

If I do a search for a video file name that I know exists it finds it and I can play it. But how do you know what to search for if there's no file list ?!

My android's on my home wifi. The browser can see and play everything fine, it's just the android app. My friend has a playbook with the app for that and he has identical issues, which says to me that there's something wrong server (4.6 on Lucid) side.

Any ideas ?

[Robandcathy]

I know for a fact that the android can play video, I do it all the time. Most my movies are in the .mkv container, subsonic has some issues with other file formats but .mkv will work. Play around with different file formats to see if one will work. Any videos made by my digital camera will not play.

[dik23]

The problem is that the Android app won't even list the files present. Same problem on Playbook. WebUI works fine.

[bushman4]

What format are the files? It sounds like you do not have the file extension of these files in the list of video file extensions in the Subsonic setting screen.

Glenn

[bebopblues]

For video playback, I think Plex has subsonic beaten. The Plex user interface is pretty good and it does all the metadata and art work scraping for you. Plex is supported on so many devices from android, iOS, Mac/PC desktops, Roku, AppleTV (jailbroken), PS3, etc. And from what I used, it seems to transcode all popular formats (MKV, AVI, MP4, MOV, etc). For now, only the Mac/PC desktop apps supports subtitle, but it is there.

[dik23]

What format are the files? It sounds like you do not have the file extension of these files in the list of video file extensions in the Subsonic setting screen.

Glenn

Mixture of avi, mkv and mp4. As I mentioned if I search on via Android it finds but it doesn't directory list - so I don't know what to search for unless I look at the webui

[GJ51]

The Android app can most definitely play video. You have to follow the normal guidelines for folder/file organization and not just dump everything into a root directory.

I have had some problems recently with the last Java upgrade on one of my sites, but I have other sites that are still working fine. I can watch just about any file type. The major issue with video on Android is bandwidth availability and CPU power if transcoding is needed.

It takes a bit of tinkering to get everything tailored to your particular hardware/bandwidth capabilities, but it does work.

I can even use SS to watch .wtv recorded TV on my phone.

Lastly, the Droid series has always had it's own set of peculiar quirks with Subsonic. Seems to be related to an internal media thing they have. I can't remember the name but it was pretty well hashed out a while back when the droids were having trouble playing back music without stuttering and pausing.

If anyone wants to test video playback on their Android, just send me a PM and I'll give you a demo.

[dik23]

Ok, so you say it's my directory structure that's off ?

Since I'm not keen on rearranging my directories, they're used for another purpose, do you think I could use Linux symbolic links to create a faux structure that SS would be able to work with ?

[GJ51]

it's a bit hard for me to say as I don't use Linux or symlinks. but I do know from what others have run into here in the forums that there are a few guidelines that help SS perform better. The first concept is that SS keeps a databse of the folder structure, but not the individual files, so that when you are in a library the folder structure loads relatively quickly, but the files stored in any folder don't load untill you open the folder. This means that performance is best when you have a lot of well organized folders each with a small number of files in each folder. Once you get to folders with more than 50 files in one folder it starts taking longer to load the folder.

The Android app (it may have changed in susequent versions) won't read files that are in a root folder listed in the Music folder.

The best stragtegy for SS is to List a media folder such as X:\Music and then fill it with folders in the Artist/Album/Tracks format. For my videos I have a X:\Videos root folder listed under media folders and then populate the root with logically arranged video subfolders by subject. Organization is a bit trickier with video than music as categorization is largely a function of your own needs, but the same cincepts apply if your trying to get acceptable performance - more folders with fewer files in each as opposed to a few folders with hundres of files in them.

If you don't want to disturb your current library, I'd suggest you might consider just making a simpler Subsonic section and just putting a few things there at a time to see if it improves performance so you can get an idea of where you want to go from there.

There is a bit of time and effort that goes into getting video on SS right, but it does work. As I've mentioned before I have users from more than a thousand miles away that are watching 1080i recorded TV from my SS site. You do need a good upload speed and the user at the other end needs fair download speed and the server has to have enough power to do the transcoding, but even with less power video can be formatted at lower resolution and be tailored to get good results that work on most reasonably powered platforms.

In the beginning we used to joke that you're not going to watch a blue ray from an atom powered server on your 3g cell phone. At the other end, ny dual quad core Xeon server with 16GB ram can handle multiple blue ray streams simultaneously at the same time. Everywhere in between you need to find what the limits are for the hardware involved.

HTH