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Playing MP3s times out

C

Chris Walker

New Member
Not sure if this is related to the Custom Firmware or not as I never tried playing MP3s before I installed the CF but here's the problem.

I'm trying to persuade my Fox HDR machine to play MP3s which I've downloaded from the BBC using get_iplayer. I have had them on a 2TB USB disc but when the Fox stopped playing after 15 minutes I tried moving them to the My Music folder on the hard drive of the machine. That made no difference and it still timed out after 15 minutes.

So now I leave the Fox machine on and using my Humax HDR1000S machine I use that to play the files which it accesses through the Media Server function of the Fox. I don't get any timeouts from the satellite box and it plays the files however long they are.

But I still feel that the Fox shouldn't time out.

What can I look at to check / change to fix this?
 
I'll take a look at it to confirm later - the CF is not implicated (at first sight).

NB: as there are several different machines with "fox" in their designations, I take it you mean HDR-FOX T2 (the "T2" can be omitted).
 
Chris Walker said:
I'm trying to persuade my Fox HDR machine to play MP3s which I've downloaded from the BBC using get_iplayer.
Click to expand...
The Humax PVR-8000T couldn't play long MP3s. Possibly the HDR-FOX is the same.

Another thought is did you convert them after get_iplayer the download? I though that get_iplayer no longer converts to MP3 and very few (any now?) are available in MP3 format.
I'm wondering that if you did convert them after download whether the conversion programme is truncating them due to a limited licence.

I have used get_iplayer to download radio programmes but they downloaded into M4a and I thought that those I did play on the HDR-FOX played fine.

I'll check what mine does tonight if Black Hole doesn't beat me to it.
 
Nothing similar here - I'm playing an MP3 created by conversion from a .ts radio recording (proper conversion, not simple MP2 extraction) 150 minutes long, and it has played well beyond the 15m point both natively (in the My Music folder) and by network file share using another HDR-FOX.

The native MP3 player is only marginally "better than nothing" though - no transport controls, no resume from last played point... it makes a long talking book a right pain unless you listen all in one session without dozing off!

I use get_iplayer to download radio, and it has to do a conversion stage to end up with MP3 - IIRC it needs access to the LAME encoder.
 
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Luke said:
did you convert them after get_iplayer the download?
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I use an HP Proliant server to download the iPlayer files and it runs a script to convert the m4a files to mp3, including sorting out times if there is an extra hour in there due to BST. That extra hour confuses some more scripts I run if I need to split the MP3 file in to half-hour segments to play in my car.

Luke said:
the conversion programme is truncating them due to a limited licence
Click to expand...
The files play everywhere else I've tried without failing so I don't *think* they're truncated.

Black Hole said:
IIRC it needs access to the LAME encoder
Click to expand...
I've just looked at the script on the HP box and it uses ffmpeg to do the conversion to mp3 using libmp3lame as you suggest. I then fix the dates with eyeD3.

I was going to suggest that get_iplayer removes any copyright but I think that it only stops it displaying the copyright text. Just in case it's relevant, gip records the files at 320k.

Playing the files using the satellite box will allow fast forwarding albeit in 30 second jumps but that's better than nothing which is what the HDR-Fox offers.
 
Black Hole said:
Nothing similar here - I'm playing an MP3 created by conversion from a .ts radio recording
Click to expand...
Can you tell me how you do your conversion please? I've recorded a couple of radio programmes today and I'd like to try and replicate what you do to test the playback function. That way I might begin to get to the bottom of why my machine doesn't play the whole file.

Thanks.
 
I've just had a play with a couple of get_iplayer programmes, the first being a 78 minute radio programme.
1/ Converted it to MP3 using
"...\WinFF\ffmpeg.exe" -y -i "...\Drama_on_3_-_The_Mother_b094sd4k_original.m4a" -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 160k -ac 2 -ar 44100 "...\Drama_on_3_-_The_Mother_b094sd4k_original.mp3"
2/ Loaded onto the My Music directory of an HDR-FOX T2.
3/ Plays at least the first 30 minutes fine.
What I could not get it to do was skip forward 30 seconds.
Converting the second m4a to MP3 using ffmeg with 320k instead of 160k also plays fine on the HDR-FOX T2.

I also played the m4a download through the HDR-FOX T2 and that plays with usual skip forward/back, resume and the time selection via the time bar and needs no conversion.
 
Chris Walker said:
Can you tell me how you do your conversion please? I've recorded a couple of radio programmes today and I'd like to try and replicate what you do to test the playback function. That way I might begin to get to the bottom of why my machine doesn't play the whole file.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Normal WebIF OPT+ “Extract Audio” facility, with MP3 in the Audio Extraction Type in WebIF Settings.

You don’t need to go to that much trouble - offer up any “proper” MP3 file (not something you’ve cobbled together) and you will find it plays fine.
 
Black Hole said:
Normal WebIF OPT+ “Extract Audio” facility, with MP3 in the Audio Extraction Type in WebIF Settings.
Click to expand...
I have to confess that I've never used the WebIF for that purpose. I do use it to download video files but normally manipulate audio files elsewhere as I rarely record a radio prog on the HDR. I did do that over the weekend though but haven't yet had time to do anything with them so I'll certainly have a look at your suggestion. Ah. That option is greyed out for the Lisa Tarbuck show I recorded on Saturday. I'll investigate further! In Settings I have Audio Extraction Type set to MP3 (60 times slower).

Luke said:
I also played the m4a download through the HDR-FOX T2 and that plays
Click to expand...
My machine won't see m4a files so I'm guessing that I need to install something somewhere, or am I doing something wrong? I put an m4a file into the My Music folder but when it came to searching for Music files, hte HDR didn't see any, only MP3s.
 
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Chris Walker said:
My machine won't see m4a files so I'm guessing that I need to install something somewhere, or am I doing something wrong? I put an m4a file into the My Music folder but when it came to searching for Music files, hte HDR didn't see any, only MP3s.
Click to expand...
The m4a audio file needs to go into the My Video folder.
 
Luke said:
The m4a audio file needs to go into the My Video folder.
Click to expand...
I found that out :)
Having played with m4a files and some more MP3 files (created from both .ts files and from get_iplayer recordings), it seems that I can now play audio files without them timing out.

So I'm happy to close this and thank everybody for their help. I'd like to say that I know what the problem was but I don't. If I run into problems again though, I feel sure that I'll know where to start looking. Once again, thanks to everybody for their help.
 
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