Does not play .mov files

[Mike]

I installed anki droid and found to my dismay that the .mov files I
use in my flash cards do not play. This, despite the fact that the
movies play on my Nexus One if I access them via another program.

I'm sure you guys have bigger fish to fry at this point with trying to
get srs and syncing working, but I just thought I'd bring it to your
attention so that you could put it on your list of things to do.

[Nicolas Raoul]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for reporting this issue!
If you have more problems, don't hesitate to report them, using the
issue tracker:
http://code.google.com/p/ankidroid/issues

I created an entry for your .mov issue.
Admittedly, it falls quite low in the priority list.
But adding this feature could take less than an hour if all goes well
(supported by WebView for instance), so if someone is motivated enough
it could also appear soon :-)

Cheers,
Nicolas.

[Edu Zamora]

Hey Mike,

When I saw the title of your post I thought it was due a limitation of
Android itself, because I far as I knew .mov was not supported like a
media file.

At least, the documentation said so:
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

So, the fact that some movies work in your Nexus One suprise me. Could
you tell us which app you use to reproduce .mov files? Maybe we could
investigate how this app accomplishes that function.

Anyway, thanks a lot for reporting and for your understanding about us
having to set some priorities.

Cheers!

Edu Zamora

[Nicolas Raoul]

I don't know much about current video formats but this Wikipedia
article states that MPEG-4 was based on QuickTime, somehow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime#QuickTime_and_MPEG-4

Need to check the reference, though.

Cheers,
Nicolas.

[Edu Zamora]

Nicolas, I read the article you pointed about Quicktime but I didn't get much from it, basically because I know almost nothing about video formats.

But reading the next paragraph, I think if it could be something related with a MOV parser or decoder... Maybe the app Mike is using includes its own codecs for MOV?

Because both the MOV and MP4 containers can use the same MPEG-4 codecs, they are mostly interchangeable in a QuickTime-only environment. However, MP4, being an international standard, has more support. This is especially true on hardware devices, such as the Sony PSP and various DVD players; on the software side, most DirectShow / Video for Windows codec packs^[23][24] include an MP4 parser, but not one for MOV.

If someone has more knowledge in this area than us and can shed some light on the matter it would be very welcome.

Cheers,
Nicolas.

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[Mike]

With the release of the alpha version of ankidroid, I thought I'd lend
a hand and help start testing. Unfortunately, the deck I plan to test
is my sign language deck which uses the aforementioned .mov files. I
converted a few to .mp4 files so that they'd play on my phone, but
apparently that's not going to work since when I tried to embed them
into the cards using the anki client on my laptop I was unable to
select them (looks like mp4 is not a supported option). I see a number
of other file formats though. Are any of these formats currently
supported by ankidroid?

mp3, ogg, wav, avi, ogv, mpg, mpeg, mov

Remembering that these are videos, which file format should I use?

If none of these formats are currently supported, which are likely to
be supported in the future?

[Edu Zamora]

Mike, of the file formats you said, mp3, ogg and wav are supported. You can see all file formats supported by Android on the next link: http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html.

I implemented audio support for Ankidroid and I think audio and video files are played in the same way (using the same classes) but I am not totally sure because I did not think about the video functionality at that time, so I did not test it.

But anyway, in order to test video support on Ankidroid we encounter the problem you already mentioned: Anki Desktop doesn't support mp4 and you can not attach mp4 (because you can not add or edit facts) on Ankidroid yet. So, in order to see if the code already implemented works for videos too I should develop a simple application to test videos or wait until someone implements the add functionality. It is going to take some time, but we are going to do it. Also, it would be interesting see if mp4 could be supported on Anki Desktop because I am sure a lot of users would like to use the same decks on their decks and computers at the same time (at least I do).

Regarding videos the formats supported are mp4 and 3gp and, in my modest opinion, I think mp4 is the way to go.

--

[Edu Zamora]

use the same decks on their decks and computers at the same time (at least I do).

I meant "on their phones and computers at the same time" :P
 

[Damien Elmes]

> But anyway, in order to test video support on Ankidroid we encounter the
> problem you already mentioned: Anki Desktop doesn't support mp4

In what way? mplayer should be able to handle it

[Damien Elmes]

http://github.com/dae/ankiqt/commit/dde3c13cfe245ad8d80557cfa0f0215282f89620