Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Could some of you upload one problematic video so I can test what's going on? Also, I wonder why you're not using stock player (or OMP), both decode videos using gstreamer - thus HW acceleration through DSP.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Really wierd?? Can anyone clarify about hardware revisons??

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

To see the hardware revision of your N900's mainboard run this in the terminal:
cat /proc/cpuinfo

This thread talks about it:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...ware+revisions

If I remember correctly, there are at least 3 production revisions (plus some preproduction). Some people say 2204 is the best one, but I have no idea if it's true.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

I will have to cut up a portion of it and see if it still reproduces the issue, because this is a 1.4 GB file, and your mailbox might not be big enough for it ;)

I normally use mplayer because it is compatible with more stuff, and because I've been using mplayer forever. I use it through kmplayer for the convenience of the GUI.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Incidentally, why does it take so frickin long to copy stuff to eMMC? Even from a 10 Class Micro SC card, it's been copying for around 40 minutes and still going. :eek:

And why is copying from a Sandisk 16GB Class 4 faster than from a Sandisk 32GB Class 10? Estel mentioned a few days ago that the best cards for swap are the Class 4 Sandisk before the 2 color scheme change. Doesn't Class designation mean anything these days? Jeez...

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Apples and oranges. Lower class may be better for swap because higher class cards are optimized for sequential read (or write) of large files (achieved primarily by using large size blocks) whereas swap generally uses small random read/writes.

You are copying a large file, presumably sequentially, so a higher class should be better. If it isn't, complain to Sandisk.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

i have same issue as handaxe, playback fine near fresh boot, goes wrong after loading several videos. That and the diagonally skewed issue i reported a while back.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Yeah, the Class 10 was slower than the Class 4, but both were pitiful. It took about 2 hours to copy a 1.4GB file from the card to MyDocs. Surely there must be something wrong!

Can't you change the size blocks by formatting the card though? Or can you only increase / decrease the block size by formatting? I am guessing you can probably only increase it, but maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

We are talking about different blocks. Flash memory is organized and used differently from your usual magnetic storage. For example there is no write without erase first. You can google it up but something like this might be a good starter. Erase happens in blocks. The size of the block is set in the hardware and has nothing to do with the file system used on top of that, so whatever block size you format the card for has no effect.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Thank you for explaining that. I knew flash is a different technology in quite a few different ways from magnetic storage, but I didn't know this detail.

Isn't there additionally a problem with electric charge escaping from the memory cells over time, thereby causing data to not be retained for as long as magnetic disks? I still have hard disks from 15 years ago that (for the most part) still work. I heard somewhere that flash memory tends to lose its ability to retain data much sooner than that.

I was backing up recently a couple of old IBM Travelstar 8GB external disks which were ruggedized and had a PCMCIA interface. A relic, basically. I didn't have any problem, except for a folder where some of the files had been corrupted. I could retrieve the data because I had stored it in the other disk, but still I think the batting average was pretty good for such an old drive. Perhaps extraordinarily strong cosmic ray hit the disk at that specific spot sometime. Or maybe, as Murphy once stated, SH@$ just happened. :)

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Yup. At least theoretically. I've read that flash memory is about the worst option for long-term archival. I always assumed it was the opposite. And actually have recommended it :)

I guess that as long as you do a read-from-old-medium-write-in-new-medium every 10 years it doesn't really matter. Just have to remember to set an alarm for every 10 years :)

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

Yes, it's crazy, because normally flash media is the most resisting to environmental damage, so it is easy to think it is also the longer lasting medium. Have you heard of cases where a CF card was lost in the sea and somebody found it, and it still worked?

Good advice, but I think 10 years is way too long. Perhaps 2-3 years? I was pissed off when I found out that 10 year old recordable CD and DVD disks I had were mostly unreadable. Some brands were better than others, but for the most part they were unusable. There are multiple programs that can attempt to recover data from unreadable disks, and I had mixed success with that. I can imagine billions of dollars in data are probably lost because of faulty media. They should make it way more clear that CD media (at least the one produced 10 years ago) should never, ever be used as archival media.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

No but I once accidentally washed a USB stick in a washing machine. Put it on a radiator for the night and it worked fine in the morning.

Amen!

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

As I understand it, the fresh boot playback issue is expectable and a result of pushing the envelope in getting 720p to work at all. So I am quite happy as is.

The distortion issue - is that definitely not a matter too high quality HD video?

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

That's crazy, isn't it? Yet leave that USB stick alone for a few years in a controlled environment, and chances are the data will be irrecoverable.

It's kind of ironic that modern (electronic) media created with the most advanced technological knowledge known to man is bound to be lost in a few years, yet data registered the old-school way (written, engraved, etc) still surfaces after hundreds if not thousands of years, and it is still legible. The reliance of modern societies on electronic means to record data scares me. All of it is bound to be lost sooner or later. Think about the implications of that.

Re: Why can't N900 play videos smoothly?
 

I solved my problem by changing the kernel power settings. I set the minimum frequency to 500Mhz and now I never have the cyclical lagging when playing videos.

I think previously the minimum was set to 250Mhz, but there is a slight chance it was set to 125Mhz by me, foolishly, as I was not aware of the fact the N900 should never run at 125Mhz. I used to have many spontaneous reboots which seem to have gone too, so I really think I might have set it to 125Mhz. :o