Notices

Hi,

I have unfortunate problem with my new N900, as it cannot play back The Economist podcast I'm subscribed to. And the same problem seems to occur with long aac-encoded audiobooks too.

The filesizes and audiolenghts for the podcasts are approximately 180MB / 7-8 hours, and the same for the audiobooks I've tried.

Everytime I try to play them, I get error message Playback Failed. Unfortunately I have no idea what to do about this. If someone needs the mentioned files for testing, I can put them available for download, and provide more (e.g. logging) information, if I manage to find it.

Best regards,

Mika Selin

You've always got the option of separating the file in to multiple smaller ones, which is what I would do personally. ( Just to make management easier. )

That being said, you can give Panucci - http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...cci/0.3-8thp0/ - a try. Although 8 hours might make that stumble too.

And as a warning: Downloading anything from outside of Extras can cause problems for your device, and should only be done if you know what you're doing.

How did you play them (what software)?
Did you already try the gPodder/Panucci combination ?

twaelti & rsuffix:

Thanks for the ideas!

Previously I have used iPhone and iPod (and occasionally iTunes) to play the files in question. Alas N900 is no iPhone , so I think i'll try splitting the files. Maybe I'll manage to script a solution to do that somewhat automatically, and feed those files to my N900 either via a private rss/podcast feed or something similar. I'll also give Panucci a try, before doing that. I'm using gPodder as my podcast downloader, and it uses Maemo's Media Player as media player. Maybe that can be changed to Panucci if it works out to be better.

Still, I hope someday these kind of files will play, as I suppose that there are at least few persons who like their audiobooks, without too much extra hassle.

Hi Mika,

I'm playing 400MB MP3 audio books (~7h) with Panucci on the N900 without problems.

Max

Fortunately panucci seems to work, if I split the podcasts and audiobooks. Thanks!

I have the same problem with rather small m4a files and the internal media player. I filed a bug and it was confirmed that there seems to be a problem with podcasts with subtitles.

Maybe it is the same problem you are experiencing.

i have problems with podcasts that have different pictures for songs and the ability to skip to a new song within the podcast itself. no problem on iphone, but doesn't work when trying to open on n900. i have several files over 2 hours that work, but it will not a 20 minute podcast with 5 songs in it.

I am having exactly this issue (also with the economist). Any suggestions beside splitting the file? And if it comes to that, any clever ways to split the file?

m4a playback seems to be a general problem on the n900. this is terrible as now more and more podcast are in aac. panucci is very unstable also with 20MB files. the bug for this for the default player is on low priority. really sad.