As part of preparation, i have started to upgrade all my Players from Android V1 R108 to Latest Version V2 R207
CMS is still at 1.8.9 and should be done once finish upgrading all my players.
since the upgrade, players suddenly stared to show Black frame where video supposed to play.
i was able to reproduce this with the same layout.
I have set the player for auditing and found some errors.
while i read in this forum that first error related to the Server CMS time setting problem,
i have checked it as well using ‘date’ command and server time is fine.
7098322 51617aa 03/09/2020 14:44 PLAYER POST ERROR Demo_Stand_small Subscriber Unable to open message: java.lang.Exception/Message Expired at 2020-09-03T19:43:11.000
7098358 59abce7 03/09/2020 14:45 PLAYER POST ERROR Demo_Stand_small XFA:LayoutManager setNextLayout: Cannot set the next Layout from the Schedule. Schedule Invalid
|7098322|51617aa|2020-09-03 14:44|PLAYER|POST|ERROR|Demo_Stand_small|Subscriber|Unable to open message: java.lang.Exception/Message Expired at 2020-09-03T19:43:11.000|
|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|
|7098358|59abce7|2020-09-03 14:45|PLAYER|POST|ERROR|Demo_Stand_small|XFA:LayoutManager|setNextLayout: Cannot set the next Layout from the Schedule. Schedule Invalid|
|7098359|59abce7|2020-09-03 14:45|PLAYER|POST|ERROR|Demo_Stand_small|XFA:FileManager|Unable to report media inventory: HTTP request failed, HTTP status: 503|
|7098360|59abce7|2020-09-03 14:45|PLAYER|POST|ERROR|Demo_Stand_small|XFA:StatusUpdateDispatch - Run|HTTP request failed, HTTP status: 503|
|7098361|59abce7|2020-09-03 14:46|PLAYER|POST|ERROR|Demo_Stand_small|onHandleIntent|Network status is connected, cannot reach XMDS.|
|7098362|59abce7|2020-09-03 14:47|PLAYER|POST|ERROR|Demo_Stand_small|Subscriber|Unable to open message: java.lang.Exception/Message Expired at 2020-09-03T19:46:01.000|
|7098365|1048757|2020-09-03 14:48|PLAYER|POST|ERROR|Demo_Stand_small|Subscriber|Unable to open message: java.lang.Exception/Message Expired at 2020-09-03T19:47:21.000|
|7098606|1781756|2020-09-03 14:55|XMDS|POST|DEBUG|Demo_Stand_small|RegisterDisplay|serverKey: XXXXXX hardwareKey: 8c92489e-2148-354e-bec4-a30c534be584, displayName: Demo_Stand_small, macAddress: 6c:21:a2:43:15:28|
I don’t think any of those errors directly relate to the problem with Video - they are more around XMR/CMS connectivity. So for a period of time the Player couldn’t get to the CMS, which isn’t necessarily a problem if they have since stopped happening.
The video problem may well be to do with an enhancement to R207 which involves preloading video. We’ve attempted to guess whether a device will support it or not, but perhaps we’ve been too optimistic.
There is a new setting in 2.0.5 to disable preloading video, called use multiple video decoders. It defaults to “device dependent” but can also be switched on/off as required.
As you don’t have v2 yet, the easiest way to find out would be to install R206 instead and see if they come back OK.
Should that solve it, we’d be grateful if you could let us know what version of Android your devices are running, and what device it is, so that we can improve our “guess” as to whether the functionality should be supported.
Thanks Dan.
i also though about this feature after posting, and started to investigate further.
i have mutliple different devices, some of them are RK based Android, and some are MSM8994 (qualcomm) - they all reproduced the video problem.
so this is not necessarily HW related.
since i have more device running video on R207 without any issues, and i was able to reproduce the problem only with this specific layout on different type of Hardware, i think this is related to the video window set to "Layer 2"
i didnt had time to investigate this outside of the the client’s specific layout , but this seems to the the only difference that then the rest of the Layouts set to full screen video only and they seems to be working fine with R207.
i will be back in office on Tuesday to make some additional tests to isolate this problem.
It seems to be related to the Layout Duration,
I have Ticker (RSS), Clock, and Weather Widgets.
the closed was set to 44,200 Seconds, to avoid flickering back in Vesion R103
when removing the windows with the different Widgets, i got the Video to play in Loop.
when removing duration for the Clock - the Layout duration is set to 1 minutes, while video is 30 seconds - which makes the video play once untill the layout restart (i assume, couldnt verify that properly)
The checkbox “Loop?” in window properties - doesnt seems to affect akso when there is only a single video.
in any case, i couldnt set layout to play with the widgets and a single video properly so video is looping…
The later versions of Xibo haven’t done anything to change how the Layout duration works in playback - there is a good summary of this here: Understanding Media duration and how it affects playback. This also explains how looping works.
In your Layout the longest content by a long way is your RSS feed. You have the duration set to 5 seconds per item, and there were well over 40 items in the feed when I checked it.
This means your video will play through one time, wait on a black screen for ((5*40)-30 seconds) and then the Layout will expire and everything will start again.
As you only have 1 video, you should check the “Loop” checkbox in the Video region so that this content loops while the RSS is playing.
The loop setting is on the Region with the video inside? If I tick that and publish the Layout, I see the video run multiple times until the Ticker has finished.
Not the loop setting on the Video itself.
If this still doesn’t work for you, can you try adding the same video to the Region twice?
