Background Video Support
Q: Where should i get the background videos?
A: The background videos must be included in the song pack (smzip)
Q: Does every song have background videos?
A: No, it does not. But if you see a pack (smzip) with size of 500MB or more, it is likely that there are background videos included with some of the songs.
Q: Are the random background videos supported?
A: No, but i am looking in to this. So far it seems that android does not support gap-less video playlists.
As much as i would love to see this working - it's just not possible (currently) to play 2 videos from a playlist without a 1-2 sec gap.
Trying to start the second video before the first ends does not help as the gap is unpredictable - i just can't tell when to start the playback of the second video so android plays it just in time the first ends.
Q: How does the game detect that there is a background video?
A: There is a #BGCHANGES tag in the .sm file pointing to the background video
An example entry from .sm file follows:
#BGCHANGES:0.000=backgroundVideo.avi=1.000=1=0=0,
99999=-nosongbg-=1.000=0=0=0
This covers the most popular .sm files with background vides out there.
Q: Are the fades, transparency and scripts also working?
A: No, there are limitations from what Android Media Player can do. Because there are just a few files using this and i have a limited time for implementing new features - all transparency, fades e.t.c. are currently ignored (this might change in future)
Q: I see a "Unable to play video (Unsupported format)" message when trying to play a file with video background, what is wrong?
A: BeatX detected properly that there is a background video to be played and found it in the folder, but android media player can't play it..
Q: Is there a way to fix this?
A: Yes there is, a simple one, you just have to encode the video to a format that android knows.
I made a small tutorial
And here are the steps:
1) Open this site in your browser http://video.online-convert.com/convert-video-for-android
2) On the site hit "Select file/Browse"
3) Navigate to your BeatX/Songs folder, find the pack folder, song folder and select the .avi file in that folder
4) Hit the convert button (keep the Optional settings blank)
5) Wait until the video is converted, download of the converted file should start automatically
6) Rename the file to the ORIGINAL NAME, including suffix (e.g. background.avi will be converted to background.mp4 so change it back to background.avi) - at this step the converted file should be playable using standard android video player factory pre-installed on your phone/tablet
7) Copy the file from your download folder back to the original file location and overwrite the original file
8) Start BeatX and enjoy!
Q: I'm seeing "Unable to play video null" message after 10 sec blackout. Is there also a work around for this?
A: Yes there is! Update to latest version (2.2.3)
Q: I'm seeing "Unable to play video Android missing SurfaceView [v...]" message. Is there a fix?
A: No, and there won't be - this should only happen on older devices ( the number in [] is less than v12 ). These just don't have the capabilities required to run background videos. But if the number is higher than 12 - let me know!
I would like to add external encoder support so you don't have to do this, but it is outside of the scope of this project. For those who know how to implement custom video encoder support for Android MediaPlayer - feel free to contact me at beatx@maniacs.sk and i can integrate your code!