iPeng support thread

[verypsb]

Playback on my iPad doesn't work. It plays the first 2 seconds in an endless loop. Is this a known problem?

Update: Looks like it works after an update to the latest iOS version.

[pippin]

Playback on my iPad doesn't work. It plays the first 2 seconds in an endless loop. Is this a known problem?

Update: Looks like it works after an update to the latest iOS update.

Could you give me any more specifics, like file format and server version?
I've seen this with no iOS version so far.

[verypsb]

Could you give me any more specifics, like file format and server version?
I've seen this with no iOS version so far.

iPad 2, 7.6.0 - r32302, .flac

Haven't used this feature extensively yet

[verypsb]

Ok, found the problem. It's having iPad playback feature installed in both iPengHD and Squeezepad and running them both at the same time (Not playing at the same time)

[pippin]

Ok, found the problem. It's having iPad playback feature installed in both iPengHD and Squeezepad and running them both at the same time (Not playing at the same time)

Oh, really? Thanks for letting me know. This is supposed to be fixed now but probably it still sometimes sets in decreasing the volume.

[epoch1970]

I have just noticed this setup:
- sync SB3 and iPeng iPhone
- loop on a single song
does not work properly for me. The song plays once but never plays again.

Song used was FLAC. I use the latest iOS update that landed yesterday.

[Delennyk]

iPeng playback transcoding on the fly problem

Hi
First of all would like to say a big thanks to the developer of iPeng,been using it since the beginning on my 1st gen Touch and its only getting better and better with time,cheers.
My OS is Linux(vortexbox)running the latest version Squeezeboxserver:7.5.4 - r32298,iPod touch 1st gen.
When I updated to iPeng playback back in Febuary everything was going well,the only thing I had to do was to go into Server Settings/iPod Touch/Bitrate Limiting and changed it to 256 kbps as i was getting dropouts when I was in New Zealand(my server is in Germany).
Everything was going well until about a month ago,my problem is I set the bitrate Limiting to 256 kbps click apply then it will play the first song as I have set it(Flac or higher bitrate mp3 transcoded to 256 with no problems)but then as soon as the song ends and it goes on to the next song or if I change albums the setting for the bitrate limiting resets itself back to 'No Limit'!!!!! same also happens if I shutdown and reboot the server.
Hope someone here can help point me in the right direction so that I can sort this out.
Thanks

[pippin]

Hope someone here can help point me in the right direction so that I can sort this out.

Unfortunately not.
It's a side-effect of iPeng's bitrate limiting for 3G networks that it completely disables it for WiFi.
There will be a setting for this in the next version.

Sorry.

[Delennyk]

Thanks for the quick answer
As I said from update to update it just gets better....:-)

[MikeMcr]

Apologies if this has been answered already but I couldn't find anything. Does iPeng Playback do any local transcoding on the iDevice and if so what formats are best to avoid it (to prevent stuttering on slower models)?

To enable Napster to work, I installed the PlayWMA plugin along with mplayer on the server. However, on my 3rd generation iPod Touch, playback was choppy especially at the start of each track.

I appear to have fixed this by going into the Squeezebox Server settings, Advanced, File Types and under "Windows Media" disabled everything except for Native and MP3. Was there a better solution, i.e. someway to tell iPeng to always request a format it doesn't need to transcode?

[pippin]

Apologies if this has been answered already but I couldn't find anything. Does iPeng Playback do any local transcoding on the iDevice and if so what formats are best to avoid it (to prevent stuttering on slower models)?

If you mean local decoding: that's FLAC and OGG.
OGG currently causes problems on slow devices (and even on fast ones if you do a lot of UI interaction).
Currently preparing an update that will help a bit but not entirely remove it (the UI interaction thing).

HD-FLAC (24bit/96kHz) also sometimes causes issues if done in parallel with heave UI interaction but much less so.

To enable Napster to work, I installed the PlayWMA plugin along with mplayer on the server. However, on my 3rd generation iPod Touch, playback was choppy especially at the start of each track.

That should depend entirely on the server. Could it be your server is not fully up to the job?
This, too, will hopefully get better in another (later) release we are working on.

I appear to have fixed this by going into the Squeezebox Server settings, Advanced, File Types and under "Windows Media" disabled everything except for Native and MP3. Was there a better solution, i.e. someway to tell iPeng to always request a format it doesn't need to transcode?

That's interesting. I would expect mp3 encoding to require much more CPU load on the server than FLAC encoding.

I'm generally seeing your issue, too (my "usual" server isn't really too powerful) so I'll have a look into this.

[MikeMcr]

That should depend entirely on the server. Could it be your server is not fully up to the job?
This, too, will hopefully get better in another (later) release we are working on.

It's a ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer with dual core CPU and 4GB of memory so should be up to the task.

That's interesting. I would expect mp3 encoding to require much more CPU load on the server than FLAC encoding.

It isn't perfect and I still get the occasional stutter but it definately fixes the glitches at the start of each track.

[lamp]

Audiobook rewind

Hi pippin one feature that I love to have is when I am listening to audiobook I would like to rewind the playback 30 seconds just like the iOS iTunes app 30s rewind feature. Is this possible to add this as a feature perhaps as a preferrence toggle?

Thanks for the awesome app on both iPhone and iPad (just got the iPad app it's great but the UI is not as intuitive).

Cheers
Peter

[Mnyb]

Do you see the blue progress bar?
It should only re-request one page.
That's needed because otherwise iPeng can't know whether there might have been changes to the database while iPeng was in the background.
Also, iPeng frees up a lot of memory when in the background to be a good iOS citizen and not to be quit by iOS too early.

Sorry for answering late, but cant you just check with the server if a rescan have been done lately otherwise keep/cache everything.
Memory ? Cant the app keep some temp files on the device (I have a 64gB iPad)

[pippin]

@lamb

The Problem is to determine that something is an audiobook, ok, you could use the genre. Don't want to show yet another control all the time.

I've been planning to o some audiobook enhancements for a long time but there just never was the time for it.
Could you file a ticket (sorry, can't post the link right now, it's on penguinlovesmusic.com)

Sorry for answering late, but cant you just check with the server if a rescan have been done lately otherwise keep/cache everything.
Memory ? Cant the app keep some temp files on the device (I have a 64gB iPad)

iPeng keeps a lot of stuff in the cache, but this _is_ how it is determining whether the library has changed.
You can't use the server's lastscan info for that, it's completely unreliable on most server versions.