| I often have breakups and interruptions. What can I do? |
| Why isn't the track position updated? |
| The player works very slow, if it's attached to a GPS power cord, but the navigation system isn't running. What's going on? |
| Why are there distortions if the preamp is over a certain level? |
| When the screen's toggled off, why is the screen on while I press a button? |
| Why are the toolbar symbols so tiny? (WM5/VGA) |
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May I offer the program on my web side, magazine CD, ...?
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Yes. There are only two conditions:
- Publish the link to this homepage (www.sto-helit.de) and my name (either my nick "Mort" or my real name "Mirko Schenk")
- Make clear it's a freeware program. I.e. no advertisements which look like it's a registered shareware program! ("full version", "unlimited", ...)
Not a condition, but good behavior, would be to tell me about it...
back
Most simple using PayPal. Go to www.paypal.com (or your locale, like www.paypal.de),
register, and send the donation to mort@sto-helit.de.
On my page (www.sto-helit.de) you'll also find links to PayPal with some presets.
If you prefer to do a bank transfer, I can send you my account data. I just don't want
to publish it on my page... Usually, this is only useful inside the EU, otherwise
transfer fees are way to expensive.
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Why should I spend money for a freeware program (donate)?
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For the same reasons, why other demand it. There's a lot of work in this player (and everything about it, like homepage, skins, support, ...), and it would be nice if this is honored in a financial way, too.
Others want up to $20 for an MP3 player - consindering this, some bucks aren't too much for a little "Thanks, good work", don't you think? ;)
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Then why not as Shareware?
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Most obviously for license reasons, because the player contains foreign code, which is published under the GPL (and thus the player does itself, too).
But primarily because I don't want to enforce anybody to spend money. It's still a hobby for me.
I think donations are a very fair system.
For you: You can spend whatever it's worth to you and what you can efford, whenever you like.
For me: No (unwritten) promises I can't promise to hold, like support or updates. I do my best, but I'm only a single human, and not doing this a business... And I don't need to waste my time with license systems, user databases, etc.
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Will there be support of WMA/ACC/any other sound format?/b>
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At least not from me...
MortPlayer supports GSPlayer plug-ins, so in theory, it's possible.
However, sadly there don't seem to be any plug-ins but the MIDI plug-in on the GSPlayer page and a beta
plug-in for FLAC, and I don't have enough knowlege about audio codecs...
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Why don't you display the entire network neighborhood?
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Because there's no official way to do this.
The function parameters common for (desktop) Windows don't work in Windows Mobile.
If anyone knows which tricks Resco did use, and there are no patents/copyright troubles, I'd
be happy to know them...
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Why do the titles etc. only scoll line by line?
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To save CPU time. Esp. on slower PPCs the constant repaints would put the device close to its limits.
But even newer PPCs would be pushed, esp. since MortPlayer in spite to many other players hasn't a single
small label for all track infos, but in some screens many big labels (e.g. in most car screens). For those,
almost half the screen would need a redraw very often. And the Windows routines to draw transparent text
(i.e. without a fixed background color) are really slow - even without "Cleartype"...
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Why aren't there any tag informations in the playlist?
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Imagine you're using the Playlist Mode with hundreds of songs in your playlist, and those are located on a slow SD
card or even on a network drive. And now imagine how long it would take to open every single file and evaluate the
tag informations...
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Will there be a landscape mode for devices without WM2003 SE?
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No. The effort would be far too big, and there would be a problem with screens that aren't fullscreen:
The title and menu bars can't be moved, which would look strange and leads to different usable screen sizes.
Apart from this, those devices are an endangered species anyway...
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Why is so much included in the "Open" dialog?
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I wanted an interface which can be easyly used during travel without the stylus. Many small buttons would
be too complicated. The menu in the open dialog can be used very good without a stylus (direction pad,
big buttons, ...) and additionaly offers the possibilty to fit it to your own needs.
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Why all this strange "favorites" stuff?
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Because usually I just copy all songs, I like to listen to, to the same directory structure, and would like to have
these tracks played as simple as possible.
No complicated and slow syncronization, no need to update playlists all the time, features like the Changer Mode, ...
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How do I create an own Skin?
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The manual on my site includes a link to a skin manual.
Direct: www.sto-helit.de/downloads/skinhelp.html
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Why are the "Changer Mode" and list skip buttons disabled?
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You have to tell the programs which paths and playlists should be played in changer mode or skipped with the list skip buttons.
This is done in the favorites.
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Why does nothing happen if I select "Tree" or "All in Changer Mode"?
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Something does happen - it's just not very obvious. "Tree in Changer Mode" limits the changer mode
to the chosen path and its subdirectories. I.e., the list skip buttons as well as the automatical
list changes at playlist end or with "Shuffle all" only skip inside this tree. That's nice if for
example you want to listen to music from all albums of one band.
With "All in Changer Mode", this limitation is removed.
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If I press stop, close the player, and start it again, the track is resumed from the position I pressed stop. Why?
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First of all, because the option to restore the position is activated (in program start settings or the wizard).
It works for stop, because often the playback is stopped by it intuitively, and it would be annoying if you had to seek the last position e.g. of an audio book in this case. I think, in doubt it's more easy to press "back" to get to the beginning of the track than to seek the position.
That the position is set to 0:00 after pressing stop, instead of the stopped position like after program start, is because you usually expect a track to start from the beginning after pressing stop and play.
If a favorite is marked as audio book, the last stop position is restored even
if "Restore position" is not activated. In this case, the position isn't reset after a stop, too.
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Why doesn't "Always on top" exist in the menu?
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Because this option only makes sense if the player doesn't occupy the whole screen.
With a screen that only occupies a part of the display (e.g. the car screen of MaxxTT), this option will exist.
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I often have breakups and interruptions. What can I do?
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First step: Increase the buffer. Depending on the system, 500ms to 1s usually are fine.
If this is not enough, you can increase the priority of the playback routines. But this might slow down the system...
If even this doesn't work, check whether there are programs which are using lots of CPU time.
ActiveSync usually is a prospect for this...
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Why isn't the track position updated?
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The position update works with low priority. Due to this, the position update doesn't work if the CPU usage is very high.
Additionally, the track position isn't updated while MortPlayer isn't the active application
(exception: "Always on top" is checked) because usually this only uses CPU time without any visible effect
(since another program is shown).
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The player works very slow, if it's attached to a GPS power cord, but the navigation system isn't running. What's going on?
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ActiveSync is going on. On some devices, it desperately tries to interpret the GPS data and by this paralyzes the PPC.
If the navigation system is running, ActiveSync can't use the port - and the problem doesn't exist.
In MortPlayer you can do something similar with the option "Lock serial port" in the program start settings. If you want to use your navigation system with this option active, you've got to start it before MortPlayer. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to get the GPS data stream (just like it's wanted for ActiveSync).
Btw, this problem isn't specific to MortPlayer. It just attracts more attention than if something resource friendly (e.g. a clock) is running.
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Why are there distortions if the preamp or equalizer is over a certain level?
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If a song (or certain frequence ranges of it) is made softer or louder this way, the volume,
i.e. the amplitute of the contained noise, is recalculated.
For example, a part with 50% amplitute (volume) will be e.g. 70%. The maximum volume is limited by
the system's volume level, i.e., more than 100% is not possible. This means, everything above a
certain level will be made 100%, wich modifies the sound characteristics in a way that causes the
distortions (btw., it's the same cause that makes the sound of distorted guitars. This effect
origins from overdriven speakers).
If songs are not set to maximum gain, this will have no or less effect.
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When the screen's toggled off, why is the screen on while I press a button?
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The system turns on the screen during an application button is pressed. MortPlayer turns it off afterwards.
It could do that during the button's pressed, too, but it would result in a terrible flickering.
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Why is the toolbar so tiny? (WM5/VGA)
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Because WM5 (or at least some devices) return the wrong value for the menu bar height.
And I can't ignore this value, because it would result in problems for users which use "real VGA"
tools like SE_VGA or OzVGA.