Playing audio files... will they add important features in WP 8.1?

[dmusicant]

Had my Nokia Lumia 520 almost a month. What's astounding me is that I have not yet been able to do this:

Play MP3 file (say, a long one, 3 hours)

Stop play and have the phone remember my stop point and resume play from that point even after shutting down the phone. Even my lousy Sandisk Sansa M250 MP3 player/radio supports that.

I have scoured the store and checked out (at least reading the details), just about every audio application I could find and to my amazement none of them supports this. I have to think it's because of a shortcoming in Windows Phone 8. Is it possible they will add this functionality in version 8.1?

 

[N_LaRUE]

We have a general features list but I can't say if this is everything.

Windows Phone 8.1 Features | Windows Phone Central

 

[T Moore]

After I turned the phone off and restarted it I wouldn't expect it to pick up where it left off playing an mp3. Never had a PC that would do that.

 

[dmusicant]

After I turned the phone off and restarted it I wouldn't expect it to pick up where it left off playing an mp3. Never had a PC that would do that.

But My Sansa M250 MP3 players do that, at least when they were shut down in the ordinary way, with the power button. Any decently featured MP3 player should support that, and MP3 player is one of the roles for a smartphone, so I'd think they would support that feature. It would seem to be a simple matter to store in memory the position from which to resume. It might not be easy or possible for an app developer without the underlying code in the OS, though, and that's what I'm posting about here it seems. I actually started by looking for a Windows Phone 8.1 suggestion link. Isn't there a place where people can suggest to the developers (Microsoft) new features?

 

[eruptflail]

I'm thinking that the way your Sansa shut down was fundamentally different than the way your WP shuts down. The point of turning off a Cellphone is (typically) to reset it. It's a shut down, not a sleep mode type setting. If you "shut down" your sansa it would probably have a hard time actually remembering your place. Granted, cellphones use Solid State memory, so it would be possible for it to remember your place.

 

[dmusicant]

I'm thinking that the way your Sansa shut down was fundamentally different than the way your WP shuts down. The point of turning off a Cellphone is (typically) to reset it. It's a shut down, not a sleep mode type setting. If you "shut down" your sansa it would probably have a hard time actually remembering your place. Granted, cellphones use Solid State memory, so it would be possible for it to remember your place.

The Sansa isn't in sleep mode when shut down. I can remove the battery, replace with another and it still remembers my place. It stores the place in memory in the process of powering off. It seems to me that smartphones could do the same in the audio if that feature was enabled. In particular if I indicate in the audio application that I'm shutting it off before shutting down the phone. I has to be doable. Maybe it's exactly what's going on in that podcast application when set up "right." Problem is it's a PITA to set it up what with libraries on a Win7/8 desktop, syncing with the phone, necessitating copying filed from the desktop to the smartphone.

 

[eruptflail]

Well then, Its probably just microsoft leaving out easily developed features as per usual.

 

[rex.reyesiii]

Does the old Zune player do this? If it does then they should add it.

 

[Cleavitt76]

It's nice that your Sansa did that, but I would hardly consider this an important or common feature. Most people would probably not expect this at all.

The Sansa device is obviously storing its place on non-volatile flash storage instead of in memory. Considering it is strictly a media player with nothing better to do with it's resources I guess that makes sense. Windows Phone has to do a whole lot more than just music playback. I realize that MS could implement this feature only for their music and video apps (as could other developers), but I also think that it would be fixing a problem that doesn't exist for 99.99% of users. I reboot my phone once every 2 or 3 months. I think it's pretty much expected that if you reboot a device you will have to reopen whatever you were doing and find the place you left off. I'm not saying you shouldn't ask MS for this feature, but in the grand scheme of things I think most users would put this near the bottom of the list (the Xbox Music app has much bigger issues in my opinion).

BTW: There is nothing stopping third party developers from doing this in their apps. It doesn't require any special OS level code. If it hasn't been done in other apps it's because it didn't occur to other developers either. If you have a favorite third party media player app you should go ahead and suggest this directly to the developer.

 

[AngryNil]

There's nothing impossible about saving the position in a song. We can already do that with podcasts, which are mp3s.

 

[dmusicant]

There's nothing impossible about saving the position in a song. We can already do that with podcasts, which are mp3s.

I have literally hundreds of ~3 hour MP3's I'd like to be able to do this with. Is there a way I can play them as podcasts? Or do I have to do the circuitous thing with establishing libraries on a Windows 7/8 machine and use Windows Phone App for Desktop to sync to the Windows Phone? The podcast apps I've been seeing in the Windows Phone Store all seem to be all about finding and downloading podcasts. That's not what I'm up to here.

 

[AngryNil]

My comment was more about the lack of technical limitations on Microsoft's part. But I believe you can get them to show as podcasts if you edit the file tags to have the genre as "Podcast". I use Mp3tag. You should be able to drag and drop these files into the phone Music folder.

 

[dmusicant]

My comment was more about the lack of technical limitations on Microsoft's part. But I believe you can get them to show as podcasts if you edit the file tags to have the genre as "Podcast". I use Mp3tag. You should be able to drag and drop these files into the phone Music folder.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a try. I have been using MP3Tag for years.

 

[dmusicant]

I downloaded and installed the latest version of MP3tag (2.38?), and it has a very long list of genre's to choose from in the dropdown box but "Podcast" is not one of them! I tried Audiobook, but so far that hasn't helped me. Haven't found an app to recognize that the file is on the SD card.

Until I have a way to do this I guess I'll try just keeping the thing on all the time. I was experiencing pretty fast battery drain but got a new battery which seems to be doing better...

 

[neitin]

The one reason I have moved to an iPhone is this. I listen to audiobooks and the phone doesn't remember the last position. iPhone in that way is cool no matter I restart the phone or listen to other files it remembers the last played position

 

[Kashan Osama]

The one reason I have moved to an iPhone is this. I listen to audiobooks and the phone doesn't remember the last position. iPhone in that way is cool no matter I restart the phone or listen to other files it remembers the last played position

This...iphones do things to perfection...if one is really into a closed ecosystem stuff then at this stage,iphone is way than wp,except that ripping off price D but yes the eco system they provide,and the productivity makes the price worthy of paying...i dont need fancy features in wp8.1,but actually want more quality of its dull system apps along with opening up the os to devs a bit,by giving more apis to them


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dmusicant]

The one reason I have moved to an iPhone is this. I listen to audiobooks and the phone doesn't remember the last position. iPhone in that way is cool no matter I restart the phone or listen to other files it remembers the last played position

That is way cool! I wonder if that's doable with a Windows Phone, if an app developer has the hooks to implement that functionality. I've done a fair amount of programming, haven't done any mobile stuff, I wonder if it's feasible to roll my own.

 

[Cleavitt76]

It should be feasible to roll on your own since you have programming experience. You could start with the Microsoft "Background Audio Player Sample" app and then customize it to store the value of the BackgroundAudioPlayer.Position to a config file in isolated storage at regular intervals. That can probably be done with a dozen lines of code at most. Then you would just need to add code to check the config file for the filename/position and set the position property whenever a file is played. That would be a few more lines of code. Here is the example and useful references if you are really interested...

Backgroud Audio Player Sample app: Windows Phone Background Audio Player Sample in C#, VB.NET for Visual Studio 2010
Isolated Storage read/write example: Beginners for how to Store and Read Files in Isolated Storage on Windows Phone sample in C# for Visual Studio 2010
BackgroundAudioPlayer.Position property: BackgroundAudioPlayer.Position Property (Microsoft.Phone.BackgroundAudio)

 

[dmusicant]

Thanks, that would make an interesting project. Do I need to buy any software to write and implement the code?

 

[Cleavitt76]

No, there are free tools that do everything you need for an independent and small project.

Visual Studio Express

Look for "Express 2012 for Windows Phone" near the bottom of the page.

You do need to be running Windows 8 64bit on your development PC since the SDK uses certain functionality within the OS.

However, you will probably need to create a developer account at some later time to publish apps to the Windows Phone Store. It's currently $19 to register as an independent developer. More info...

https://dev.windowsphone.com/en-us