A3 restarts when playing some files, solutions?

[otterpopjunkie]

Hey everyone,

I've found that with some movie files, my A3 will complete the loading and then freeze for a few seconds before the volume increases past "5." Then the device shuts itself off. Has anyone else experienced this problem? It happened to me once using a 3Mbps 640x480 asf file recorded on it, where it would have trouble playing and then die. I think it must've had trouble recording it in the first place.

The other files it happens with are all of the .mkv and .mp4 files from the CCC media archives here (http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Conference_Recordings). They are H.264 files with AAC audio I think. Here's the gSpot 2.7 info from one of them:

24c3-2214-en-make_cool_things_with_microcontrollers.mp4
61,204,026bytes
Undetermined MP4 (.MP4) file
186 kbps
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Codec Status Undetermined , avc1
33:01.880 length
49547 frames
25.000 fps
0.024 Qf
1.333 ar
640x480
61 kb/s mono
mp4a: MPEG-2 AAC LC
48000Hz.

The other .mkv files were Matroska / Vorbis / H.264 (Main Profile, 8 B-Frames). According to the specs these files shouldn't have a problem. I think I read in a review somewhere someone else had this problem, with some files (large ones too?) it won't play and dies. If it was a compatibility problem why won't it say it's unplayable like other files?

Any ideas?

[CvP]

at current state, A3 cant play h264 MP with B-Frames.

i dont know about others.

[otterpopjunkie]

Well I just read up on what B-frames are... I wonder if the A3 is even capable of playing the same resolution files as without B-frames. I hope at minimum they'll add the capability to play Mp4 with B-frames for smaller resolutions... Ah well.

[CyruzDraxs]

Most anime fansubs are encoded with B-Frames, but the A3 should be able to handle them fine as they are usually relatively low bitrate. HD fansubs are often under 1 Mbps, while I've encoded some DVDs to H264 at 3-4 Mbps and they ran flawlessly on the A3.