Why won’t some media files play properly?

The video data bit-rate used may have exceeded the recommended bit rate.

The video data bit-rate is the amount of video or audio data used per second to store or play the contents, usually expressed in Mbps (mega-bits per second). Video encoded with excessive bit-rates will not playback smoothly in the media player, likely due to storage I/O bottleneck.

Please visit: www.planar.com/support/downloads for video conversion tools.

The media playback looks different on a PC compared to the media player’s LCD screen. (Wrong aspect ratio)

There are 2 major aspect ratios (width-to-height ratios) for video content, but many kinds of displays. If you play 4:3 video on a 16:9 display (or vice versa), a circle becomes oval, and the picture takes on a squeezed or stretched look. To avoid this distorted look, adding black bars are a common technique.

The Media Player can be configured to automatically add black bars for certain types of displays. You can set the output resolution in MP-3450’s configuration menu to match the native resolution of your display.

Some JPEG images cannot be played in the media player.

Progressive JPEG are not supported. Please convert to baseline JPEG for maximum compatibility.

JPEG images can be either of 2 types: baseline or progressive compression. Baseline JPEG offers greatest compatibility, while progressive JPEGs are suitable for web site images. Progressive images are downloaded and displayed “progressively,” being rendered more clearly as more data is received over the internet. Progressive images are primarily supported on PCs. For media appliances, make sure to save images as baseline JPEG in your photo editor, or resave them as baseline JPEGs using free tools such as IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/ ).

Does the media player support video streaming?

No. The media player plays files from local storage and does not support real-time video streaming over the network. This delivers an optimum viewing experience free of playback quality issues such as stuttering, blocking, or blue-screens.

However, MP-3450 does support dynamic content delivery to push individual files quickly over the network using the SOAP API. This method is a compromise between live streaming with its high bandwidth demands and entire playlist content updates which necessitate longer update cycles.

The media player is not playing. What should I do?

Check the player’s messages on the display (OSD, or on screen display) for status information.

Play list errors and scheduling issues are two major causes of playback problems. To determine if the problem is caused by a bad play list, just delete the play list and restart player. The player should loop through all media files, indicating a fault with the play list.

If the playback is scheduled to play at specific time, check to see if the device is set to the right time zone on the world clock. When nothing seems wrong, the time zone setting is often the reason the program is not played.

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