1. BennyX's Avatar
    anyone else notice the multitasking is a bit restrictive, depending on what you have running at once?

    I noticed this when playing videos.. just out of curiousity, i tried running multiple videos at once using different programs.

    1. playing a Youtube video in the browser
    2. using ES File Explorer's built in video player to play something streamed off my PC
    3. using the native video player to play something off built-in storage
    4. using the built in player in LAN File Explorer to play something streamed from PC

    It didn't matter what I did, I could not get more than one video to play at any given time.
    This was in showcase mode, so I thought there would be no problem. Apparently QNX doesn't allow the Playbook to play more than one video at a time???
    08-30-12 04:02 PM
  2. pacoman03's Avatar
    And why would you really want to? For one thing, I don't think you can't get more than one audio source to run at the same time, for obvious reasons- two or more audio sources would step all over one another.
    edit- well scratch that last idea, since I just got the Music player and Angry Birds to run together, and audio from both came through.
    Last edited by pacoman03; 08-30-12 at 04:44 PM.
    08-30-12 04:39 PM
  3. BennyX's Avatar
    And why would you really want to? For one thing, I don't think you can't get more than one audio source to run at the same time, for obvious reasons- two or more audio sources would step all over one another.
    edit- well scratch that last idea, since I just got the Music player and Angry Birds to run together, and audio from both came through.


    it was just a curiousity thing... wanted to see if the Playbook could do it. I mean, supposedly it has true multitasking, right?

    This would demonstrate that this is not the case at all. Unlike, say, my netbook, which can play multiple videos and sounds at once without issue.

    I could understand if I were trying to use the same video program to play all those videos.. i wouldn't expect that to be possible. But using different video players at once shouldn't trip up a 'realtime multitasking OS' like QNX...
    08-30-12 04:48 PM
  4. pacoman03's Avatar
    OK. Scxratch my whole last post. You got me thinking, and I remember seeing this question once before. See my response at the top of the page in this thread- http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...55/index2.html
    08-30-12 04:53 PM
  5. BennyX's Avatar
    OK. Scxratch my whole last post. You got me thinking, and I remember seeing this question once before. See my response at the top of the page in this thread- http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...55/index2.html
    that's interesting regarding being able to play 2 FLV's at once (albeit thru some trickery, lol)


    I just think back around 20 years ago when there was BeOS for PC's.. an unpopular OS, sure, but very powerful. It could run multiple videos at once easily, on hardware that by now would be fairly inferior to that in the Playbook!

    Perhaps RIM should have used BeOS instead of QNX?? lol

    I'm not being serious, just brainstorming.. i'm kinda bored at the moment, hahah
    Akuji_ism likes this.
    08-30-12 04:59 PM
  6. mikeo007's Avatar
    Gonna guess it's a hardware decoder issue. Try playing back some uncompressed file format and see what happens.
    SifJar likes this.
    08-30-12 05:13 PM
  7. der_mit's Avatar
    Yeah, it would be good to play music whilst watching a slideshow of your pics. Or play a loop video of a retro looking casstte player whilst listening to your music , i think there's an android app for that.
    I have the piano app and i sometimes have music playing on the playbook and play along on the piano, both sounds play at the same time. Lol
    08-30-12 05:16 PM
  8. pacoman03's Avatar
    that's interesting regarding being able to play 2 FLV's at once (albeit thru some trickery, lol)

    It's not 2 FLVs I'm playing at once, I'm playing a normal vid in the Video player and captured live stream in the MovieFlvPlayer- and this only works with captured live streams, as opposed to captured on demand streams, playing in the FLV player. To prove I'm not just blowing smoke, I posted a short vid showing my PB playing Video captured from CPAN.com and a music vid from YouTube playing in the Videos player.
    08-30-12 05:38 PM
  9. TheScionicMan's Avatar
    Doesn't multitasking refer to doing several tasks at once, not the same task multiple times?

    Are those other players actually standalone or are they like most of the 3rd party browsers that are built on top of the native one?
    08-30-12 06:13 PM
  10. Innovatology's Avatar
    There are API's that allows an app to find out whether it has exclusive access to the audio and video engine.

    There are also API's that allow an app to detect when it is in the background, and suspend or throttle its activity, e.g. to conserve battery, memory and processor. If I was writing a video player, that's what I'd do, or at least make it optional.

    The PB has hardware support for video decoding. Perhaps that hardware is in use in one player, preventing the others from using it.

    Any combination of these factors could cause a video to pause.
    David in Durham likes this.
    08-30-12 06:55 PM
  11. smartie88's Avatar
    I found playbook can not load Web pages at the same time
    08-30-12 08:58 PM
  12. BennyX's Avatar
    It's not 2 FLVs I'm playing at once, I'm playing a normal vid in the Video player and captured live stream in the MovieFlvPlayer- and this only works with captured live streams, as opposed to captured on demand streams, playing in the FLV player. To prove I'm not just blowing smoke, I posted a short vid showing my PB playing Video captured from CPAN.com and a music vid from YouTube playing in the Videos player.

    You're right, that does work. Just tried it out... except I just played a Live TV/Radio feed from the C-Span site using the stock Playbook browser, and then played a video using the Tablet TV app. They both played fine. Playing any video from local storage using the stock Video app will play at the same time as the C-Span video, too.

    If you find a way to get *three* videos playing at once, that'll be a trick. I couldn't do it. One would always pause! lol
    08-30-12 09:00 PM
  13. BennyX's Avatar
    I found playbook can not load Web pages at the same time

    It can, but it takes some time. I had 3 browsers loading crackberry.com at once. (Simple Browser, stock Browser, and Skyfire)

    CB probably isn't a good site to try and test for speed when loading, I know.. heh
    08-30-12 09:05 PM
  14. BennyX's Avatar
    There are API's that allows an app to find out whether it has exclusive access to the audio and video engine.

    There are also API's that allow an app to detect when it is in the background, and suspend or throttle its activity, e.g. to conserve battery, memory and processor. If I was writing a video player, that's what I'd do, or at least make it optional.

    The PB has hardware support for video decoding. Perhaps that hardware is in use in one player, preventing the others from using it.

    Any combination of these factors could cause a video to pause.

    ^^^^ This man speaks truth and logic. I'm not sure we can allow him to live.
    Barljo and David in Durham like this.
    08-30-12 09:07 PM
  15. smartie88's Avatar
    It can, but it takes some time. I had 3 browsers loading crackberry.com at once. (Simple Browser, stock Browser, and Skyfire)

    CB probably isn't a good site to try and test for speed when loading, I know.. heh
    But did you try load 3 pages in one browser?
    blackberry_surfer likes this.
    08-30-12 09:21 PM
  16. wayne504's Avatar
    IMO the multi-tasking has been dumbed down since OS 1. I seem to remember loading multiple tabs simultaneously as well as having multiple audio/video sources even playing youtube videos in a background tab while still surfing the Web. Most of this disappeared with some of the 1.x updates.

    I might be dreaming of this but seem to remember the ability to do this when I first got my playbook around holiday season last year.
    08-30-12 09:23 PM
  17. BennyX's Avatar
    But did you try load 3 pages in one browser?
    I did, yes. I bookmarked multiple sites to show up on the home page, then clicked on 4 of them, one right after the other.. they all loaded up in the same stock Playbook browser, and from what I can tell (i can only switch between tabs so fast) it did seem like they were all loading at once.

    Of course that's hardly a scientific kind of test, but it's the best i could do, lol
    08-31-12 10:01 AM
  18. BennyX's Avatar
    IMO the multi-tasking has been dumbed down since OS 1. I seem to remember loading multiple tabs simultaneously as well as having multiple audio/video sources even playing youtube videos in a background tab while still surfing the Web. Most of this disappeared with some of the 1.x updates.

    I might be dreaming of this but seem to remember the ability to do this when I first got my playbook around holiday season last year.


    well.. technically you can do all that still..

    You can play youtube vids while surfing the web, only if you are playing the Youtube vid in one browser and surfing with another. Also, multiple audio sources can play at once. I had a youtube vid playing, Pacemaker app playing 2 songs at once, as well a the stock Music player playing a song.

    The main problem seems to be with playing multiple videos at once, depending on the source, and in best case scenario the limit seems to be 2.
    Last edited by BennyX; 08-31-12 at 10:20 AM.
    08-31-12 10:03 AM
  19. Akuji_ism's Avatar
    that's interesting regarding being able to play 2 FLV's at once (albeit thru some trickery, lol)


    I just think back around 20 years ago when there was BeOS for PC's.. an unpopular OS, sure, but very powerful. It could run multiple videos at once easily, on hardware that by now would be fairly inferior to that in the Playbook!

    Perhaps RIM should have used BeOS instead of QNX?? lol

    I'm not being serious, just brainstorming.. i'm kinda bored at the moment, hahah
    Offtopic: Though dead, BeOS now lives in form of Haiku - the open-source clone of BeOS R5. And it's still the quickest desktop OS available : Home | Haiku Project
    08-31-12 10:25 AM
  20. notfanboy's Avatar
    I don't know if this will work on the Playbook, but there this free Android app called Super Video that can play videos in a floating popup window. For example, I use it for browsing the web (or composing emails) while watching a YouTube video at the same time. It can support up to six simultaneous videos, but I haven't tried it yet.
    08-31-12 10:38 AM
  21. BennyX's Avatar
    Offtopic: Though dead, BeOS now lives in form of Haiku - the open-source clone of BeOS R5. And it's still the quickest desktop OS available : Home | Haiku Project
    Yeah, I was reading about Haiku last night, actually. Some peeps were even pushing for an ARM version of it, and some were trying to get an Android port going. Would be nice, but I'm not hopeful, lol.
    08-31-12 11:30 AM
  22. BennyX's Avatar
    I don't know if this will work on the Playbook, but there this free Android app called Super Video that can play videos in a floating popup window. For example, I use it for browsing the web (or composing emails) while watching a YouTube video at the same time. It can support up to six simultaneous videos, but I haven't tried it yet.
    Sounds pretty cool if it works.. I'll look into it!

    Hmmm nope.. no joy. it's not listed in the official 'working' Android list here:

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...owsperpage=250
    Last edited by BennyX; 08-31-12 at 11:38 AM.
    08-31-12 11:31 AM
  23. Vector-SS's Avatar
    I just want to be able to play a YouTube clip (music) in one tab while I surf the net in another tab, that's all - and no I won't use the native YouTube app because the search results compared to the web browser are horrible and most of the time I cannot find what I'm looking for.
    09-01-12 01:24 AM
  24. JayInNJ's Avatar
    But did you try load 3 pages in one browser?
    Yes in simplebrowser. Won't work in stock browser. This is a design choice of the browser to conserve memory.
    09-01-12 07:40 AM
  25. thecsman's Avatar
    Reloaded the nytimes homepage while typing this reply. The browser does multitask.
    09-01-12 09:08 AM
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