Hi,

I have downloaded the Oplayer HD app with a view to linking it up with my dropbox account. I have successfully done this.

A friend has created a shared folder in dropbox in which he has added a number of .avi files. I tried to watch one of these directly through the web link to my dropbox folder (as opposed to the link within the app) and it states 'please enable flash to preview this file'.

I have tried this with a number of .avi files but keep getting the same message. I had understood that the point of the app was to enable the ipad to play .avi files without flash. Please could someone confirm this is the case and how I can fix this?

Thank you
Sarah

Hi Sarah,

I recommend you contact the developer of OPlayer directly to ask for support, but if the .avi plays when it is downloaded to your iPad, then the issue will be one of the preview not working, not the app failing to play the file.

Certainly OPlayer pays .flv files for me, but you will never get Flash itself on any iOS device. Even on Android now Adobe have ceased support for the Flash Player on the latest 4.1 iteration, Jelly Bean.

Thanks Janner.

It does indeed work when downloaded but not when I try and stream the video directly from dropbox. I appreciate that I can't get flash to work on an ipad, which is why I am so puzzled as to why an ipad app was requesting this....

I have asked the developer but haven't had a response yet so any guidance as to why I can't stream directly would be appreciated.

Thanks

I'm no expert, but I suspect the problem is to do with the way the avi files have been encoded.

AVI is a derivative of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), which divides a file's data into blocks, or "chunks." Each "chunk" is identified by a FourCC tag. An AVI file takes the form of a single chunk in a RIFF formatted file, which is then subdivided into two mandatory "chunks" and one optional "chunk".
The first sub-chunk is identified by the "hdrl" tag. This sub-chunk is the file header and contains metadata about the video, such as its width, height and frame rate. The second sub-chunk is identified by the "movi" tag. This chunk contains the actual audio/visual data that make up the AVI movie. The third optional sub-chunk is identified by the "idx1" tag which indexes the offsets of the data chunks within the file.
By way of the RIFF format, the audio-visual data contained in the "movi" chunk can be encoded or decoded by software called a codec, which is an abbreviation for (en)coder/decoder. Upon creation of the file, the codec translates between raw data and the (compressed) data format used inside the chunk. An AVI file may carry audio/visual data inside the chunks in virtually any compression scheme, including Full Frame (Uncompressed), Intel Real Time (Indeo), Cinepak, Motion JPEG, Editable MPEG, VDOWave, ClearVideo / RealVideo, QPEG, and MPEG-4 Video.

Before I appear too bright, that paragraph was coped from Wikipedia

My gut feeling is that your friend has encoded his files in a way that means they cannot be streamed to the iPad, only played locally.

I would also submit that your bandwidth to "stream" the file directly from Dropbox is not fast enough. It probably takes longer to download than to play.

I didn't have any trouble streaming a .swf from my server to OPlayerHD Lite.

Here's the link, if mods permit: http://www.hummingbirds.net/images/screenclean.swf

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