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iOS Media Player 'Infuse' Upgraded With New Design, Network Streaming and More

M

Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
DipDog3 said:
No, it won't play any videos from my network share without paying $5. VLC plays most of the same files, but is free.

I can't recommend this app, I am giving it one star...
Click to expand...

Oh come on...

1. nPlayer, which is the player I've recommended the most so far, also costs $5. Asking for $5 is pretty normal for high-end players. (Note that I haven't tested / reviewed the new Infuse player yet, only the old, 1.x ones. I don't know how it compares to nPlayer yet. Will post a full review some time when I have the time.) Voting down an app because VLC (which isn't very good in some respects) is free isn't very nice.

2. VLC really lacks in some areas - see my previous comments on its complete lack of hardware decoding support. It is in no way recommended for many media types.

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brand said:
Not sure what how this is any more newsworthy then the other hundreds of thousands of apps that get updated.
Click to expand...

This was a major version bump from with an, on the ATV, well-known vendor. IMHO, this alone is worth the frontpage (which is, for the record, iOS blog-only and not that of the main article channel of MR).
 
DipDog3

DipDog3

macrumors 65816
Sep 20, 2002
1,191
812
Menneisyys2 said:
Asking for $5 is pretty normal for high-end players. (Note that I haven't tested / reviewed the new Infuse player yet, only the old, 1.x ones. I don't know how it compares to nPlayer yet. Will post a full review some time when I have the time.) Voting down an app because VLC (which isn't very good in some respects) is free isn't very nice.
Click to expand...

I decided to go ahead and pay the $5 to test out this app on my Blu-ray rips that are stored on my NAS. I open the first movie and the app tells me it cannot play the audio...:mad:

I try some other high bit-rate videos I have. The audio plays on most of those but the video freezes/skips...:mad::mad:

My Apple TV plays all of these videos perfectly with Plex Server.

I stand by by one-star review. Hopefully Apple will give me a refund. If not, I will have to initiate a charge-back with my CC.
 
M

Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
DipDog3 said:
I decided to go ahead and pay the $5 to test out this app on my Blu-ray rips that are stored on my NAS. I open the first movie and the app tells me it cannot play the audio...:mad:

I try some other high bit-rate videos I have. The audio plays on most of those but the video freezes/skips...:mad::mad:
Click to expand...

While I'm yet to test the app, this may have been caused by your trying

- to play any non-mp4/m4v/mov file (e.g., MKV's) - these are not natively AirPlay'able, apart from the vastly inferior direct or mirrored mode. As I've pointed out above, it's simply not possible to get decent playback over direct / mirrored AirPlay playback with any kind of player / playback technique.

- OR enabled AirPlay mirroring. Try disabling mirroring (while still being connected to the iDevice) and try playing back again. Assuming, of course, you play back a mp4/m4v/mov file.

I'll soon report back as soon as I test the AirPlay support of the player.

EDIT: the above strictly applies to wireless AirPlay playback. I may have misunderstood your OP - I thought you tried to play back those files via an ATV. Will try to very soon answer with more detail.

EDIT 2: the player seems to intelligently remux MTS / MKV files for AirPlay playback, which means it's - in not all cases! - capable of playing back even MKV's over AirPlay in non-mirrored mode. My previous remarks on the problems caused by the size of the source MKV file / the amount of free storage, however, still seem to apply. I'll post a detailed report soon.
 
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M

Mr-Kerrse

macrumors 6502
Apr 1, 2011
273
0
United Kingdom
I updated this morning & was pleasantly surprised, it found my network drive straight away & worked perfectly but it could not find my mac for some reason i will have another look at it tonight as this is the perfect solution for atv3's as you can hopefully stream any format from your mac to your phone to the atv3.

I personally have atv2's but other members of my family have atv3's & i always have to convert films for them so if i can set them up with this would be perfect.
 
firecore

firecore

macrumors 65816
Aug 20, 2010
1,341
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Denver, CO
bobgorila said:
Since firecore are monitoring this thread I have two questions that aren't answered by the app's description:

1. If I load a MKV file can infuse send it to an ATV using airplay?

2. Can infuse airplay files that it's accessing from a SMB share?

Thus far multi-video players I've used can only airplay local files or files accessed over UPnP (they just forward the URL to the Apple TV), further, while they can play a MKV they can only airplay the normal range of apple-compatible files.
Click to expand...

1. Yes. Infuse supports 2 types of AirPlay, native and mirroring. Native AirPlay is just what you expect, and will work will pretty much any h.264 video whether it's in an Apple friendly container like an MP4 or something different, such as MKV or AVI.

Other, non-h.264, formats can be AirPlayed using mirroring which still works pretty well.

2. Infuse will be able to AirPlay files streamed via SMB as well.

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rikscha said:
Best player there is. You can indeed access your movies from a nas and then airplay to your atv. The disappointing part though is, after having waited for months for this update to finally access my files on my time capsule, yiur NAS share isnt being scanned and the found movies, TV shows are not being added to your library. You also cant copy any movies etc from your NAS to the app. The app behaves differently to its ATV counterpart.
Click to expand...

Both these features are in the works, they just weren't quite fully baked in time for 2.0. :)

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DipDog3 said:
I try some other high bit-rate videos I have. The audio plays on most of those but the video freezes/skips...:mad::mad:
Click to expand...

Hmm, sorry about that. We'd be interested to learn a little bit more about these videos. If you have a sec to drop us a quick note it would be appreciated.

http://firecore.com/contact
 
M

Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
Menneisyys2 said:
EDIT 2: the player seems to intelligently remux MTS / MKV files for AirPlay playback, which means it's - in not all cases! - capable of playing back even MKV's over AirPlay in non-mirrored mode. My previous remarks on the problems caused by the size of the source MKV file / the amount of free storage, however, still seem to apply. I'll post a detailed report soon.
Click to expand...

So far, excellent results - most of my test MKV's work just great over native AirPlay. Unlike the "brute force" approach of conventional apps, it doesn't seem to fill up the storage. Just running a two-hour-long MKV to see how the player fares; will report back later with even more material.
 
N

NorEaster

macrumors regular
Feb 14, 2012
239
23
Great news...and thanks for the very informative explanations in your prior posts and for your testing.

Having said that... has anyone done a comparison of Infuse vs. Remote Files? Remote Files seems to play most (if not all) of my movies in various formats, including those with AC3. In addition, Remote Files can access UPnP and SMB file shares...and it lets me download movie files from my NAS so I can watch my videos when I'm on-the-go. However, Remote Files has, in my opinion, an unintuitive UI and it's somewhat hard to use.

If Infuse is better, I'd like to know how and that may convince me to switch.

Menneisyys2 said:
So far, excellent results - most of my test MKV's work just great over native AirPlay. Unlike the "brute force" approach of conventional apps, it doesn't seem to fill up the storage. Just running a two-hour-long MKV to see how the player fares; will report back later with even more material.
Click to expand...
 
N

nostresshere

macrumors 68030
Dec 30, 2010
2,708
308
Menneisyys2 said:
I'll soon publish it...
Click to expand...

Though you may get "blasted" from time to time, I sincerely appreciate your clear review of reality in the AV world. I am in the middle of reworking my media playing operation and look forward to your review of Infuse Pro.
 
M

Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
nostresshere said:
Though you may get "blasted" from time to time, I sincerely appreciate your clear review of reality in the AV world. I am in the middle of reworking my media playing operation and look forward to your review of Infuse Pro.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

Just uploading some comparative benchmark videos to YouTube:

- nPlayer on iOS6 iPad3 and iOS7 iPhone5, Infuse 2 on iOS7 iPad3

- Infuse 2 on iOS7 iPad3 and iPhone5, Infuse 1.5 on iOS6 iPad3

Will VERY soon post more info!
 
M

Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
1,101
Menneisyys2 said:
Thanks!

Just uploading some comparative benchmark videos to YouTube:

- nPlayer on iOS6 iPad3 and iOS7 iPhone5, Infuse 2 on iOS7 iPad3

- Infuse 2 on iOS7 iPad3 and iPhone5, Infuse 1.5 on iOS6 iPad3

Will VERY soon post more info!
Click to expand...

For these tests, I used two of my iPad 3's: one running at 6.1.2, another one 7.0.4. The former is JB'n, the latter isn't. In addition, I've also added a 7.0.4-based, and, consequenly, not JB'n iPhone 5 to the bunch. In the two videos, the iPad 3 with the 6.1.2 is at the top, the 7.0.4 is at the bottom and the iPhone 5 is on the right.

Using my brand new LOTR standard 7 Mbps H.264 + 200 kbps 6-channel AAC benchmark video, there's no discernable MKV playback fluidity difference between the latest pre-2 series player and the new, iOS7+ one, as can be seen in the following video:

http://youtu.be/eqki-df-ZZY (video becomes available in about 30 minutes)

This is great news for everyone not willing to upgrade to iOS7 – local, auto-remuxed MKV playback is equally good in the old version. Of course, it doesn't have as sophisticated networking as the new one.

Directly compared to the current version of nPlayer, the playback fluidity is approximately equally good, as can be seen in this video:

http://youtu.be/m0qZYBUU_Kw

Here, the 6.1.2 iPad 3 and the 7.0.4 iPhone 5 run nPlayer and the 7.0.4 iPad 3 the new Infuse.

NOTE: as I've emphasized at https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18451705/ , you absolutely must change Settings > Video > Renderer For Hardware Decoding setting from the default OpenGL ES to Quicktime to maximize performance in nPlayer! For the demo, I did change on both the 6.1.2 iPad 3 and the 7.0.4 iPhone 5; this is why I started shooting the video from the Settings screen.

I'll start battery my standard130-minute-long usage tests very soon (see the latest figures at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1679716/ ); I'll publish them as soon as I get them.

NOTE: all the above only discusses hardware-acceleratable MKV playback. No TS / MTS etc. tests have been done. Those will be later published.
 
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M

Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
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It seems the last-compatible (1.5.x) version isn't really iPad 1-friendly. While nPlayer plays back both my new test MKV (see https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/81986513/lotr3-7MbpsH264-200kbps6ChAAC.mkv ) and my 126-minute battery tester anime just fine (particularly after disabling OpenGL ES rendering), this is in no way the case with Infuse: it tends to stop after some seconds and wouldn't continue at all, even if you keep tapping the pause icon.

I've shot a demo video showing all this (as usual, half-speed slo-mo):

http://youtu.be/-gIsPx0v7tg

Note that the same 1.5.x version works just great with exactly the same files on the iPad 3. I've just finished a native (non-mirrored) ATV AirPlay test with the iPad 3 as the source. There were absolutely no glitches during the tests (126 minutes) and everything went just fine, including the SSA -> standard subtitle conversion. As you can see in my yesterday's comparative videos, the old version doesn't have problems with the new LOTR video either.

All in all, currently, the app doesn't seem to be fully supporting the iPad1 - unlike later models. Hope the dev joins the discussion.
 
M

Menneisyys2

macrumors 603
Jun 7, 2011
5,997
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I've finished measuring the real-world power usage of the MKV playback. (The lower, the better.) It's 21% for my test video & setup (please see my earlier article on how it's measured). That is, it's somewhat (about 50%) more than that of AVPlayerHD, HD Player Pro and nPlayer. However, it's clearly lower than that of the latest It's Playing and significantly lower than purely software-only decoding; for example, that of VLC for iOS.

This value reflects disabled-subtitles playback. If you do enable subs embedded in the demo video, the battery use somewhat increases (to 24%). This is pretty understandable - after all, it's a rather complicated SSA conversion and the embedding of the resulting subtitle stream in an M4V/MOV container when playing back the content purely with Apple's tools, even over AirPlay. (When you play back content over AirPlay, you can't use overlays to render subtitles, unlike with hardware-assisted playback on the built-in screen. The latter is clearly much easier, programming-wise, than re-embedding the now non-SSA subtitle in a M4V/MOV file.)

All in all, while it does consume somewhat more power than top, previously-recommended players, it's still not bad, particularly if you take into account that Infuse currently is the only player with true, native, flawless MKV support over native(!!!!) AirPlay.
 
N

nostresshere

macrumors 68030
Dec 30, 2010
2,708
308
firecore said:
Yep. Videos stored on a hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme can be streamed using the Pro version.
Click to expand...

Do not have Airport Extreme but do have MBP with hard drive attached, and a hard drive attached to router.

??? Will infuse deal with that?
 
firecore

firecore

macrumors 65816
Aug 20, 2010
1,341
965
Denver, CO
Menneisyys2 said:
I've finished measuring the real-world power usage of the MKV playback. (The lower, the better.) It's 21% for my test video & setup (please see my earlier article on how it's measured). That is, it's somewhat (about 50%) more than that of AVPlayerHD, HD Player Pro and nPlayer. However, it's clearly lower than that of the latest It's Playing and significantly lower than purely software-only decoding; for example, that of VLC for iOS.

This value reflects disabled-subtitles playback. If you do enable subs embedded in the demo video, the battery use somewhat increases (to 24%). This is pretty understandable - after all, it's a rather complicated SSA conversion and the embedding of the resulting subtitle stream in an M4V/MOV container when playing back the content purely with Apple's tools, even over AirPlay. (When you play back content over AirPlay, you can't use overlays to render subtitles, unlike with hardware-assisted playback on the built-in screen. The latter is clearly much easier, programming-wise, than re-embedding the now non-SSA subtitle in a M4V/MOV file.)

All in all, while it does consume somewhat more power than top, previously-recommended players, it's still not bad, particularly if you take into account that Infuse currently is the only player with true, native, flawless MKV support over native(!!!!) AirPlay.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the detailed comparison. Multi-format AirPlay is one of the features we're most proud of in Infuse...so I'm happy to hear you're enjoying it as well.

Power consumption has been something we've constantly been working to improve, and there are still a few areas that, once addressed, should help things be more efficient. Also, once Infuse has been fully converted to 64-bit there should be additional power savings there as well. Overall, it can only get better from here. :)

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nostresshere said:
Do not have Airport Extreme but do have MBP with hard drive attached, and a hard drive attached to router.

??? Will infuse deal with that?
Click to expand...

Yes. Infuse supports streaming using SMB, which is supported by almost every Mac, PC, or network drive.

More details on setting this up can be found here.
http://support.firecore.com/entries/23773290-Streaming-From-Other-Devices
 
J

JTravers

macrumors 6502a
Jun 28, 2010
733
228
firecore said:
Thanks for the detailed comparison. Multi-format AirPlay is one of the features we're most proud of in Infuse...so I'm happy to hear you're enjoying it as well.
Click to expand...

Will Infuse 2 automatically deinterlace 1080i content? Also, can it Airplay a 1080i mpeg2 .ts file?

Thanks!
 
A

alexgowers

macrumors 65816
Jun 3, 2012
1,338
892
I don't care what anyone says. Air Video is the best around for everything.

It has a pc/mac server to stream to you iPad, you can also download direct! no need for wifi/web interface, it'll just see the video and give you options to download, any non supported files are converted live for download if need be though appears to pretty much natively support everything i can find.

This seems like it's behind much like VLC which just doesn't come close to my personal needs.
 
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