Monthly Archives: July 2014

Music Videos and new iOS

I love my music videos. I have hundreds of them.

I like to play them on the TV at home. I do this using my iPhone and my Apple TV connected to my TV (via Sony amp). The problem is I’ve been putting off upgrading my iPhone’s operating system for ages. I finally did it recently, and the next time I went to play my music videos on the TV I couldn’t.

It seems it removed the ability of the music player to play music videos (ok, still plays them, but not landscape, transmitted to airplay devices).

Now the iPad has had this problem for ages. You can listen to the music videos in the music player, but if you want to watch them, you,have to go to the video player. Now the video player is useless for so embody with hundreds of music videos. You can’t play them in shuffle mode, only telling it to play one, then selecting the next and telling it to play and so on. Also you can’t sort my artist or playlists or anything useful like the music player did.

Well I spend ages reading and searching for a solution.

There seemed to be no solution from apple, there response was just that the feature was removed, basically “suck eggs” as far as I can tell, so I had to go looking for an app to restore the functionally.

What I found was MusicVideoPlayer. It pretty much does what was lost.

It has a few problems that I have found with respect to Airplay, but if you just want to view your music videos on your iPad or iPhone’s screen, it’s what you really need.

If you are wishing to view using airplay, then like I said, I ran into a few problems. Below is a copy of a post I’m going to post on the support forums, so hopefully the airplay problems have a solution, and then I’d be giving it a 4 or 4.5 star rating.

– – – – – –

Hi, brought your app the other day. Works fantastically on the iPhone and iPad’s screen, but I’m having some problems with using it over Airplay (to an Apple TV).

On the iPhone when using airplay the phone keeps timing out and locking itself after the normal amount of time, as the app doesn’t stop it from going to sleep. When it goes to sleep it stops sending video to the Apple TV, though it does start sending audio.

On the iPad it very frequently ends at the end of a video (yes I have shuffle on). When you swipe up, the iPad screen that comes up indicates that the music is paused, but the indicator on the app says the music is playing (though the time position is stopped at the end of the video). Pressing the pause button on the app starts it up again. So for some reason it’s status is going out of sync with what the iPad thinks the playing condition is in.

Is this a known problem, and is their a solution?

Thanks.

Taking a fall

Tuesday night when I got out of the shower there were two missed calls from my mother on my phone.

I tried to call her on and off for quarter of an hour, before I finally have up and went to check Facebook I case there was anything I’d missed.

There was a post from an aunt that my grandma had taken a fall, was in hospital and was going to have surgery for a broken hip between 3pm and 7.30pm.

That sounds like a pretty long time for surgery when your 86, so naturally I was worried, but there was soon a update on Facebook saying she came out of it well.

I finally managed to get hold of mum and got more of the story.

Naturally I was worried about grandma. It was about 8pm by now. I rang the evening operations for work (that’s the guy who gets the work phone at home all might after the office closes), and told him what had happened and I really wanted to go up to Christchurch (we live in Dunedin) to see her.

Ops said just go, he’d start ringing around and find cover for my (6.45am) shift.

So half an hour latter myself and my wife were on the road.

There was no use showing up at Christchurch hospital after midnight, so we crashed at an aunts on the way up, started off the next morning, and got there inside visiting hours.

Another aunt was there and just left as we got in.

We chatted with her for about an hour. We managed to get back to,our car park opposite the hospital with just one minute to spare.

She seemed in good spirits, so that was good.

After that it was time to drive home.

We got home about 6.30pm I think. I had a nap, as even though it was early, long distance driving seems to take it out of you.

So she is doing well, and here I am back at work, sitting at my bus stop, waiting for departing time.

Full time camera

Man I really wish I had a good res camera on my glasses all the time, with a easy way to quickly take a shot.

This morning there were two shots I’d love to have taken.

One was a builder, 9.20am on a winters morning, walking past with a plank or some sort of pole, about twelve foot long. This was over one shoulder, while the other hand was carrying his morning coffee. To make the missed picture even better, he was walking towards a hatchback witch had a cricket bat propped into it keeping it open.

Not sure why, but I just liked the scene.

The second shot I would have taken this morning was a helicopter taking off from the roof of the (Dunedin) hospital. It was a lovely blue sky, and I could see it taking off throw the branches of a leafless tree.

It was a good sight, and I think it would have made a good photo. I probably would have taken the shot to early though, as if was thinking that would be a great shot as it was in the thick of the branches, but a little latter when it was near the edge with just a few branches the photo would have be fantastic.

Oh well, no photos, just memories, either way having a good morning even though I had to start driving the bus at 6.50am on a winter morning.