[hon]

Hi Guys, I tried searching but couldn't find it anywhere.

I am new to developing BB software. All I want to do is add video as a resource to an app im making. I put the avi file in the res folder and eclipse finds it no problem. I build and and use javaloader to load the cod file to my bold 9000. Here's the thing. When the avi is 8mb, I get a javaloader error. When the avi is 4ish mb, it works fine. Is there a max size I dont know about? Am I embedding/including these videos in the package correctly?

At the end of the day, these will be proprietary instructional videos that my client would not want just "OUT" there. At least not easily so that is why i must package the videos into the cod file. Anyone see any problems with this?

Also when I'm referencing the res folder, do I need use some special path?
right now i'm just using 'file://myvid.avi'

I will use mp4 or some other smaller compressed video later but i thought i should figure this size thing out first. Thanks for any help.

[hrbuckley]

8 MB could be a significant percentage of the amount of available application memory. Not sure if there is a limit for a resource file, but I would suggest you look into the methods available for syncing media onto the SDCard or other memory.

[hon]

Hey Thanks for the reply. Is there anyway you can think of that I can package up multimedia along with an app so that its not just freely accessible in the file system? My actual app is very tiny.. all it does is play back video. But the vids are the bread and butter.. If you could just copy and send these vids around to friends, the whole point of buying the app from the store is pointless.

[Dougsg38p]

I've heard folks complain about this limit being 4MB, 8MB, and 12MB. I still have not seen a definitive answer to the question.

Check the flash memory available on your device - maybe you only have 7 MB available.

Options / Memory / Application Memory

[hrbuckley]

Originally Posted by hon

Hey Thanks for the reply. Is there anyway you can think of that I can package up multimedia along with an app so that its not just freely accessible in the file system? My actual app is very tiny.. all it does is play back video. But the vids are the bread and butter.. If you could just copy and send these vids around to friends, the whole point of buying the app from the store is pointless.

This is the classic DRM delema. When you give someone all the material they need to view media, by definition they have all the material they need to bypass any protection. It is also possible to extract COD files from a device with JavaLoader, and install it on another device.

You could use cryptography to lock the COD to some hardware property (the PIN for example). But if you can do that, then you could use the same techniques to encode the video on download so that it could only be decoded by the COD on the authorized device that downloads it. This is essentially what eBook readers do.

[hon]

Again thank you very much for the reply.

I'm really not trying to encrypt the files or bind it to specific pins. This would be great but not necessary for me. I just need it as simple as possible but want the videos to be packaged up with the app so that they arent just freely out there to copy. I don't need to DRM them or anything. If computers savvy people want to extract the cod and pull the videos out, well thats good for them. I just want it so that a normal not so computer savvy person cant just grab all the videos easily (like copy and paste easily) out of the phone.

I have never built a app for the app store before but i have built apps for the iphone. For the iphone you just get a single ipa file( or app ) and everything you need, images, etc etc are in there and you cant easily pull them out if you dont know what you are doing.

How does it work for blackberry? I assumed with the blackberry store you would just download the cod or the jar and install. Is there ever a time when you would download the cod/jar along with a folder called for example "videos"? That way the app can load without preloading all the videos into memory?

I ask all this because like my original question, I couldnt add an avi to the resource folder (although now that i have read some more it seems the vids should be in the root folder) and use javaloader to install it because the cod was too large.

Is there really any way to package up an app along with its videos that will work?

Thanks. sorry for being a noob. The blackberry developer site is a plethora of random knowledge and its not very organized IMO if you have a specific question like mine.

[hon]

Originally Posted by Dougsg38p

I've heard folks complain about this limit being 4MB, 8MB, and 12MB. I still have not seen a definitive answer to the question.

Check the flash memory available on your device - maybe you only have 7 MB available.

Options / Memory / Application Memory

Thanks Doug,

This is my problem with BB development. The answers are so hard to get.

Is it even possible to build a program like the one im trying to build?

a simple app that just plays back videos. small short training clips. not over the web.

or another example would be a picture viewer where the pictures are packaged up with the download of the app. How is this done now? or is it?

[hrbuckley]

It is possable to do what you want, the issue is that Blackberries don't (and likely won't) support very large data in the way you want. Blackberry hardware and OS is very different from the iPhone. More different than the iPhone from Windows Mobile for example.

Application memory on a Blackberry, where COD files, the persitent store, and other data end up, is very limited. This has been a perenial complaint levied against RIM, but evolves out of design decisions that enable the Blackberry platform to perform in ways that other smart phones can't. So these complaints are akin to buying a Prius and then complaining about the cost of replacing batteries.

In any case your strategy of deploying videos wrapped in a stub application be very difficult to make work simply because application memory is a limited resource.

You could deploy the videos packaged in windows install files, and have the install package work with the user to put the video into Device Memory (different from Application Memory) or the Media Card. However, with out some sort of protection they would be drag and drop copiable.

[hon]

Thanks alot. I think im abandoning this project til rim gets out of 1990.. =( Maybe it's me.. either way.. thanks.

[hrbuckley]

There are some problems for which the Blackberry is not the right tool.