Pocket Looper

About Pocket Looper Android App

Use this app to VJ with your phone. It will load video files from a folder on your SD card and automatically loop each one. Great for hooking up to a pocket projector and VJing on the go!

It has NO visible interface elements, so you can scrub videos or choose new ones using gestures alone, without hinting to your audience that you are using a video player. (No pesky seek bars, play buttons, etc.)

NOTE: This application does not include any videos! You will have to add your own VJ clips to the SD card before you can use it!

SETUP:

* BEFORE STARTING, add your video files to the SD card in their own directory. The default is "/sdcard/vj_vids/".
* The videos must all be encoded so Android can read them. As of this writing they must be .MP4 or .3GP files encoded with the H.264 AVC codec.
For more information on video formats, see the end of this document, or visit: http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

INSTRUCTIONS:

* Tap the screen once to play the next video. It will loop until you tap again.
* Slide your finger back and forth horizontally to seek/scrub the video. The leftmost position is the beginning of the video, the rightmost the end.
* Slide your finger vertically to a position and let go. It will load the video file in roughly that position.
e.g.: if you have 5 videos in the queue, and you slide your finger to the vertical middle of the screen, it will load the 3rd video. If you slide it all the way to the bottom, it will load the 5th (last) video. Sliding to the top will load the 1st video.

If you want to hook it up to a pocket projector, you will need a phone that supports TV video out, like the Samsung Galaxy S (Vibrant, Captivate, Fascinate, Mesmerize, etc), some versions of Motorola Droid, etc.

SUGGESTED VIDEO CODEC:

To get the minimum amount of lag when scrubbing and loading videos, the key is to use a low framerate and low resolution.
According to the Android docs, the recommended low-quality settings for encoding your videos for Android are:

* Video codec: H.264 Baseline Profile
* Video resolution 176 x 144 px (320x240 also works)
* Video frame rate 12 fps
* Video bitrate 56 Kbps (up to 500Kbps)
* Audio codec AAC-LC (no sound is even better)
* Audio channels 1 (mono)
* Audio bitrate 24 Kbps

Please email me with any suggestions or questions.