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Technical Support Forums » Citrus Alarm Clock

1. 

   Predasus
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago

   Im getting an error whenever I try to use Citrus to play my media files. "Media Error - The media file specified for this alarm is either corrupted, or there is no codec or audio output device avaliable to play it." I LOVE the fading audio feature in the morning so I don't get jolted awake, but this is preventing me from using any of my music other than a few select tracks. One thing I'm noticing is that songs that previously worked with Citrus just magically stopped working the other day. I'm pretty much out of songs that actually work when Citrus is used as the player.

   Any ideas? I've tried pretty much everything from changing my sound quality settings in Vista to changing file names/folders to relocating files to different parts of my hard drive. No luck what so ever ...

2. 

   Mark
   Administrator
   Posted 3 years ago

   Have you installed or uninstalled any media codecs recently? Codecs are the bits of software used to play and encode music and video on your computer. Citrus also uses these to play your alarms.

   If you have uninstalled some Codecs, or if you're unsure, you may need to re-install them. Other users have reported success using the open-source ffdshow codec, so you may want to give this a try.

   Hope this helps!

3. 

   Predasus
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago

   I narrowed it down to a problem with the way Citrus reads ID3v2 tags off of the music files. All of my files have advanced tags associated with them and whenever I try to play them with said tags attached to the file, Citrus refuses to play them. ID3v1 tags work just fine, but the ID3v2 tags, with their advanced file information WILL NOT play in Citrus.

   I was able to get the music I want to play for my alarm working by editing the file information in Winamp and removing the ID3v2 tag. Gonna go check and see if there was some kind of foreign character in each of the tags or something that might relate to the foreign character bug currently within Citrus.

   I do believe I've stumbled accross a bug that actually might need fixing Mark ...

4. 

   Predasus
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago

   Went back through and verified there are NO foriegn characters of any kind in any of the text boxes in the ID3v2 tags on ANY of my music. I went through and removed certain information one by one from the ID3v2 tag starting with Artist then Album then Title and nothing solved the problem until I completely removed the ID3v2 tag associated with the file.

   Weird thing ... if I go back and reapply the ID3v2 tag ... it will work in Citrus no problem but ONLY AFTER having removed it initially.

   I hope this helps 86 this problem for good.

5. 

   Mark
   Administrator
   Posted 3 years ago

   Glad you got it working again! Sounds like the tags are certainly related to the issue.

   At any rate, Citrus doesn't actually read and decode the music files itself, but relies on external codecs. If the codec reports a failure, Citrus just echos the error message back to you and starts beeping as a fail-safe measure.

   I'm afraid chances are this bug is still related to a specific codec on your system. Still, I appreciate the awesome sleuthing and will certainly forward this thread to anyone else experiencing the issue.

6. 

   Predasus
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago

   Then I suggest you start working immediatly on a music program that is just as awesome as citrus, that incorporates the citrus alarm features! How about a winamp/wmp plug-in?!??!?! Man ... I'd pay some beans for that. One can dream right?

   Either way, I absolutly love the program and love not being jolted awake like those other free alarm programs out there do. Perfect features, perfect coding ... best 13 bucks I've ever spent. Keep up the good work Mark!

7. 

   Anonymous
   
   Posted 3 years ago

   I'm having this problem too....Citrus can only play a few songs, and the rest give me the 277 error.

   I've installed the Combined Community Codec Pack, and ffdshow, but it still doesn't work.

   The songs all play fine in external players, but I'd like to have the fade-in feature, etc.

8. 

   dweebgal
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago

   I also have the same problem as these posters.

   I already have CCCP installed (and therefore FFDshow) as it is my codec pack of choice. I try to run as few codecs as possible to avoid these sorts of issues.

   I've run the CCCP insurgent to make sure there are no codec conflicts (there are not). I have not uninstalled or installed any codecs recently. In fact there have been no changes to my system other than installing citrus.

   All the MP3s tested play fine, with WMP11, Media Player Classic, VLC and iTunes.

   The only thing that works is stripping out the ID3v2 tags and just leaving the v1 tags. They then play internally through Citrus with no problem.

   (As an aside, what I have done is made a copy of the mp3s I want in the playlist - I tend to only use a small selection per week, and rotate them - to a folder on my desktop, and had the "stripped" versions in there, I would like to keep my v2 tags for my iPod. I then save the "citrus.m3u" playlist in there as well)

   I accept your reasoning that it *shouldn't* be the tags (as I have other files with v2 tags that work fine with no altering. I've compared the v2 tags between problematic and non-problematic files, and I can see no differences which might cause the issue) for the reasons you've stated, but it seems to be the only thing that fixes it....

9. 

   Mark
   Administrator
   Posted 2 years ago

   Thanks for the additional information. Clearly something's afoot with the ID3v2 tags. I'll look into it.

10. 

    dweebgal
    Member
    Posted 2 years ago

    Thanks for that Mark.

    I'll keep on with the workaround for now

11. 

    Predasus
    Member
    Posted 2 years ago

    Well I dug a little further and noted that when I changed my ID3v2 tags using iTunes to version 2.3 instead of 2.4, Citrus will play all ID3v2 music files and you can preserve the tag information of your music. It's just a matter of doing the following using iTunes:

    1. Highlight all of the music in your library (or use Edit>Select All while in the Library section)
    2. Right click on any of the selected songs and click "Convert ID3 Tags..."
    3. Check the ID3 tag version box
    4. Select v2.3 in the drop down menu
    5. Click convert

    Depending on the size of your library it might take a while, but when it's done, Citrus will play all of your music files guaranteed. The problem is Citrus is looking for v2.3 ID3 tags and not finding them because most music burned/ripped/bought anytime recently was created using v2.4 ID3 tags.

    Quick fix to a really annoying problem.

12. 

    dweebgal
    Member
    Posted 2 years ago

    Predasus,

    Just looked into what you are suggesting there.

    Checked the ID3 tag versions under iTunes.

    They are v2.3 *not* 2.4, and I still get the same error.

    I have even tried telling iTunes to "convert" the tags to 2.3 anyway, to see if trying to re-write that part of the tag header would help.

    Same 277 error as before.

    *edit* Just to point out, I do *love* this software, it has made getting up in the mornings much less painful for me!

13. 

    Anonymous
    
    Posted 2 years ago

    I _PROMISE_ I'll buy this just as soon as this error is fixed

14. 

    Mark
    Administrator
    Posted 2 years ago

    I've heard reports from some users that installing this codec solves the ID3v2 problem: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MP3_Parser_DirectShow_Filter.htm

    I can't vouch for it personally yet, but it may be worth a shot.

15. 

    Anonymous
    
    Posted 2 years ago

    Installing this: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MP3_Parser_DirectShow_Filter.htm did help. Thanks, Mark.

16. 

    Anonymous
    
    Posted 1 year ago

    Program isn't very chinese-music friendly. There are a couple of chinese songs that i have to replayce with numbers or letters and itll woudl work. is ther any way to go around this without editing all my chinese songs?

17. 

    Mark
    Administrator
    Posted 1 year ago

    Download the latest version; it supports Chinese characters in filenames.

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