Messages

1

General Discussion / Mplayer Speed Question

« on: February 11, 2005, 05:07:39 pm »

MPEG (MPEG-1) is so... well... 1980's.

I wholeheartily agree... but it was all I knew at the time... luckily I've found a better way.

I have had much recent success with MeWiG on Windows. I highly recommend downloading and installing the windows binary (or compile it yourself) MPlayer / MEncoder from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ and MeWiG (Mencoder Windows Gui) from http://mewig.sf.net/.

Here are my recommended MeWiG options, YMMV:
- Encode as mp3 (using lame)
- Audio Bitrate 96
- Increase volume by 10dB (optional)
- Encode video using ffmpeg (divx!)
- Codec mpeg4 (divx!)
- Video Bitrate 120
- 2 Pass
- High quality (1) fewest bits (vhq)
- 4 mvs
- trellis quant
- Crop as needed
- Scale to max 320 width or 240 height

This gets an hour of PVR'd TV (commercials cut out) down to 70-75 MB and a movie at around 225-230 MB. I'm still testing... but initial results appear to have a slight noticeable higher quality in both sound and video with a 25% reduction in filesize as compared to their counterparts encoded via my instructions above.

Another cool part about MeWiG is that you can use the GUI to create the command lines and then have a starting point to make your own scripts, or run a bunch as a batch job in a cmd prompt.

Also, I haven't tried any ogg/ogm's with MeWiG yet, but the option is in the GUI.

2

General Discussion / Mplayer Speed Question

« on: January 27, 2005, 09:01:26 am »

And for a notion of the performance I'm getting playing these on the zaurus, here's a clip of my 5600 playing the intro to Battlestar Galactica.

SORRY! Had to kill it... too much filespace.

3

General Discussion / Mplayer Speed Question

« on: January 26, 2005, 08:40:58 pm »

For your viewing pleasure, here's a 30 second clip from CSI: NY's Tri-Borough episode produced via the above process:

 [ Invalid Attachment ]

P.S. That's 30 seconds... squeezed into 1,177,604 bytes!!!

4

General Discussion / Mplayer Speed Question

« on: January 26, 2005, 08:34:54 pm »

It just took me some trial and error to arrive at the settings in my post above... but if you're trying to mimick my procedure with tmpgenc, having this file will help...

Here's the .mcf file (MPEG setting template) for tmpgenc (just remove the .txt extension):
 [ Invalid Attachment ]

5

General Discussion / Sl-5500 And Kingmax 1gb 60x Secure Digital (sd)

« on: January 26, 2005, 08:08:47 pm »

I haven't tried using any Kingmax cards on my 5600, but Sandisk 1gb SD and CF haven't worked for me. Perhaps the Z has a size limit for expansion cards at 512 MB?

6

General Discussion / Mplayer Speed Question

« on: January 26, 2005, 07:58:09 pm »

 

I wish it wasn't so because command-line video-editing and encoding rocks... but I haven't had much success using mencoder, ogmmerge and the like... all my ogm movies do not advance correctly in mplayer and oftentimes trying to advance will stall/crash my Z, so I'm stuck using gui-based tools on windows...

 

I have had much success using video files (MPEG-1's) created using the smart ripper, dvd2avi, and tmpgenc tools.

Now, I have a significantly-sized library of converted dvd's and tv shows, down-encoded for exclusive use by my zaurus. I have found it particularly useful for traveling (without a laptop) to burn a bunch to a dvd-r and carry that along with a card reader and borrow somebody's computer or laptop to swap movies or shows for the flight home.

 

Essentially, I take any video file (or seperate AVI and WAV files, as produced by dvd2avi) and run it through tmpgenc with settings:

Resolution: 320x240
Frames per Second: 24 fps
Constant Bit Rate (CBR) (for video): 200 kbps
Layer-2 Audio
Audio Sample Rate: 44100 Hz
Audio Bit Rate: 96 kbps

At least for me, these settings are producing entire movies from dvd with total space used around 200-300 MB... good enough for around 1 movie per 256 MB card and 1-2 movies per 512 card, or about 90 MB per hour of tv (minus the commercials, which leaves about 40-45 minutes). And the quality, of course, isn't perfect, but I would call it very acceptable and not detracting (as was the case with the ogm's IMO).

Also, I would highly suggest running mplayer outside of qtopia!!! I don't know how you'd do that on a 5500, but on a 5600... you would reboot, then wait for when it counts down from 5, hit /, and then a, and then you'll be have a shell outside qtopia and nearly all cpu cycles can be devoted to mplayer. Remember to use -vo fbdev option for mplayer, instead of -vo sdl as you would inside qtopia.

Also, I have noticed that the -playlist option in mplayer is broke... anyone else confirm that? No biggy, I just wrote a script called mplaylist.pl that reads a .m3u playlist, runs mplayer, transfers command line options to mplayer and suppresses mplayer output between playlist items (the cursor just blinks a little bit).

mplaylist.pl:
Note: Another fix: more error correction. This one is current as of Sat Jan 29 14:44 UTC.
 [ Invalid Attachment ]

7

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Preliminary Oz 3.5.2 Errors On Poodle

« on: December 04, 2004, 12:21:44 pm »

After further testing, I'm able to install some other packages, but they don't show up on the desktop.

Still no idea on the ssh client...

I have concluded that 3.5.2 (OPIE or GPE) is not mature enough for day to day use.

8

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Preliminary Oz 3.5.2 Errors On Poodle

« on: December 03, 2004, 09:15:22 pm »

Code: [Select]

root@doom:/# ssh guinness
ssh: connection to root@guinness:22 exited: No auth methods could be used.

Code: [Select]

root@doom:/# ipkg -test install gweled
Installing gweled (0.5-r0) to home...
Downloading http://guinness/zaurus/poodle/feed/openzaurus/3.5.2/base/gweled_0.5-r0_arm.ipkipkg: invalid magicAnyone have any thoughts on either error?

9

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Opie Or GPE?

« on: December 02, 2004, 03:16:16 pm »

I agree with adf. I am looking forward to the 3.5.2 gpe. It's a solid idea... now we just need it to mature into a solid gui. I prefer gpe because in contrast to opie, it's purpose is not to build an open source version of the sharp gui. I like the new, progressive, slick look to gpe. However due to limits in 3.5.1 gpe's maturity, I was forced to go back to opie or qt to do anything substantial.

10

OpenZaurus/Opie/Qtopia / Openzaurus 3.5.2

« on: December 01, 2004, 01:29:03 pm »

I noticed that OpenZaurus 3.5.2 was released today. It is available at http://www.openzaurus.org.

11

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Wiping a Sl-5600 and starting again.

« on: September 23, 2004, 01:54:54 pm »

In my experience with the 5600 (pxa255) and OZ 3.3.6-pre1, ssh does not start on boot. You have to start it via:

# sshd

then you should be able to ssh into your zaurus.

12

OpenZaurus/Opie/Qtopia / mediaplayer 2 and mp3 skipping

« on: August 17, 2004, 07:15:44 pm »

To be absolutely clear for the archives; I changed the
following line in $HOME/Settings/opiexine.cf:

 #audio.oss_sync_method:softsync

into

audio.oss_sync_method:softsync

From: http://handhelds.org/hypermail/opie/75/7515.html

13

User Request for Applications / Kismet + GPS

« on: August 09, 2004, 10:13:27 am »

omega, that's correct.

At the moment, I have the GPS working (qpeGPS and gpsd)... and I have Kismet working, but for some reason, all versions of Kismet compiled for the Z that I've tried (2.6.0, 2.8.1, 3.0.1, 3.1.0) either don't work period or don't use the gpsd. The *best* one has been 2.8.1 (which is really 2.6.0 according to the ipkg info).

I wrote some diagnostic programs in perl... and found out that even after configuring kismet for gps collection, it only sends a single gpsd request ('PAVM' for Position, Altitude, Velocity, Mode) when you hit Shift+Q to close down kismet.

I was/am planning to "do it myself" but am struggling with getting the cross compiler environment set up on my Debian system. It seems all the instructions / help / howtos out there are geared mostly towards the Red Hat / 5500 combination.

14

User Request for Applications / Kismet + GPS

« on: August 08, 2004, 11:20:19 pm »

Kismet with GPS would be nice.

15

Spain / Trabajo en Seguridad Informática en Madrid?

« on: July 29, 2004, 01:37:06 pm »

Acaban de aprobar mi curriculum para liberar el otro día, y tan pronto que puedo escribirlo a máquina, lo pongo.

Esto es el tipo de trabajo que busco: Generalmente estoy contento haciendo cualquier cosa en la industria informática... me encanta aprender nuevas temas, pero mi fondo es más o menos enfocado en seguridad de ordenadores y redes, y me encanta esa tema el más. Entonces hay que escoger donde vivir... prefería vivir y trabajar en Madrid, España o Denver, Colorado donde viven las familias de mi esposa y yo, pero cualquier sitio es una posibilidad.

Si os ocurre algo, puedes mandarme un PM o escribir un mensaje aquí.