Quasar Media Player Released For Sharprom And Pdaxrom

[snk4ever]

Ok, no problems, I just thought that you released it since you said you fixed it. I'm not in a hurry, I just wanted to try it.

[ofels]

The recipe and patches are ready to be checked in. However I am looking for someone to check it into OE as I do not have write access to the monotone repository.

Nobody seemed to be interested to check the recipie into OE currently- I did not get any response.
So here is the ipk file, built for aklta and Angstrom, though it should also run on C3xxx devices.
May it be of any use.

Oliver

You didn't attach the recipes to your mail and you didn't attach them to bugzilla. It's very hard for us to check things in we don't have access to.

I had sent mails including attachments to OE people directly, I have asked for volunteers on the angstrom mailing list and here without even getting a reply.
A simple "please send the patches to me or attach them to bugzilla" would have been sufficient instead of silence. Sounds like "leave me alone with that"

I will add the files to bugzilla.

Oliver

[ofels]

I will add the files to bugzilla.

Bug 3224 added with the files required for committing it to OE.

Oliver

[the_oak]

An SL-6000 user here (default Sharp rom). Quasar is absolutely beautiful!! It is also about 30 seconds faster opening than Zplayer. (Zplayer is really slow opening, about 40 seconds.) It plays music files very nicely and created a playlist for both music and video. Very nice indeed.

For other SL-6000 users information, the mplayer settings I used are:

-vo fbdev -fbmode qvga -vm -vop rotate=1

I have only one issue with this. If I view a video, then close the video, the screen does not redraw properly. Parts of the screen remain blank. Rotating the screen and then rotating it back fixes the problem. Zplayer did not have this problem, so there must be some useful code somewhere in there that affects this.

Kino2 also had this problem and I seem to recall a Qcop call (or lack thereof) being suspected as the cause. However, I am not a programmer, so I don't know. Another contributing factor may be our lack of an updated video driver for the SL-6000.

I have submitted a bug report also to:http://trac.katastrophos.net/quasar/newticket

Keep up the good work, and thanks a million!!

[eviLjazz]

The new release is finally out. The big changes in this version:
- Better tag reading and Unicode support
- Many improvements and bugfixes for video playback

Please check the website for details:
http://katastrophos.net/quasar

[eviLjazz]

I have only one issue with this. If I view a video, then close the video, the screen does not redraw properly. Parts of the screen remain blank.

Thanks for reporting! The bug has been squashed in the new release.

[xamindar]

Yay!  Thanks for this release.  It works a lot better.  My music files do show the tag info now but only if they are in english.  Any Japanese characters are square boxes so it seems that quazar is simply using a non-unicode font.  Is there a way I can change the font that it uses?  Which font IS it using?  Thanks again!

[the_oak]

The bug has been squashed in the new release.

Just downloaded 0.9 version. The bug is indeed squashed!!!!!!! Wonderful. This media player has all the features I want, looks great, opens quickly, plays movies or mp3s, and redraws the screen fine. I couldn't ask for more. This has to be the best media player for Zaurus.

Thanks!!

[adf]

An SL-6000 user here (default Sharp rom). Quasar is absolutely beautiful!! It is also about 30 seconds faster opening than Zplayer. (Zplayer is really slow opening, about 40 seconds.) It plays music files very nicely and created a playlist for both music and video. Very nice indeed.

For other SL-6000 users information, the mplayer settings I used are:

-vo fbdev -fbmode qvga -vm -vop rotate=1

I have only one issue with this. If I view a video, then close the video, the screen does not redraw properly. Parts of the screen remain blank. Rotating the screen and then rotating it back fixes the problem. Zplayer did not have this problem, so there must be some useful code somewhere in there that affects this.

Kino2 also had this problem and I seem to recall a Qcop call (or lack thereof) being suspected as the cause. However, I am not a programmer, so I don't know. Another contributing factor may be our lack of an updated video driver for the SL-6000.

I have submitted a bug report also to:http://trac.katastrophos.net/quasar/newticket

Keep up the good work, and thanks a million!!

Was there a patched kernel for better audio, as there is with the 3x00 Z's?

[eviLjazz]

Yay!  Thanks for this release.  It works a lot better.  My music files do show the tag info now but only if they are in english.  Any Japanese characters are square boxes so it seems that quazar is simply using a non-unicode font.  Is there a way I can change the font that it uses?  Which font IS it using?  Thanks again!

By default it is using Helvetica and in most distros it seems to miss some of the necessary Unicode glyphs.
I've just checked against the font "Lcfont" and Quasar displays the Japanese characters just fine then. However, Korean and Chinese characters aren't displayed correctly. So, it's really a matter of having the right font installed. Covering all possible Unicode areas in the bitmap fonts that are used in Qtopia is space-consuming.
I mostly tested on OS X in X11 and it displays everything just fine, but we have True Type fonts and Freetype rendering there instead of bitmap fonts...

The fonts are defined in the skin ini file:
/opt/QtPalmtop/share/quasar/skins/default/skin.ini

You'll have to adjust the sections [bigmode], [normalmode], [smallmode]. Change playlist_font, playlistoverview_font and playinfo_font to use "Lcfont" instead of "helvetica".
But beware, it's a mess!

[eviLjazz]

Was there a patched kernel for better audio, as there is with the 3x00 Z's?

Nopes. The SL-6000 is using a different chip (WM9712). I can tell from the specs it supports "Tone Control", "Bass Boost" and "3D Enhancements": http://www.wolfsonmicro.com/uploads/documents/en/WM9712L.pdf
I'm sure it would be possible to hack the driver. I just don't have a device to test with...

[tovarish]

do you know which sound chip the c860(7xx) uses and if your audio enhancements could be available on the c860 too.


*UPDATE*
I found out that it is the wm8731 and this one doesnt have digital graphic equaliser so bummer

tovarish

[xamindar]

Thanks so much eviljazz.  This is really the best music player for the zaurus now.

[enclose789]

I'm using 6000L with Sharp ROM, and I had installed Quasar Media Player (0.9) twice on my Z, but so sad that it could not work on my Z.  

My situation was:
Installed fine.  The first time to startup the program fine, but I could not play any MP3 or MPEG file.  Therefore, I closed Quasar Media Player and re-executed it again.    However, the program just hangs there and nothing happened.  Namely, installing with package manager goes fine, but I can not to actually start it.  I don't know how to make it work on my Z.

FYI, I only use the stock Mplayer, without any addition libs.  Shall I install another libs on my 6000L??  I hope that someone could help me to use this execellent player on my Z, thanks in advance!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update:

It's strange that I can "enter" this program's control panel now.  When I add the mp3 from a file, I could see this song  shows up in the On-The-Go Playlist.  However, when I push the "play" botton, it always shows the information that "mplayer could not be executed or was not found on your system.  Would you like to specify the location of the mplayer binary on your system?"

So I go to "tools" --> "configuration"  -->  "mplayer", I specify the location as "/home/Qtpalmtop/bin/mpegplayer" (I cannot file a file called "mplayer"), then re-play the song.  But the same information still shows up.  

I still could use the original "Media Player" on my 6000L, please tell me how to specify the location of the mplayer binary.  Thanks in advance.

[adf]

I'm using 6000L with Sharp ROM, and I had installed Quasar Media Player (0.9) twice on my Z, but so sad that it could not work on my Z.  

My situation was:
Installed fine.  The first time to startup the program fine, but I could not play any MP3 or MPEG file.  Therefore, I closed Quasar Media Player and re-executed it again.    However, the program just hangs there and nothing happened.  Namely, installing with package manager goes fine, but I can not to actually start it.  I don't know how to make it work on my Z.

FYI, I only use the stock Mplayer, without any addition libs.  Shall I install another libs on my 6000L??  I hope that someone could help me to use this execellent player on my Z, thanks in advance!

It appears to work on mine, though I didn't try it out very thoroughly. I'll give it a good run and see what it does.