cpchan branch

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by Lacene

also, will you plan on adding album art to your build later on?

I will be including the album art patch when the author supports a saner and more standard method of storing the album art (ie, "Album Art.jpg"/"Folder.jpg" files and embeded).

Charles

[CrowdAds]

[Llorean]

It's very likely that the way the album art patch does it now is how Rockbox is going to officially do it.

What is insane about the current method?

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by Llorean

What is insane about the current method?

The reason why I don't like the current method is the usage of fixed sized bmp files instead of a more common method such as scalable "Album Art", "Folder", "Cover" jpeg/png files or embed album art. Most people would just like to use a batch album art downloader, especially when faced with hundreds of albums. However, after reading the "Album Art" patch page more carefully it seems like this is a limitation of the wps code and cannot be gotten around without either a rewrite or an ugly on-the-fly conversion work around. I guess I will just include it.

Charles

[Llorean]

BMPs can be scaled, and a patch to do so exists. PNG and JPEG aren't more scalable, really. In the end the advantage of PNG/JPEG = slightly better efficiency on disk space. The advantage of BMP: Less work to load them, less code to load them, so better battery efficiency. Since you have much more disk space than battery life, it's definitely better to use BMP. As well, there's no jpeg or png decoder in the core, just the plugin, and for it to work with album art it'd have to be added to the core (meaning that it would cost RAM from everyone, even those not using album art, things in the core are there for everybody, so it needs to be used conservatively, unlike plugins).

There's also no real advantage to using embedded album art. I mean, with that you end up with one image per song, almost as wasteful of space as BMP if not moreso, with the only benefit being that since they're built into the song, instead of being a single cover.bmp, you can move individual songs elsewhere and keep their album art instead of having to copy a second file (which goes along anyway if you move the folder.)

So really most of the advantages you see to the other methods are imaginary. There are mass-downloaders that will download .jpeg yes, but then you can immediately use a mass-converted to convert all the jpegs to bmps at the largest needed size, and let the resize patch shrink them for WPSes that need smaller ones.

So, the only real advantage I see is that you don't have to run that mass-bmp-converter step. Did I miss something?

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by Llorean

BMPs can be scaled, and a patch to do so exists.

Yes, I know- bmp's like all bitmaps are scalable to an extent. However, the resize patch is broken for current svn.

PNG and JPEG aren't more scalable, really. In the end the advantage of PNG/JPEG = slightly better efficiency on disk space.

True.

The advantage of BMP: Less work to load them, less code to load them, so better battery efficiency.

True too. I guess it really stems from my irrational aversion to MS file formats. How about using xpm?

There's also no real advantage to using embedded album art.

True, I personally hate this method and I think is a waste of disk space.

So, the only real advantage I see is that you don't have to run that mass-bmp-converter step. Did I miss something?

Yes. It is easy for a slightly more experience user to do the batch conversion. However, I think most people would prefer an out of the box solution.

Charles

[Llorean]

An out of the box tool could fairly easily be made if an independent developer took interest (or better yet, integrated into RBUtil, as that would be lovely).

And bitmap shouldn't *really* be considered a microsoft image format. Outside of the header, it's just raw pixel data at whatever color depth the header mentions it is. While technically a file format, it's really just the simplest possible way to store image data.

As for the broken bitmap resize patch, it'll be easier to fix that than to create a new scaling patch for jpegs.

[pyr0sphere]

I'd like the new Doom controls. I might finally beat level 1 now..

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by pyr0sphere

I'd like the new Doom controls. I might finally beat level 1 now..

New as in the ones in the svn version of Rockbox or that of the patch?

Charles

[pyr0sphere]

Whichever one you proposed to include. Anything is better than what we have as default.

Basically the one that turns with the scrollwheel instead of left and right buttons

[a12ctic]

Am I the only one having problems with the latest of this build? Music, videos, gb games, etc, all refuse to play. The plugins seem fine however.

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by a12ctic

Am I the only one having problems with the latest of this build? Music, videos, gb games, etc, all refuse to play. The plugins seem fine however.

Strange, I haven't had a problem at all. What errors are you getting? It may be an older boot loader and newer firmware mismatch- I read on the Rockbox site that it could cause strange problems.

Charles

[a12ctic]

I just updated the bootloader when they came out with the patcher or whatever. For videos i get incompatable version, same with rockboy games, when I play a mp3 it says "Undefined instruction at 3fb0fc4 "and restarts.

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by a12ctic

For videos i get incompatable version, same with rockboy games, when I play a mp3 it says "Undefined instruction at 3fb0fc4 "and restarts.

Try going into the "root" and ".rockbox" directories of your player and delete all "rockbox.e200" files and see if it helps. The firmware name have been changed to rockbox.mi4. Also, the Rockbox version number should be what you see in "attachment_1". As you can see from "attachment_2" I have no problems using my player.

Charles

[pyr0sphere]

Woah, your WPS screen looks better than mine. The default one I use has the date on the top bar all messed up. Could you teach me or post, if possible, your version of that theme?

I remember asking you about this before. I'm still using Nimbus 14 as my font =D

Hopefully you know what I mean by my date problem

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by pyr0sphere

Woah, your WPS screen looks better than mine. The default one I use has the date on the top bar all messed up. Could you teach me or post, if possible, your version of that theme?

It is not really finished yet. However, I have attached my working copy. If you want to learn how to make a theme, here is the link:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CustomWPS

Hopefully you know what I mean by my date problem

Yes, I do.

Charles

[a12ctic]

Originally Posted by cpchan

Try going into the "root" and ".rockbox" directories of your player and delete all "rockbox.e200" files and see if it helps. The firmware name have been changed to rockbox.mi4. Also, the Rockbox version number should be what you see in "attachment_1". As you can see from "attachment_2" I have no problems using my player.

Charles

Same version, already deleted the e200 file :-/

[pyr0sphere]

Works perfectly. Thanks =D

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by a12ctic

Same version, already deleted the e200 file :-/

Hum, this is strange. Try reinstalling both the zip files. You might have accidentally forgot to install one.

Charles

[pyr0sphere]

Hmmm, discovered a bug

I was playing a song and all of a sudden it turned into really loud static. Like what you get on televisions when no channel is on, or like a radio when you're moving the dial around.

First time it's ever happened to me. Using the latest patched version

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by pyr0sphere

First time it's ever happened to me. Using the latest patched version

A quick reset will probably cure that. I would give it a couple of days, for the dust to settle, before report the bug. The developers have only recently absorb the volume increase patch in to the tree.

Charles