Re: ipod nano video on linux in All Things Unix http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19531977 en Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:01:14 EDT Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:01:14 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533514 jdong :
said by justin See Profile :

thanks, but seriously just walk into an apple store and see these things flying off the shelves like candy. (they are boxed like candy as well, or jewelry). I'm betting that most ipod addicts on linux dual boot rather than deal with the learning curve.
You know Justin, my 5th Generation iPod Video worked beautifully under Ubuntu virtually out of the box, minus me writing a video encoder script for it. These new iPhone based firmwares on the Touch is just simply a pain and completely proprietary, it looks like the most straightforward way to upload onto it is to jailbreak it, install an SSH daemon, and use wifi to mount SSHFS.

For now I'm just gonna use my macbook with OS X to manage this Touch. too much trouble to get it working under Linux -- Apple has made it quite clear it is their job to make that as difficult as possible :)
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533514 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:13:38 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533458 justin : thanks, but seriously just walk into an apple store and see these things flying off the shelves like candy. (they are boxed like candy as well, or jewelry). I'm betting that most ipod addicts on linux dual boot rather than deal with the learning curve.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533458 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:04:20 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533416 jdong : *grin* Justin, just for you I'll make sure that in Hardy, gtkpod's eject command will be mapped correctly through HAL to eject the iPod :)
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533416 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:56:19 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533397 justin : thanks, then I struck the next minor issue which is that gtkpod doesn't 'eject /media/IPOD', you can add this as a command to ~/.gtkpod/gtkpod.eject (a script) but this fails (as it does from the command line without sudo) because you didn't mount it in the first place, hal (root) did.

so I fixed that by adding the full mount to /etc/fstab (after hal mounts it, do 'mount' to see the filesystem type and options) and added the option "users" to this list.

finally gtkpod pops up when the ipod is attached, and gtkpod ejects the ipod (and underlying mount) when you order it to.

Of course one can use eject from the desktop icon, but that is unsatisfactory to me.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533397 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:53:08 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533351 jdong : For posterity. URL to the "updated" gtkpod-aac »https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/+sour···buntu1.1

Associated bug report:
»https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sourc···g/163283

If anyone can try the above gtkpod build and see that it supports AAC as advertised, please comment so on the bug report, I just need two success reports and then this will be a regular system update and nobody will have to suffer this unexpected gtkpod-aac doesn't handle MP4 behavior!
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533351 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:44:26 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533293 EUS : I for one am pretty happy to see at least three geeky people fixing this (esp for Deb-style systems).
I like using linux, love how far it's come since redhat 6, but will never have the time/knowledge to actually figure something like this out.
Saki's on me.
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~ Project Hope ~ ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533293 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:35:44 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533151 jdong : System->Preferences->Removable Media, Multimedia tab :)
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533151 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:08:28 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533144 justin : ok, I got it, thanks.

btw do you know how to tell ubuntu to not fire up rhythmbox when it automounts the ipod, and instead fire up gtkpod?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533144 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:07:20 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533111 jdong : The terminology is confusing. The aac variant actually just means it can parse mp4. This was broken just in gutsy because our libmp4v2 was too ancient and lacked an API call that gtkpod wanted. I prepped the fix for this a month or so back. There issl a separate aac variant because the mp4 parsing lib was deemed non-free but mp3-only users didn't want the entire gtkpod demoted to multiverse
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533111 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:00:54 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533091 sporkme :
said by justin See Profile :

Yeah partly I blame apple - it would cost them the profit they make at the apple soho store in just a week to produce a linux itunes - but who really expects them to step up?
I think you underestimate that task. :) Which gui toolkit should they use? Would this "Linux iTunes" run on ubuntu? Fedora? Gentoo? Bob's Linux? Joe Schmaltz Edgy Hoary Anal Wart Linux?

Writing it once might be affordable, but keeping it working on each distro that comes and goes each year? I don't think any sane person would sign up for that.

If someone wants to make an open source OS+Desktop, there would have to be some radical changes in the world of open source (ie: working on a project that may diverge from personal goals).]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533091 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:57:20 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533064 justin : I did read your first post, but was waiting for the elaboration.

How long was it broken for, because gtkpod-aac supported aac (audio) files at some point, obviously.

There is/was a terminology confusion.. my problem was with video, not apple audio format. Should gtkpod-aac really be called gtkpod-aac-mp4? Would an mp4 video file with mp3 sound have been accepted by gtkpod-aac? Why doesn't vanilla gtkpod Just Work (with video).]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19533064 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:53:53 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532999 jdong : Justin, read my first post. The gtkpod-aac not supporting aac bug is known and the fixed package is in the proposed repository. I was the one who worked on the fix.
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532999 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:44:03 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532959 justin : In case anyone else finds this topic, here is what I've done so far.

1. Despite the gtkpod being updated for video support at the end of 2005 .. ( see »www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/initial-···-libgpod ) the ubuntu gtkpod and gtkpod-aac programs do not understand video, and give a message normally associated with gtkpod being told to deal with an AAC file.

2. gtkpod is a bear to re-build manually from a normal ubuntu install. I had to google each configure failure to identify the missing packages. Several pulled in whole rafts of others. Here is the minimum path:


At this point you have a gtkpod that can handle m4v files.. at least the ones I am making using handbrakeCLI (there is no gui version of handbrake for linux, only windows and OSX). A guide to using handbrakeCLI is here »handbrake.m0k.org/trac/wiki/CLIGuide
I just set the width, height, encoding bit-rate, set two-pass. Converted the "longest title" of my DVD (another flag). mp4 is implied by an output file extension of .mp4, and I selected AAC as the audio with a bitrate of 128.

HandbrakeCLI pauses after two passes and looks like it hangs, but it eventually completes. This 40 whatever minute 200mb file paused for about 10 minutes at the end showing 0.0% complete, after about 30 minutes of processing (this is a slow laptop).

mp4info comes from the libmp4v2 library util directory, so a first check is that it can grok your video file..


plays great, appears in Video menu of ipod correctly.

Whew.
Now correct me if I'm wrong here but I think only the geekiest of ubuntu users are going to go through this to get their christmas ipod up and running under linux.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532959 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:38:13 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532329 justin : this is an ipod nano, not a touch or an iphone..

The hash part is fine, I checked the XML file on the exported mass storage file-system. It isn't a problem of files getting loaded but not getting indexed (which would be the hash getting set incorrectly), it is that gtkpod doesn't work with video files (refuses to deal with the mp4/m4v file) and amarok doesn't even have the concept of video.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532329 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:06:58 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532113 jdong : (1) The iPhone and iPod Touches do *NOT* expose a mass storage device at all

(2) The iTunesDB file on the 6th generation has another hash field that must be updated else the DB gets rejected.

(3) See the GTKPOD section of »https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Portab···s/iPhone

This new release of gtkpod apparently is required for the iTunesDB hash field to be generated
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532113 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:34:20 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532106 benyto : One of the points I'm trying to make is that the use of an Ipod requires external software to operate at all. Whether you see it as simplistic or not is largely irrelevant. Any upstream change has the potential to make your current software environment stop functioning, causing you to go through this again sometime in the future.

I suspect I'm in the minority here, but when I bought my player I made sure it absolutely required nothing else in order for me to use it. As long as computer's OS supports USB mass storage devices I am able to get media on to and off of the device, and the device can play it without any problems. No file structure limitations, no need to update a database.

Your beef is legitimate. I'd be frustrated, too.

As for the Ipod USB mass storage issue, I was under the impression that the units did not operate as a standard USB HDD. One that you could plug in to a computer without Ipod-specific software and use as a storage volume. Perhaps my impressions were incorrect.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532106 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:33:23 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532016 justin : When I plug in the ipod, I have /dev/sdb1 which is a directory tree and all the ipod manipulation programs do is manipulate files in that filesystem, so for instance new music files go in FXX sub-directories. Shrug. The ultimate low level utility is gnupod which is a bunch of perl that offers command line utilities for pushing files to the filesystem and updating gnutunes.db (made from itunes.db).
I thought it was always like that, and I have an old ipod mini that does the same thing? where is the super proprietary tricky code here?
The type of the filesystem is different for "windows" init ipod vs "mac" init ipod, thats about it?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19532016 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:20:23 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531977 benyto :
said by jdong See Profile :

Justin, the new nanos expose a mass storage device interface??
I was curious about that point, as well.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531977 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:15:28 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531973 benyto : Right, but you're still using a device that requires the use of specialized software to function ('specialized' being a highly subjective term, of course). If the device vendor doesn't release a Linux version of its software then you are at the mercy of third-party developers to keep up with the current landscape so you don't have these problems.

Alternatively you can use a device which requires no external software whatsoever to operate and you'd have nothing to worry about. Copy your media files over and then use the player's OS to play them.

Certainly such usability issues should be a consideration when purchasing a device, no? And I'm not just talking about usability issues solely from the Linux user's perspective. A device which requires no external software for proper operation must have some appeal to users of other OSs, I'd imagine.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531973 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:14:51 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531952 jdong : Justin, the new nanos expose a mass storage device interface??

I have an iPod Touch which doesn't even do that.
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531952 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:11:46 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531840 justin : here is the thing though. The ipod isn't very complicated. It has a simple directory structure, acts as a disk when plugged into a usb port, it has an XML file for settings and a database file whose only tweak recently was for encryption with the ipod firewire address to tie the database to the device (a logical improvement, out there for some time now, that yet required me to download the recompile source for libgpod). It plays widely understood file formats (mp3s, mpeg-4) as well as the apple DRM encoded ones that originate from the apple store.

It appears that one of the reasons that amarok, which appears to be the most together interface for ipod integration, doesn't support video are simply that the developers don't have a video capable ipod! I mean, come on.. amarok has a music storefront!

meanwhile you can't even use itunes under wine because wine doesn't properly surface the USB interface? So is wine still being recommended for linux converts? I hope not..

There is no real competition for the current nano, or even the ipod touch.. and there is definitely good money in consumer linux. If the mozilla foundation can haul almost $100 million a year into a bank account for sticking a google search box on the default home page then there is plenty of money to be made from writing a linux interface that Just Works.

Yeah partly I blame apple - it would cost them the profit they make at the apple soho store in just a week to produce a linux itunes - but who really expects them to step up? they want an OSX world why should they help linux (it isn't clear to me that they are actively hindering it, though).

It sounds from jdong that this is just a temporary glitch but really even if gtkpod worked as it once did or is supposed to do, it still seems flaky. User forums (un-ending topics starting with 'help..') confirm my experience that reliable a/v under linux still requires skills of an "unstable release" source guru who can keep in their head the approx development state of about 15 separate sourceforge libraries.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531840 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:58:05 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531774 JohnInSJ : Not yet - but my kid is getting one for xmas, so I expect I will have to bite the bullet...

Saw this in wikipedia »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_classic

"iPods of the 6th generation (as well as the iPod nano and the iPod Touch) introduced an additional checksum in their song database, making it initially impossible (without reverse engineering) to use the iPod with 3rd party syncing programs.[6] This limitation was soon worked around by Gtkpod team.[7]"

As horrific as it sounds, you could try, er, a virtual machine that is capable of running itunes. MacOS or XP...
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My place : »www.schettino.us]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531774 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:45:36 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531238 benyto : Is this the part where someone says "Well, that's what you get for trying to work with a purposely closed device that was designed to work only with its own proprietary software"?

I'm not attempting to discount your frustration; I understand that. However, I would think it wouldn't be too difficult to see these types of problems coming. Several years ago when I bought my first (and current) DAP I went out of my way to find one that supported what I wanted and operated as a USB mass storage device. That pretty much ensures I can use it with the vast majority of desktops or laptops in use today, regardless of the OS they use or the software they have installed.

But then you may have some perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to use an Ipod, and my completely unhelpful post will only compound your frustration. :P]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19531238 Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:19:37 EDT Re: ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19528840 jdong : Ok there is a bug in gutsy gtkpod-aac that makes it not mp4 capable. I have fixed it but the updated package is in the gutsy-proposed repository

I will elaborate more once I am back on a real keyboard
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Ubuntu MOTU Developer and Forums Council]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19528840 Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:23:42 EDT ipod nano video on linux http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19528789 justin : I'm stuck trying to upload video to the new ipod nano ..

what I've tried so far.

1. handbrakeCLI - worked, in that it can produce an mp4 file from a dvd (is this the same as m4v?) with the right params
2. rhythmbox - didn't work for the video file
3. amarok - (pulls in whole kde stuff) doesn't understand uploading video files at all (they appear as music files)
4. gtkpod - refuses to process my mp4 file, (whether renamed to m4v or not) saying it needs to be recompiled from source

quote:
Import of 'blah.mp4' failed: m4a/m4p/m4b not supported without the mp4v2 library. You must compile the gtkpod source together with the mp4v2 library.
The following track could not be processed (filetype is known but analysis failed):


In an effort to fix gtkpod I got as far as finding out that libmp4v2 1.6.0 is currently not available as a tarball! I've no idea what version ubuntu has.

Argh!

Does anyone properly and fully use a current gen ipod under linux? (podcasts, photos, music, videos?)]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19528789 Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:14:47 EDT