jdong
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Re: ipod nano video on linux
said by 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. 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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justin
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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. |
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jdong
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*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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justin
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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. |
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jdong
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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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EUS
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| reply to justin
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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jdong
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System->Preferences->Removable Media, Multimedia tab
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justin
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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? |
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jdong
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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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sporkme
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1 edit | reply to justin
said by justin :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). |
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justin
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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). |
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jdong
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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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justin
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1 edit | reply to 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. |
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justin
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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. |
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jdong
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(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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benyto
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| reply to justin
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. |
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justin
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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? |
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benyto
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| reply to jdong
said by jdong :Justin, the new nanos expose a mass storage device interface?? I was curious about that point, as well. |
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benyto
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| reply to justin
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. |
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jdong
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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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