Support for Maemo / Nokia N900

[Bombasaki]

Hello, I was wondering if there's a Linux download for this device and if not will it be? Nokia's new device(N900) is going to use Maemo wich is Linux based so it will be a nice combo to have this software on your mobile.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

When N900 is out, VLC will run on it

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I have the base port working at http://git.remlab.net/cgi-bin/gitweb.cg ... /fremantle .

But there is no UI and I have neither the skills nor the expertise to invent one.

[anuu158]

The Nokia N900 is next Maemo device from Nokia and it's seems to be getting a lot of people excited and we’re amongst them. I bring know you about Nokia N900 that it will see introduction of the Maemo 5 Linux-based OS on a Nokia handset, and Effectively creating a whole new platform for Nokia communication to develop and explore of mobile industry. I have checked out some of the great features, we can expect from the Nokia N90 and other thing that why, purchase of this mobile phone. Because the Nokia N900 is a 3.5-inch touchscreen device that packs in 32GB of memory and even a 5-Megapixel Carl Zeiss camera. It also packs in everything we love about the latest smartphone devices, so we get a full QWERTY keyboard, plenty of memory and HSPA connectivity all wrapped around that 3.5-inch touchscreen.
and sliding cover also there, it's cost very high around the range Rs.40,000 only. if you need it you can follow it.

[qole]

Jean-Baptiste or Rémi, is there any way you could post a .deb of the Fremantle VLC to test? I don't need it to have a GUI frontend...

[Bombasaki]

When N900 is out, VLC will run on it

Awesome news!! This is the device to get!! My new Macbook Pro replacement is gonna have to wait ^^

[Bombasaki]

LoL, now the thing is to know if the TV Out can handle the high resolutions like 720p or 1080p that we like to use with VLC ^^

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

http://www.remlab.net/files/vlc/fremantle/

Note that it will not work correctly with Scratchbox/QEMU.

No UI. Slow XVid decoding. Missing screen unblanking. Key press misrouted. Don't expect much...

[qole]

Thanks for the .debs! Unfortunately, there's insufficient room on my device to test.... I'll have to figure something out...

There's some stop-screen-from-blanking code (from n800 mplayer) at talk.maemo.org if you're interested. See this post: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p= ... post328633.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Those files occupy 22 Mb (excl. debug and dev)... on the internal MMC (not the NAND). Lacking space there is quite an achievement. I don't want to know how much crap you've installed.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The problem with unblanking is not how, but where. It used to be done in the video output task. But calling DBus from the video output task was a bad idea from performance point of view. Anyway, this is fixed in git.

[qole]

Rémi:

Thanks so much for the .debs! You're right, the VLC player is put into /opt, where there is lots of space (the proper place is /opt/maemo/appname but I don't think it really matters). I assumed that it was being put into the root filesystem, where I only had 9 MB of space left...

I would love to have the version with the fixed unblanking.

I have started a thread about this VLC over on talk.maemo.org:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=31802

Feel free to come and post there.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I uploaded the fixed version yesterday IIRC. Still no progress on UI and key presses

[qole]

Rémi:

You have uploaded the fixed version over the old version, and they have the same version numbers?

BTW: I can see the "big" camera's output on the screen by using v4l2 input. It is slightly delayed, but it works. I'm not sure how to get an http stream off of the device, yet. I'm just not very good at the VLC command line, with all of the mysterious transcode and output parameters...

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The software is not in any repository, does not build cleanly (you need network access on the build host) and the number of users has one digit. I think the version numbers are a very minor concern at this point.

And V4L2 does not work for me.

[qole]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to criticise, I was trying to determine if I was supposed to download the files with the same names again.

Here is the command line I use to see the camera on the screen:

cvlc -vvv v4l2:///dev/video0:chroma=YUYV:height=492:width=640

I find that I have to open the camera, close the camera app, then run vlc. If I don't do it in that order, the camera's output is yellow-greenish.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Thanks for the hint. I'll look at changing the V4L2 default settings then.

I have uploaded a new version with a slightly faster video output pipeline, and working key presses

Someone still needs to provide a user interface, and that won't be me

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

How would one without such a phone work on it?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I'm not sure if this is a rhetorical question?

Developping the UI on a PC, compile-test-debug is much easier. Start Xephyr in 800x480x16 mode, run VLC inside it, and always expand the windows since that the Hildon window management policy, you have a pretty good start... Also the Scratchbox SDK has an x86 target (I never tried it) including the Hildon UI framework, not sure about Hildonized Qt4.

Using the plain Qt4 interface is another option, but for some reason, I could not get it to work (compiles OK, but freezes at run-time in MainInterface::MainInterface). The main interface should be usable with the touchscreen. The FSC should be good too, though I guess a littler but wider layout would be better give the screen resolution. I am much more worried about the -separate- playlist dialog... In any case, this is all conjectures, since I have not gotten Qt4 to work yet.

Skins might work too, as long as it is a single block 800x424 rectangle (screen size minus the Hildon title bar), but then we still need a dialog provider.

Last option is to use the existing VLC Hildon 4 plug-in, which I haven't tried yet. But I reckon it's under-developed anyway.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

If I am to do it, I won't do it in any technology except Qt4, but I don't have a phone. So, this wasn't rhetorical. About the playlist in a separate dialog, well, it might be the time to merge it back in interface.

[qole]

The Hildon 4 plug-in was probably developed as part of the 2008 Google Summer of Code project that focussed on VLC for Maemo.

Also, I agree that the Fremantle SDK would be the best place to attempt development of the interface.

http://maemo.org/development/sdks/maemo_5_beta_2_sdk/

Also, developing in QT is probably the best for the future.

http://www.vuntz.net/journal/post/2009/ ... OME-Mobile

[qole]

Someone at talk.maemo.org has contributed a GUI mockup:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p= ... post336126

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

qole: FYI, being based on ffmpeg can still mean a lot of speed difference, because of audio pipeline and chroma conversions.
For the UI, I'll have a look, but I doubt I would work on hildon.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

This sketch omits the tricky but necessary parts: the playlist and the dialogs. At any rate, it takes hugely longer to implement a UI than to sketch it.

Currently, there is still no way to browse the memory card or type an URL in VLC other than through the X terminal IMO, that is a show-stopper to Maemo Extras submission. Another showstopper is the hackishness of the build process. python-xcbgen is used but is missing from the SDK Aand libraries are downloaded from Internet during the build process, as that is how the VLC contrib system works.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The camera default settings are now fixed (thanks to Dionoea).

I tried the Hildon UI. It runs but it is pretty bad. Fullscreen and key presses are broken (due to recent changes in VLC). The functionality is very limited. The menu is N800-style. And the colors were chosen for the N8x0 bright windowing theme, it looks really ugly with the dark theme of N900. So hmm, I don't know what to do