thelinuxlink.net

Hey I have an I audio X5 and it rocks (dont have the L version which is rated 35 hours). This portable media player rocks only one draw back navigation. But aside from that it rocks. To the point. Dan Dennedy was talking about some scripts he uses with bash podder to conform the video podcast to iaudio standards. Is there anyway the scripts are available or anyone know of a location I could get such scripts.

Thanks

This is a script that can be invoked from within the bashpodder script:
ddennedy@xtremedia:~$ cat anytoiaudio.sh
#!/bin/sh

TMP=`basename "$1"`

mencoder -o "$TMP".avi -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1:turbo:keyint=48:vbitrate=256:autoaspect \
-ofps 15 -xy 160 -zoom -vf scale,expand=160:128,dsize=4/3 \
-ffourcc DIVX "$1"

mencoder -o "$TMP".avi -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
acodec=mp3:abitrate=128:vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=2:vhq:v4mv:keyint=48:vbitrate=256:autoaspect \
-ofps 15 -xy 160 -zoom -vf scale,expand=160:128,dsize=4/3 \
-ffourcc DIVX -af volnorm "$1"

The above script is based upon my anytodv.sh and anyto3gp.sh (mobile phone) scripts where the resolution is fixed (well, DV actually has 2 resolutions: normal and anamorphic widescreen). When the resolution is fixed, you need to pad areas with black while maintaining aspect ratio, which is what the above accomplishes. However, it is best to not have to spend bits encoding the black-to-picture transitions. So, for iAUDIO, I tested creating a non-paddded video that contains aspect information in the AVI metadata, and it works! Here is my revised script:

#!/bin/sh

TMP=`basename "$1"`

mencoder -o "$TMP"_iaudio.avi -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1:turbo:keyint=48:vbitrate=512:autoaspect \
-ofps 15 -xy 160 -zoom -vf scale -ffourcc DIVX "$1"

mencoder -o "$TMP"_iaudio.avi -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
acodec=mp3:abitrate=128:vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=2:vhq:v4mv:keyint=48:vbitrate=512:autoaspect \
-ofps 15 -xy 160 -zoom -vf scale -ffourcc DIVX -af volnorm "$1"

rm -f divx2pass.log

----

It takes the video to process as the only command line argument. The output file is the name of the input file with '_iaudio.avi' appended to the name.

thanks man much appreciated and keep up the good work

I will be getting the 30GB iAudio X5L for christmas so I decided to digg this up. I noticed this script outputs the files with a .avi extension, why? shouldn't it be .mp4 or .mpeg4 because the X5 only supports Mpeg4? I'm not very knowledgable with video codecs so maybe Im missing something.

My iAudio X5L continues to work great; so I do recommend it if you need vorbis and not AAC. It might be the best vorbis player today. The video support, while a nice bonus, is rather weak compared to latest iPod and the new Creative Labs Zen: http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/zenvisionm/.

MPEG-4 comes in a variety of formats. MP4 file format is derivative of Quicktime and is the ISO standard. However, DivX popularized MPEG-4 in an AVI format before the standard. The popularity of DivX propelled the popularity of MPEG-4 in AVI to make it a defacto standard rather than a true one. Nowadays, there are so many MPEG-4 codecs and tools that support AVI due to geeks shunning DivX business practices, we just refer to them as MPEG-4 AVI.

ddennedy wrote:My iAudio X5L continues to work great; so I do recommend it if you need vorbis and not AAC. It might be the best vorbis player today. The video support, while a nice bonus, is rather weak compared to latest iPod and the new Creative Labs Zen: http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/zenvisionm/.

I *NEED* Ogg support which is one of the reasons why I bought it (but I can't use it till xmas unfortunately) but the iPod doesn't have anything on the X5L. the X5L has 35 HOURS of battery life! Plus the iPod doesn't have USB-OTG or OGG support. Also the the Zen and iPod have bigger screens so its not a good comparison. The video playback is just a nice extra I doubt Ill use it that much

ddennedy wrote:MPEG-4 comes in a variety of formats. MP4 file format is derivative of Quicktime and is the ISO standard. However, DivX popularized MPEG-4 in an AVI format before the standard. The popularity of DivX propelled the popularity of MPEG-4 in AVI to make it a defacto standard rather than a true one. Nowadays, there are so many MPEG-4 codecs and tools that support AVI due to geeks shunning DivX business practices, we just refer to them as MPEG-4 AVI.

Ok thanks for clearing that up.

I created a KDE Konqueror action so I don't have to use the terminal to start it. change Exec=2iaudio.sh %f to what the script was saved as. Save that code as 2iaudio.desktop in '$HOME/.kde/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus'. If the servicemenus folder doesn't exist create it.

ddennedy wrote: It might be the best vorbis player today.

What else can i do with it?

Is the iAudio still using it's flat file presentation at this point? Last time I looked at one, I was very impressed with some parts of it and not so impressed with others. 30 G of files that are in a single un-sortable directory is IMNSHO completely unmanageable. There was a lot of talk about changing this, though, and I'd be very interested in seeing what's been done. I was also very leery of the dongle that they use rather than building the adapter into the unit itself - it looks highly breakable/losable. I'm talking about their "iPod Killer" here, not the smaller flash based players -- the X5 IIRC.

I know my M3 uses the flat file and I think the X5(L) uses it too. However it is not impossible to sort. I have all my music saved in a folder for artist and album in artist and I have found it very easy to navigate and you can loop by artist for setting the recursive level (how many folders deep). Also you can make playlists and a dynamic playlist so you could make a playlist for every artist which is extremely easy to do in amarok. Also since Creative Labs (makers of the Creative Zen's) has a patent on ID3 menus I think iAudio doesn't want to use it.

Cool - that's good to know!

I know it's been a while since you posted on this topic, but I have a few Iaudio questions. What is the Ogg supported quality? Is it everything or just low quality. Is it high Q ogg and low Q ogg? One of the tech show guys mentioned some players don't play 64 bit rate oggs well, but they play high bit rate oggs really well. I have a gradually failing Neuros II 40G and it will play ogg files of Q6 but skips noticably. I always encoded everything at 256 bit when i started using ogg so I couldn't tell the difference from that to the .flacs. So I get pretty good compression and still sounds original.

Also, what is the X5's playlist format? .m3u or what? Could I put all my podcasts in their own feed directories. and play them from the folders? Are the playlists per directory or is there a special place they need to be?

I'd like to script together a list of recent items that I could sync to the device and at least semi-automagically manage that big landscape in there.

I have the IAudio5 which is the ultra cheapo 512 meg flash based player.

jonas wrote:What is the Ogg supported quality?

My player handles all ogg (minus the highest quality settings)

So does mine (handles all ogg formats, that is).... the GP2X.