[v0.4.1]video4fuze [Outdated]

Hi ssorgatem:

I’m afraid you are speaking Greek to me and I don’t speak Greek!  However I’m willing to learn enough to dabble to try and enhance the gui.

Can you point me to a good example to work through a simple Qt slot/system tutorial type exercise?

@noleks wrote:

Hi ssorgatem:

I’m afraid you are speaking Greek to me and I don’t speak Greek!  However I’m willing to learn enough to dabble to try and enhance the gui.

Can you point me to a good example to work through a simple Qt slot/system tutorial type exercise?

Oh don’t be afraid ;). Qt isn’t that difficult. More, Qt is the easiest and most powerful GUI toolkit you can use with python*.

For documentation about PyQt, you can’t miss it’s fantastic wiki: http://diotavelli.net/PyQtWiki/StartPage

There you have some very good tutorials to start with. i still have it bookmarked :slight_smile:

Then, you have all the documentation from Qt.  Here you have it partially translated into python, with notes on PyQt particularities.Additionally, if you can read C++, tutorials for Qt in C++may be also useful to you, as the classes and methods are the same.

Now, I don’t know if you use a IDE, but the IDE  which helped me a lot when I was starting to learn python and Qt was Eric

It’s written in PyQt, and is very symple to write PyQt4 apps with its assitants and helpers. There’s also an Eric Tutorial out there. You’ll be amazed on how little code you need to do cool things. And they’d be automatically cross-platform.

 And more specifically, PyQt4’s own documentation has a point about singal/slots on PyQt. It may seem strange at first, but when you get used to the signal/slot system you won’t want to live without it.

*Indeed, everyone says this about the toolkit they use. With Qt, however, it’s actually true :slight_smile:

Okay I’ll see what I can do.  Need to get to this around my day job though.

In the meantime, has anyone seen their videos suddenly “end” on their Fuze, in the middle if playback?

I have been converting 1-hour shows (480x480 mpeg from TiVo) to avi using video4fuze.  The mpeg file size is 1.6GB and the resulting avi file is 358,008 kB.

The coversion seems to go fine, and I can play the file fine on the VLC Media Player, but it starts playing and then abruptly ends mid-playback on the Fuze. I’ve run the conversion twice and it has happened on both conversions, the first in the first seven mintues and the second in the first eighteen minutes of playback.

Is there any way to debug this?  Does vido4fuze record any log files that might indicate corruption?  I haven’t found any.

I have seen the same misbehaviour when I play videos from certain microSDHC cards (in my case a Kingston 4GB class 4 card). This has been reported by other users too. The same videos play nicely when put on internal storage. Therefore the first question is where do you save the converted video on the fuze (internal or external storage)?

Hi ewelot:

This is internal sotrage.  I also just took a look at MediaCoder to see if I could try another approach but I think it does not use the DX50 video codec. :frowning:

DX50 denotes DivX MPEG-4 version 5. It is written by mencoder (from within video4fuze) to the FourCC tag for compatibility reasons for some decoders but I believe this is not strictly required by the Fuze itself. Mencoder in video4fuze uses the free XviD video codec (very similar to DivX) by default. MediaCoder does the same and should have downloaded the necessary free libraries upon installation. Check my tutorial which gives an outline on the MediaCoder + Avi-Mux GUI approach.

I’ve got two purposes: If I were you I would program that first the first vid 

will be converted completely and just then the second will begin. So  users are able to save much time. 

And if it is not too expensive, it would be nice that in the playlist-editor various files 

from different folders could be selected at once.

Thanks a lot. Don’t think I want to be nasty or unpolite. It’s just an advice.

PS: It’s a really good work thanks a lot!!! I hate smc and this is absolutely the best way to convert video, I think!

Peace

Noaja 

@noaja wrote:

I’ve got two purposes: If I were you I would program that first the first vid 

will be converted completely and just then the second will begin. So  users are able to save much time. 

And if it is not too expensive, it would be nice that in the playlist-editor various files 

from different folders could be selected at once.

 

Thanks a lot. Don’t think I want to be nasty or unpolite. It’s just an advice.

 

PS: It’s a really good work thanks a lot!!! I hate smc and this is absolutely the best way to convert video, I think!

 

Peace

 

Noaja 

It’s OK :wink: it’s always good to see thatthere’s peoplewho appreciate my work. And all suggestions are always welcome, too.I can’t promise anything, specially these day, because i’ve almost no free time and I have to choose between social live or coding (and I’m not yet so geek :wink: ), but i’ll try to implement the most interesting or best effort/result ratio yelding features for next version… 

And thank you all guys for using video4fuze. I never expected it would reach so many downloads…

I’m a computer and gadget enthusiast.  The kind of guy who feels pretty proud of himself if he can get someone else’s creation to work on his own PC.  :) 

I have no idea how to write code.  So my thanks to ssorgatem for creating video4fuze.  I’m stuck with dial-up at home.  Went to the library with our Ubuntu 9.04 lappy and installed the *nix version, then downloaded the Windows version to install on our main home PC, an XP SP3 desktop.

Both versions seem to work fine.  In the *nix version, the mencoder window that pops up does not display the % value, nor the min and mb values.  But the app appears to work.   I didn’t really want to install Wine, but beggars can’t be choosers!  

The Ubuntu installation was pretty straightforward, which is also much appreciated.  Some of the neatest programs can be a little scary to install if they’re not in the repos, or if they are but you want the latest version…

Different output in terminal windows between the two versions may be because of different mencoder versions. I haven’t noticed any difference with mencoder from debian-multimedia unstable repo, but ubuntu’s mencoder may be older, newer, or simply slightly different. Nothing to worry about, I think :wink:

well, now that ive tried changing the parmeters of the encoder, it doesnt convert at all (there are ones that are recommanded on page 10, but they come from linux machine, and it doesnt work with my V4F on my xp machine) and i dont know how to reset. i assume that the previous versions worked better, so may i ask, if no one would post the most proper parmeters to use for the encoder, at least can we get link to previous version of V4F? cuz i feel cheated, at least by sansa, with the crappy SMC that screws up the video audio sync.

To reset mencoder parameters to default, just click on the “Defaults” button in Advanced>Preferences

Mmm,  anyways, mencoder commands work the same across all supported platforms, so they should work on your XP if they did on a different machine. Just check that you have no extra whitespace and so on.

well, catually i dound the default botton, and it worked, only then i encontered ERROR 2. dont know what it means, but it stopped working. tried re-installing, didnt work either. can you please provide link to a working version? some of us doesnt care for UI, i just want to use my sansa as i was promised.

Hi, ss -

Are you saying that v4f would use whatever version of mencoder was already on the Ubuntu PC?  I thought mencoder was part of the v4f package.  As you mentioned, it doesn’t seem to matter.  I converted another Handbrake rip yesterday, “Monsters vs. Aliens”, and it plays fine.

I had one unexplained phenomenon.  As soon as I transferred the v4f conversion to the Fuze, I played a few minutes of it, then scrolled forward ten minutes or so into the video, then hit “Pause”.  Went back to the beginning and tried to fast-forward further into the file, but the Fuze would stop right where I’d previously paused the file, go to a blank screen, then go back to the beginning.

I thought I’d broken it, so instead of trying to fast forward I just let it play.  The Fuze played right on thru the point where I’d paused it.  Everything seemed fine.  We’re talking about a lot of moving gears here - ripping the original DVD in Handbrake on a Linux PC, converting it with v4f, transferring to the Fuze, etc. There could be some tiny glitch anywhere in the process that might cause the Fuze to do what it did.  So I was curious if you’ve ever seen that same thing happen to you?

I have another question.  I’m ripping at the Handbrake “High Profile” setting.  Any recommendations regarding good ways to make the original file that you would feed to v4f?  

@telkwa wrote:

Hi, ss -

Are you saying that v4f would use whatever version of mencoder was already on the Ubuntu PC?  I thought mencoder was part of the v4f package.  As you mentioned, it doesn’t seem to matter.  I converted another Handbrake rip yesterday, “Monsters vs. Aliens”, and it plays fine.

 

I had one unexplained phenomenon.  As soon as I transferred the v4f conversion to the Fuze, I played a few minutes of it, then scrolled forward ten minutes or so into the video, then hit “Pause”.  Went back to the beginning and tried to fast-forward further into the file, but the Fuze would stop right where I’d previously paused the file, go to a blank screen, then go back to the beginning.

 

I thought I’d broken it, so instead of trying to fast forward I just let it play.  The Fuze played right on thru the point where I’d paused it.  Everything seemed fine.  We’re talking about a lot of moving gears here - ripping the original DVD in Handbrake on a Linux PC, converting it with v4f, transferring to the Fuze, etc. There could be some tiny glitch anywhere in the process that might cause the Fuze to do what it did.  So I was curious if you’ve ever seen that same thing happen to you?

 

I have another question.  I’m ripping at the Handbrake “High Profile” setting.  Any recommendations regarding good ways to make the original file that you would feed to v4f?  

Yes, on platforms other than Windows, v4f uses the system’s mencoder: there no reason to bundle a different version of mencoder with v4f when it’s already available and more up-todate in the distro’s repos. So the v4f .deb just depends on mencoder, but doesn’t include it. I include mencoder in the windows package just because not many people has already mencoder installed in their windows machines…

For next version I’ll try to make a Mac package. It’s a challenge ;). There I may include mencoder too.

About your unexplained phenomenon, it seems to be the same issue you can encounter explained in previous pages of this topic. It’s still unexplained, though :slight_smile:

@achiron wrote:
well, catually i dound the default botton, and it worked, only then i encontered ERROR 2. dont know what it means, but it stopped working. tried re-installing, didnt work either. can you please provide link to a working version? some of us doesnt care for UI, i just want to use my sansa as i was promised.

Hmm strange error 2…

v4f stores it’s configuration data in the windows registry, so you may have to clean it: look for keys starting with “ssorgatem” :wink:

Windows’ error 2 means it doesn’t find the file you’re specifying. I think the problem is that it has somewaht taken a wrong path to mencoder… so you should change the “mencoder” word in “Advanced-> preferences”  to the full path to the mencoder binary (I think video4fuze’s included mencoder is in C:\Program Files\video4fuze\mencoder.exe or equivalent path, depending on your windows version and language)

Well it seems nice just annoying you have to run it on Compatibility on vista are they coming out with one that works with Vista? 32 or 64 bit

@jlenz28 wrote:

Well it seems nice just annoying you have to run it on Compatibility on vista are they coming out with one that works with Vista? 32 or 64 bit

Indeed, next version will work without need of any compatibility mode on both vista and 7.

That was an issue from avi-mux GUI, which now is fixed.

Hi:

I’m still beating my head against a wall trying to figure out what is different about the SMC output file that video4fuze is not duplicating.  I have had issues where video files suddenly stop and restart playing from the beginning of the file, between 5 and 20 minutes in.

 

I have tried using VLC Media Player to get some info and there are only two differences I can see:

 

1) video4fuze outputs stereo audio; SMC outputs something called “Dual-mono”.

2) VLC displays the following message when I play a SMC-converted avi:

"This AVI file is broken.  Seeking will not work correctly.  Do you want to fix it?  This might take a long time.”

 

I have no idea whether either of these has anything to do with it, but SMC files do not show this truncating behavior.  I tried using mencoder options to drop the number of channels to one but it still truncates/resets in the player.

 

Also, does anyone know of any player or file analyzer that will give more stats than VLC?

 

Thanks

Gspot Codec Appliance gives a lot of info–though I don’t know if it offers more than VLC.

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/