There might be hope…
http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/10/iphone-syncing-on-linux/
It seems as if there is a project underway to help us linux users get the best out of our iPhones!
Okay, so I called Microsoft and talked with a Media Center specialist about the right codec/containers to use to properly encode your movie files and have them play over UPnP. I haven’t tested all of them out yet, but I hope that one of these will work. I will be pushing all of them through vlc to see if I can get one working and will get back. Again, I am looking for DVD quality in my file, I don’t care the size, so this isn’t for crunching, this is for quality.
From Microsoft:
Q1: What are the details of Xbox 360 Audio Video Interleaved (AVI) support?
A1: The following list contains Xbox 360 AVI support details:
. File extensions: .avi, .divx
. Containers: AVI
. Video profiles: MPEG-4 Part 2, Simple and Advanced Simple Profile
. Video bitrate: 5 megabits per second (Mbps) with resolutions of 1280 x 720 at 30 frames per second (fps)
. Audio profiles: Dolby Digital 2 channel and 5.1 channel, MP3
. Audio max bitrate: No restrictionsQ2: Can you describe Xbox 360 support for the H.264 standard?
A2: Xbox 360 provides the following H.264 support:
. File name extensions: .mp4, .m4v, mp4v, .mov
. Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
. Video profiles: Baseline, main, and high (up to level 4.1) profiles
. Video bitrate: 10 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 x 1080 at 30 fps
. Audio profiles: two-channel AAC low complexity (LC)
. Audio max bitrate: No restrictionsQ3: What exactly does Xbox 360 support for MPEG-4 Part 2?
A3: The following information describes Xbox 360 support for MPEG-4:
. File name extensions: .mp4, .m4v, mp4v, .mov
. Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
. Video profiles: Simple and Advanced Simple Profile
. Video bitrate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 x 720 at 30 fps
. Audio profiles: two-channel AAC low complexity (LC)
. Audio max bitrate: No restrictions
Q4: What exactly does Xbox 360 support for WMV (VC-1)?
A4: The following information describes Xbox 360 support for WMV:
. File name extensions: .wmv
. Container: asf
. Video profiles: WMV7 (WMV1), WMV8 (WMV2), WMV9 (WMV3), VC-1 (WVC1 or WMVA) in simple, main, and advanced up to level 3
. Video bitrate: 15 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 x 1080 at 30 fps
. Audio profiles: WMA7/8, WMA 9 Pro (stereo and 5.1), WMA lossless
. Audio max bitrate: No restrictionsQ5: Can I mix and match the video and audio codecs outside of those defined in questions 1 through 4 above?
A5: No, you cannot. We only support each audio and video codec in the explicit containers as defined in questions 1 through 4.Q7: How do I create WMV, AVI, H.264, and MPEG-4 content? What encoders does Xbox 360 support?
A7: You can create this content by using one of the many third-party applications that are available. Xbox 360 supports many popular encoders. Specifically, for encoding to WMV, you can use Microsoft Expression Encoder or Windows Media Encoder.
After you get Cydia or Icy installed, just add the following to the repository list, and you can install in via Cydia or Icy.
http://cydia.hackulo.us
It took a little work, and a lot of renaming and restructuring folders, but I finally got my id3 tags fixed. One thing I hate about id3 tags are, after a while, the tags get all messed up, and organizing music becomes a task. It took about 5 hours of creating all of the folders I needed, and the script did the rest.
There were a couple of steps I used to get everything in line. First, I created the folder structure. I used http://musicbrainz.org/ to find all of the albums that each mp3 belonged to, and created the folders as ‘music/artist/album/song.mp3‘.
While creating all of the album folders, I copied all of the songs into their respective folder, and then used Thunar’s “bulk renamer” to name all of the mp3’s ‘## – artist – song name.mp3‘.
After everything was organized, I emerged id3 and id3v2. The first and seconds scripts that were wrote actually had to rename all of the files so that I could use deliminators to identify and extract the song name and the track number from the file name. The second script actually clears and re-tags all of the mp3’s.
Script 1: changes all of ‘ – ‘ to ‘ _’
#!/bin/bash
find . −name "*.mp3" > /tmp/list
cat /tmp/list | while read filename;
do echo "old name was " "${filename}";
newname=`echo "${filename}" | sed "s/\ \−\ /\ \_/g"`
echo "new name is " "${newname}"
mv "${filename}" "${newname}"
done
rm /tmp/list
find . −name "*.mp3" > /tmp/list
cat /tmp/list | while read filename;
do echo "old name was " "${filename}";
newname=`echo "${filename}" | sed "s/\ \−\ /\ \_/g"`
echo "new name is " "${newname}"
mv "${filename}" "${newname}"
done
rm /tmp/list
Script 2: changes all of ‘.mp3′ to ‘ _.mp3′
#!/bin/bash
find /media/storage/media -name "*.mp3" > /tmp/list
cat /tmp/list > while read filename;
do echo "old name was " "${filename}";
newname=`echo "${filename}" | sed "s/.mp3/\ \_.mp3/g"`
echo "new name is " "${newname}"
mv "${filename}" "${newname}"
done
rm /tmp/list
find /media/storage/media -name "*.mp3" > /tmp/list
cat /tmp/list > while read filename;
do echo "old name was " "${filename}";
newname=`echo "${filename}" | sed "s/.mp3/\ \_.mp3/g"`
echo "new name is " "${newname}"
mv "${filename}" "${newname}"
done
rm /tmp/list
Script 3: tags all of the mp3’s with Artist, Album, Number, Song. Note: the directory in the first line for the find command is the main folder were all my music is stored, and under the “ARTIST= / ALBUM=” lines below, the -f # represents how many layers deep each respective folder is for the tag. For instance, /media/storage/media/Music/Artist/Album, the Artist folder is 6 levels deep and the Album folder is 7 layers deep (don’t forget to include the root directory for one level).
#!/bin/bash
find /media/storage/media/Music -name "*.mp3" > /tmp/list
cat /tmp/list | while read filename;
do
rm /tmp/num
PWD=`pwd`
ARTIST=`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 6 -d "/"`
ALBUM=`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 7 -d "/"`
`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 1 -d "_" > /tmp/NUM`
NUMBER=`cat /tmp/NUM | cut -f 8 -d /`
SONG=`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 3 -d "_"`
echo "setting title for id3 tags for " "${filename}";
echo "artist: $ARTIST"
echo "album: $ALBUM"
echo "track: $NUMBER"
echo "song: $SONG"
id3v2 -D "${filename}"
id3tag -a "${ARTIST}" -A "${ALBUM}" -s "${SONG}" -t "${NUMBER}" "${filename}"
done
rm /tmp/list
find /media/storage/media/Music -name "*.mp3" > /tmp/list
cat /tmp/list | while read filename;
do
rm /tmp/num
PWD=`pwd`
ARTIST=`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 6 -d "/"`
ALBUM=`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 7 -d "/"`
`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 1 -d "_" > /tmp/NUM`
NUMBER=`cat /tmp/NUM | cut -f 8 -d /`
SONG=`echo "${filename}" |cut -f 3 -d "_"`
echo "setting title for id3 tags for " "${filename}";
echo "artist: $ARTIST"
echo "album: $ALBUM"
echo "track: $NUMBER"
echo "song: $SONG"
id3v2 -D "${filename}"
id3tag -a "${ARTIST}" -A "${ALBUM}" -s "${SONG}" -t "${NUMBER}" "${filename}"
done
rm /tmp/list
The third script took about 5 minutes to run, and all of the files were tagged properly. To et the file names back to normal, you simply have to reverse the ’sed’ command in the first two scripts.
I finally got my iPhone jailbroken in linux using VirtualBox and Redsn0w. I know this isn’t the primary method that people want to use, but it is a step in the right direction.
There is a lot of having to re-connect the device because it will disconnect itself from the virtual machine, but as long as you are paying attention, then you shouldn’t have a problem.
On another note, I haven’t given up on trying to sync the iPhone 3G running the 3.0 firmware with Amarok, but things have been slow. I started up again, and ran right into the same problem I had last time, where does the FirewireGUID information get saved? There also seems to be problems with the permissions once logged into the iPhone via ssh. Hopefully soon I will figure this one out.
So I have found many posts out there where everyone can’t seem to find the “easy” or “user friendly” software that makes ripping DVD’s to your computer to stream to 360 via UPnP easy. Hopefully I have the solution that people want. I found that dumping the DVD stream with mplayer and using vlc to convert was the easiest method. I have also been playing with the formats and containers to encode with, and found the one that seems to look the best and still manage to save a little space.
First, simply put your DVD in the drive and use mplayer to dump the stream:
mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream
If you have an ISO image, then:
mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device DVD.ISO -dumpstream
You should now have “stream.dump” in the folder that your executed the command in.
Next, launch vlc, then click on the “Media” menu option, and select “Convert / Save”.
Click “Browse” and select a location to save your file. Save your file as a “.mov” file.
Before starting, you will want to create a profile so that you can repeat this easily. Click the “New Profile” button which looks like a sheet of paper with a star on it. (last button in the Settings block)
In the “Encapsulation” tab, select “MP4/MOV”.
In the “Video codec” tab, check Video, Codec H-264, Bitrate 3200 kb/s, Frame Rate 35 fps. (I am still tweaking these settings for best quality, so any help would be appreciated).
In the “Audio codec” tab, check Audio, Codec MPEG 4 Audio (AAC), Bitrate 256 kb/s, Channels 2, Sample 48000.
After that, label your profile, save, and start your ripping. My video files, on average, are about 1.5GB in size.
Any help on fps and bitrates would be appreciated, for me, file size isn’t as much of a problem, I want the best quality.
After a little work, I finally got my Xbox 360 to connect with my computer using uShare. uShare allows you to share music, movies and pictures to your Xbox via UPnP. For Gentoo/Funtoo users out there, it is a bit of a pain to get working. First, it isn’t in Gentoo’s official Portage, so you have to get the overlay, and add… for Funtoo users though, the version listed in Portage has problems with the init scripts, so it is better to get the Overlay anyway.
Overlay: http://bugs.gentoo.org/192561
Next, the config files; if you had an old version of uShare, ditch it, and all of it’s config files(/etc/ushare.conf). I used the following config for /etc/conf.d/ushare … and make sure that you add ‘-c’ in front of the directories you plan on sharing, or uShare wont start up, and wont give you any proper error readout.
# Copyright 1999-2007 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $
# User to run ushare daemon (if none, root will be used)
USHARE_USER=""
# UPNP Friendly Name:
USHARE_NAME="reaper"
# The interface to bind to:
USHARE_IFACE="eth0"
# A List of directories to share, each precieded by '-c':
USHARE_DIRS="-c /home/roberts/media"
# Misc. options, like:
# -p $port Use specific port to listen ($port)
# -x, --xbox Use XboX 360 compliant profile
# -d, --dlna Use DLNA compliant profile (PlayStation3 needs this)
# -w, --no-web Disable the control web page (enabled by default)
# -t, --no-telnet Disable the telnet control (enabled by default)
USHARE_OPTS="-x -p 49152"
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $
# User to run ushare daemon (if none, root will be used)
USHARE_USER=""
# UPNP Friendly Name:
USHARE_NAME="reaper"
# The interface to bind to:
USHARE_IFACE="eth0"
# A List of directories to share, each precieded by '-c':
USHARE_DIRS="-c /home/roberts/media"
# Misc. options, like:
# -p $port Use specific port to listen ($port)
# -x, --xbox Use XboX 360 compliant profile
# -d, --dlna Use DLNA compliant profile (PlayStation3 needs this)
# -w, --no-web Disable the control web page (enabled by default)
# -t, --no-telnet Disable the telnet control (enabled by default)
USHARE_OPTS="-x -p 49152"
After this, you should be good. Start uShare with ‘/etc/init.d/ushare start’, point your browser to YOUR.IP:49152/web/ushare.html , and you can add more directories to share there.
Overall, the web interface is really bare and has no automatic refresh option, so every time you add files to the share directories, you have to restart the service, or click the refresh button on the web interface, however, it works. The only downfall is that it doesn’t perform transcoding, so you have to make sure you encode your videos in the right format. (I am working on that now, because I can see all of the directories, but the files are the “wrong format”)
Another tip, when trying to connect from the Xbox, make sure that you are in the “Video Library”, “Music Library”, or “Picture Library” and not in the Windows Media Center section. UPnP does not substitute WMC.
I finally knocked the dust off of my C++ book, and started learning C++ again. I can already tell that I forgot almost everything which is crappy, but it seems to be coming back to me quickly. In the mean time, I am going to be keeping track of all of my own code that helps me learn the chapters material. If the code is from the book, then I will not post it, but if it is something that I wrote myself, then I will post it under my ‘Programming’ page.
I keep falling behind with these PSP modifications, and since there are so many different walkthroughs out there, it is hard to find one that is exactly for me. Since I fell so far behind, I wanted to store all my files in a central location that would be easy or me to recover.
I had a 3.71-m33 modified system, and decided that it was time to upgrade. I had lost my Pandora Battery and Magic Stick, so before I conducted any updates, I wanted to re-make the battery just in case I bricked the unit, I could recover it. So, this walkthrough will come in two parts, this being the creation of Pandora’s Battery and Magic stick.
Pandora’s Battery is another name for the service battery Sony uses to recover the unit, however, this one specifically allows you to install custom firmware onto a PSP unlocking special features like playing ISO’s from a memory card and mounting the UMD drive through USB allowing you to store UMD disks as ISO files on your computer.
In order to softmod a battery to create Pandora’s Battery, you will need a modded PSP, and I strongly recommend the old PSP battery. (The old batteries will fit in the PSP Slim). If you don’t have access to a modded PSP, I believe you can do the hardware mod to convert your battery, but I am not sure, I had access to a modded PSP before I started. You CAN purchase batteries and sticks here.
Now, assuming you already have the battery, let’s get started. All of these tools work through VirtualBox for all of the Linux users out there.
DISCLAIMER: First, I am not responsible for any damage to any device, follow these steps at your own risk. Second, the following is not used to assist in piracy in any way, these tools are to assist in backups on your ALREADY OWNED games.
For already hacked PSP’s needing to recreate Pandora’s Battery
Needed:
- despertar del cementerio (I have version 7)
- Pandora Installer For 3.xx Kernels
- mspformat.exe
- Sony Original Firmware 4.01
- PSP Running Custom Firmware 3.x/4.x (m33)
- Extra PSP Phat Battery (Original PSP battery, not a slim battery)
- Extra Memory Stick Pro Duo 128MB+ (No larger than 4GB, note that this will only be used for the magic stick, not game saves, so use an extra stick and do not use it for anything else but this.)
Step 1:
Although most cards don’t need this, we are going to run it anyway so that we aren’t wasting time and having to back track. This is the ONLY tool that you will have to run in Windows. First, turn the PSP on with the Phat battery inserted into the back, and connect via USB to your computer. Once the device show in my computer, note which drive it is. For this walkthrough, we will use ‘g’. Download the mspformat.exe tool above, and save it in
C:\mspformat\
Now, go to ‘Start >> Run >> cmd.exe’ and execute (note that g at the end is the drive of the PSP)
c:\mspformat\mspformat.exe g
Step 2:
Next, we will copy all applicable software to the PSP. Windows is no longer required for Linux users. There should be nothing on the PSP memory card now. Lets create the following: (ms0:\ = PSP root directory)
ms0:\PSP\
ms0:\PSP\GAME\
Download despertar del cementerio, Pandora Installer For 3.xx Kernels and Sony Original Firmware 4.01. With despertar del cementerio, extract contents and copy the “DC7″ folder into ms0:\PSP\GAME\ so that it reads:
ms0:\PSP\GAME\DC7\EBOOT.PBP
With Pandora Installer, extract contents and copy the “pan3xx” folder into ms0:\PSP\GAME\ so that it reads:
ms0:\PSP\GAME\pan3xx\EBOOT.PBP
With Sony Original Firmware 4.01, extract contents, rename the “EBOOT.PBP” file to “401.PBP”, and copy it into ms0:\ so that it reads:
ms0:\401.PBP
Step 3:
Now that everything is on the PSP, let’s make the battery first, then configure the memory stick.
Navigate to the Game tab on the PSP and look under Memory Stick, launch “Pandora Installer for 3.xx+ -R4a-”
Under “Battery options…”, select “make battery Pandora”
Under “MemStick and MS-IPL options…” on the main menu, select “Install ms0:/MSIPL.BIN to the MemStick”
Now, you are all done with that, you can quit, and go back to the PSP dashboard. Navigate back to the Game tab, and this time launch “Despertar del Cementerio v7.77″
There is only one step to do, and that is press X.
That’s it, you now have a functional Pandora Battery and Magic Stick. To test it out, completely shut down the PSP, take your Pandora (Phat) battery out, and put it right back in, and your screen should look like this.
With this tool, you can now modify any PSP slim (TA-85), or any original PSP’s. The newer slims won’t mod, to check, look at the ‘Hardware Info’ option in the Pandora dashboard and google the version to see if it can be modded before you do any modifications.
I have been trying to find a decent window manager for my laptop that wouldn’t kill my resources, and would still look nice. Originally, I started using fluxbox, but it wasn’t cutting it for me, mainly because it has significant problems with ‘xcompmgr’ and certain programs with transparencies. So I ventured to openbox. At first look, wow, it has no panels, no functional desktop, really, it has nothing, just a simple right click menu for all of your applications. After exploring a little, i came across wbar, tint2, conky & trayer. All which are very useful for the openbox desktop. Below is a screenshot, and additionally, I created a script that will mirror my setup for your desktop. Let me know what you think.
Screenshots: 7 Photos 3 Photos 1 Photos 3 Photos 1 Photos
Download:
Script