Various iPod 5.5g questions

[Pileot]

Ok i have searched on this forum and not found many answers, so i hope im posting in the right place and  can be helped...

Rockbox Version r13287-070429 for iPod Video

Firstly, power.
Im looking at the battery settings, and i was able to customize a WPS that shows the battery life as a percentage and estimated time remaining... and it seems to max out at about 8 hours on the display, yet i can get much longer life. Also when my battery life gets low, it totally runs out of juice when it says theres about 45 mins left. I checked in the battery section, and i have it set to the lowest setting it can go (1300 mAh) but that still sounds pretty high...

Question 1 - Is there a way for me to find out what size of battery i have so i can have it set to the correct settings?

secondly, movies. I bought this iPod because i want to watch movies on it, but with Rockbox i seem to have problems with this. I downloaded a prog that would reincode the movies, but since then i have lost it, and it never seemed to work correctly. From what i could tell, i had to size the movies down to fit the ipod resolution, and then i figured somthing had to be done with the framerate...

Question 2 - What programs should i use to make movies viewable on my iPod, and what settings should i be using?

thirdly, having the backlight at the same brightness is not always the best option. Granted its a small thing, but its the little things that count.

Question 3 - How can i change how bright the backlight is?

lastly... I have noticed when i go to play my music... if i select genre for instance, then it lists all the genres of music i have. If i select all tracks, it sorts the music by name. the same for if i select artist, it lists the artists, then if i select all tracks again it lists the tracks by name.

Question 4 - How can i get the music to play the files in groups, artist, genre, etc and display all tracks in these groups?


Ahh i lied i thought of one more question... Is there a specific build for the iPod 5.5g that is considered "superior" or better to use than any other one? And if i try using the nightly builds... do i just replace the files i have now with the nightly build files? Or is using nightly builds not suggested for a noob like myself?



Thanks for your time, i hope i have made myself clear. I look forward to reading your suggestions

[Didgeridoohan]

You say you have searched the forums, but have you checked out the wiki and the manual? Most questions can be answered there, and if they can't the forum is the right place to go (and then you usually get the answer "read the manual").

Question 1: Don't bother with the estimated time left. It's not calibrated for the iPod yet and it wasn't until recently (yesterday I think) that you could choose the correct mAh. My tip is to just use the percentage of battery life and estimate the time you have left yourself...

Question 2: Check the wiki... PluginMpegplayer

Question 3: Don't know if this is possible on an iPod. Doesn't say anything about it in the manual. On an Iriver H340 you go Settings -> General Settings -> Display -> LCD Settings -> Brightness.

Question 4: I'm assuming you are using the database, and since I use a filetree-structure myself, I don't know much about this...

Bonus Questions: Don't know about any "superior builds"... (Iriver user and official build at that). Nightly builds? Never heard that before... They used to be called daily builds, but now there's only the current builds that is updated ever time something is commited. This is also a question you find the answer to in the manual... Updating Rockbox. (the link in there is old though and should point you here instead: Current Build)

[Pileot]

Many thanks... i read the manual but didnt read the wiki... thought it might be a rehash of the manual... i will go there now...

What do you mean the correct battery setting wasn't known until yesterday? Does that mean if i get the daily build for today it should have the battery thing fixed?

As for Question 3, the LCD brightness is changable with the default iPod software, i see no reason it shouldnt be changable with Rockbox

For Question 4, is there a filetree view for the ipod? i never heard of that before... could an iPod user let me know if its possable?

[Didgeridoohan]

The correct setting was known before yesterday, but it wasn't implemented in Rockbox until yesterday.

15 May 21:21   Make it possible to select the correct battery capacity on ipod video, default is the 30GB models 400mAh, discharge curve and runtime estimation is still no calibrated.

Just because something is possible in the original firmware doesn't mean it is possible (yet) in Rockbox. It might just be that no one has committed support for changing the brightness of the LCD on an iPod yet...

Since you are using Rockbox, yes there is a filetree view... Yet again, a link to the manual: File Browser

[Pileot]

Ahh i was thinking more like a tree view like the one that windows explorer uses.

I'm assuming if i take the latest daily build it will have the updated battery info? thanks for your continued help, i really appreciate it

[ryran]

There is a patch for enabling lcd brightness control on the ipods--you could find some builds that include it in the unsupported builds forum. It works fine, but from what I remember reading, people said the code didn't do it quite the best way and so suposedly, one of the core-ish devs was working on a way to do it more betterer. .... Haven't heard anything in a long time.

[Toxikator]

As to question 4: you can, but you'll have to muck about in the tagnavi setup.

What you'd have to do is create a tag system whereby the tracks were named by their genre first, then their other characteristics (say, you'd see "Funk 01. Funkadelic" or whatever) and then strip off the genre tags.

there's no good way of doing it. You'd be better off doing it by filters anyway.