5.5G 80G video, new to rockbox

[matthewsackmann]

Ok, I have said ipod video and am very curious about rockbox.  Have skimmed through lots of manual and read forums/faqs for a couple days now so i'll ask all my remaining questions here.

   1. I have pretty much my entire ipod filled to the gills with songs/videos that I do not have on my computer any longer.  Is there a chance of losing these when i download/open rockbox?  should i back them up?  

   2. When Rockbox boots up it will search for my files and enable them to be played in rockbox.  does this increase the space taken up by said files?  And do i have to run another program to re-sort them from the itunes confusion?  

  3. How much space does rockbox take up on the ipod?  i am already continually erasing things to fit new stuff on.

  4. i mostly want rockbox to play chess on the ipod.  how difficult is the chess AI?  and it seems that i'd be able to import old games i played or famous games into the chessbox with .png files, is this correct?  is it possible to play two player chess?  

   5.  Lyrics??  i have inputted lyrics (+notes+translations, etc...) on many songs.  i won't be able to view them on rockbox?  

Sorry if any of this is to be found elsewhere, i honestly looked around a long time.  

   So basically i want to try rockbox for the chess game with some music, probably shifting back to the original OS for music/video viewing because of longer battery life.  But I'm really scared to mess up my ipod.  
I know I had more questions but can't remember them now...

Thanks a lot for all answers/comments!
-matt

[LambdaCalculus]

It's very difficult to actually destroy your device using Rockbox, short of smashing it with a hammer. Rockbox is quite safe, but it comes with no guarantees. You can use RbUtilQt, our in-house installation utility, to ease the process of installation, as well as the manual. Follow the link on the left-hand side of the screen. The manual is everyone's best friend!

To answer your questions:

1) You don't need to back them up, but always be safe and make a backup of any device you own.

2) and 3) Rockbox only takes about 3-4 MB of space on your iPod hard drive. The Database size may vary, depending on how many songs it locates on the device. As long as your songs are properly tagged, then they'll appear in the Database. The manual explains the Database in further detail.

4) That's .pgn files, if I recall. I find the AI to be pretty clever on the chess plugin. And I haven't tried playing a 2-player game yet.

5) I think there's a patch in Flyspray for that. Look at the links under "Tracker" to the left.

Just note that any songs you may have purchased from iTunes won't work under Rockbox, since we don't support DRM and may never do so. Anything you ripped from your personal collection will work perfectly.

Video support on iPods is not very good under Rockbox. We only support MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoded files, and the framerate would rate at around 10-12 FPS for a fullscreen 320x240 video.

[Chronon]

1. Well, it's always a good policy to keep backups of important files.  And one thing I would advise is that you keep a backup of your iTunesDB since if this gets corrupted the retail firmware will not be able to see the still intact media.  But I don't find Rockbox installation on an iPod to be a terribly hazardous procedure.

2. In order to browse your iTunes installed files (in a meaningful way) you will need to let Rockbox build its own database.  Please note that you will not be able to view the videos you synched with iTunes in Rockbox since Rockbox does not support the same codecs as the retail OS.

3. The current iPod Video (60/80 GB) build appears to take up about 7.2 MB of space.

4. I found the AI to be fairly challenging.  But I've only played it on a couple of occasions.  Here's the wiki page for the plugin (LINK).  It appears that it currently can load .PGN games but not save them.

5. There's not currently a lyrics viewer included in Rockbox, but there is a patch in the tracker (FS# 7432).  Additionally, work is being done to allow buffering of metadata in the main buffer at the same time as playback.  This should allow a method for clean implementations of album art, cuesheet support and lyrics viewing.  See the MetadataOnBuffer wiki page.

[LambdaCalculus]

Very kind of you to help fill in the blanks, Chronon. Many thanks!

[matthewsackmann]

Many thanks to both of you!  I looked up more details on chessbox and found that you can't play two players yet, but it seems to have a pretty high ELO rating (1700), which can probably kick my butt (which is good).  So i can load completed games in .pgn and then watch them move by move?    

  Anyone checked out the "Opening Book" in chessbox yet?

So i think i'll dive in , i just need to decide if i want my whole database converted to rockbox or just a few albums to listen to while playing chess...  Is the sound quality better with rockbox?  i know it can play flac and ogg but just on regular mp3s?    Is it possible to manually add songs from the ipod's OS DB to the rockbox DB so i don't have everything?  This would also make it easier for me to listen to my favorite artists instead of scrolling through all 2000 or so artists i have on my OS DB.

thanks again

[Chronon]

Very kind of you to help fill in the blanks, Chronon. Many thanks!

Yeh.  I was actually posting my reply as you were doing yours.  I got notified but it wouldn't update me with the content of the reply so I posted mine anyway.  I'm glad there was at least some linear independence!  

Many thanks to both of you!  I looked up more details on chessbox and found that you can't play two players yet, but it seems to have a pretty high ELO rating (1700), which can probably kick my butt (which is good).  So i can load completed games in .pgn and then watch them move by move?    

  Anyone checked out the "Opening Book" in chessbox yet?

So i think i'll dive in , i just need to decide if i want my whole database converted to rockbox or just a few albums to listen to while playing chess...  Is the sound quality better with rockbox?  i know it can play flac and ogg but just on regular mp3s?    Is it possible to manually add songs from the ipod's OS DB to the rockbox DB so i don't have everything?  This would also make it easier for me to listen to my favorite artists instead of scrolling through all 2000 or so artists i have on my OS DB.

thanks again

Rockbox gives you better control over the sound (e.g customizable EQs [with precut so you don't get distortion as in Apple's firmware], crossfeed, crossfade, and more).  There's not currently any easy way to edit down the Rockbox database (though I will point out that this is also the case for the Apple firmware).  Rockbox builds its database directly from the metadata tags in your media files.  It doesn't care about the iTunesDB at all.

But I think I would just prefer to have access to all of my music as well as plugins in Rockbox anyway.

[matthewsackmann]

Well, thanks to your advice i decided to go for it!  Loaded the whole sheband into rockbox, took about fourty minutes (12000+files).  So far, I LOVE IT!!!   wish now i downloaded more themes, because they are super cool!   I had the same problem a lot of other posters had, i had to install my bootloader manually, but that was easy enough.  Still can't find the "Opening Games" thingy for chessbox though...

[LambdaCalculus]

Well, thanks to your advice i decided to go for it!  Loaded the whole sheband into rockbox, took about fourty minutes (12000+files).  So far, I LOVE IT!!!

Enjoy Rockbox! Your iPod will love you for it later!

Still can't find the "Opening Games" thingy for chessbox though...

For opening .pgn files, you mean? Just copy a few .pgn files into a folder on your device (for example, make one called, say, "Chess"), then navigate to that folder in the file view and click on a game you want to play. Chessbox will open it automatically.

[matthewsackmann]

Still can't find the "Opening Games" thingy for chessbox though...

For opening .pgn files, you mean? Just copy a few .pgn files into a folder on your device (for example, make one called, say, "Chess"), then navigate to that folder in the file view and click on a game you want to play. Chessbox will open it automatically.
[/quote]

Well, that helps, but no, in the chessbox wiki, the roadmap says it has an opening book that has about 250 opening lines.  This would be a different way to play where it tries to teach you the standard moves across a wide range of different openings, i.e. King's Gambit, English Opening, Four Knights game, etc...    is this possible to access?  anyone?

[Chronon]

Sorry, I don't have any special information about that.  It looks like it is eventually intended to be an option that can be toggled on/off.  Maybe the AI automatically uses openings from the opening book at the moment?  I'd have to look at the code to do anything more than guess, however.