Midi Player

[jbullfrog]

Chronon, you are exactly right when you said that the midi plugin only works for specific midi files.

The file I posted was actually NOT the file I was having problems with.  I just posted a random midi out of my collection.  When I tested the file I posted, it actually worked.

Here are the actual files I am having problems with, either with no sound at all, or buffer problems.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ivfynq

One more thing.  Is it possible to get the plugin to play the midis consecutively, not stopping after every midi is played?


Thanks everyone for their contribution!

Is it really that difficult for rockbox to recognize midi files just as it recognizes mp3 files?  Or is it because most people don't listen to midis that the developers didn't even bother to support midi files?  Even my nintendo ds can play midis!

[Llorean]

Playing *just* midi files is a LOT simpler than mixing them in with other formats of audio. Please, don't assume things are simple without doing some real research into the subject, even if "even" your DS can play them. The midi plugin doesn't get a lot of work because right now nobody can come up with a good way to incorporate it into the main playback code, and that's more or less a major step that needs to be accomplished.

It's not an issue of simply "recognizing" it. Files need to be put into memory in advance, so the disk only needs to spin every now and then rather than constantly spinning to be read. With MIDI files you have a lot of files (one song, and many patches). These patches can require a considerable amount of memory. As well, each song may need a different selection of patches, and some patches may be needed again for later songs. Managing these patches in memory (so that you don't load the same one more than once, and don't accidentally let any go early, etc) is complicated if you also want to be able to buffer other formats or even just more than one midi (efficiently at least).

And yes, part of the problem is that "most people don't listen to midis." Remember, everything is done by volunteers. If most people don't listen to midis that also means that most volunteers don't listen to midis, and most volunteers know nothing about how to improve support for them. In all honesty, if you're passionate about midi support the best thing to do is to *become* a developer. Put some time into learning about the relevant matters. Otherwise you are exactly the kind of person who "didn't even bother" that you mentioned in your own post.

[bascule]

I'm tempted to say that it was very unhelpful to post a working file in a problem file thread, but never mind...

Of all the 'broken' ones you posted, only 'Hotel Dusk 05' works for me (but with continuous buffer misses).

However, of interest is that the others, if left to play (silently) for long enough, do eventually splash 'FINISHED PLAYING' and drop back to the file browser.

So I suspect that they are playing, but are not being generated quickly enough to even start buffering, so the 'Buffer Miss' message is never being displayed. I'm guessing it must be some sort of a complexity issue (too many instruments or whatever).

So that just leaves kfb's mysterious "crap...null waveform..." error message to resolve, although I expect that, as stated earlier, it's the PortalPlayer targets' lack of horsepower that is behind both of these problems.

If I were you, I'd just convert them all to MP3/Vorbis/etc. and play them as normal. MIDI's were developed when storage was at a premium and lossy encoding had not been developed ^{[citation needed]} and, although it's kind of a cool concept to just provide instructions on 'how' to play a song, the availability of synths, sequencers and other digital music generation tools have really eliminated the need for this archaic format.

[PaulPosition]

Agree with you on all counts except that last one (that 'need' thing)...

You're obviously not a musician. Being able to share musical works in a format which allows reading the score (through an interface, obviously), isolating particular instruments, slowing and speeding without artefact, etc. is a boon.

Of course, for only listening, a purely audio format like you suggest is obviously preferable. 

[Chronon]

Apparently someone mentioned this on IRC in September 2007.

http://www.rockbox.org/irc/rockbox-20070927.txt

You can search for "crap".   

It looks like that user was able to get rid of the "Crap. . . null waveform. . ." message by reinstalling Rockbox and the patchset -- though this left the default stuttering if too many instruments play at once.

[jbullfrog]

Thanks for the help.  I have learned that incorporating midi support is a much more daunting task than I guessed.  For now, I'll stick with converting them to wav files using Winamp, and then converting the wav files to mp3 format.

Maybe one day Rockbox will have full midi support.  Who knows?

[karashata]

Depending on what you mean by "full"...  As far as I can tell, it already has full support for general midi, though for PP targets it still needs some optimization to get it to decode the instructions fast enough to keep up with playback for higher tempo and more complex midis.

I don't know if anyone will add support for extended general or whatever other midi instrument sets are out there, or if adding that support would be as easy as finding a patchset with the extended general (or whatever) instrument set and a configuration file that Rockbox's midi plugin can read and use.

[bascule]

You're obviously not a musician...

Correct. And I apologise if I upset anyone who does still need to use it. I made an assumption that people still using it did so because they want to in some sort of a retro or deliberately 'old-skool' way. It just seems incredibly old-fashined to me (in digital terms, obviously).

[Strife89]

Thanks for the help.  I have learned that incorporating midi support is a much more daunting task than I guessed.  For now, I'll stick with converting them to wav files using Winamp, and then converting the wav files to mp3 format.

You can also use www.haminet.com 's MIDI to MP3 converter. It's free.

[robin0800]

For now, I'll stick with converting them to wav files using Winamp, and then converting the wav files to mp3 format

Rockbox can play wave files and also wavepack so no need? for mp3.

[lgfb]

I had the same problem with the "Crap... Null waveform..." on the sansa280. After several attempts, I tried it using different untar-tools. Using WinZIP or WinRAR brought somehow corrupted files out of the archive. You can try unpacking them at the command line using:

bunzip2 patchset.tbz2
tar xvf patchset.tar

These were the programs bringing success...:

D:\>bunzip2 -V
bzip2, a block-sorting file compressor.  Version 1.0.1, 23-June-2000.

   Copyright (C) 1996-2000 by Julian Seward.

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms set out in the LICENSE file, which is included
   in the bzip2-1.0 source distribution.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
   LICENSE file for more details.

bunzip2: I won't read compressed data from a terminal.
bunzip2: For help, type: `bunzip2 --help'.

D:\>tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.12

Copyright (C) 1988, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason.

Kind regards

[kfb]

lgfb, thanks a ton!!!  That did the trick.  I used 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) instead of bzip, but it still worked.  Thanks again!