FF/Rewind across file boundaries

[MikeN]

Hi guys.  First timer user/poster here, so bear with me.  I've tried to do my homework.  First I've gotta say thank you to all the guys who've worked on Rockbox.

Just bought a Sansa e260 for $40 from Microcenter in CA here.  The guys were nice enough to pop the refurb box open in the store and let me check the firmware, so I knew I was getting a v1.  They have c240 and e250 also in the stores, in case you are interested.

Got home and eagerly installed Rockbox.  I installed the "extras" in case I needed them and hit an error right at the end of the install.  I wanted to do my bit and report it, but 4 days later, I forget what it was :-(  Some missing files.  But anyway, Rockbox works fine.

I listen mainly to audiobooks and have a couple of iAudios.  On these players, FF and rewind take you into the next/previous tracks seamlessly.  This is pretty standard -- eg it works that way in my car CD player.  For audiobooks, lectures, podcasts, etc., you often need to rewind 30 seconds or so to catch something you missed.  On my other players I rewind a dozen or so times during every session -- often across into the last part of the previous track.  It is quite a handicap if you can't do this.

Anyway, since some work has gone into Rockbox with audiobooks in mind, such as its bookmark support, I am wondering if there is some option to configure FF/RW to cross file boundaries -- others must have thought the same as me.  I poked around in the documentation but couldn't find anything.  Experimental code is fine for me!

Thanks for any help.  Regards,

Mike

[BruceHP]

It's hard to give a good answer to this question without knowing how you organize your files, but, here are some thoughts.

Under Playback settings, try changing the settings for Auto-change Directories, Prevent Track Skipping and set
skip Length to 30 seconds instead of Skip track.

another idea might be to merge all of the track from one subject into one track which, with the bookmarking function, should pose no problems.

HTH!

[MikeN]

Thx, BruceHP.  I don't have the "Prevent Track Skipping" option -- I guess I did not install the latest build -- by mistake I installed the latest Release last week.  I tried setting skip length to 30 seconds, but it would still not skip beyond the end of a file :-(

I'll upgrade and unset "Prevent Track Skipping", and see if that allows me to skip into the previous/next file.  Is that what you meant?

Concatenating the files would work, as you suggest.  But that would be a bit of a pain -- some books have jpegs and nfo files, and they can have hundreds of mp3 files in a dozen subdirectories resulting from audio CDs, when I rip them.  Sigh.  Thanks again,

Mike

[MikeN]

I upgraded to today's build and tested the various config values as above, but there was no change, as exected -- FF and RW always stop at the end and beginning, resp., of a file.  (Oh, in response to your comment on file organization BruceHP, I'm talking about moving across files in the same directory.)

Oh well.  I'll keep my fingers crossed for the future.  Thx,  Mike

[Chronon]

Just to be sure, you did unset "Prevent Track Skipping" and were still unable to skip (not FF) to the next track?

[Llorean]

He wants to fast forward into the next track... notice the topic of the post.

[Chronon]

Yes.  I did notice that.  I guess the more important operation is not FF to next track, but REW to previous anyway.  This does not work as desired for seeking across track boundaries (regardless of step size).  Skipping past the track boundary in reverse begins playback at the beginning of the previous track rather than near the end of the track even with a skip size of 5s.

Should we consider this as a feature idea?

Edit: I changed "Seeking past" to "Skipping past" as it's more accurate.

[BruceHP]

>Should we consider this as a feature idea?

For people listening to audiobooks FF/Rewind to the Previous/next file can be a good feature, but it should be switchable.

Before Rockbox (bookmarking), I split my Books files (5 to 40 hours long) into 5 minute segments for better management.

Of course, this may be of no benefit to people not listening to serial  files.

Thanks!

[MikeN]

> For people listening to audiobooks FF/Rewind to the Previous/next file
> can be a good feature, but it should be switchable.

Yes -- configurability is a major part of what makes Rockbox good.  As a comment though, it's hard to imagine a realistic case where it would be important to have FF/Rewind stop at the boundary.  You are more likely to achieve whatever you are trying to achieve by using boundary-crossing FF/RW and Next/Previous clicking.

> Before Rockbox (bookmarking), I split my Books files (5 to 40 hours long)
> into 5 minute segments for better management.

Yes.  I used a free tool called mp3DirectCut for that.  It was nice and small and fast.  You look for flat spots in the wave pattern that indicate that the reader is taking a decent pause between sentences, etc., then place cutpoints there.

Mike

[Llorean]

Right now the default behaviour is for seeking to slow down as you approach the boundary. Our current method of accelerated seeking doesn't really mesh well with seeking across the boundaries, and a general assumption is that if you wanted to seek within something "as if it were one file" the simplest solution would be to have it actually be one file.

I'm not saying boundary-crossing seeking wouldn't be nice, but there are also some other pretty obvious solutions to the problem too.

[BruceHP]

Unfortunately,  None seem to be obvious to me.

While, I, would seldom use this feature maybe it could be a "Play from, 30 seconds from the end of the last track"  button.

[Llorean]

As I said, the most obvious one is "if you want a selection to act as if it were one file, make it one file"

[Chronon]

If you use bookmarking you don't need to worry about losing your place in a long file.  Then you can always just rewind a couple of minutes from the bookmark to remind yourself of where you left off.