various feature ideas

[zaphee]

Hi all. Here's a list of features that I would suggest the rockbox devs to implement.

- 3GP video support
- in oscilloscope plugin, show the detailed waveform (just like vlc's oscilloscope plugin does)
- screenshot taking plugin
- graphing calculator
- automatic battery capacity detection (if possible)
- use earphone jack as line in/mic port when recording audio (if possible)
- vorbis/mp3/wav transcoding tool
- alternate backlight brightness and timeout settings for plugins.

I know, some are more usable or feasible than others, so please don't blame me, these are just suggestions of features that I think would be useful.

[linuxstb]

- screenshot taking plugin
- use earphone jack as line in/mic port when recording audio (if possible)

You can already take screenshots - http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/ScreenDump

Rockbox also already supports using the headphone socket as an input on hardware that supports it (some ipods).  Are there any devices where Rockbox doesn't implement this, but could?

[bluebrother]

- 3GP video support

3gp is a container format that can contain several codecs. For video this is h263, and most (all?) supported players are likely to be noticably too slow for this.

- screenshot taking plugin

and how should this work? There is no button that's free all the time that could get used to trigger the screenshot. However, a screenshot functionality is already available since long. You can either use the simulator on a PC or find a menu option in the debug menu. Beware that enabling the screenshot feature in the debug menu makes a USB connection trigger a screenshot, hence you won't be able to estabilsh a USB connection anymore until you turned it off again.

- use earphone jack as line in/mic port when recording audio (if possible)

This is hardware dependent. A line out is usually a line out, i.e. an output. Not an input -- that's something completely different (you need to convert an analog to a digital signal, while output is the other way round. The hardware for this is completely different).

- vorbis/mp3/wav transcoding tool

Why? This would be slow as hell because the CPU in an MP3 player is rather limited. Transcoding is a task you really should do on a PC. But if you want to try, there's already the mp3encoder plugin which transcodes wav to mp3. It's sloooow. (Oh, and the quality of encoders on the PC is likely to be noticably better)

[zaphee]

- 3GP video support

3gp is a container format that can contain several codecs. For video this is h263, and most (all?) supported players are likely to be noticably too slow for this.

I actually mean the videos taken from mobile phones. I thought that some quite old mobile phones support *encoding* in this format, why wouldn't some color-screen rockbox targets just decode it ? And there's already support for some MPEG videos, as far as I know, so I suppose that targets supporting this are fast enough to decode videos with such quality ? IMHO, it's still worth trying (well, I think...).

- screenshot taking plugin

and how should this work? There is no button that's free all the time that could get used to trigger the screenshot. However, a screenshot functionality is already available since long. You can either use the simulator on a PC or find a menu option in the debug menu. Beware that enabling the screenshot feature in the debug menu makes a USB connection trigger a screenshot, hence you won't be able to estabilsh a USB connection anymore until you turned it off again.

Not a single button, but some key combination (like Select+Menu quits a plugin on an iPod, then Select+Play for example would take a screenshot when screendump is enabled, and save the picture to the player's root directory).

Rockbox also already supports using the headphone socket as an input on hardware that supports it (some ipods).  Are there any devices where Rockbox doesn't implement this, but could?

Which iPods ? It doesn't seem to work on my 1st-gen nano.

[linuxstb]

Rockbox also already supports using the headphone socket as an input on hardware that supports it (some ipods).  Are there any devices where Rockbox doesn't implement this, but could?

Which iPods ? It doesn't seem to work on my 1st-gen nano.

I think just the 4th Gen ipod and the Photo/Color.  As far as we know, the 1st gen Nano hardware doesn't support it.

[saratoga]

- 3GP video support

3gp is a container format that can contain several codecs. For video this is h263, and most (all?) supported players are likely to be noticably too slow for this.

I actually mean the videos taken from mobile phones. I thought that some quite old mobile phones support *encoding* in this format, why wouldn't some color-screen rockbox targets just decode it ? And there's already support for some MPEG videos, as far as I know, so I suppose that targets supporting this are fast enough to decode videos with such quality ? IMHO, it's still worth trying (well, I think...).

Why don't you look up what this codec is for whatever phone you're thinking of, and then see (or ask) if its likely to be feasible to decode in Rockbox?  Its not really helpful to suggest a format without telling us what the format is.

[zaphee]

- 3GP video support

3gp is a container format that can contain several codecs. For video this is h263, and most (all?) supported players are likely to be noticably too slow for this.

I actually mean the videos taken from mobile phones. I thought that some quite old mobile phones support *encoding* in this format, why wouldn't some color-screen rockbox targets just decode it ? And there's already support for some MPEG videos, as far as I know, so I suppose that targets supporting this are fast enough to decode videos with such quality ? IMHO, it's still worth trying (well, I think...).

Why don't you look up what this codec is for whatever phone you're thinking of, and then see (or ask) if its likely to be feasible to decode in Rockbox?  Its not really helpful to suggest a format without telling us what the format is.

OK, sorry. Didn't know that 3GP _container_ (thanks bluebrother) can contain several different codecs. I did actually think of h263 for video, however not for the super-high-resolution videos (like 640x480 which is probably not feasible on any of the rockbox targets), but ones with video size of 176x144 at 15 fps (or 128x96 at 12 fps) and AMR for audio at 16 kbps, 8 KHz mono (by the way, implementing ARM-only audio files playback would be nice too). I am not an expert (so I may be wrong) but I doubt that pre-2007 mobile phones are much faster than most of the color-screen rockbox-supported DAPs, so I believe it's possible. What do you think ?

[saratoga]

I am not an expert (so I may be wrong) but I doubt that pre-2007 mobile phones are much faster than most of the color-screen rockbox-supported DAPs, so I believe it's possible. What do you think ?

The gigabeats are probably faster, and maybe the Ipod Nano 2G.  Not much else is though.

I would like to see mpegplayer expanded to work on more audio and video formats.

[raudonkepuraite]

Most Nokia smartphones (older ones) use ARM 9 processors ranging from 100mhz to 300mhz, ALL SonyEricsson K, W series and most smartphones use same ARM 9 (well not exactly the same) clocked at 200mhz, most old Siemens and BenQ phones utilize weak 66mhz - 95mhz brains
They are able to play most 3gp containers.

[bluebrother]

Most Nokia smartphones (older ones) use ARM 9 processors ranging from 100mhz to 300mhz,

And most Rockbox targets use an ARM7 core. Which is, obviously, slower. Most Rockbox targets use a CPU frequency of less than 100MHz. Which is, obviously, less than "100 to 300".