5 Questions of a begginer about RockBox

[baratul]

Hi,
I discovered RockBox, and i try RockBox with the Simulator on my computer before to put it in my ""ipod video 80Go"". I'm new with that RockBox, and after hours of using the Simulator, i still have some questions about ""is it possible to??"" and ""how to"" questions.

ps: English is my second language, so i hope you can understand my English, and i also hope my message is posted at the right place.

Here are my questions:

1- I have some Japanese music in my ipod, and the name of the songs are in Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. The problem is in RockBox those Japanese symbol are replaced with blank square. Is it possible to have my Japanese songs name to appear in Japanese like it is with Apple ?

2- It's about the hour that is displayed, if we are as example 12:26 i don't see the last number, so i see 12:2 i can't know if it is 20-21-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29 and i always see the 3 first numbers, there is a way to display the full hour ?

3- When i open RockBox, there is all the options available, including the Radio. There is a way to remove some "useless" options (it's usually possible with Apple) ? Because currently, there a number of option that i would like not to display in the choices list at the opening of my ipod.

4- As i said before, i try RockBox with the Simulator on my computer, and i have a small sound problem using it. The sound is little scratchy, is it "normal", i mean, it will be the same on my ipod or not ? (considering the song sound perfectly in Winamp on my computer)

5- This question is about the artwork of the playing song (the picture displayed when a song is read). It was confuse for me, but i success to put a picture on a song. But currently, i have some Compilation CD, which contain different artist on the same CD. I would like to have a different picture for each song. The only way i found is to put a picture using the same name as the song into the same folder. But the problem is that my pictures take a lot of place, and i would like to put them "invisible" (because i will use my IPOD only to listen music, not to look at picture). So the best would be to put ALL my artwork in another Folder called Artwork, but this way i'm not able to have a different picture per song. How can i do what i want to do ?

Sorry for all those "probably begginner" questions, but i search a lot before to ask, i do my best but i still need some help with those 5 questions.

Now, let me tell you (for the curious who want to know) why i choose to try RockBox:
- I begin to extract my cd music in .Flac and Apple is not able to read .Flac
- I hate to use something like Itune, so i think the best is to only put the file on my ipod without using something like that
+ It's customizable a lot, so it looks very cool. White background of Apple is not so pretty lol.

Anyway, thank you!
ps: if my message is not posted at the right place, you can move it
ps2: if one of my questions is not clear enough, let me know, and i'll try to explain it better.

[Chronon]

Please read the manual, most of your questions should be answered.  A couple of points:

1) See this site for a breakdown of glyph coverage by various fonts:
http://rasher.dk/rockbox/fontstats/

2) It sounds like a problem with the theme/font you are using.  I would first try a different theme (though the default shouldn't have this problem).

4) It is a simulator, so it provides a simulation of the UI.  It doesn't emulate any hardware actually present in your player.

5) You either need to accept that different images will use a certain amount of space or simply use a single image for the compilation.  If you are worried about visual clutter from lots of images in the same directory as your music files then you can set Rockbox's file browser to only view music files.

[bluebrother]

1- I have some Japanese music in my ipod, and the name of the songs are in Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. The problem is in RockBox those Japanese symbol are replaced with blank square. Is it possible to have my Japanese songs name to appear in Japanese like it is with Apple ?

Make sure you
- use a font that can display those characters (unifont should be a good start). If you haven't installed the font pack I can strongly recommend it. Various themes rely on the font pack being installed.
- for mp3 and other file formats that can have their tags in different codepages make sure to set the correct one (this only affects the WPS, not the file browser).

3- When i open RockBox, there is all the options available, including the Radio. There is a way to remove some "useless" options (it's usually possible with Apple) ? Because currently, there a number of option that i would like not to display in the choices list at the opening of my ipod.

No, unless you get the source code and build it yourself.

4- As i said before, i try RockBox with the Simulator on my computer, and i have a small sound problem using it. The sound is little scratchy, is it "normal", i mean, it will be the same on my ipod or not ? (considering the song sound perfectly in Winamp on my computer)

The simulator is a tool meant for debugging and developing themes. It's purpose is not the be an audio player on your PC. While it can play audio for some targets (should be all SWCODEC targets) it's simply not intended for this.

5- This question is about the artwork of the playing song (the picture displayed when a song is read). It was confuse for me, but i success to put a picture on a song. But currently, i have some Compilation CD, which contain different artist on the same CD. I would like to have a different picture for each song. The only way i found is to put a picture using the same name as the song into the same folder. But the problem is that my pictures take a lot of place, and i would like to put them "invisible" (because i will use my IPOD only to listen music, not to look at picture). So the best would be to put ALL my artwork in another Folder called Artwork, but this way i'm not able to have a different picture per song. How can i do what i want to do ?

You can select the file browser to show only music files in General Settings / File View / Show Files / Music. Or use the database which will only show music files anyway.

[baratul]

Thanks for your answers, here is the result:

1) I have the "extra Fonts pack". I found some Fonts that display Japanese Symbol, but the language of my ipod is in French, and the French Symbol like:: éèêà disappear if i change for another Fonts. So i think that i need to find a French-Japan Fonts

2) It's ok, i have the full hour now

3) I see.. it's kind of impossible. It's not so important, so i can do with that.

4) Ok, so there is no problem. It was just to be sure, but you confirmed me that it's because it's only the simulator.

5) The solution you gave me bluebrother work perfectly, thanks

So the main remaining problem is that i have to look all the font "one by one" and hope to find one that can display both French and Japanese symbol, and i'm not sure to find one.

[bluebrother]

So the main remaining problem is that i have to look all the font "one by one" and hope to find one that can display both French and Japanese symbol, and i'm not sure to find one.

Check rasher's fontstats page Chronon linked earlier. It should be helpful for finding an appropriate font.

[baratul]

I installed RockBox on my ipod video 80Go, all was fine, but when i arrive to play a song, the "While Playing Screen" is kind of weird, and i can't hear my music. At first, i thought it was because i edited the .wps file and some .bmp

So i tried with different unchanged theme for my "while playing screen" i took from this page: http://themes.rockbox.org/index.php?target=ipodvideo
I tried with different theme, including "Boofers" and "AW200glass" but i still have on my ipod a similar window as this one:

But i do not have this problem when i'm using the simulator. All was fine with simulator, but it doesn't work with any theme on my ipod. I used the auto-installation to install RockBox on my ipod.

The only "while playing screen" which success to display is the "Boxes" (and probably the default one). Unfortunatly the "boxes" is not in my taste at all lol.

I probably do something wrong, but i don't know what it is, and i very don't understand why the unchanged theme doesn't work.. because i freshly downloaded the theme, unchanged it, and i have this problem.

I'm so sorry to need to ask you to help me again...

Finally after hours, i found, and now it's work perfectly on my ipod video 80Go. So now i will have to try my ipod for the next days to see the difference. But currently, i think it's more beautiful for the customization. I didn't try to put my .Flac yet, but there will be probably no problem. So amazing, no longer need to use that Itunes

Thanks for people that helped me in this forum, and to the people who create and have work on rockbox.