video on ipod [tech talk]

[torbent]

First of all: This is NOT a feature request, further more I would like to chat about theoretical possibilities and technical limitations. I am not (yet) a rockbox developer, but I know how to code...


I would like to know what kind of potential possibilities there are to develop a video player under rockbox / ipod port. (Personally, I have got the ipod 5g..)

I know, the ipod has got a PP50XX ARM processor and it there is not much RAM avaibale, so it is probably impossible recycle an existing project like mplayer.
Further more rockbox is its own operating system, so I am not sure whether it is possible to use any (linux) programm/library (like ipp) at all.  Is it nesessary to code everything from skretch? (Actually, could anybody give me some information, what kind of OS rockbox is. I didnt find such information at the faq/manual/wiki/mailing list archive/wikipedia/google... but maybe I overread it... )

Would be happy, about (almost) any kind of answer... 

[texture46]

I am more interested in a video player for the iPod nano generation because they dont even have a video player on the apple OS. Whereas they do have it for linux but the size of the videos after you uncompress they are just outrageous.

[Bagder]

it is probably impossible recycle an existing project like mplayer.

No, not impossible, just plain old hard work. And it needs to be made with integer math and not floating point.

I am not sure whether it is possible to use any (linux) programm/library (like ipp) at all.  Is it nesessary to code everything from skretch?

Rockbox already takes advantage and leverage on numerous other open source projects. There's nothing stopping us from doing the same in the video department.

[Suntiger]

I am more interested in a video player for the iPod nano generation because they dont even have a video player on the apple OS. Whereas they do have it for linux but the size of the videos after you uncompress they are just outrageous.

The Nano does not physically have the hardware required for playing compressed video, and it never will. If that's a problem, Steve Jobs would be the one to talk to.

[saratoga]

I would like to know what kind of potential possibilities there are to develop a video player under rockbox / ipod port. (Personally, I have got the ipod 5g..)

It has a nice broadcom MIPS DSP chip on it for video acceleration (PP chips are really slow).  Unfortunately, I don't think anyone knows how it works or how to run code on it.  So unless something changes, its probably not possible to do much video decoding at all on the 5G in Rockbox.