FLAC issues with 4G grayscale

[rockbox_noob]

I have looked around and can't seem to find answers to these:

1) FLAC files do not play. I tried a couple files produced using raptor. No luck. It simply doesn't play them. MP3s work fine, so I have audio.
My battery needs to be replaced pretty badly, perhaps that contributes?
I tried replacing the rockbox.ipod and .rockbox folders to no avail.

2) How selective do I need to be in choosing my release if I just want a stable firmware to play FLACs? Any particular one noted for its stability?

This one I didn't look for, but if you would be kind enough....

2) I decided to erase everything on the (FAT32) hard drive. As expected, it finds the bootloader but not the firmware and "gets all apple-y". I later put ipodlinux on it. Now the bootloader *sometimes* goes with rockbox incomplete->apple and *sometimes* goes into ipodlinux. Can someone explain to how this works and/or how I can select which one starts up? It's odd.

[Llorean]

I take it you didn't remove the bootloader before installing iPodLinux?
You've probably got both the Rockbox and iPodLinux bootloaders right now then, which could cause some strange behaviour.

[rockbox_noob]

Yeah, I never actually uninstalled the bootloader, but erased the firmware. Thanks for pointing that out; I just thought ipodlinux's install script would take care of that for me.
It seems strange to me that that is even possible.


The moderators on this list are cool.

[Llorean]

The *easiest* method would be to use the restore tool, if you don't mind wiping the music.

The second easiest is only available if you kept the bootpartition.bin file from before the original Rockbox instally. If you uninstall iPodlinux, then write that back (ipodpatcher -w 1 bootpartition.bin, similar to how you wrote the rockboot.bin during our install) then install iPodlinux back, it should work.

[rockbox_noob]

I suppose I would have asked that next....one step ahead of me. I'll probably have to restore.

If you or anyone else would like to take a shot at those first two questons (particularly the first one) have at it. I don't understand how I could be the only person to install rockbox and have trouble with FLACs on the 4G. No one else seems to have that problem.

I'm waiting on a new battery to arrive, so hopefully I will have FLACs working by Friday or so and can post good news. Speaking of which, I am about to post a new thread regarding batteries.

[Llorean]

The battery *should* be what's causing playback issues with FLAC.
I don't know what Raptor is though. Try a different encoder. Also, make sure the tags are Vorbis Comments, as if for some reason it doesn't use the proper tagging, that could potentially cause problems.

Our FLAC codec itself isn't known to have any issues at this time, so it's *most* likely your encoder creating some sort of not entirely standard files, that our codec is less tolerant of than whatever else you use to play them. This doesn't mean there's not a problem with ours, it's just less likely, since you really are the first report of this problem I've seen.

As for build stability, other than the random freezing that seems to affect all 4G builds until that bug is resolved, there isn't any known to be particularly better or worse for FLAC playback.

[rockbox_noob]

Excellent reply. I'm very impressed.

As soon as I get this stuff working I think I'm going to throw a donation to you guys. Thanks.