Ogg-support 0.4: Media Player

I added initial support for the built-in Media Player. It’s untrivial to get everything working properly as the FileManager, the Metalayer Crawler, and the Media Player are all close source applications and their behaviour is not really documented anywhere.

The change log:

  • Added OGG support for the built-in media player.
  • Updated ogg related mime types from freedesktop.org.xml (excluding *.ogg patterns).
  • Added icons for the new mime types.
  • Removed dependency to floating point vorbis library.

Known issues:

  • The FM doesn’t now how to start the new mime types.
  • The Metalayer Crawler doesn’t fill in the meta data (artist etc.) for the ogg files.
  • I removed the *.ogg patterns from the mime file because with it neither the FM nor the Crawler checked the real mime type for files but just put the first mime type with *.ogg pattern.

The Crawler did fill in the artist etc. for my ogg files at one point, but I don’t know why. If you have any hints for these issues, I’m all ears :)

PS. The MP now plays oggs with Theora video and Vorbis audio too :)

14 thoughts on “Ogg-support 0.4: Media Player

  • December 10, 2007 at 2:33 am
    Permalink

    This is amazing news. With the official Nokia briefing against Ogg’s adoption as an HTML5 reference file format, I hope Internet Tablet users can persuade them that they should support open standards like Ogg better.

    Thanks for your work! Now I just have to wait for price drops on micro-SD cards before splurging on one big enough to hold a reasonable portion of my media collection.

  • December 10, 2007 at 2:51 am
    Permalink

    Funny you released this the same day this piece appeared on Slashdot:

    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/09/2045200

    Quoting:

    “Several months ago a workgroup of the W3C decided to include Ogg/Theora+Vorbis as the recommended baseline video codec standard for HTML5, against Apple’s aggressive protest. Now, Nokia seems to be seeking a reversal of that decision: they have released a position paper calling Ogg ‘proprietary’ and citing the importance of DRM support. Nokia has historically responded to questions about Ogg on their internet tablets with strange and inconsistent answers, along with hand waving about their legal department. This latest step is enough to really make you wonder what they are really up to.”

  • December 10, 2007 at 9:38 am
    Permalink

    Thanks for your work. One small improvement request / bug report : device must be rebooted for media player to be able to play ogg files after installing the package. A popup suggesting rebooting the device would be nice.

  • December 10, 2007 at 9:47 am
    Permalink

    Rebooting the device shouldn’t be needed as the package restarts the media engine and the metalayer crawler.

    Are others experiencing this too?

    If somebody knows why, I can just restart that service too.

  • December 10, 2007 at 3:24 pm
    Permalink

    I haven’t had a chance to install the new version yet, but about adding filemanager support: I think the way to do it would be to copy /usr/share/applications/hildon/mp_ui.desktop. If your package had a clone of this file called, say, mp_ui_ogg_support.desktop, but with only the new mimetypes; I think this would do the right thing. You can use dh_desktop in your debian/rules to register/deregister the new desktop file.

    Is there any documentation about the metalayer crawler? I’ve seen how the file manager uses the thumbnailer to get info about MP3s. Is the metalayer crawler different to this?

  • December 10, 2007 at 3:51 pm
    Permalink

    The package already provides mp_ui_ogg.desktop. A wild guess about FM’s problems is that the mime file doesn’t provide any mime for *.ogg pattern. Only the magics.

    I didn’t find any document for metalayer crawler, but I didn’t try very hard.

    The mlc extracts the meta info from MP3s and writes them to /home/user/.meta_storage (an sqlite db which I believe the MP treats as the “Library”).

  • December 10, 2007 at 9:20 pm
    Permalink

    Awesome, does this also setup the mime type for *.ogv files? (ogg videos new suggested extension).

    Thanks much!

  • December 10, 2007 at 9:30 pm
    Permalink

    Sorry, no *.ogv. I copied the mime types from my /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml and there was only video/x-ogm+ogg for *.ogm.

    Make a bug against ogg-support with proper pointers and we’ll see about that in the next release :)

  • December 11, 2007 at 1:15 am
    Permalink

    Great news! Real ogg support is the one thing I missed on my n800. It’s getting better all the time, thank you!

  • December 12, 2007 at 12:09 am
    Permalink

    Thanks for this! My main use for this is streaming, since several local radio stations stream in OGG format. I’m pleased to find that OGG streaming works in the built in Media Player now, but with the following caveats:

    – I had the same issues as others have described, with Media Player saying “unknown file format”, until I restarted the device.
    – When playing OGG streams the Media Player seems to spend an awfully long time buffering (~60s) before it starts playing. This is contrary to e.g. MP3 streams from the same site.

  • December 12, 2007 at 9:23 am
    Permalink

    I probably could do something to the first issue, if I would know why restarting device helps. I’ll do more debugging later with a fresh installation of 2008.

    About the second issue. I think there’s nothing I can do for that. Just guessing though. I didn’t even try to listen ogg streams over net.

  • December 22, 2007 at 10:07 pm
    Permalink

    Thanks for this release! I’ve just bought an N810 to replace my 770 and was trying to port the mogg package across and then you released this :) All works as expected, although there’s a noticeable delay in playing a track (~3 seconds) v. a ~1 second delay on 2007HE (using mogg and an addition to /usr/share/libmetalayer/metadata_lib.conf). I know that’s probably not a helpful comparison, but just thought I’d throw it out there.

    With the aforementioned 2007HE setup, the mediaplayer in OS2007 detects and sorts my vorbis files correctly (albeit without detecting track length); although I also can’t yet replicate this behaviour using OS2008.

    Anyway, thanks again!

  • February 29, 2008 at 12:40 pm
    Permalink

    I play football. I’m not trying to be a professor. The tests don’t seem to make sense to me, measuring your brain on stuff I haven’t been through in school.

  • July 10, 2008 at 8:10 pm
    Permalink

    I am using OGG Support 0.8 on an N800 with OS2008.

    I keep all my music on a server that is uPNP compatible (i.e. MediaTomb on Linux). I can successful index these and play on my linux laptop using RythmBox.

    With Media Player, I can browse the server but the player doesn’t see any ogg files.

    If I use the File Manager then I can also browse the server and now the ogg files are seen. If I double click on an ogg file the Media Player starts up and plays it.

    What am I doing wrong and how can I get this to work properly, i.e. Media Player browse and open ogg files.

Comments are closed.