maemo.org - Talk - Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

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Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

Is anyone else finding the performance of Panucci poorer under PR1.2 especially when they have other apps running in background over the Internet?

I've had to abandon Panucci in favour of the built-in media player as listening to podcasts via Gpodder is almost impossible. The audio pops and skips almost every 10-15 seconds sometimes and it's unbearable. I much prefer Panucci as the slider is far more finger friendly and simply works better, normally.

I thought PR1.2 was bringing some performance improvements to this kind of application, but in my case it seems to be the reverse :-(

**Update** just installed 0.3.13 and all seems much better now, many thanks.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

Quote:

Originally Posted by thp (Post 694612)

This is a bug. Please report it at http://bugs.maemo.org/ where it can easily be seen by the developers when they are working on the project - thanks!

Reported for both Gpodder and Panucci.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

I'm up and running on tha gpodder.net/gpodder/panucci-combo, and it's awsome!!

But I ran into problems when I subscribed to this podcast: http://podcasts.nikonians.org/index.xml

Some of the episodes (the "image doctors"-ones) are in .m4a-format. Panucci opens this fines and plays them - but I guess there's stuff embedded in the file thats confusing panucci - because the fm-radio(!!) is launced, appearently to show this content. The result is that panucci stutters during like **** during playback... Is there a sollution to this, or is . m4a simply not supported?

-skrotnisse

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

I think I spoke to soon with my update yesterday saying that the latest release fixed all things for PR1.2

It's still not perfect and still stutters occasionally but nowhere near as much as it did before. My main gripes are that network activity such as Skype connections cause stuttering and any alerts such as email/sms cause the audio to complete divert to the messages so I miss whatever is being said for the time it takes for the phone to play the tune. On this issue, I did notice that the default N900 player now seems to set the phone into a mode where all alerts change to a very short and quiet beep, rather like the signal that you have a second caller trying to contact you in a voice call - plus at no point does it cause the audio file being played to be interrupted.

If the built-in player had better support for resuming, head-phone pause/resume and a decent slider I'd be back to it again.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

Quote:

Originally Posted by thp (Post 520974)

A workaround for 0.3.x that you might or might not like is to merge all that small files from the CDs into one big file. Look for "MP3 joiner", "MP3 merge tool", etc.. on Google.

Quote:

Originally Posted by thp (Post 520974)

Even on a Desktop computer I find it much more pleasant to have a slider for the whole show/audiobook/mix than to have to navigate through a playlist of many small files.

Splitting audiobooks in many small files is really just a relic of the way CDs worked back in the day (i.e. no direct "seeking" with a UI and a slider, but rather a very easy way to switch between tracks). Where in 1994 you had to remember "disc 4, track 7", today Panucci remembers "107 minutes and 39 seconds" for you ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by thp (Post 520974)

And no, not even the "chapters" of books are a reason to split audiobooks into multiple files. There are ID3v2 chapters for MP3 files: http://www.id3.org/id3v2-chapters-1.0 and I know that there is a way to have chapter marks for MP3 files. Haven't seen anything for .ogg yet. Chapters in files just lack the support in players and encoders most of the time, but the format is specified and some sources already use it.

Due to the fact that Panucci resumes files at the position that you stopped them, there are no problems with extremely long files (and I myself make use of that feature when listening to two-hour-long DJ mixes or podcasts which are also often longer than one hour).

I have been wondering if pannuci is the solution to my audiobook maemo needs and it's comforting to hear you saying this, as this is what I have always done. When dealing with audiobooks for a long time you come to loathe having multiple files, if nothing else because they are messy in your directory structure. Also you want to be able to navigate across the whole audio, and preferably not deal with playlists. But I wanted to ask if these features and processes you are describing are actually supported in Pannuci...

Specifically, the problem is that books can get up to 70+ hours. Still, in an age where we throw around 700meg files for low res movies, very large audio files are a viable option, and indeed the best one IMHO for dealing with long audio books. In order for it to be worth the trouble to convert them this way, you HAVE to have the chapter data from the filenames and ID3 tags of the original files preserved within the long files. This way it is like zipping all the files up into one long file that can be played directly and not lose any valuable track information.

As far as I knew, m4b was the only format that could preserve chapter data so I spent almost a month last year in foobar2000 sorting and converting 150 gig of audiobooks (in random small files) into 30 gig of single huge 20kbps m4b files for each title. The most extreme case was an entire podcast series' with almost 200 podcasts. So 2 hours is not a long file, even 15 hours isn't really that long compared to (the most logical way to store) say Atlas Shrugged, the Bible, a TTC lecture series, or an stored podcast series. I've gotten the impression Panucci was really designed more with short (hourish) podcasts in mind

Here are my issues and concerns:
1. Since panucci is an audiobook player, why does it open m4a but not m4b audio files? It is the same encoding as m4a I think and infact some m4bs (that arent too long) can be renamed to m4a and they open and play in panucci. Seems like as easy as changing a function call in a case block for m4b files, to just play them like m4a.

2. You mention that chapters are no excuse to keep small files apart, but does Panucci support chapters? My renamed m4b files do not preserve their chapter data when opened in pannuci. Even forgetting m4bs, I would prefer to put them in this ID3v2 mp3 format, but still I see nothing in the interface to support chapter skipping, only short and long time skipping.

3. What is the deal with panucci and huge files? Given that huge in the scope of an audiobook player means 70+ hours. I have had issues with my device consistently crashing before it can begin playing files bigger than about 5 hours. Granted these are m4bs renamed to m4a, so this might be part of the issue.
I really think a serious audiobook solution should be able to handle audio files nearly up to a gig, or upwards of 100 hours. Could it, rather than loading the whole file into memory, just load blocks for the next (lets say) 5 minutes, and thus make the total file size irrelevant? Maybe that is already what it does...

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

Also it would be really cool have a panucci headphones deamon, that automatically launches panucci at your last file and place whenever the headphones are plugged in. Because personally that's all I ever use headphones for.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesbarrett (Post 713852)

This is a very specific use case, and probably wouldn't warrant inclusion in mainline Panucci. It's quite easy to write a quick Python script that watches the headphone port for connections and start Panucci and then let this script run in the background :)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesbarrett (Post 713848)

Specifically, the problem is that books can get up to 70+ hours. Still, in an age where we throw around 700meg files for low res movies, very large audio files are a viable option, and indeed the best one IMHO for dealing with long audio books. In order for it to be worth the trouble to convert them this way, you HAVE to have the chapter data from the filenames and ID3 tags of the original files preserved within the long files. This way it is like zipping all the files up into one long file that can be played directly and not lose any valuable track information.

Split it into chunks of 6 hours or so - that should work. If not, you might find the new/upcoming Panucci version useful: It has a proper playlist management UI. Oh, and don't forget that Panucci is open source. You can grab the source code, implement the functionality, and submit patches to the maintainer. I'm mostly working on proper Podcast support in Panucci at the moment, not so much audiobook-related stuff.

There's a dedicated audiobook app that might better fit your needs: nQa Audiobook Player.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

Hello to all,

I have a issue, used Panucci before very often and liked a lot thanks for that.
Already had in the beginning a issue, that I installed Panucci and it would not start and got the hint to install gpodder aswell.
Now after Updating the Firmware of my device to PR1.2 and restore my backup Panucci does not work anymore.
So I reinstalled and removed it several times but this does not help. Also reinstalled Gpooder and anything.
Only way to start Panucci is from Xterminal, which gives me the following output.
But then panucci does not recognise my playlists I made with Panucci even :)
I use the newest version downloaded via application Manager today as well for a final test.

Any hints or ideas?

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player

You are not the only one with problems:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=29583&page=7

It is easy to revert back to the old working version.

Type as a root in terminal:
apt-cache policy panucci (to show available versions)
apt-get install panucci=0.3.17 (to install)