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
 

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
 

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
 

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
 

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)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Thanks a lot working perfectly as it should.
Thanks for your help

BR

Wolfpac

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

I recently updated Panucci to 0.9 but am now having a problem re-opening it once i have closed the application. If i try to open Panucci up again it starts to load but then closes and doesn't let me play anything and doesn't give any errors. the only way to get it to open is to go through Gpodder.

I liked the idea of playlists so added all my unplayed podcasts but could then not see this as i couldn't get back in to panucci without it resetting the playlist.

Is anyone else having this issue or it it by design that this happens. It only seemed to start doing this after the latest update.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

FYI, the Maemo5 links on the site you're taken to by this link do not work :(

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

0.9, is that correct?

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

That's what it says when i go into About when in Panucci. Just checked and it is the Alpha version. There is also a bug opened with the same issue as i am having. I voted for it to add my voice there.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

That's odd, as I know it, 0.3 is the current version in Extras, 0.4 is available but hasn't been put in the repo and 0.5 is being worked on.

Ah, maybe it's a device thing i.e. I have it on the N900

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

0.3.x is the stable version currently in Extras.
0.4 has been the version after that, but nikosapi has ceased development of it (or at least the development progressed too slowly for my taste), so I've picked up from where he left and turned that into what is now 0.9 and will become the next version "really soon now".

As 0.4 has been "forked" from 0.3 before Maemo 5 came around, all the Maemo 5 goodies currently in 0.3.x for Maemo 5 are not all forward-ported to the 0.9.x branch yet, but that's being planned.

No updates against the 0.3.x branch is planned, and 0.9.x will take over once it's more mature. If you have updated to 0.9, you must have Extras-Devel enabled. That's what you signed up for when enabling Extras-Devel - you have read the warnings about unstable software, didn't you? ;) See some posts above in this thread for instructions on how to install the old version.

Only half a week of Uni to go - after that, I should again have more time to spend on these open source projects ;)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Just thought I'd report a problem with 0.4 in case this might affect other versions also. My panucci suddenly crashed and subsequently refused to open. Looks like I'm going to have to revert to 0.3.
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10790

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Just downgraded to 0.3. Still no joy. I now get
# panucci
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/panucci", line 22, in <module>
import dbus
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/__init__.py", line 79, in <module>
import dbus.types as types
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/types.py", line 6, in <module>
from _dbus_bindings import ObjectPath, ByteArray, Signature, Byte,\
ImportError: /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/_dbus_bindings.so: undefined symbol: PyEict_DelItem

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

I am seeing this as well with the latest update to 0.9 from devel, I believe. I can only start it via gPodder.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

This seems to be an error in your python/python-dbus installation. The same error should happen if you run "import dbus" in a Python shell.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Yes, it's a known problem and will be fixed with the next upload. Please be patient and know the warnings about Extras-Devel.

(You should be able to start it from the command line if you really need to - the problem is with the contents of the .desktop file and with the system killing Panucci while it's being initialized.)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Yes, I get the same error. Now to fix it.
I tried "apt-get install python-dbus" as root but I got
"Package python-dbus is not available, but is referenced to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source.

I then tried apt-get install python2.5-dbus. This time it said "python2.5-dbus is already the newest version... set to manually installed.
Running panucci still gives the same error.
If I try to run gpodder I get Warning: python-dbus not found. Disabling D-bus support and some other dbus errors.

apt-get install python2.5-runtime tells me that is also the latest version.
I'm floundering around in the dark here. Should I try to work out how to uninstall and reinstall the whole python thing somehow?

If I have to uninstall panucci/gpodder and start over, how would I do a clean uninstall? I'm hoping that won't be necessary.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Try "apt-get install --reinstall" on the packages mentioned above (python2.5-dbus and maybe some other packages that are related like -runtime or so).

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

That worked great. Everything is back up and running and gpodder has all of the subscriptions still in.

Thanks *VERY* much for taking the time to help. I really appreciate it.

I hope your course is going well. All the best with that.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Great player. I would like to use in conjunction with gPodder, but I noticed that my cpu load is significantly higher using panucci vs. the default media player (~50% @250MHz vs. ~30% @250MHz).

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Suspended my Audible account.

Opened a Barnes & Noble Account.

Purchased audiobooks, downloaded software with purchases to PC and the MP3s were simply transferred to the N900 via the software and 'audible' via Panucci.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

I've testes the new Panucci version from Extra-Devel several days now. I can confirm, Bluetooth Buttons from my car-stereo are not working. Otherwise a great update. :)

I had now to go back to the version 0.3.17 in extras cause I have to drive today 2 hours and with the Bluetooth Buttons it is a lot more safer. I'm eager to see a new release. Great work thp! :)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

I have a question and it is something I've wondered about / has annoyed me about panucci since I started using it on my N800. Panucci has done this for as long as I remember but I've never got round to posing the question.
I often listen to podcasts to put me to sleep and often when I wake the podcast has finished. Once the end of file is reached the play button turns into a folder button which opens the file dialogue. However I normally restart the file by going into the bookmarks dialogue, selecting the start of the file bookmark that is there by default and selecting "jump to" from the menu. This is the quicker than using the folder dialogue or shutting panucci and re-opening the podcast from gpodder both of which return the behaviour of the play button to normal.
After restarting the podcast in this way, I can use the seek bar to scoot to the place I left off listening, however, although the icon on the folder button has changed back to a play symbol, the button still behaves as a file dialogue opener, i.e. not as a play/pause button.
Is this deliberate behaviour? It is not as I would expect but maybe there is a reason for it I am missing.

Apologies if this is an old question. Not a complaint since I have still put in many hours of listening with Panucci

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

I hope not. :)

I had the same problems... but the new version for the N900 from extra devel has this fixed. It stops only the playback and keeps the file open. Exactly like I would expect it: 0.9-alpha1

Sadly it is at the moment not aviable for Diabolo. But perhaps in the future with a new release... (it's still a alpha version)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Oh, OK thanks. That's good.
Apologies, I wasn't clear. I'm not still using panucci on a N800. I do have a N900. I meant I had started using gpodder/panucci on my trusty old N800 a long time ago (and this "feature" has always been present).

Will maybe check out the extras devel release. I suppose it is pretty stable?

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

In my own experience, yes. :D
But I'm not the developer and there is a clear statement: It's a Alpha release!

So don't expect a stable software. From my own experience it feels more stable and finished than the old version from extras. But Bluetooth Buttons are currently not working.
So it's your decision. I missed the Bluetooth implementation and uninstalled the new Alpha, deactivated extra-devel and installed Panucci again to get the old version back. In my opinion it is save enought and worth a try. :)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Thanks, I will try. Seems like it was a good time to ask!

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

After testing the extras-devel panucci for a while I find that it will lock up the N900 if I leave it running (not touching the device i.e. sleeping :)) having finished a podcast.

Touching the screen lights the backlight but the screen remains black and the machine unresponsive, resolvable only by popping the battery.

Have returned to the extras panucci for now and the problem hasn't repeated.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Oh, I have this strange behavior since several days, too. Sometimes my N900 won't wake up, I couldn't turn it off and had to remove the battery. But I wouldn't have Panucci suspected. I thought my device has a ageing phenomena.
After looking closer... at my device pulseaudio keeps sometimes at 22% CPU usage even if I had stoped the audio playback. But this happens not every time. That's strange. :confused:

Currently I'm using Panucci 0.3.17 (because of the great working bluetooth support) - I will keep a lid on that.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

I encountered something similar on my N900 while using Panucci (0.3.17) a few days ago. The podcast I was listening to kept on playing, but the phone responded to nothing else. Headphoned wouldn't stop the playback on disconnecting headphones, but it switched to speakers and back to headphones properly when connecting / disconnecting the headphones. Even long press on power button to power off wouldn't work, I had to pull the battery. I don't have sshd running so I couldn't get in to see what's going on.

I didn't associate it with Panucci then, and it might well have been something completely different. Never seen anything like this before though.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Pretty sure the Panucci alpha is to blame. The problem hasn't repeated since returning to 0.3.17.

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

Hi
Finally got 0.9 to install. And have I missed something - in menu there is now just playlist & about. What about open etc.

Thanks

Scott

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

0.9 iss still in Alpha state. Please deinstall panucci, deactivate Extra-Devel ans install panucci again. :)

Re: Panucci Podcast and Audiobook Player
 

No need to deactivate/activate repositories. You can also install old version directly from terminal:

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