Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Coming from Windows and some experience with Mac, I have some huge peeves with Open Source software and platforms.

For example, I'm having issues with Canola playing videos and thought I converted them right. They stutter and barely show a frame. So I'm about to try the Nokia Internet Tablet Converter. Here is where my peeves begin;

Prior to that, I saw Tablet Encode, which on the page says "requires Perl and Mencoder".

WHY DONT YOU BUNDLE IT?! My first peeve. Imagine if you were on any other OS and it said "oh btw you need that before you can use this". How many users would it frustrate?

Another peeve is lack of documentation. Canola's site has nothing I could find about troubleshooting any issues, what video format/bitrate/size to use (I had to search for that and found info at Maemo.org).

And lastly, the fact that Maemo is being inconsistent with me -- I have to unplug the N800 from my PC in order for Canola to see the internal card. Why?

I've seen such lack of consistency and thoroughness in so many OS apps it's really upsetting. Don't get me wrong, I admire the developers and the apps out there but god damn :mad:

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Unlike Windows, most flavors of Linux have everything in repositories and when installing something, it automatically resolves its dependencies in order to run. Thats why it is not bundled. Perl and MEncoder (part of MPlayer) are just few clicks away. If Tablet Encode was in some distro repository, it would have installed the needed software for you. In Windows though, there's no such ecosystem, so you're on your own.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Ahhhhh I see.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

jself,
I am a mac user too.
I believe you just have to adapt to a new device and a new environment. It would probably be the same with any other device. Actually it is not Maemo or the tablet that you should blame for this ...

1/ Canola
You say you encoded the videos properly ... but are you sure ? What guidelines did you follow ? Moreover, do you know that if Canola is very good for music, it's not the best videoplayer ?

2/USB & Card
When you plug the tablet to your PC, it behaves like a USB card reader : it mounts the cards on the PC. As far as I know, it would be the same with any O.S. : when a drive is mounted for one system, it cannot be mounted at the same time for another one. It's the same when you plug your camera to your PC : you cannot have the memorycard mounted on the PC ant, at the same time use it to take pictures.

I tested most of the PDA systems (Palm, WinMo, Symbian, Newton OS, Win C.E. , Qtopia ...) ... believe me, Maemo is the best.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Internet Tablet Video Converter worked great and the videos play fine in Canola. I'd used a different app prior, keeping the videos within spec - that was the problematic conversion.

I understand now, thanks.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

I started a thread in Multimedia section to tell that we can have better video quality than with the Tablet Video Converter ... when you have time, if you're interested, take a look!

And don't forget that even if you're a young and gutsy new user ... we can help ya to discover ... that you still have a lot to understand !

(By the way, you can call me "mAAAAAAster")
:cool:


...
...
What ? You say i'm a noob too ? ... huh ... yes, but you can at least call me "master", OK ?:D

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Check this (mentions mostly mplayer, but applies to canola as well):

http://wiki.maemo.org/Video_encoding

Also, the single most common encoding error I've seen around is keeping the 48000Hz audio. Make absolutely sure you convert 48K to 44K1. The difference is night and day.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

this thread about videoencoding is rather old and innacurate ...
We can have better !

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Thank you, totololo, for your offer to update the wiki! ;) :)

You'll notice that I've already incorporated your findings into that article. Look for the paragraph under Media Player Limitations starting, "Some recent tests have found..."

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

My main concern with OSS is that the documentation is sparse if not non-existent for some applications. It ends up being like the old Colossal Cave adventure game--you have to experiment and guess to even find out what the rules are (or compare notes with others!).

Some ports (like Gnumeric) still have major problems in the submenus when trying to do formatting. The "ports" therefore are not complete until all bugs are wrung out from every routine. OSS often is not structured enough in the source code to make this an easy task to convert from a PC to a Hildonized interface.

As my N800 still has occasional "pausing" problem, I suspect that one or more of the routines used by an application are not good Maemo "neighbors" (brings back memories of Windows 3.1 and how some programs would not play nice together in the sandbox!).

Still...I think that OSS should be encouraged and nurtured otherwise we'll have big "M" telling us how things should be done and Genuine Advantage phoning home every hour on the hour.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

that's very interesting, I didn't know that. in fact, I kind of assumed it'd be the other way round, as you see on the Zaurus its sound chip runs at a native 48kHz and its cpu struggles when mplayer tried to convert sound as well as video on the fly.

I'll tweak my video encoder/ripping program and see what benefits I get in terms of CPU usage.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

I went to find out what the sampling rates supported are and found a quoted spec which said variable:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=103015&postcount=5

Since DVDs are 48kHz, and CDs 44.1kHz, then I'd suggest it's better to stick to those rates to avoid mangling the sound. Suggesting resampling everything to 44kHz would reduce the size of the sound file a bit, reduce the data rate for playback a bit, but isn't going to help quality at all - you're better off tweaking the video compression for best results!

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Sorry, but no, NO and NO.

Try it out please. The post you are quoting is way outdated. There is a day and night difference. I'm not kidding. It's not the data rate, but the downsampling process that kills the performance. Also the file size is defined most often (i.e. mp3, ac3) by the bitrate, and not the sampling rate (128kbit is 128kbit regardless of the sampling rate).

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

In the Windows world there is one desktop environment at a time to which all aps are designed to work with. At least that's MS plan which was foiled by the abomination called Vista that has kept users on XP. In the Linux world there are multiple window environments like Gnome and KDE for example. Each of these environments has there own set of libraries which lend a common feel to aps that use them. There are aps like OpenOffice and Firefox that are windows environment and even OS agnostic. The tablet has its own window environment to optimize use with it's hardware platform. Some aps that run on the tablet also run on Linux desktops. The GPE set of PIM aps is a good example. When we mix applications from different windowing environments they will run but will have a different look and feel -- inconsistency you noted. My personal preference on the desktop is Gnome which is used by Ubuntu, my Linux distrobution of choice.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

This belongs more to the desktop software than mobile, but the thread is interesting.

Could you provide examples of good OSS applications with bad documentation? Then it would be great if you could provide a closed source alternative with better documentation. And how much you have to pay for it.

Maybe this is a too blind assertment, but I think OSS applications documentation can match the documentation of free of charge proprietary software. It makes sense that a piece of software costing dozens or hundreds of €€€ provide much better documentation. Still, you have examples like OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, etc where even the basic documentation is good, and you can buy printed manuals and training books if you wish.