Any forums I should be looking at for feedback?

I don't know about others, but I think the max file size could be lowered quite a bit...

Once the newness wears off a bit, it'll be fine...

So Andrew, are most people using the converter for YouTube, Google Video, or file uploads? Can you tell what is going thru the server? Also, when someone starts uploading a file, does the queue wait for that file to be finished uploading and hold everything up until then, or does it go on to the next task?

Mostly YouTube so far, with a noticeable percentage of Google Video, a handful of other random URLs and a few uploads.

Uploading a file won't block the conversion, however downloading and converting a web-based video is considered a single block, to prevent impacting other uses of the box.

I might revisit the exact process if it gets a little unwieldy.

Cheers,

Andrew

OK, here are some instructions:
1. go to https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=54 and download mplayer_1.0pre8-maemo.5_armel.deb
2. in the file manager find this file and double click on it, it will launch application manager that will ask you some confirmation and will install mplayer on your Nokia 770
3. download some *.flv file from youtube and put it on your MMC card
4. in the application start menu find 'MPlayer' in 'extra' category and start it
5. find your *.flv file in the list and double click on it
6. enjoy
7. report bugs and feature requests here: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ead.php?t=2405

Well, if you want to play youtube videos, it is probably better to watch them directly without transcoding. They already have a poor quality and transcoding reduces it even more.

But as a generic and universal solution, transcoding web service is a great thing.

Well, you see, developing a good video player which supports a lot of video codecs decently is very hard. It is the work that can be done by very highly qualified (and highly paid) professionals and requires a lot of time to develop. If you check ffmpeg (the engine used my mplayer), it was developed for many years and involved dozens or even hundreds of people working on it. The costs can be reduced if you use already existing solutions, but Nokia 770 is a new device. It is hard to be pioneers and right now Nokia 770 software is not so advanced as the software on competing platforms. It just needs to catch up and you should understand this. I not, this device is just not for you. But a good thing about Nokia 770 is that it is based on linux, so it can use linux software after it gets ported. MPlayer is one of such examples. I just wonder why Nokia decided to start making their own video player from scratch instead of just porting existing linux solutions (though it uses gstreamer framework, but most of video and audio codecs in it are non open source)?

Thanks for the instructions. I didn't know it was GUI (it is, isn't it?). I will be getting around to this tomorrow (I hope). Will report back. Thanks again.

Holy cow. It works!

Chose a small sample YT vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqR78JniB0Y

d/led via Video Downloader and it played as .flv!

Hmmm... only seems to see vids on MMC, not Internal too?

No drop-down menu? Must hit Back Arrow key to quit while playing a vid?

Still, thanks!!

2mike if you follow this thread http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...5&postcount=84
you will be able to skip the download step. I have included a file to paste mimetypes from.

I hope it helps others, but I bailed when I saw:

>>>First, become root.

Once mplayer's matured, it'd be trivial to produce a deb of the MIME-type modification now that 2006 OS installs as root within /.

BTW, I've added a bookmarklet to VidConvert: tap and hold in Opera and choose "Add to bookmarks..."; you can then hit it from within the bookmarks when you're on a YouTube or Google Video page to save copy & pasting.

It makes using YouTube that much simpler.

Comments, as ever, welcome.

Cheers,

Andrew