Great utility, Andrew! Works perfect with the You Tube links I have thrown at it, really helps make the 770 more useful. One of the most frustrating things is when I go to a site and can't load a video...now I can :)

So will your converter handle Quicktime videos?

Again, thanks for giving us the use of your server for this fantastic utility...

It handles QuickTime, might be depending on the version. I've just uploaded one of the samples using Sorenson on my Mac and the result will convert.

It's running mplayer from Subversion so it should even handle WMV9 using the prototype code.

About a fifth of the YouTube videos I've tested fail, I've no real clue why.

Making the "you're in a queue" message automatically refresh would be an obvious enhancement. I'm also thinking about email notification about when it's ready, what do you think?

That would be awesome! This is definitely a great tool. Thanks a million. Quick question though. Do you think you could have the converter automatically convert a top 10 list from Google Video and YouTube and have links to each of the converted videos, or would that be too much strain on the server?

The top 10 from both services, complete with thumbnails would indeed be very cool. I look forward to someone producing some code ;-). From a strain-on-the-server point of view, it'd be better to convert them once and make the results available rather than lots of people encoding them all separately.

As for email notification, I'll investigate that later today.

The Flash video oddness seems to be specific to the x64 platform. I'll raise it on the ffmpeg list.

OK, I've downgraded the version of mplayer to 1.0pre8 and previously broken Flash videos now seem to be working.

This will be at the expense of the latest WMV codec work, but I think the FLV support is more important, looking at the usage so far.

Feedback, as ever, welcome.

Cheers,

Andrew

Man, it's popular!!

Please wait

Your video is in the queue, there are currently 16 items in the queue. Please check again shortly.

-- so do I just sit on that page and keep hitting the link or what?

Edit: Maaaaan, what are people converting that takes so long? My YouTube vids zip through! Whatever is ahead of me must be huge! There goes the bandwidth!

Well, we have to contend with other users now...after trying it out on my Windows Mobile Treo 700wx and getting great results, I couldn't keep the secret. I asked Andrew if I could post on TreoCentral and share the site, because WM5 has the same silly Flash limitations as the 770. I didn't want to bombard his server and have him freak out!

Don't worry, it's new and people are trying it out...the queue will go down, just leave that page open and refresh it every once in a while. Good thing there is a 50MB limit...in fact, it might be better to have a smaller limit. I haven't seen many large YouTube videos, most are probably between 2MB-10MB.

So YOU are to blame!! Queue is at 22!! We should NOT have to compete with Treo owners! Let them go elsewhere, dammit.

Of course the queue is now empty.

I'll look at lowering the maximum size if it gets unmanageable, or introducing a "premium" service somehow.

We Treo users are tired of being treated like second-class citizens ;)

Yeah, I spilled the beans...I'm hoping both communities can help to improve the service, I definitely think it has many possibilities...

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

?!!? How does this differ from the Bookmark I added on day one, and how would I use it ? Regular Bookmark doesn't work like that? TnH *where* in YouTube?

If you've ever used bookmarklets in a "normal" web browser it's exactly the same:

1. Add the bookmark to your bookmarks (by tapping and holding on the link on the VidConvert page
2. Go to a YouTube page.
3. Click on the newly added bookmark and the current YouTube video will be automatically submitted to the VidConvert queue.

This is supposed to be easier than bringing up the URL bar, copying the YouTube URL, going to VidConvert and pasting it.

HTH,

Andrew

Bah! I've got JILLIONS of bookmarks. I see now how it is supposed to work. Will let you know when I've tried it.

That's what folders are for ;-)

Hmmmm... how about that email option, eh?

And what do I do if, like now, I am at the Apple Store, have converted something, and find the file is too big to upload to myself via YahooMail?

I'm going to email myself the URL of the page with the converted vid and hope that does it!

Want to d/l it directly onto the 770 later.

Yes, the links stay valid for around 24 hours (actually probably a little longer depending on the conversion) so it's perfectly valid to email them to yourself (or anyone else for that matter!)

Email notification is possible, but to be honest, I've got more important things to be doing at the moment. Given the general lack of feedback and from looking at the logs, it seems only a few people are using it on an ad-hoc basis. At the moment, I'm forced to conclude it's not worth investing further in. Of course, if it's actually worth something to people, they could make a donation to help cover the investment of my time, bandwidth, disk space etc.

In the mean time, you could bookmark the results page if there's a long queue and check it later - as I said, they stay valid for over 24 hours.

Hope that helps,

Andrew

Thanks for your effort, Andrew. I wish *Nokia* would bloody do this! Hey, Aris, send him some bucks to cover your shame!! (Does *anyone* use Flickr from Tableteer? Geez...! Talk about lame...)

Thanks :-)

I should also have said, the results stay valid for over 24 hours from when they're produced - not when they're submitted.

Andrew, What you've done is great...thankyou. It's a shame a donation hasn't been made, i guess thats the world we live in though ay? We all want something for nothing! I don't even have a 770 yet....doing ALOT of research before i buy one but i've now made up my mind and i'm popping over to http://shop@nokia.co.uk to order one...TTFM!

JonBoy
P.S...once i use your service i'll pop over a few £'s...don't deal in $'s im afraid!

Thank JonBoy, $s have to be converted to £s for my bank account anyway, and a few pounds are worth more than a few dollars ;-)

Cheers,

Andrew

D'OH!...me and my mouth!

Re: Media Convert site
 

Any chance you could lead me to your scripts so I could set up a conversion server myself?

Re: Media Convert site
 

Responded to your email.