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Subject: Re: Enqueing all types.

Re: Enqueing all types.

From: Neon John <johngd_at_bellsouth.net>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 21:58:32 -0500

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:05:53 -0500, "TP Diffenbach" <rockbox_at_diffenbach.org>
wrote:

>John,
>
>Can you get your mom to play a .cfg gfile before playing a book playlist?

No. I've tried. She had a small stroke last year and since then has not been
able to deal with new complex tasks. I had to work with her a bit to get her
able to scroll through the playlist selections. Strokes are strange things.
She's otherwise perfectly normal and of above average condition for someone
that old. It's just that the part of her brain that handles memorizing new
complexities quit working.

>
>If not, I assume that audio-books have a much lower bitrate than music?

yes, I downsample everything to 32kb/sec. Most rips are at 64kb. I have
found that there is very little practical degradation going from one to the
other. downsampling allows me to load twice as many at a time which saves me
some work. I can say reliably that all books I deal with will be 64kb or
less.

>We
>could do a private build for your mom that arbitrarily cranked the treble
>and killed the bass if the bitrate were, oh, less than 96kbps?

That's a thought. Seems like that would complicate the whole mess with yet
another branch to deal with over the long term. Another problem is that not
all book rips are crap. Most rips from CD are fine. It's the rips from
library tapes that tend to come out the worst. Some have essentially no
content above about 600 hz.

If I have the ability to play a cfg file in the play list I can sample the
book a few times, figure out which config is appropriate and include it in
that particular playlist.

I have a little batch file that is little more than "dir *.mp3 /b |sort
>playlist.m3u" that creates the playlist from the contents of the book
directory. It would take me maybe 10 seconds to vi the list and stick in a
config entry at the top. maybe even extend the batch file to receive the
config file name on the command line and do it all automatically.

John
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se [mailto:owner-rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se]On
>Behalf Of Neon John
>Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 6:18 PM
>To: rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
>Subject: Re: Enqueing all types.
>
>
>On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 09:51:17 -0500, "TP Diffenbach" <rockbox_at_diffenbach.org>
>wrote:
>
>>Easy. When an mp3 is loaded, read it's associated cfg file, if any. To
>>associate cfg files to mp3s, we could:
>> look for a .cfg in the same directory with the same file name as the mp3,
>
>I think we're overcomplicating a very simple idea: when the playlist
>interpreter comes to a .cfg file, "play" it just like a music file. KISS.
>That will address the major of the need for this facility.
>
>Dealing with shuffle can be done one of three ways. Method 1 is to ignore
>.cfg files when in shuffle mode. Conceptually, executing a config file at
>some random time makes no sense. An in-line config would normally be
>inserted
>when the play list is to be played linearly. This would certainly be easy
>to
>program - just check the mode flag and ignore the playlist entry if in the
>shuffle mode.
>
>Method 2 is to execute the cfg whenever it is encountered. That makes sense
>to us control freaks who want absolute control over the device procedure.
>"If
>I don't want a config to execute in shuffle, then by God, I'll take it out"
>mode of thought.
>
>Method 3 (my preference) is to have another config flag to tell the
>interpreter whether or not to execute the cfg in shuffle mode.
>
>This feature may not seem very important to you younger folks but it is
>vital
>for the elderly like my mom. She simply cannot comprehend the meaning of
>things like config files (or "files" for that matter) or overloaded keys.
>Many audio books are encoded so poorly that to be understandable the bass
>must
>be cranked all the way down and the treble all the way up. Music, of
>course,
>sounds like unmitigated crap at those settings. The current situation
>effectively precludes my mom from taking advantage of the huge storage on
>her
>Jukebox. I have to be there to change from music to book setting.
>
>I would love to have the feature for my benefit too. It would let me move
>from book to music transparently, only having to select the appropriate play
>list.
>
>Please consider these thoughts before either blowing off this request or
>over-complicating the feature.
>
>John
>---
>John De Armond
>johngdDONTYOUDARE_at_bellsouth.net
>http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/o/johngd/
>Cleveland, Occupied TN

---
John De Armond
johngdDONTYOUDARE_at_bellsouth.net
http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/o/johngd/
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Received on 2003-12-20

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