[PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

I'd like to pre-announce Qt Tablet Encoder (or QTE, pronounced as cutie), which is a media conversion tool geared towards tablets.

A short preview is available no longer present available again at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBJM0o7j4Rw

EDIT: Our trigger happy friends at youtube removed the video. The vimeo flash upload applet consistently fails on me. So, looking for a video side that might not freak out on an (gasp) open source media conversion tool demo.

EDIT2: Video reinstated. We'll see if it stays on :)

I'd like to hear your comments and suggestions. Until then, in the spirit of pre-announcing I'm going to pre-answer some of your questions

- Yes, the dog ate the end of clip. Nothing serious is missing, just the answer to life, the universe and everything.
- It's in Qt4. I like Qt.
- It's completely written in Python. I like Python.
- I know about tablet-encode, knots and alike, and they're all great, but not quite what I needed, a parallelized, quick, clean and desktop integrated solution for ALL media.
- I know it has big buttons. A possibility is running this UI on the tablet as a remote front-end so you could 'request' converted stuff to your tablet (not just uPnP, but images, books, and other goodies).
- The demo uses a mplayer/mencoder backend, but it's pretty detached so you could fit in any backend you want. This is also how I plan on using this to convert images, sound, books, you name it.
- I develop on Linux, but it could be made to work on Windows and MacOS X with minimal effort - it doesn't even have binaries afterall, so the only question is the availability of the backends.
- I didn't cheat, I really detect the tablet model and location via USB descriptors
- I didn't cheat, the live preview live shows live recompression live output. Live.
- Made with WingIDE from http://www.wingware.com . They gave me license as an OSS developer, so they deserve the plug.
- It's not ready for prime time yet, if I released it today, it might burn your house down, make your cat explode and drive your girlfriend crazy (not necessarily in that order). Patience.
- Sorry about my squeaky-English, it's my third language, still working on it.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Wow! That looks great! Thanks!!

Unfortunately I've remained a Windows user. Were it not for that, and your warning about the cat, I'd want to use it right away.

BTW, your written English is flawless and, but for an accent that doesn't hinder understanding you at all, your spoken English is practically flawless, too.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Looks great! Looks like you have put a real effort into it. If you get this working on OS X, I'd be happy to test it.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

It looks good! One question, though... I noticed you were running KDE3. Would I be right in presuming, then, that your app is written in Qt3? Or is it just themed to match your system?

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

I believe one of the benefits of QT (and Python) is that they're pretty much cross-platform now. You'll just need QT libraries installed in Windows as well

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

EDIT: Our trigger happy friends at youtube removed the video. The vimeo flash upload applet consistently fails on me. So, I'm looking for a video side that might not freak out on an (gasp) open source video conversion tool demo. If you know about one, speak up.

Thanks. I read/write in English a lot, but rarely ever talk.

It's in Qt4, but Qt really tries to make it appear as close to native apps as you have noticed - a KDE3 theme in my case.

Correct. A windows or mac porting process would mostly be just checking what of the required libraries/backends should be bundled (the only section that might need platform specific tweaking is the device detection).

The application itself would run from the same files if qt and python are present. Thus, you wouldn't even *have* a separate win/linux/mac download, except if you want a native installer for it.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

The video still plays for me, here in the UK, fine. :). And it seems like an awesome app!

And, why apologise about your English? It really is normal and I bet I couldn't speak Serbian as well as you speak English.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Hm, must have been temporary, I checked from my tablet and desktop (different providers), and both said video is not available. We'll see if it's just a glitch in the youtube matrix.

Well, when listening back my own text it didn't sound that good (all those it's not pronounced like that, you mumble, too much 'OK' and 'soo..' to fill up the thought buffer), but I guess you could file it all under perfectionism :) BTW My native is Hungarian, I just live in Serbia (that's how English gets to be my third language). You can never talk enough languages if you're from around here :)

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

A question for the general public - what sort of stuff do you have on your desktop and needs some sort of conversion to make convenient on your NIT ? Stuff I have so far (most of it already implemented):

doc, docx, odt, sxw -> pdf or html
avi/mov/dvd -> scaled/recompressed avi
ftp or streamed video (youtube incl) -> avi
streamed audio -> mp3
tv tuner -> avi
flac, ogg -> mp3
oversize jpg/tif/raw -> display sized jpg

Anything you fancy and I don't have here ? Don't be shy !

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Hmm, what you have covers it mostly. Though for the oversized image, can you keep into account aspect ratio? It would come in handy if the image is horizontal versus vertical.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Sure, already you can control aspect (keep, ignore, crop), brightness/contrast, and compression quality. I did consider rotation, too, but on tablets I don't think it's an issue so dropped it for now. My current 'todo' for the images backend is watermark, flip/mirror and grayscale.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Oh I have an idea. Will this have to be done over USB? If so, maybe have it so you could do it over SSH. Or some other method like outputting to a folder so a user could send it over themself over SCP. I know that not everything will work (like auto-detect).

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

By default it outputs to a folder. If you do 'detect' it will try to find the mounted device (or SD card). SSH on linux is easy (through gnomevfs or kioslaves), but I have no idea how to do kioslaves style ssh stuff on Windows or MacOS (except for calling winscp externally which is ugly).

EDIT: Possibly doable on windows and mac via Paramiko (http://www.lag.net/paramiko/ ). I'll get back on this.

For over-the-air conversions I originally planned to use the same app which would just signal to the instance on the desktop and then just stream/copy it over internally - less overhead than SSH and no background daemon needs to be running on either the tablet or the desktop. We'll see about that one.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Very interesting! Do you mind listing your app at http://maemo.org/downloads/PC/ as soon as you feel itś ready?

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Sure, as soon as I have something close to alpha quality I'll put it up there.

On a side note, can you help me with with regard to where to look or who to ask for the MAC address ranges of different NITs (respond in private if it's "classified" :) ) ? It would be far more elegant for local network autodetection than portscanning for ssh connection strings.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Well, it seems like you have a pretty GOOD handle on it. I like your sense of humor... as you've conveyed (in English!) :D

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

42

Oh, crap. Did I ruin the surprise?

Seriously, though, this looks great. Can't wait for a release! Hmmm... now I just need to come up with some obscure file type for you to try to implement ;)

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

attila77,

Impressive demo !
You seem to have thought of most things to give a good work flow.

A thought for possible future expansion : ?
Conversion US<>European video standard ?
Conversion Interlaced<>Non-interlaced video ?

Good video editing programs have plugins (of varying quality) for these things,
but if it were possible to integrate such functions with your intuitive general-conversion-interface,
amateur/semi-pro video people would, I think, love it.

Another idea :
When I (in some future) convert LPs, tapes & CDs to computer files, I would like two outputs,
one high quality and one smaller sized for portable use
(unless by that time the smaller size would not be needed).

My N810 has
WLAN MAC address: 00:1D:6E:9B:XX:XX
Bluetooth address: 00:1D:6E:9D:XX:XX

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

The de-interlacing option is a nice catch ! US/European I don't quite get - your best bet is NOT to convert frame rates as you can view both on the tablet equally well.

I think profiles fit this purpose nicely. And of course I can add a generic 'Desktop computer' as an output device to accomodate higher bitrate profiles.

And, when you mention LP, Tape, I see I don't have direct audio as an input option - another nice catch ! :)

Thanks !

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Right !!
But I was thinking that your pgm could be a help for video editing
when you want output > DVD (/VHS).

Your converter looks like a good tool for packaging edited video in any (?) required format.
Low priced video editors are often limited in that respect.

. . . just a thought for future expansion.

( EDIT:
Your Demo looked like a really good framework for a general purpose conversion tool. )

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Any chance it can handle *.Tivo files? Tivo slaps on some header info and changes the extension from .MPEG. I use a program called 'Direct show Dump' to strip it back down to Mpeg, then run through Nokia's Encoder.


I assume I can run it in puppy Linux, It will just take more time to figure out than I am willing to put into it this month. I don't know Linux well (where files come from and go). I'll give it a try, but don't know when.

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Could you point me to a .tivo file you think is representative ? Basically, if ffmpeg or mplayer (the www.mplayerhq.hu one, not the windows media player) can read it, you should be OK.

Also, don't worry about the linux thing. I managed to dig up an old copy of XP that came with my laptop which I can use in an emulator - and that should be enough for at least the packaging part. So that's linux+windows support at release. Mac packaging volunteers needed !

Re: [PRE-ANNOUNCE]Qt Tablet Encoder
 

Question: I'm still new so please forgive this question if it sounds crazy. But is there a way to do all the converting on the Nokia N900. Reason being I downloaded a bit torrent and wasn't able to play it as the media player didn't support the file, so wondering if this program would allow to take the downloaded file on my N900 and convert on the N900 so I wouldn't have to use my laptop at all. I'm trying my best to get rid of my laptop, haha. Now only if the N900 could directly connect to my external hard drive and cd burner that would be the icing on the cake to really be close to get rid of the laptop.