New iPods

Jimaroid · Post by **Jimaroid** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:52 pm 0

Video codecs are the single most frustrating thing in existence in computing, I reckon. I have a very frustrating experience with them on the whole. It's always a lottery in whether things work or not. I wish it was all disappeared and fucked off the planet for good.

SORT IT OUT, STEVE!

Governmentyard · Post by **Governmentyard** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:18 pm 0

Mate just called - can't find info on mac site - the Pod classic runs off a hard drive while the nano is flash, yes?

Also - he's got XP without service pack 2 - can he connect his ipod, install drivers, etc, without using itunes which needs SP2?

cheers lads

gumboot · Post by **gumboot** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:21 pm 0

HGFB wrote:
gumboot wrote:This fascinates me. You know that DivX is just re-badged MPEG-4, right? Do you have content where you're not prepared to strip out the DivX headers? Where does stuff like that come from?
TV torrents for most people. Do you have an app that will convert a random divx/xvid file into a format something like this can play without having to do a full transcode?

Depends on the container. If it's AVI then mencoder should be able to do the trick. Command line options along the lines of:

Code: Select all

mencoder input.avi -o output.avi -oac copy -ovc copy -ffourcc XVID

Although, I don't know if XVID is any better. There are dozens of fourccs that all represent MPEG-4 part 2. With the exception of a few tweaks and bugs here and there, they're all interchangeable. The only reason to not support the DivX fourccs is that you haven't paid a licensing fee to them to include their badge on your product. They don't provide any new technology. Just a very expensive badge.

[edit] Gah! Re-read. You're going to need it in MP4 format, aren't you. I don't know, offhand. If you can find a solution that involves using mencoder or ffmpeg to do the transcoding, then you can replace all that encoding crap with arguments that just copy the encoded data straight through. You still have to mess around just as much, but it's faster and lossless.

If you are in a situation where AVI is just fine, all you'd need to do is hex-edit the file to replace the characters 'DIVX' in the appropriate place (near the start) with something else.

<pimp>The chip in the 5G would normally come with software that supports AVI <boast>to a degree of compatibility comparable with ffmpeg</boast>, but some customers choose to do their own, limited, file parsing instead.</pimp>

<snipe>Oh, and it could probably play Flash, too.</snipe>

gumboot · Post by **gumboot** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:26 pm 0

Jimaroid wrote:Video codecs are the single most frustrating thing in existence in computing, I reckon. I have a very frustrating experience with them on the whole. It's always a lottery in whether things work or not. I wish it was all disappeared and fucked off the planet for good.

SORT IT OUT, STEVE!

Steve doesn't care about you. You'll buy your video at the iTunes store, and it'll work, and that's all you need to know.

Sickboy · Post by **Sickboy** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:37 pm 0

Guru-Meditation wrote:

Check the Leaderboards.

Soooo, shall I send you my address then, G-M? Due to current lack of availability, I'll let you off the 'Will Get This The Day...' part.

Early October would be perfectly acceptable.

Guru-Meditation · Post by **Guru-Meditation** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:34 pm 0

Sickboy wrote:Check the Leaderboards.

Soooo, shall I send you my address then, G-M? Due to current lack of availability, I'll let you off the 'Will Get This The Day...' part.

Early October would be perfectly acceptable.

I will check this when I get back home. Just so I know what was your score?

Sickboy · Post by **Sickboy** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:35 pm 0

349-something.

Hit the next gear now. I'll go higher soon.

Guru-Meditation · Post by **Guru-Meditation** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:53 pm 0

Sickboy wrote:349-something. Hit the next gear now. I'll go higher soon.

I should hope so, 400k is certainly possible

Sickboy · Post by **Sickboy** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:01 pm 0

Guru-Meditation wrote:
Sickboy wrote:349-something. Hit the next gear now. I'll go higher soon.
I should hope so, 400k is certainly possible

Yeah, I saw round 2 of that eat-loads-of-ghosts-in-succession but had sort of eased up by then.

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:58 pm 0

Some pictures of an iPod Touch.
http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/001894.html

Yak · Post by **Yak** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:57 pm 0

Apparently Americans are getting them early - they are appearing in shops and online order statuses are changing.

No word of anything like that happening outside the US though.

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 3:47 pm 0

I tried the new Nano out today in an Apple store. It's lovely. It doesn't seem
too big at all. The screen is very sharp, although I'm not convinced I'd watch
video on it as it's very small. The interface maybe felt a little slow but much
better than I'd expected from reports. Over all it's a really nice mp3 player.

I asked about the iPod touch and the salesperson, who turned out to be
the manager, said they'd heard nothing other than the 28th the same date
as the online store says.

Kronos · Post by **Kronos** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 3:55 pm 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote:Some pictures of an iPod Touch.
http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/001894.html

*Kerching* Sold! I think I'll be after one of those beauties when they come out here

matt · Post by **matt** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 7:16 pm 0

Not wanting to piss on any parade here, but I'm in the market for one of these myself.

Screen quality comparison - iPhone vs. iPod Touch:

http://flickr.com/photos/macpublishing/ ... 87/detail/

HGFB · Post by **HGFB** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 7:33 pm 0

For comparison here's a similar screenshot taken on my 30gig Cowon A2. I used the built in screenshot function that initially takes a bmp. I then converted this to a jpg at 96% quality

My LCD brightness setting is at 8/12.