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MP3 Player - The Be Way
shyster writes "Be has created a prototype mp3 player that puts all other hack jobs to shame. Using an Intel 810E chipset with a Celeron-400MHz processor, and relying on BeOS's wonderful file system (where attributes are stored with the files) for database search capabilities, this thing really makes BeOS look good, as well as emphasizes it's audio/video capabilities. They don't plan on making this thing themselves, but rather customizing and branding the OS for OEM partners to place in their own hardware solutions. This kind of approach should allow for some differences between devices, such as having a CD-RW, DVD drive, touchscreen LCD display, etc. The other great thing about this is that it's networked.
Check out the full story here."
If the RIAA were even vaguely more sophisticated than the pack of Neanderthals with JDs that they are, this is the sort of thing they'd be spending their money on.
As a collective organization representing the recording industry, they could be shooting impulse music purchases into the stratosphere by embracing and supporting appliances like this. They could be working on standards, encouraging hardware and software manufacturers, generating consumer interest. Just imagine - You're listening to something you like, and instantly you can choose to buy songs that are (A) liked by the same people who like the current song, (B) listed as inspiration by the band that recorded the current song, (C) anything else clever people can imagine. They could - gasp - look forward for a change.
But no, it is not to be. Instead they are going to waste their time and further alienate consumers by focusing on low-return, antipathy-generating initiatives like pay-per-listen recordings and Quixotic lawsuits against software that courts can't touch.
Which is why I think they are on the way out. One of these days some other upstart organization - perhaps another industry group with an eye to expanding its constituency - is going to make the case to the big recording companies that the club they're sending checks to is doing nothing but hurting their interests.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
well technically the "index" (i assume you're talking about the Sherlock index) on a MacOS volume is stored in a separate file. the other difference from BFS is that the index isn't automatically updated everytime a file is changed. instead, it's more of a hack, where Sherlock's "scheduler" runs at midnight (default) and updates the day's changes in the index file. BFS does all of this behind the scenes and in real-time, along with many other niceties (such as storing attributes along with the files as mentioned in the article).
so really what they're saying is correct, though misleading. they make it sound as though you can't do the same thing with MacOS. you can of course, it's just not as elegant a solution.
i was a big Be fan a back a few years ago but i gave up on them (especially after their "Apple screwed us" FUD when they dropped Mac support). i'll stick with my Mac, with some real applications and enough niceties for my taste. besides, i always liked NeXT-Step, and i'll get to use once again, but on my G3s! :)
- j
Ignore the Amiga style windows decorations it has at the moment, what should be more interesting is the following:
- It's Open Source. Shares that in common with Linux, so neither has that advantage over the other
- It also has a 64 Bit Journaled Filesystem, and will have file Attributes. Exactly the same as BeOS (Although it is not BFS, natch)
- It is actually fairly small. Certainly smaller than Linux, BeOS etc. Can't compare it to BeAI though, they're two diferent things
- It has great potential as a "Media OS" as well. It doesn't use X for a start, which is always a good thing if you want to do things like video...
- It's just cool.
O.K, it may have less applications than BeOS now, but there is no reason why AtheOS can't find itself finding market share not just on the desktop, but also the embeded market, in the future.This is all IMHO of course, but it does have most of the advantages being touted here.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Not so far. In fact, Be's deadness is so complete that its doubtful that a free, GPL'd BeOS could even attract mindshare at this point.
Be is simply the next Amiga. People will be playing with Be ten years from now. At least none of the Amiga advocates try to convince you that its going to take over any market - they're a happy clan of hobbyists. I suggest Be advocates adopt this mentality if they want to salvage any dignity.
One problem: what major OEM is using BeOS solutions?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Although it sounds cool, and although Be may inherently have some database functionality that makes this kind of thing rather elegant and intuitive from a developer point of view....
HOw is this, as a commercially viable product, any better than others? Certainly not because it's based on BE. Most consumers don't care what it's based on. Do you know what OS your sony dvd player runs? Do you care?
Archiving mp3 information is trivial whether you have a filesystem that lends itself well to this or not....
Yes, actually people have adopted Be, and the Slashdot users who don't sit around in front of computers all the time may well have been to a theatrical show or amusement attraction whose audio is being run by Level Control Systems' BeOS-based gear. It's been out for years, has won several major industry awards... you can "see" it on Broadway ("Ragtime," "Fosse"), Las Vegas (Cirque de Soleil, both shows), and in odder places (Disney's Cirque de Soleil, the MGM Indiana Jones show, the Sony Metreon in San Francisco).
Adamation's systems run the ZEUM in San Francisco as well. Edirol recently announced the DV-7 nonlinear video editing system, which runs, you guessed it, BeOS. A forthcoming "hospitality industry" version of Compaq's iPad runs BeIA. And, of course, there's the obligatory weird startup (Qubit) and the "what were they thinking" project (Whirlpool's prototype BeIA-based refrigerator). These are just the announced projects, of course.
Look, folks, I'm an archetypal disillusioned BeOS user--it's still my favorite desktop OS, but I don't think it has much of a future on the desktop. And it didn't die when Apple chose NeXT, it died--well, became undead, more accurately--when Be decided that focusing on the appliance market required them to publicly gut their desktop effort.
To paraphrase Al "Totem Pole" Gore, "I strongly disagree with their decision, but I accept it." From everything I've heard, BeIA is getting a lot of positive attention within the industry, particularly because of their management services, which are evidently significantly ahead of anybody else's comparable offerings.
With all due respect, having access to the source is not the only consideration most businesses will have in evaluating options, and licensing fees are only one component in development cost. And, just because Be is being quiet about things doesn't mean they're not doing anything--we've all seen companies which were much louder and weren't, when all was said and done, doing anything. Conversely, we've seen Transmeta....
Read up on Aura. The BFS plays heavily into how cool Aura will be. It is a LOT more than "networked MP3."
"And like that
The native OS/2 file system, HPFS, also has the ability to store attributes with files. And remember, HPFS was released in 1988 - 12 years ago. Wow. Is it also a 64-bit journaled file system? Does it handle the attributes the same way as BFS? (Namely that searching attributes is SUPERFAST, and users can create their own attributes for files and folders.)
"And like that
Multimedia is only going to be more and more integral to everyday information appliances (not just stereo components and PVRs). What answer does Linux have to this with its mishmash of incompatible multimedia technologies?
To me, this article indicates exactly why operating systems like BeOS will continue to make inroads into the embedded market, while Linux is in serious danger of losing out. Be is designed and marketed as a "multimedia OS", and uses like this allow it to really shine. How long before the built-in features of BeOS are more than anyone doing it from scratch in Linux will want to compete against? Isn't it already that way?
My feeling is that the multimedia capabilities in BeOS will eventually obviate the need for Linux's primary strength in the embedded market--the availability of source code. If an OEM-ready platform already has support for all the stuff you'd want to hack into Linux, is small and cheap enough, why NOT use it? Isn't the whole reason TiVo used Linux so they could add in all the multimedia stuff they needed that Linux didn't provide? (And don't tell me they did it for philosophical reasons. OEMs want results, not dogma.)
If Linux wants to compete in this space, it needs focus, which seems to be the one thing it doesn't (yet) offer.
The only certainty is entropy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you want to take the performance hit for indexing while you're using the computer (BeOS) or while you're not (MacOS)? There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.
What they're saying is wrong. Do consumers really care about those kinds of details (difference between MacOS and BeOS)? No. It's just techno-FUD.
Also, if BeOS stores the info in each file, how can it be true that you don't have to iterate through all the files to find something? There has to be some external data structure. Whether you call it a file or something else is just symantics.
Ogg Vorbis support is available today. Check out www.bebits.com and you can find Vorbis codecs for the BeOS. One nice feature of the BeOS is that it includes a robust API for handling audio and video. Once you install the codecs for a new file type, all of your existing applications can access it immediately.
.so files in the proper place in your ~/config/add-ons directory. Once this is done the stock BeOS player app will play your Vorbis files, and the stock BeOS CDPlayer app will save CDDA tracks as Vorbis files if you want. Any well-written app will ask the OS for a list of available audio encoders and present the user with the choices.
So, you install the codecs by putting what amounts to some
I actually just got thru adding this functionality into one of my projects. It only takes a small handful of code to iterate thru all the encoders installed. Now, if a user adds a codec or upgrades an existing one, my program benefits automatically. No recompile needed.
BFS is a nice filesystem
Thank you. We agree. Most modern file systems has similar file indices, but they usually aren't updated in real time, and they're not as expansive as BFS' are. BFS' file attributes and indices may not be revolutionary, but they're available in the same place and used to complement each other, which has an overall revolutionary effect. Working with files in BeOS is something much different than in any other OS I've used. The small things, like having different icons for different shortcuts to the same program and sorting MP3s by genre, then filename are what I miss when I use other OSes.
If every FS had unlimited, indexed, real-time, pervasive file attributes, I would be quite happy. I don't see them readily available with any of the other major players, so BFS does have something unique and special that makes it stand above the crowd. If not in terms of innovation, then in terms of application.
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OS/2 also has a multithreaded multimedia subsystem, which was released in the early 1990's (I can't remember if it was 1990 or 1992).
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And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I'm curious what other people are using for databases of mp3s (and any other format of file, for that matter). I took a look at RIMPS as a frontend, and I wasn't terribly impressed (maybe it's because I was using their 1.0 version rather than whatever is in CVS). Bad things seemed to happen, like it would attempt to re-insert the same file sometimes and would crap out on me.. It also apparently couldn't handle non-numeric characters in the year field of an ID3 tag...
Anyway, I'm thinking of reworking a simple database system I already made, but it would include support for multiple `creators', which is especially important when you think about how many people are `featured' artists, or other collaborative efforts. Most systems require you to decide which single artist is `The Artist' I also want to add in some sort of support for multiple songs in a single file (such as the single 70 minute file I have of my copy of Paul Oakenfold's Tranceport CD).
Also, I really get annoyed when files get sorted character-by-character, and the sort includes a leading `A' or `The'. In addition, I was thinking of adding support for fixing the case of letters in song titles. Ordinarily, words like `on', `in', `for', etc., are supposed to be lowercase in titles, but most people seem to capitalize them.. Who knows if that would ever happen, though..
But maybe something like that already exists?
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Be Inc. changed it's focus in January.
They are focusing now on Internet Appliances, thus BeIA, rather than BeOS. BeIA is supposed to be fully customizable for the OEM, including UI and all sorts of other things. It's made to run on as little as 32MB of RAM and has support for Flash, Real, and Opera 4 as it's main browser.
The device spoken of here is yet another iteration of BeIA. This just goes to show the remarkable uses of Be's latest work. Hopefully the networking support will be seamless- not like it is on R5 Pro. Check out http://www.qubit.net for another BeIA enabled device, this one with 802.11b connectivity.The attributes aren't stored *in* the file. They are "attached" to the file. In the example of mp3s you have Album/Artist/Title/etc attributes, which are all indexed and updated in real time. The filesystem isn't constantly probing for changes, as you think, so there is no performance hit. When a file is modified, a BMessage is sent which updates the index on the file.
Like you said, most consumers don't care how it works behind the scenes. But the way Aura does it is incredibly elegant and quick.
I'm sorry, but its curtains for Be. Its mindshare is nonexistant, it has no direction, and it will soon be out of cash. Be essentially went out of business the day Apple chose NeXT instead of Be.
I like BeOS and all, but if you want this NOW, you could check out the Audio ReQuest.
It's a home audio component with a big hard drive full of mp3s. It has an RJ45 in the back for your home ethernet. It transfers files to/from any computer on the same network with their branded software, and their next software update will make it do SMB.
It had audio quality problems, but an update on the soundcard made the quality much, much better. I hope they add digital outs in a future model.
It connects to a tv and has a remote to let you navigate your collection and sort by artist/album/whatever.
It has a CD drive that rips and encodes mp3, and I believe it also looks up titles from CDDB if on the internet. It also encodes from any input source you want to plug into the back of it. My dad is mp3ifying his LP collection this way.
It also has nifty visual effects it does on the tv while it plays, if you like.
My two wishlist items: ogg vorbis support (hopefully with multichannel) and 802.11b wireless networking.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
That sounds like a good idea, but what is so great about BFS is that the implementation was pervasive. You don't have to go to the shell to add, remove or change attributes.
That said, I would happily welcome this sort of change as a fundamental addition to the UI of Windows.
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. . . maybe Be will buy Corel's Linux? Or maybe they'll be the next lucky owners of WordPerfect?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'd be more interested if they'd even mentioned Ogg Vorbis...
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
Imagine a centralised MP3 server networked (both 802.3 and 802.11 - thats ethernet and wireless for the young ones) to other appliances around your house. Choose a MP3 track and listen to it from your Hi-Fi / TV / Refrigerator / PC / backyard hammock on a internet appliance etc. Listen to a streaming MP3 server, and immediately download more songs from the same group. Little Johny listens to kiddie MP3's from the bedroom, Mrs Jones listens to a hip song in the kitchen while Mr Johnes listens to a blues song in the garage - all songs are streamed from one box. Stick a new CD in, convert the audio to MP3 (with online lookups) and all networked devices in the house have access to the new songs. With MP3 storage space reaching double gig digit storage sizes (>10G) it becomes more and more cumbersom to issue searches, as well as a problem of duplicating data. I think that this custom built MP3 box on steroids provides so much more than anything I can muster myself. This appliance will be idiot proof to operate, and you'll be able to buy it at your local electronics shop. Nice.
Revolution = Evolution
The difference here is: the BFS doesn't index its files centrally to some index. Each file has a variable amount of attribute data that can be extended as the user/developer wishes. That attribute information is stored directly in the file system info tree, although if it gets really big its stuck into a hidden file [or extra node/block actually].
This is super-slick because the file system info tree is structured mostly in places where the head of the drive can get to fast, and usually right next to tons of similar information about all the files in a directory or group of directories. This way you can read a couple blocks of file attribute information without ever having to actually skip to the files themselves and search that, thus acheiving a great savings in head movement. Its similar in basic concept to the BSD Fast File System and the Linux Ext2fs, in that they do the same for filenames, sizes, and other attributes. But the BFS has extensible attributes.
So extensible attributes mean: I downloaded a file from somewhere, besides just a filename=foo.tgz, I could put a from_URL=ftp://ftp.foo.org/pub/foo/src/tgz/ attribute there. All mail messages have their subject, from, to, reply to, and all that stuff stored as attributes, and all mp3s have their ID3 tags (and possibly more) stored as attributes. So you can just grab stuff that matches the attributes you want. This happens really quickly because the head only has to skip to the general inode information, better yet, any smart OS will cache all that in memory, so a large portion of your search is done without drive head movement.
Large attributes exist too. For example some drawing programs store a scaled down preview in an attribute... fair enough, that is in an extended attribute node/block, but that node/block doesn't have to be searched or then cached unless it's known to contain the key that is being searched for.
So sure, any OS could go ahead and index mp3 id information, cache it, maintain coherancy between it and the fs, and search through it, but for Mac OS, that would take a seperate indexing phase, an extension that pays attention to fs changes and updates the index, and a special extension to a special searcher (the BFS search is just an fs feature with a gui interface) that looks through the special index. And that is just as feature rich, but it lacks the performance considerations that were taken into account when building such things directly into the fs.
I do like the Mac, unfortunately Be sucks for not keeping developers more PPC aware, even if Apple forced them out of developing for G3 [not that that has stopped NetBSD or linux even]. It's a real shame because the BeBox was one of the coolest ideas in a long time, especially because of the OS, but not solely... the PPC is a cool chip (literally too).
-Daniel
P.S. The guy who developed BFS presented it as a talk at WPI (cause he graduated from there), and the guy who developed Ext2 came to talk to the linux group a few weeks earlier over how it worked and what may be done differently for Ext3. Both were very informative
FYI, NTFS has had a somewhat obscure
feature since its very birth that was named
STREAMS. NTFS streams allow you to insert an
unlimited byte stream and assign a name for that stream which will accompany the file as long
as it stays on NTFS.
For example: copy con: > a.txt:$mymp3data
And one more thing: NFSv4 will also have support
for the same style of metadata (called attributes
in NFS).
Your enlgish was fine, if not better than most native English speakers- don't worry about it :)
I love the idea of this. I pine for the day that I can buy a cd (hear that RIAA), bring it home, sitck it in my multimedia console, encode the thing to vorbis, and have the tracks available to any other mulitmedia device in my house.
However, I'd also like to see the system be very, very OPEN. First of all, dump MP3 encoding. Support MP3 playback for my 2 gigs of already encoded stuff, but stop encoding this locked down codec. Move to Vorbis for all encoding. It's just better. Also, make it accessible to anything with an IP address. I want to be able to access this multimedia thing with my computer while I'm working or from my slimmed down multimedia module in my kitchen while I'm cooking. It sounds like Be has considered this, which is a good sign.
I think Be has a good product in their OS and I'm sad that it never really took off. Their filesystem kicks ass. They've got great multiprocessor support as well. I was really sad to see them drop support for the PowerPC, a move that I never really understood. I'd like to see this work, in a bit more open way though. If Linux had some of the technical capabilities that Be has, it'd be the winner.
My other computer is your Windows box
Journaling, Schmournaling. Be's filesystem keeps information about files in a metadata database. You can add arbitrary information types to this metadata, and you can search the filesystem for files.
For instance, you can add Artist, title, album, live/recorded, and bitrate to the information on the file. Then you could search for all live recordings by Tori Amos or Limp Bizkit, at a datarate above 128 kbps, sorted by title.
All without writing but one line of code (the search query)
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Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
Like Intel? (Which owns a lot of Be stock) The BeOS stock price is more a factor of lack of profile (Be who?) and the very tightly closed development system Be uses. (They don't even announce release dates. Releases just "happen")
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Hello,
/. Aura is nothing more than networked mp3. Lot of people have done it. And also as mentioned above this has nothing to do with the journaling filesystem (which just happens to be the default fs on Be). When articles like this are posted people are incited to point out the holes in the article and thus create FUD towards Be. I understand Be is not a free OS. But we here in France have a strong Be following and are faithful Be users. I would really like right information on Be posted here, instead of FUD and things that anyone could point fingers at. Sorry for my bad english.
As a Be user, I find it frustrating when I see things twisted around and posted as news on sites like
Because BFS queries don't have to iterate over every file like Mac, Windows, or Linux queries do, search results would be instantaneous.
The MacOS has had index-based searching for years. Just now, it took me all of 5 seconds to search the contents of over 3 GB of files on my Mac for a certain keyword. I don't have a particularly fast system, either.
The whole basis for using Be for this seems to be that it's a "multimedia" OS, whatever that means, and that they have almost no other markets, so they will have to give all their attention to this one.
Actually, I hear the best possible CDROM ripper/writer you can get is the Philips VeloCD. Its blue, it rips at 32X, and it writes at 12X (or 16X, I forget) And it actually does that in real tests!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What about all the legal mumbo jumbo?
The important lesson here is that Be is not calling the shots on this. Be's OEM customers will decide what kinds of protection mechanisms an Aura device should have, and Be will tailor the technology to that
this worries me...it has been proven that many times it is not the customer (read:ME) who drives the market, but the lawyers (who "know" what problems a device like this could cause - eg litigation from the RIAA) and marketers (who think it'll need to be eXtreme or be some cool green color of thermoplastic.)
this device looks ready for primetime "secure" music methods...send in the lawyers.
other than that...can i have one in all black with orange lights to match my amp??
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Hi,
I tried Aura a few weeks ago on BeIA developer forum. But I must say that it's nothing as mentioned here. I mean the mp3 player bit is just a normal mp3 player. It's got networking (sort of like the way most people host mp3's on nfs mounted partitions). The default filesystem (Be Journaled fs) just takes care of all directory work. This could be easily implemented in almost anything else. Also it has nothing to do with Be's mp3 player.
I saw one such implementation with a LDAP and NFS. A script goes and constructs LDAP entities for all songs. It's tiresome if you dont have the stuff in the mp3's to begin with. But the LDAP imeplementation is magnitutdes faster. I dont know why the author of the article missed this altogether. And maybe some reaserch before posting the article on slashdot might have stopped all the trolls here today!
Enjoy
Beed!