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Ogg/Vorbis on Palm OS
loshwomp writes "We have built an audio player for Palm OS, and a public beta is available now. The beta includes support for Ogg/Vorbis audio, and a future beta will include plug-ins for more formats, as well as the plug-in SDK itself."
Can you really fit that much music on a palm?
I haven't looked at Palms in a couple years. How much storage space does your average palmOS machine contain these days? Anyone familiar with the topic want to give some approximate numbers?
What is the license? Where is the source code? This isn't freshmeat.net so I hope there's something more significant than just a free ad for proprietary software.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Palm machines aren't exactly known for fast CPUs, at least by desktop terms. This chart shows clock speeds from 16Mhz (Zire) to 66MHz (Sony Clie T665C), with most current units at 33Mhz. Now, I know clock speed ain't everything, performance-wise, but it kinda looks like most current machines won't be able to play much. Maybe spoken word stuff, which can get by with much lower bitrate & sample frequency, but forget ditching your iPod just yet...
Port the player to Linux for the Zaurus and iPaq, or even Pocket PC, and then yer talkin'.
Click here if you just like to click on shit.
You're advertising this on Slashdot as a Palm OS app, but admit that it only runs currently on the Tungsten T. Your website only has one page, with no detail as to whether your product is open source or not. I can't find info about you or your application anywhere, even at your personal site, where you host your "free ogeLib Palm OS library". Who are you, is this for real, and how did you get it posted on the main page of Slashdot?
As for my fellow readers, has anyone actually downloaded and run this app?
Please tell me, when you say "converted," that you did not transcode from mp3 to ogg. Tell me you re-ripped your CD's.
I think it sounds pretty cool and would love to try it, but it does not give any specs needed to run the player... Like what versions on Palm, processors.. etc etc
If you'd actually folow the link and read the page, you'd see that the application is made for the Tungsten T and reads the files off expansion cards. So it will run on the Tungsten (which has 16MB of RAM), read ogg files off SD expansion cards (which come in sizes up to 128MB), and you can use headphones.
Does this
Since this is only for the Tungsten T, this will only be available to the early adopters.
As for my Palm, I currently have no intention of getting rid of my Palm IIIxe. I know that alot of ppl are waiting for the Tungsten T to gain that "killer app" that they can't find on their old Palm (or in some cases Pocket PC)...
One of the biggest hurdles for the Tungsten T to overcome is the fact that HackMaster is not compatible with the new hardware. ~80% of the current PalmOS apps will work with the Tungsten T...or to put it another way, ~20% of the apps will not work with the Tungsten T...you can bet that 20% includes all of those popular hacks currently available for the Motorola-based Palms.
The price is also about $100 more than the same speed iPAQ with about twice the memory (4M ROM and 16M RAM vs. 32M ROM and 64M RAM)...This comparison was not valid when palms had 180x180 displays and low-quality sound...but with these new features (faster processor speed, 320x320 resolution, Color, and "high-quality" sound), owners will demand use of the higher resolution, Color (already available on some Motorola-based Palms) and higher quality sound...all of which slows the system and increases application size...
So, what's all of this mean??? I'm pretty sure that 16M is going to start looking pretty small when the new apps come along...
Yes, but it's hard to write native ARM code or native DSP code: PalmOS5 runs all applications as interpreted 68000 code; the best you can do (with a lot of work) is link in some assembly routines.
>So please no more of the "wow, decoding music
>with a 33Mhz processor would never work," "wow,
>I can hold two songs in my 8MB of RAM," etc.,
>etc. comments. You are right, the old Palms WILL
>NEVER play music files; it is simply infeasible.
Actually, I'm not so convinced.
The older Palms had shitty sound hardware, but it is possible to play at least WAV files on them. The quality sucks major, but it works nevertheless.
Disk space is also not a problem. Standard Vorbis will get down to 8kbps, which put quite a bit of files in 8M. I have written prototypes of new Vorbis encoders that will go down to 4kbps mono with pretty acceptable quality. This gets you a full album in 2M. Three albums at least on a 8M Palm.
The big issue is the CPU. Old Palms have a 33Mhz 68k processor. All that I have seen could be overclocked without risk to at least 45Mhz, and since we're pushing the limits of the hardware anyway, let that make us our target.
The question is if a 45Mhz 68k can decode a 6-8khz sample rate mono Vorbis 1.0 file. We're not looking for full Vorbis 1.0 compatibility remember, we just want to play those files, which have significantly less hardware demands than for example an 128k stereo 44khz Ogg. Since we're not going to need 16bits output either, you can make compromises in the decoder trading quality for speed. I have no idea if it is possible to decode Vorbis in this conditions, but I certainly don't think the answer is an 'obviously not' and I am currently investigating it.
--
GCP
palm doesn't have an "internal" file system. everything is stored as a resource or record database. the data chunk is limited to 64k. there are API's available that allow filestreaming, which, pretty much do 'internal management' of your data in 4k record chunks :) a good programmer would support filestreaming .pdb files - i have written a number of utilities to convert from a normal file -> .pdb filestreaming.
IS there any difference quality-wise between the integer decoder and the floating point decoder? Meaning, is the quality of the sound the same? Does integer decoding use more CPU cycles? Else, why not go that way from the start? OK, that's enough questions