geekmaster kindle video player

[Zombater]

Originally Posted by knc1

Just as long as one of us is **not** confused.

Those questions should have taken care of all the common problems.
If it was going to work on your PW2, it should be working.

I.E: It isn't going to work on a PW2 as written.
(It might or might not work on a PW1 - nobody has tested that yet.)

The compiled application, gmplay, was written (and tested) during the era of the Kindle Touch (before either Paperwhite was introduced).

For the gory details, open the "Magic Revealed" spoiler in the first post of this thread.
In the source code, you will find three different functions, for the three different video hardwares **prior to** the introduction of either Paperwhite Kindle.

The application needs additional code added to support the Paperwhite video hardware.

- - - -

I think the situation is the same in the case of ffmpeg mentioned in the top post -
No work done (yet) to support either of the Paperwhite Kindles.

Short ans: It isn't going to work on a PW2.

NOOO. Okay then, are there any alternatives to GMV?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Zombater

NOOO. Okay then, are there any alternatives to GMV?

None that I know of for the Kindle PW2.

The Kindles use an "invented by Amazon" video memory layout.
And I don't recall reading about anyone doing the work for that model.

- - - -

Like yourself, I was hoping it would "just work".

[Zombater]

Originally Posted by knc1

None that I know of for the Kindle PW2.

The Kindles use an "invented by Amazon" video memory layout.
And I don't recall reading about anyone doing the work for that model.

- - - -

Like yourself, I was hoping it would "just work".

Well, it seems this dude got it to work with "zcat", that's why I asked you in the first place what it was:

Originally Posted by HisDudeness

amazing piece of code you wrote there =)

just wanted to confirm its working on the PW2.
-started it with zcat over ssh, because launcher did not work...

cheers

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Zombater

Well, it seems this dude got it to work with "zcat", that's why I asked you in the first place what it was:

Ah, the script that does not work on your model DOES USE zcat.

The *nix standard utility, cat (concatenate) reads one or more files, concatenates them, and writes them to stdout.

The newer utility, zcat, does the same for files which are gzip compressed.

Your problem is not with zcat.

The gmplay utility is not coded to handle (I.E: starting with recognition of) your device.
Until someone, perhaps yourself, adds that code - it will not work.

When launched with KUAL, KUAL should be writing the system error message to its log file (along with just exiting).

[Zombater]

Originally Posted by knc1

Ah, the script that does not work on your model DOES USE zcat.

The *nix standard utility, cat (concatenate) reads one or more files, concatenates them, and writes them to stdout.

The newer utility, zcat, does the same for files which are gzip compressed.

Your problem is not with zcat.

The gmplay utility is not coded to handle (I.E: starting with recognition of) your device.
Until someone, perhaps yourself, adds that code - it will not work.

When launched with KUAL, KUAL should be writing the system error message to its log file (along with just exiting).

Should I post the message here and will yer help me?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Zombater

Should I post the message here and will yer help me?

It would be confirmation.
Probably will not say much, other than "segfault".

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

...
(It might or might not work on a PW1 - nobody has tested that yet.)

The compiled application, gmplay, was written (and tested) during the era of the Kindle Touch (before either Paperwhite was introduced).
...
No work done (yet) to support either of the Paperwhite Kindles.

Short ans: It isn't going to work on a PW2.

I got one of the first PW1s, and I am sure I posted somewhere that it worked fine. Not sure about recent firmware updates though. The video played fine, but played in the upper left corner of the denser screen, leaving a border below and to the right.

I lost my PW1, so I cannot test recent firmware updates...

Also, it has been reported to work on the PW2 as well. My code was future-proofed as far as I could make it back then, and it seems I was successful so far.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

I got one of the first PW1s, and I am sure I posted somewhere that it worked fine. Not sure about recent firmware updates though. The video played fine, but played in the upper left corner of the denser screen, leaving a border below and to the right.

I lost my PW1, so I cannot test recent firmware updates...

Thanks.

"Somewhere" - heck, I have lost track of my own posts.
Maybe someone will find it for us.

Ah, we might be lucky and the PW1 & PW2 will need only minor changes to your code.

[PieMan597]

And if I remember right, the extension is broken, and I think that you'd have to be in the directory where gmplay and the .gmv files are for it to work...

[geekmaster]

Has anybody tested this on PW2 or newer?

[edo1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Has anybody tested this on PW2 or newer?

I did. It works on pw2.

[geekmaster]

"Oh... and I figured out how to get fluid animation (no longer limited to 1.5 FPS) on a DX and DXG now too..." I wish current ME could talk to younger ME and ask him (me) if he wrote that down anywhere... Research I read claims that memories have a half-life of about a year, after which they get pruned or consolidated with other similar memories (i.e. generalized), depending on how much they were used. Makes me wish I was more dilligent at writing stuff down where I could find it again...

BTW, is there a working KUAL extension for this anymore?

[PieMan597]

I could never get the KUAL extension to run, so I just ran gmplay in Kterm, with the added bonus of being able to terminate gmplay if I needed to. Someone else might have a working KUAL script.

[geekmaster]

I just noticed that somebody posted a video of gmplay in operation on a K5:



And it seem that "twobob" (a/k/a "seggie fault") finished adding sound to my gmplay program (he was very close with the "Balsamic" code he shared here before "going dark"):



It was nice that they provided a link to this thread in the youtube comments.

Hmm... Here is another video somebody else posted, also with sound:



Where is the source code (or even a downloadable executable)?

Okay, this is by Roman Batyuk (a member here) whose video was very jerky and flashing (non-dithered greyscale). I posted to his thread that he should do dithering like I was doing. He stopped posting here, but it seems he made progress AND added sound:



So, both Roman and twobob went dark, but kept producing (unshared) content?

[geekmaster]

An interesting observation: My video player uses a 130 msec update rate (about 7.7 FPS). I determined that as an optimal speed (as fast as we can go without excess visual artifacts). The docs I had seen at that time said the update rate was 300 msec, so I seemed to be pushing it faster than was its intended speed. However, I just noticed this page at freescale (mfg of SoC with embedded eink controller):

Originally Posted by https://community.freescale.com/docs/DOC-93396

Dithering Implementation for Eink Display Panel
...
2. Eink display panel characteristic
a. Low resolution
Eink only has couple resolution modes for display
DU (1bit, Black/White)
GC4 (2bit, Gray scale)
GC16 (4bit, Gray scale)
A2 (1bit, Black/White, fast update mode)
b. Slow update time
For 800x600 panel size (per frame)
DU 300ms
GC4 450ms
GC16 600ms
A2 125ms

3. Effect by doing dithering for Eink display panel
a. Low resolution with better visual quality
By doing dithering to the original grayscale image, we can get better visual looking result. Even if the image becomes black and white image, with the dithering algorism, you will still get the feeling of grayscale image.
b. Faster update with Eink’s animation waveform
Since the DU/A2 mode could update the Eink panel faster than grayscale mode, with dithering, we can get no only the better visual looking result, but also we can use DU/A2 fast update mode to show animation or even normal video files.
...
Currently, with Atkinson dithering algorism, our processing time is about 70ms.

5. 5. Availability

a. We implemented both Y8->Y1 and Y8->Y4 dithering with the same dithering algorism.
b. Implemented into our EPDC driver with i.MX6SL Linux 3.0.35 version release.
c. Also implemented in our Video for Eink demo

Notice how they say the pure black/white mode (which we use in gmplay) can do 125 msec per frame (slightly faster than we do here). However, this code was also optimized to work on the K3 (and to some degree on the DX/DXG), which has a slower frame rate. So my tests actually found the right speed, and going much faster would cause noticeable annoying visual artifacts even on newer kindles.

When the K4 and K5 came out, the existing firmware and sourcecode first hinted at an animation more, though there was no code at that time to go with such comments. This linked page above says that eink drivers (for newer kindles) now contain (Atkinson) dithering code built into the eink driver. However, the K3 and earlier (and perhaps even the K4, due to its K3 emulation mode used when booting from the main partition) most likely do NOT contain dithering code (though exanimation of recent source code could see if this was added since I last studied the source code in detail).