MPlayer for Kindle: AAC/FLAC/MP3/OGG/WAV/... support, local and streaming !

[Greg Anos]

Smarter,

I wonder if you had ever thought about talking with the openinkpot guys. This sound like it would be a nice upgrade for their open source software.

[Smarter]

I didn't know about openinkpot, sounds interesting . But apparently they already have mpd packages(http://git.iplinux.org/mpd.git/) which is more appropriate than mplayer(which I only used because it was easy to build), the only thing missing is a user interface.

[janvanmaar]

EDIT:
This has been superceded by a new code fixing some bugs and introducing new features here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...46#post1449846
I removed the zip originally attached to this contribution from this reason.


I have played a bit with the scripts from Smarter in order to achieve a reasonable setup for listening to an audiobook while reading (usually the same ) book.
I have added the following functionality for this purpose:

Shift+Z = back (~10 seconds)
Shift+Z+Z = rewind (~100 seconds)
Shift+X = forward (~10 seconds)
Shift+X+X = fast forward (~100 seconds)
Shift+M+Q = go to the beginning of the currently played file
Shift+M+C = continue listening from the place where previously stopped (by Shift+M+S)

Due to the bug in the original mplayer seeking functionality that I mentioned previously, I had to workaround the seeking by stopping the current playback and starting a new one from the requested position. I deliberately broke the Shift+M+key convention for seeking in order to enable a more convenient and quicker seeking.

The 'continue' feature works in the same way - the currently played file and the position in it are remembered when stopping the playback so that we can continue from the same position the next time (the info is saved in a file, so a sleep or restart is not a problem). It may be preferable to use Shift+M+S / Shift+M+C for "pausing" (instead of Shift+M+P) as the former does not drain the battery and survives sleep/reboot. However, it would not solve the problem Kenneth_irl had - the playback still needs to be stopped before going to sleep/reboot.

Another change: the files are played in alphabetical order now.

The way I use it is uploading 1-2 audiobooks for the books I want to listen+read, with the name of the files belonging to the same audiobook starting by 00_name, 01_name, etc (usually chapters but not necessary). I find it pretty usable, perhaps it will be useful for somebody else too.

[otichy]

This sounds great! The audiobook killer feature would be saving multiple bookmarks so that you could listen so more than one book at a time...

[starworld]

how to add my local mp3 files to playlist?
and which format supported by mplayer?

[janvanmaar]

The audiobook killer feature would be saving multiple bookmarks so that you could listen so more than one book at a time...

Multiple books are rather difficult to handle without GUI, in general. But it shouldn't be too bad with 2 books. I will think about it.

how to add my local mp3 files to playlist?

There is no interface - you can only edit a file. You can just start playing a 'playlist' consisting of all the local files by Shift+M+A.

and which format supported by mplayer?

basically anything without DRM should work

[otichy]

Originally Posted by janvanmaar

Multiple books are rather difficult to handle without GUI, in general. But it shouldn't be too bad with 2 books. I will think about it.

Yes, GUI would be another killer feature

[SpookyMunky]

Love this mod, so nice having radio playing away in the background, ability to shuffle, all of it, just the way the kindle should have been natively, thanks alot smarter

I have noticed a wierd issue though, maybe I am doing something wrong.. Mostly I listen to somafm radio stations when Im not using radio sure. I cant seem to get it working for swapping between somas different stations though, the example stations work fine for swapping back and forth but when I change it for something like -

http://somafm.com/groovesalad.pls
http://somafm.com/lush.pls
http://somafm.com/beatblender.pls
http://somafm.com/brfm.pls

or any sort of combination of somafm playlists, if I hit next or previous the stream stops for a second then continues playing the same station .. doh ,, Am I using the wrong links or soemething ?

[SpookyMunky]

Funky, Have gotten it working by finding the direct stream links for each station

e.g. -

http://voxsc1.somafm.com:8032/
http://voxsc1.somafm.com:8014/
http://streamer-mtc-aa04.somafm.com/stream/1073

now Im happy, Thanks again for this port

[xlendi]

Great job! It's really cool to listen my favourite radion stations in the Kindle 3.

[ibdilbert]

Thanks Smarter, just what I was looking for, a better player than what comes with the kindle. I too am an avid audiobook listener, so I'll be using janvanmaars scripts (Thanks!) to be able to skip around and I like his alpha sort for easier book listening. A GUI w/ multiple listening lists would be great for multiple books and music genres. Maybe even a status bar to tell how far through the book you are. Very cool, I'm very impressed with your work!

[dhdurgee]

Will this player work with internet play lists? I am asking as the streaming radio stations I would want to listen to work this way. One example would be:

http://provisioning.streamtheworld.c.../WMALAMAAC.pls

If this will work I will have to look into adding this player to my kindle.

Dave

[Paulinafrica]

Originally Posted by Smarter

I might write a GUI, either for mplayer or for mpd

Have fun!

Hello Smarter A GUI would be a really, really nice addition as trying to remember all of the commands and then forgetting to press ^,M,S when you wander off, or go to bed can be a bit of a PIA, but full marks to you for the MPlayer for kindle!
Cheers
Paul

[dhdurgee]

I have looked around a bit more and it appears that curl is available on the kindle to download internet files. I have added to the /mnt/us/mplayer/control.sh script to take advantage of this by adding a section:

InternetPlaylistLoad() {
curl -s "$@" | grep :// | sed 's/File[0-9][0-9]*=//' >/tmp/mplayer.playlist
loadplaylist /tmp/mplayer.playlist
}

This is prior to the case statement, where I added cases for each station eg:

wmal)
InternetPlaylistLoad "http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/WMALAMAAC.pls"
;;

Of course I also added key map entries in the mplayer.ini in the launchpad directory. This appears to be working, but I did have my kindle get into a strange state at one point that required a reboot to cleanup. Could this be the result of some sort of an internet streaming hiccup, or did something else cause the problem?

Dave

[dhdurgee]

A further follow-up on this internet streaming. I am having inconsistent behavior with this. While I can reliably play music from the Music directory the internet streaming seems to be troublesome. I have managed to get this to run once today, but attempts to use it after that have failed.

I don't have WiFi at home, so I need to be elsewhere to try this. I can confirm WiFi operation by opening the browser and confirm mplayer operation by playing local music. I stop mplayer and attempt to start one of the internet streams but get nothing other than the "Success!" message. I try all three I have defined, stopping mplayer between them, with similar results.

How can I best debug this to see what is causing the problem? I could change the script to capture the mplayer stdout/stderr in a file in the installdir for later inspection and see if the problem is with mplayer. I could modify the command line in mplayer.ini to likewise capture stdout/stderr for later inspection.

Are there any better ways to accomplish this? Am I the only one seeing this problem?
If you need more than the one station included in the above message, change "WMAL" to "WBAP" and "WABC" for the other two I was working with.

Dave