Coming from Windows and some experience with Mac, I have some huge peeves with Open Source software and platforms.

For example, I'm having issues with Canola playing videos and thought I converted them right. They stutter and barely show a frame. So I'm about to try the Nokia Internet Tablet Converter. Here is where my peeves begin;

Prior to that, I saw Tablet Encode, which on the page says "requires Perl and Mencoder".

WHY DONT YOU BUNDLE IT?! My first peeve. Imagine if you were on any other OS and it said "oh btw you need that before you can use this". How many users would it frustrate?

Another peeve is lack of documentation. Canola's site has nothing I could find about troubleshooting any issues, what video format/bitrate/size to use (I had to search for that and found info at Maemo.org).

And lastly, the fact that Maemo is being inconsistent with me -- I have to unplug the N800 from my PC in order for Canola to see the internal card. Why?

I've seen such lack of consistency and thoroughness in so many OS apps it's really upsetting. Don't get me wrong, I admire the developers and the apps out there but god damn

Unlike Windows, most flavors of Linux have everything in repositories and when installing something, it automatically resolves its dependencies in order to run. Thats why it is not bundled. Perl and MEncoder (part of MPlayer) are just few clicks away. If Tablet Encode was in some distro repository, it would have installed the needed software for you. In Windows though, there's no such ecosystem, so you're on your own.

Ahhhhh I see.

jself,
I am a mac user too.
I believe you just have to adapt to a new device and a new environment. It would probably be the same with any other device. Actually it is not Maemo or the tablet that you should blame for this ...

1/ Canola
You say you encoded the videos properly ... but are you sure ? What guidelines did you follow ? Moreover, do you know that if Canola is very good for music, it's not the best videoplayer ?

2/USB & Card
When you plug the tablet to your PC, it behaves like a USB card reader : it mounts the cards on the PC. As far as I know, it would be the same with any O.S. : when a drive is mounted for one system, it cannot be mounted at the same time for another one. It's the same when you plug your camera to your PC : you cannot have the memorycard mounted on the PC ant, at the same time use it to take pictures.

I tested most of the PDA systems (Palm, WinMo, Symbian, Newton OS, Win C.E. , Qtopia ...) ... believe me, Maemo is the best.

Internet Tablet Video Converter worked great and the videos play fine in Canola. I'd used a different app prior, keeping the videos within spec - that was the problematic conversion.

I understand now, thanks.

I started a thread in Multimedia section to tell that we can have better video quality than with the Tablet Video Converter ... when you have time, if you're interested, take a look!

And don't forget that even if you're a young and gutsy new user ... we can help ya to discover ... that you still have a lot to understand !

(By the way, you can call me "mAAAAAAster")



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What ? You say i'm a noob too ? ... huh ... yes, but you can at least call me "master", OK ?

Check this (mentions mostly mplayer, but applies to canola as well):

http://wiki.maemo.org/Video_encoding

Also, the single most common encoding error I've seen around is keeping the 48000Hz audio. Make absolutely sure you convert 48K to 44K1. The difference is night and day.

this thread about videoencoding is rather old and innacurate ...
We can have better !

Thank you, totololo, for your offer to update the wiki!

You'll notice that I've already incorporated your findings into that article. Look for the paragraph under Media Player Limitations starting, "Some recent tests have found..."

My main concern with OSS is that the documentation is sparse if not non-existent for some applications. It ends up being like the old Colossal Cave adventure game--you have to experiment and guess to even find out what the rules are (or compare notes with others!).

Some ports (like Gnumeric) still have major problems in the submenus when trying to do formatting. The "ports" therefore are not complete until all bugs are wrung out from every routine. OSS often is not structured enough in the source code to make this an easy task to convert from a PC to a Hildonized interface.

As my N800 still has occasional "pausing" problem, I suspect that one or more of the routines used by an application are not good Maemo "neighbors" (brings back memories of Windows 3.1 and how some programs would not play nice together in the sandbox!).

Still...I think that OSS should be encouraged and nurtured otherwise we'll have big "M" telling us how things should be done and Genuine Advantage phoning home every hour on the hour.