Fabián Rodríguez

Apparently Corey was right all along.

I found about this via Ogg’s entry in Wikipedia. So I did the sensible thing.

Ahhh… that felt good.

Now, can someone with proper access in Launchpad make that “Confirmed, Critical, Hardy Milestone”… or whatever you deem more appropriate

A few weeks ago I applied to the Nokia N810 maemo device program, as I’ ve become more and more interested in mobile devices. I thought my profile would fit their description of candidates fit for the program.

My close friends know a thing or two about my obsession with mobility (and, consequently, VoIP). I often have enough in my backpack to set up shop (or office) most anywhere and colleagues often come to me with unusual requests for adapters, connectors or accessories that I locate quickly among my desktop chaos. Unless you have lots of free time you don’t want my advice on the subject (including what kind of backpack best carries it all).

Last week I got an email announcing I had been accepted in the program, which means I’ll be able to buy a (discounted) device! Living in Montreal will no doubt help as we have a large free wireless network provided by Ile sans Fil.

My application basically proposed to work and contribute in the following areas, from a non-developer, end-user point of view:

• Making the N810 work flawlessly with Ubuntu: syncing, access to data, etc.
• Look for language support problems
• Abuse the device’s VoIP and video capabilities
• Obsessively use and abuse Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora content
• Share the device with colleagues & friends and collect input about all the above
• Report bugs, document and review this device on my blog based on all the above

I was clear in my application I won’ t be doing any dev work, and I have never contributed to the maemo project before, so I am happy I got accepeted and hope I will make the best of it.

Apparently Nokia’s Internet tablets (770 or n800) don’t support Ogg Theora / Vorbis open formats. It’s too bad, since the 700 has dropped in price and is now available around U$140. In a 2005 Linux Journal interview, Dr. Ari Jaaksi of Nokia had an interesting answer to LJ’s question about open formats support:

LJ: Given the proclivities of the Linux community, it has to be asked: will Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora be supported on the 770?
AJ: There’s nothing technical that prevents it. However, the 770 is a consumer device. The challenge is that there is not much [Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora] content right now.

So if I understand correctly, there was a decision from Nokia to actually drop support for open formats on their Internet tablet because it’s a consumer product.

I am left wondering why they didn’t use WinCE in the first place. And no, the n800 that was recenly released still does not support Ogg open formats for audio and video.

Bon, c’est un peu dernière minute mais… à partir de demain et pour le weekend au complet, à ne pas manquer: RoCoCo 2007. Merci à Marc Laporte et Simon Law qui ont fait passer le mot :).

Visit http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/, read a bit (includes instructions for Windows users). Download the python script and also install ffmpeg2theora (See #2 at my Drupal Video Guide).

Then:

1. Visit your favorite YouTube video
2. Copy the URL to the clipboard
3. In command line:

   magicfab@suzy:~$ python youtube-dl.py http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcuF7S3r6gM
   Retrieving video webpage… done.
   Extracting video URL parameters… done.
   Video data found at http://lax-v11.lax.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=PcuF7S3r6gM
   Retrieving video data… 1897k of 1897k done.
   Video data saved to PcuF7S3r6gM.flv
   magicfab@suzy:~$ 

4. Convert it (careful, those are TWO dashes before the optimize option):

   magicfab@suzy:~$ ffmpeg2theora PcuF7S3r6gM.flv ––optimize
   Input #0, flv, from ‘PcuF7S3r6gM.flv’:
     Duration: 00:00:47.3, bitrate: N/A
     Stream #0.0: Audio: mp3, 22050 Hz, mono
     Stream #0.1: Video: flv, yuv420p, 320×262, 25.00 fps(r)
     Resize: 320×262
         0:00:47.33 audio: 36kbps video: 305kbps
   magicfab@suzy:~$

5. An .ogg corresponding file will be created in your current directory.
6. Profit ?

update: youtube-dl has been packaged since Edgy. Install it using the standard Synaptic package manager or through apt-get in command line, by searching for the youtube-dl package.

usage: youtube-dl [options] video_url

Am I the only one that finds it very odd that the UN General Assembly 61st Session webcast archives are all in Real Video format, with specific restrictions to copying or saving the content ? I am almost happy this means there is so much work for any and all open format advocates out there!

L’an passé je découvrais Drone, lors d’un sortie plutôt inhabituelle pour moi. J’avais testé sous une Debian et c’est le genre de logiciels qui aident mon frère dans sa démarche pour quitter Mac OSX et aller vers Ubuntu.

C’est quand même étrange que je tombe sur des situations qui me permettent de parler de logiciels libres, sorties et vidéo dans la même phrase. Cette nuit je suis tombé sur un des développeurs de Drone sur IRC qui me mentionnait qu’ils évaluaient la possibilité de refaire le projet en Java - horreur! C’est curieux mais je crois qu’une telle décision technique irait contre l’esprit même de créativité, partage, découverte, et interaction de la technologie et des arts que permet ce logiciel. Après avoir discuté quelques minutes du piège Java, ce texte étant trop théorique pour expliquer la chose aux coéquipiers (selon mon interlocuteur), je cherchais d’autres arguments. (more…)

Tiens, un site web - wiki - consacré à l’édition et l’audio numérique avec Ubuntu: The Ubuntu Studio Project. (more…)

My consulting-trained brain was recently exposed to electronica and massive video input. Curiously, I found out that one of the groups presenting at Homéostazie was using a combination of open source, technical talent and good creativity karma. (more…)