Log from #neuros IRC channel

randonimity: just because my sleep is measured in minutes doesn't mean I don't remember how to KILL -9...

okay, okay, i know when i'm not wanted

no, obviously, you don't. shoo. i don't have time for me.

fine, i'll keep the completed copy of our homework to myself, then.

[01:05]

well, darn.

[01:06]

srobertson: you need to mine your alt personalities for data, before killing them. you should've learned that by now

[01:08]

about the only thing i've learned by now is that i should have learned a lot more by now

[01:14]

and that caffeine pills are luvverly...

[01:14]

* srobertson is away: making food and taking pills. empty stomachs don't do well here.

[01:16]

nerochiaro, peterqiu: so what style are you going to use in astyle? (P.S. I hate the styles where half your source code is just braces on a line by themselves.)

[01:17]

* daurn wonders

[01:17]

<daurn>

what happened to sitwon?

sourcerror: that one

daurn: good question

ugh :(

sourcerror: can't say i like it much either, but it can be changed en-masse later at any time and besides it's better than no standard at all

[01:19]

also 4 spaces instead of tabs, which i approve

[01:20]

yes, no reason to get into religious debates. But I think it makes the code so spread out it hinders understandability. anyway.

[01:21]

yay for 4 spaces :) !

[01:21]

sourcerror: incentive to reduce the amount of code :)

[01:21]

good point!!!

[01:24]

* srobertson is back (gone 00:09:57)

[01:25]

srobertson: if you were gone more than 00:10:23 we were going to call for help!

sourcerror: thank goodness I made it! thanks for looking out for me guys, it really touches me

right here

* srobertson points at the area just above his sternum

with a pointy stick

[01:27]

* srobertson does *not* make an incision in the area just above his sternum

[01:27]

thank you very much.

[01:28]

* sourcerror appreciates that IRC is just text

[01:28]

as opposed to <blink>html</blink>? or maybe *STAB* physical!

[01:29]

* sourcerror ouch, my eyes!!

[01:40]

anyone by chance knows libpng wrappers/loaders that eat a png file name and spit out a pixmap. i have the reference one from the png book but there might be simpler ones

[01:43]

not sure what you're using it for, but most distros come with imagemagick. 'convert image.png image.bmp'

[01:44]

srobertson: need to read a png file and get a pixmap to display on the osd

[01:45]

before nanox can be started

[01:45]

I noticed those huge .bmp files in the flash for the boot. I guess they compress well? so that's why they are used?

...because it is before nano-x?

splash screen

nerochiaro: for a simple example (a dinosaur comics instance), bz2 compressed better than png

we want to have these as PNG so John can use transparency and stuff

oh.

[01:47]

well, what about chromakeying? or, i swear there's an extension for bmp that allows transparency

[01:47]

srobertson: plus dinosaur comics have large areas of solid color

[01:47]

srobertson: the key is: more standard, the better

[01:48]

srobertson: plus one day we might not go cramfs, so what you do ?

[01:49]

what do you do? PARTY

[01:49]

yay!

[01:50]

* srobertson feels linuxy now, munching on handfuls of dried pasta

[01:51]

you should munch on raw herrings to feel really linuxy

[02:15]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Evaluate XMMS2 last, and I have a larger chance to be around.

[02:16]

anders_: it's ok

[02:16]

we'll do bridge->other stuff->xmms2

[02:37]

* Johndesigner perks up at hearing splash screen

Johndesigner: i'm trying a couple things that should give you PNG for the splash sceen

Johndesigner: when you have some time though, i'd like to bounce some ideas about youtube with you

sourcerror: the huge bmps are that way bc i was counting on using png or jog at splash, but it turned out i was told only 16bit bmp could be used:(

Johndesigner: given it's the new priority, it seems

[02:39]

nerochiaro: thats great news about the pngs

[02:39]

yeah, just wait until i actually manage ;)

[02:40]

nerochiaro: sure, we can talk about the youtube a bit

[02:40]

I see.

[02:40]

btw, it would be AWESOME if the pngs at splash could do a simple animation like fade in fade out

[02:41]

Johndesigner: you can adjust alpha i think

[02:41]

friggen apple tv uses loads of animations in its gui

[02:42]

they are expensive

[02:42]

nerochiaro: let me mail you the new sequence, i think where the fades would be are obvious

[02:42]

sure

[02:45]

ok its off

[02:46]

its much more simple than the orange one..i think joe called it 'super bowl commercial' style.

[02:46]

simple but is supposed to get in your very mind

[02:46]

yeah, although i liked the orange one better

that "power of freedom" gives me always strange connotations

but that's obviously just me

it's not bad anyway

i was also think of just using the word freedom with a period. small white text in the middle of the screen with a small floating shadow

kinds says it all i think

much better, but maybe too simple ?

yeah, thats where using the 3 pillars to push the Neuros message works well also

or you can have the words "freedom", "innovation", "openness" etc appear one by one (with shades) around the neuros log

what is the Neuros log?

logo

at different "distances" (giving perspective with the shades)

ah, didnt know ppl called it that

[02:50]

* Johndesigner is not following

[02:50]

i call "logo" the word "neuros" with that specific font. the one it's on the left in the stuff you sent me

[02:51]

ah, gotcha

[02:51]

and the thing about distance, i'm not sure i conveyed it properly

do you mean 'depth'?

maybe

yeah, exactly

so maybe freedom float near the "viewpoint" while "innovation" a little on the left and on the back, "opennes" a little shifted and on the right, etc

[02:52]

yep, the small 'drop shadow' on that pdf is supposed to give the slightest hint of depth

yup

i was just suggesting to use that more

well, anyway

let's move to youtube. i'm certainly no designer :)

* Johndesigner is thinkin

[02:55]

nerochiaro: i think we could do a lot of different things as you suggest, but we will need to figure out what is *actually* doable at boot time

[02:55]

you tube then?

[02:55]

Johndesigner: will get back to you on png within the day, if that's ok

Johndesigner: yes, youtube

sure, thanks! I'll buy you a beer if you can figure that out

Johndesigner: heh, we'll see

I'll buy you a brewery if you can figure out how to do fades at boottime

Johndesigner: Gao said not much space to do PNG at boot time, or we could've used that

anyway

nerochiaro: what code does the splash screen flipping?

the main limitation for youtube seems to be it's keyboardless, since it seels everyone wants to enter full searches

[02:58]

Johndesigner: uboot

[02:58]

Johndesigner: and some direct-to-fb code once we are past boot and before nano-x is up

[02:59]

Johndesigner: the idea i'm trying to work on is to enable png in that direct-to-fb code

[02:59]

nerochiaro: we were talking about starting the youtube thing with a smaller specific goal - like being able to see the 'top 5" of the day or something

[03:00]

nerochiaro: direct to fb?

[03:00]

Johndesigner: ah, i was already sailing past that ;P -- the top 5 can be easy, you use the youtube API to get the "featured" videos for the day, with a limit of 5. this gives you titles and thumbnails

[03:01]

cool, how can I be of service?

[03:01]

Johndesigner: direct to fb means it paints directly the image pixels one by one to the screen. While later you can do that indirectly via nano-x (much easier and much flexible)

[03:01]

ah

[03:03]

I was playing with the apple tv today

[03:04]

and it allows some browsing of film trailers from Inet Itunes

[03:04]

you dont need to enter (and cant) any text

[03:04]

and what happens if you need to find something ?

[03:05]

you must do that on your computer thats connected to your netowrk

[03:05]

do we want to force people to have a PC ?

[03:05]

i thought the vision for the OSD was to be PC-less as possible

I tested it by transcoding "sincity" to H.264 - entered it into itunes on a compy connected to my 11g network

nope -no pc

* Johndesigner types very slow

no problem

Johndesigner: i'm typing in other windows while i wait :)

[03:07]

heh

[03:08]

after loading the h264 vid into itunes on compy - wnet to apple tv in other room and it started streaming instantly

[03:08]

Johndesigner: you had to browse to it in itunes ?

[03:10]

no, you need to set up appleTV to "synch" or pair with the specific compy

[03:10]

then

[03:10]

move thru the list much like we have

[03:11]

to get to the file that will show up automatically

[03:11]

under the compys nick

[03:12]

im not sure yet if you can go directly to inet itunes store with it or not

[03:13]

doesn't sound much exciting to me

[03:13]

its not really

[03:13]

the trailers from itunes store show up painfully slow

[03:14]

like 5 minutes for a 2 minute trailer

[03:14]

and it finished dl before starting too which i thought was strange

[03:14]

well, let's back up to our stuff then. and try to do better :) so let's suppose we can get the list of the top 5 featured youtube videos, we display it in a list with thumbnails ?

[03:15]

might have been a lot of things slowing down the transmission tho

[03:15]

sure thumbnails would be good

[03:15]

with the title , playtime too

[03:16]

or maybe osd gets top 5 vids and 5 other 'random' selections for a little curiosity

[03:17]

what are the chances of playing .flv on osd

[03:17]

?

[03:17]

I've tried transcoding the tube vids to .mp4 and avi - not too good results

[03:18]

we can do transcode on board, then play it. i'm not sure of the quality yet

[03:18]

Johndesigner: and random selections are pretty hard to do with youtube actually

[03:19]

Johndesigner: for randomness you can pick the most recently added

[03:19]

nerochiaro: transcode on board delays the time-to-play though right?

:(

vixy.net is an online youtube transcoder

the same one

will run on board

[03:21]

i used I used that transcoder for a couple youtube vids and I was underwhelmed by the quality

[03:21]

of the resulting vid

[03:21]

maybe it can be tweaked, but youtube vids IMHO suck anyway

[03:22]

sure do but they do some sort of slight of hand to make them watchable

[03:23]

they transcode them to flv from mpg, then we transcode them back to mpg. loss is inevitable

[03:23]

I jsut worry about both the click0then-dely on the osd and also the resulting quality if they are transcoded on the osd

I understand the lossy nature, but this was baaad

maybe just the vids i picked i dunno

it wasn't a scientific test

anyway

[03:25]

so decoding .flv on the osd must be a total bitch right?

[03:26]

otherwise you coding folk would jsut do that

[03:27]

Johndesigner: well, i don't really know. it's up to the codec vendor, and as far as i know they don't or can't do it

[03:27]

Johndesigner: you have to ask Gao for specifics, i've never dealt with them

[03:27]

Johndesigner: but bottom line seems to be they won't do it

is that format really based in h264?

Johndesigner: and doing it on our own entail this transcoding step

anyway, i don't mean to take you time with that junk

anders_: you around, by the way ?

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Yes.

[03:29]

anders_: you mentioned that it might be possible to add fake headers to the transcoded video so that we can play it while it downloads

[03:29]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Yes. Might be possible.

[03:30]

anders_: the transcoder you ported is vixynet, right ?

[03:30]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Yes.

playing some of the video while dl-ing is key IMHO

key

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Modified to not seek in input file. So it doesn't need to download to a temparary file.

otherwise its a gimmick

[03:32]

anders_: and the difference with a normal transcoder is that it does it progressively ?

[03:33]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Key feature of the vixynet transcoder is that it doesn't not fully decode the data.

[03:34]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Making it _FAST_. But can't change resolution.

[03:34]

anders_: scans the file and changes parts on the fly ? which is possible because flv is similar to the mpg so it doesn't need to actually change the video data ?

[03:35]

that is decode/encode again

[03:37]

good morning =)

[03:38]

turran: hi

[03:38]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Really really simplified video encoding works like: simplify input data (lossy) -> pack simplified data (lossless). The transcoder works because the "simplify data" step is the same for both formats. And only the lossless packing is different.

[03:39]

anders_: so the same simplified data can be reused

[03:40]

<anders_>

So instead of (flv) unpack -> "desimplify" -(raw)-> "simplify" -> pack (xvid) it becomes (flv) -> unpack -("simplifyed" data)-> pack (xvid)

[03:41]

anders_: ok, i get the idea. so it should not theoretically lose any quality, no ?

[03:42]

it's not lossy->lossy, it's all done in lossless

[03:42]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Right.

[03:43]

Johndesigner: so i have no idea what cause the quality loss you mention

[03:43]

anders_: ok, i had a clear picture then :)

[03:44]

anders_: however, the headers are not clear to me. they shouldn't be just convertible from the original flv video ? or do the xvid headers need some data that the flv headers don't have ?

[03:44]

nerochiaro: hmm, ok. I was just mentioning it to keep an eye out

[03:45]

Johndesigner: ah, ok

[03:45]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: The thing is that the transcoder writes some kind of broken dummy header in the beginning of the file first. And then, when it has all data about bitrates and file length and stuff, it seeks back and writes a real working header.

[03:46]

anders_: why the dummy thing ? isn't that data already there in the flv header ?

[03:47]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Don't think it is there. If it is we can write a real header. Otherwise we can write a header with fake values to make it playable, but with wrong metadata.

[03:49]

anders_: i see. sounds pretty much feasible either way

[03:49]

anders_: the fake header

[03:50]

anders_: would that be with very long length so that it plays until get to the last frame and then aborts ?

[03:50]

(i'm of course confessing my ignorance about video headers here)

[03:51]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: I think there might even be a "stream" header, that says "this is a live stream, there is no such thing as length" that could be used.

[03:54]

anders_: so we can write something like that, buffer the video into memory, and start playing. sounds good.

[03:55]

<anders_>

nerochiaro: Should<tm> be doable.

[03:55]

anders_: Gotcha<tm>

[04:05]

Johndesigner: have you ever used firefox 2 ?

[04:05]

am right now

[04:07]

Johndesigner: what do you think if the automatic suggestions when you type in the search box ? what if there was a way to re-use that on the text input for the osd ?

[04:07]

that could be big

[04:08]

very usefull indeed

[04:09]

Johndesigner: it can be done, if we assume the osd will be connected to the network

[04:09]

i'll post more info in ML in a while

or maybe a field of choices or field of common words

to choose from

like a cloud sort of

explain better the cloud idea please

[04:11]

not really a list per-se, but a cloud of words or phrases where the more popular words are bigger or bolder

[04:11]

can jump around with cursor to select

not cursor, but dpad

Johndesigner: i know, but i don't know how would you move around them efficently

[04:14]

oh, this seem smore interesting than efficient

[04:14]

and for the random searches

[04:14]

like surfing

[04:15]

your idea for the auto complete is better for targeted searches

[04:15]

i was thinking for the youtube search, for example

[04:17]

can osd grab text from descriptions on youtube?

[04:19]

for a specifc search we could use the soon to be real on-screen qwerty keyboard in addition to your autocomplete idea

[04:20]

but if osd can grab words or phrases from youtube descriptions, compile a list of popular ones, then display those as 'you feeling lucky' type thing

[04:21]

Johndesigner: grab in which sense ?

[04:22]

Johndesigner: you mean pick random description from random videos and compile statistics of what are the most popular words ?

[04:23]

something like that yea...is that remotely possible

[04:23]

no

[04:24]

unless you train the system progressively while the user uses it

[04:24]

but that's really lots of work for probably too little gain

[04:25]

gotta be some way to emulate, even if in obscure form, the 'channel surfing' experience

[04:26]

I havent tried the youtube mobile phone stuff...something there maybe?

[04:27]

channel surfing ?

[04:28]

constantly clicking the tv remote channel advance without having a specific end

[04:28]

when you're bored

[04:28]

or indecisive

[04:30]

what im driving at with this is that if the 'golden 5' vids of the day is attainable...

[04:30]

then having some kind of curiosity

[04:30]

that might draw you to vids you wouldn't normally look for

[04:31]

could be engaging

[04:31]

as an additional option to the top 5 list that is

[04:35]

Johndesigner: we can have a "related" surf on the top 5 videos

[04:35]

Johndesigner: we can browse video by categories

Johndesigner: we can browse videos from the same user as a certain video

Johndesigner: or for his friends

(or for the current user friends)