20080628 - Insignia Pilot with Linux

Jack Ungerleider is going to talk about using the Insignia Pilot with Linux.

Jack Says:

"It will play ogg files but doesn't organize them very well. So I rip to MP3 using KAudioCreator and manage the music to the Insignia using Amorok. I've also taken to using Kyamo to edit the tags for album art. Works like a champ."

Hardware run down:

Insignia Pilot - 4Gb Media player - Best Buy "House brand" - price (6/22/2008) $119.99

4GB SD HC expansion card

HP Pavillion dv6000 Series laptop

1 USB cable (included with Pilot)

Software rundown:

openSUSE 10.3 (32-bit)

KDE 3.5

KAudioCreator

Kyamo

Amorok

*Firefox with Fast Video Download add-on

*mencoder

Lame MP3 encoder

*The Pilot can play video. These provide a way to grab flv's from YouTube and other major video sites and convert them to the very particular avi format the Pilot needs.

Ripping Audio

(The following assumes the above packages are installed)

To convert audio from from CD to MP3 for the Pilot follow these steps:

1. Place the CD into your optical drive
2. When KDE recognizes the disc select the option "Extract and Encode Audio Tracks". This will launch KAudioCreator
3. In KAudioCreator: Open the KAudioCreator Settings from the Settings menu
   1. Under CDDB make sure that it is configured to check remote using: freedb.freedb.org
   2. Under Encoder select MP3. Keep the target path as defined. If you want to put music into a directory below your home directory change the path to include that at the beginning.
   3. The defaults for the rest of the setting should be acceptable.
4. You are now ready to rip. Select that tracks you want to rip
5. Then click the gear icon (Rip Tracks) on the tool bar
6. Monitor progress on the Jobs tab of the interface. KAudioCreator will automatically add an encoding job once the track is ripped.
7. Once all your tracks are ripped, close KAudioCreator and open KYamo. It will scan your home directory and find your media files. Find the album folder for the disc just ripped and select it.
8. In the KYamo interface click on the cover art option and then click the "Search for Cover" button.
9. Select a square image between 200 and 400 pixels on a side if it is available.
10. Click the save file button. Close KYamo.

The files are ready to transfer to the Pilot. First a few words about making it work. First make sure that the Pilot is set for folders and files in the Connection Type under settings. If you plan to use and SD card in the slot of the Pilot to increase your storage capacity I recommend you leave it out for the first go round with transferring music.

1. Plug the Pilot into an available USB port. If it is not turned on this will cause it to power up.
2. When you receive the dialog box on what to do with the attached device select "Do Nothing" or press the "Cancel" button.
3. Open Amorok and go to "Configure Amorok" on the  Settings menu.
   1. In the settings dialog click on Media devices
   2. You media device should show up with the option set to "Do not handle". This is the default.
   3. Change the option to "Generic Audio Player".
4. Make sure that Amorok sees your music files. You should see the cover art select in the Amorok "Collection" tab associated with the disc you just ripped.
5. Select at the highest level you want to copy. Either individual tracks or the entire disc. Right Click on the label in the tree structure and select "Transfer to Media Player".
6. On the Media Player tab you should now see the tracks you want to transfer.
7. Use the Connect button at the top to connect to the media player.
8. Click the transfer button and it should copy the files to the media player.

That's pretty much it. You can now enjoy your audio on the go.

Working with Video

 One of the reasons I decided to get the Pilot was that it handles video on its 2.4 inch screen. This is comparable to some of the early LCD based pocket TVs. Getting video to the Pilot is a bit tricky. It only supports a very particular formatting of the file. Basically it needs to be XVid (or DivX) Mpeg4 in an AVI wrapper. The only way I have found to do this reliably is via the command line using Mencoder. The details are in this article (http://www.platoscave.net/tag/audio) at platoscave.net. The pertinent information is shown below:

mencoder demo.flv -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=96 -srate 44100 -af resample=44100:0:0 -af volume=20 \ 
-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=1:vbitrate=384 -sws 2 -vf scale=320:240,harddup \
-noskip -skiplimit 1 -ffourcc XVID -ofps 29.97 -o output.avi

I've made a couple of changes in the above from the original. I changed dump.vob to demo.flv and set the scale to 320:240 since I'm looking to convert standard 4:3 video.  This is to show that you can use mencoder to convert files downloaded from sites like YouTube and play them on the Pilot.

To get the flvs from the video site I use the Firefox add-on, Fast Video Download. This allows the downloading of videos from a number of video sites.

CAUTION: When downloading videos make sure you know any copyright related issues. Particularly if some is specifically labeled that it cannot be downloaded or used off-line then leave it alone. If you don't know whether you can download the video then assume that you can't and leave it alone.