Words from the inside

So finally we have brought SeriesFinale to Hell Diablo.

Some months ago I began a port of SeriesFinale to Diablo (Maemo 4), the software that rules Nokia N8×0 series. Working on it every now and then, finally I have achieved a first version which has everything I was using from Fremantle version.

After talking with Joaquim, the original author (and also my workmate), we decided to put this port as a branch in official repository.

What will you find in this port version?

• It is based on SeriesFinale v0.2.1
• Some features have not been ported yet. For instance, adding series manually or edit information about episodes is not ported yet, and thus are disabled.
• It is a multi-window application. Yes, in order to keep as much the same code as original version as possible, I ended up in a multi-window application: browsing through shows, seasons, and so on is opening different windows. Going back is as simply as closing the opened window. I know it is ugly, but my main goal was to have a functional version running in Diablo. And it does, indeed!

I expect to integrate new changes in Fremantle version, and also to implement all features that remain unported.

Regarding the multiple windows issue, I need to evaluate if it is worth to change it and use just one window with some browsing widget. The main point here is that whatever I do, it should make easy to integrate new features from Fremantle version. After all, Fremantle version is the “official” one

We want to make life easier for all people that want to try Grilo. So we have set up a PPA for Grilo.

If you are using Ubuntu Karmic, add

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/grilo-team/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/grilo-team/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

to your sources.list and you will have Grilo.

If you are using Ubuntu Jaunty or even the next Ubuntu Lucid, do not worry: just replace “karmic” by “jaunty” or “lucid” respectively in the sources.list.

At last, Ubuntu Jaunty have an older version of Vala, while Grilo requires a newer one. So we have backported Vala from Ubuntu Karmic to Ubuntu Jaunty and added to the PPA.

We have released a new version of Grilo, 0.1.2, a framework that provides access to different sources of multimedia content.

Main changes is this release are:

• Improved Vala bindings
• Removed flickcurl from Flickr source
• Added support for gupnp-av-1.0 new versions (greater or equal than 0.5)
• Added two new sources:
  • Shoutcast: get content from popular SHOUTcast internet radio stations.
  • Bookmarks: helps to create bookmarks to multimedia content

The work done in flickr and upnp sources has allowed to remove specific packaging branches for Jaunty, Lucid, Sid and Lenny: now you can use debian branch to build the packages in all those distributions.

Besides it, the main reason for getting rid of flickcurl library in Flickr source is that lack of a asynchronous API. As right now we are using a small subset of flickr service API, we have decided to implement our own way of accessing Flickr.

Nevertheless, our mate Mario is working in a project called flicksoup (a pet project so far), that try to fix this problem, providing a very good asynchronous API. We hope to move to that library in future.

Now, time to test Grilo 0.1.2, and stay tuned for news!

A new version of mafw-gst-eq-renderer has been released: 0.1.2009.47-1-1.

mafw-gst-eq-renderer is a renderer plugin for MAFW, the multimedia framework used in Maemo 5. It is a fork of original MAFW renderer plugin which adds an equalizer.

This release integrates all changes from original mafw-gst-renderer v0.1.2009.47-1 plugin. So it should have all features as original (and unfortunately all bugs too).

If you want to use it with the default mediaplayer, I suggest to install MGR flavour.

Installing mafw-gst-eq-renderer

Installing mafw-gst-eq-renderer (I’m assuming you want to install MGR flavour) is very easy: download it and from a terminal, install it, uninstall original mafw-gst-renderer and reboot the device.

For those that need a detailed step by step:

1. sudo gainroot
2. dpkg -i mafw-gst-eq-renderer_0.1.2009.47-1-1mgr_armel.deb
3. apt-get remove mafw-gst-renderer
4. reboot

Uninstalling mafw-gst-eq-renderer

If for any reason you want to uninstall it, it is easy too: you must restore original mafw-gst-renderer and then remove the fork.

Again, step by step:

1. sudo gainroot
2. apt-get install mafw-gst-renderer mp-fremantle-generic-pr
3. apt-get remove mafw-gst-eq-renderer
4. reboot

After this, everything should work fine.

Iago did a good introduction about Grilo some days ago. As he told, source code is kept in Gitorious, and we welcome any feedback, patches or plugins. Take in account that this is a starting work, so probably lot of changes might happen.

Code is right now split in two repositories: grilo, which contains the core framework, and grilo-plugins, which contains a set of plugins ready to be used. Right now, we have plugins that can access local filesytem, uPnP servers, Flickr, Jamendo, and Youtube. Also, there is also a plugin to deal with podcasts, another one that is used to get cover arts from Last.FM, and finally a “fake” source used to do some tests.

Also, in order to help people to try Grilo, we have packaged it. There is a branch named debian, both in grilo and grilo-plugins repositories, that contains a recent version of Grilo: just build the packages and you can play with Grilo. We will try keep always the last version of code.

As plugins have some requirements, it could be that your Debian/Ubuntu distribution can not satisfy those requirements. Thus, we have created specific branches for this distributions. If you have Debian Lenny (stable), Debian Sid (unstable) or Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04), use the appropriate branches when creating the packages. Take in account that these branches just get rid of plugins that can not be built due to lack of requirements. As Grilo is a live code, might be in future fixes can be committed so they can be built in that distribution. In this case, we will get rid of that branch and people will use the debian branch.