MTP: The story goes on...

Finally I got my mobile-sync working with linux and android. And no, its not MTP...

A USB stick with a file called '.is_audio_player' is recognized by banshee and rythmbox as a valid sync-target. After sync to stick I could copy over to my device using MTP...

What a mess!

Linux & MTP

For those who don't know: Since Android 3 Google decided to use MTP as transport protocol. Device vendors could optinally add SD-card mounts but they don't need to.
My Nexus 4 from Google for sure does only support MTP which has very bad support on linux.

Is there hope on the horizon? gvfs-mtp
I have had no time to test this, but I will do soon.

Convert movies to h264

Finally my vdr (or any other file) to h264 converter script has landed on github
https://github.com/KnisterPeter/convert-to-h264

Gnome-Shell Extensions and Goodies

So, hier mal wieder ein Update:

Seit ich die gnome-shell verwendet ärgere ich mich, dass die Kalenderansicht in der TopBar nur mit Evolution funktioniert.
Nach ein bisschen Aufwand kann jetzt auch ein Google-Kalender Konto verwendet werden:

https://github.com/KnisterPeter/gnome-shell-google-calendar

Außerdem versucht der Button in dieser Kalenderansicht natürlich auch immer Evolution zu starten.
Hierfür habe ich eine kleine Erweiterung geschrieben, damit jetzt der Google-Kalender im Browser gestartet wird:

https://github.com/KnisterPeter/gnome-shell-calender-open

TimeTracker Application

Finished Version 1.0 of TimeTracker - my first public qooxdoo application.

Its a small application for monitoring the spend time on projects and tasks. This app uses the browsers localStorage to save all project and task data so there is no server-side part and also reloads and browser restarts are survived.

The app is installed here for public acccess: http://time.markus-wolf.de/
Sources could be found on github.

Just give it a try. :-)

Converting VDR recordings to Matroska (MP4/AC3)

After testing some tools, I decided to go with HandBrake which does an awesome job in automatic cropping.

The script below does start a HandBrake job using the ac3 audio stream if available, otherwise the first other mp2 stream. The script could be used as VDR postrecording hook for automatically convert recordings.

#!/bin/bash

LOGFILE="/var/log/vdr-convert.log"
INFILE="$1/00001.ts"
OUTDIR="$2"
AUDIO=`ffmpeg -i $INFILE 2>&1  |grep "Audio" |grep "ac3" |sed -e 's/.*Stream #0.\([0-9]\).*/\1/g'`
if [ "x$AUDIO" != "x" ] ; then
AUDIO="-a $AUDIO -E ac3"
else
AUDIO=`ffmpeg -i $INFILE 2>&1  |grep "Audio" |grep "mp2" |grep "stereo" |sed -e 's/.*Stream #0.\([0-9]\).*/\1/g'`
AUDIO="-a $AUDIO -E faac"
fi
TITLE=`egrep "^T" "$1/info"  |sed -e "s/^T //"`
EPISODE=`egrep "^S" "$1/info"  |sed -e "s/^S //"`
OUTFILE="$TITLE"
if [ "x$EPISODE" != "x" ]; then
OUTFILE="$OUTFILE-$EPISODE"
fi
OUTFILE="$OUTDIR/$OUTFILE.mkv"

echo "Executing: /usr/bin/HandBrakeCLI -i \"$INFILE\" -o \"$OUTFILE\" $AUDIO -b 2000" 1>> $LOGFILE
nice -n 19 /usr/bin/HandBrakeCLI -i "$INFILE" -o "$OUTFILE" $AUDIO -b 2000 2>> $LOGFILE 1>> /dev/null
echo "Converted $INFILE to $OUTFILE" >> $LOGFILE