firmware updates - what is possible?

summerblink · 05-10-2005, 08:39

i was wondering if firmware updates could possibly fix/solve/add these things:

gapless playback
viewing pictures while listening to music

uhhh, well, i guess those are the only things that i can think of that i would want to fix on the x5 (not having one in hand).

any ideas?

danson · 05-10-2005, 09:53

good topic, lets make a wishlist:
my #1 wish:
search/jump function: search for words in the ID3 tags, in the filename or in the path of the file. As the Cowon OS is based on linux, this should be very easy to program, as linux has various ways to search stuff in a filesystem (e.g. whereis).
While entering the word (part of it) a shrinking playlist (eg file with symbolic links to all the songs matching the current search word) should arise, which is constantly rewriten as you enter more letters to your word.
You should be able to stop the search at any time and play all the songs which match, as if it where one folder (with symbolic links).
This way you could forget the ID3 database stuff! You could play all songs of one artist, because all songs of one artist would have his name either in the filename or in the path. All you have to do is order your songs nicely.

summerblink · 05-10-2005, 11:00

hrmm. i wonder how easy the x5 would be to hack . . . has anybody hacked any of the other iAudio products? i could see some customized fonts, etc., all that jazz like what happened with the iPod and iPodWizard (btw, the main reason i'm ending up buying an x5 (besides the fact that it ROCKS) is that i lost my iPod photo) . . .

korinengell · 05-10-2005, 12:08

Well, technically speaking so long as it is not hardware limited, anything is possible in software. Let me give you my take on what is reasonable to expect and what is not....

The only things that really factor here are memory and processing power. Given that there is at least 20GB on the basic player we can pretty say that is unlimited for an embedded device (and I am assuming here the hard drive is partitioned with an area reserved for the OS as opposed to seperate storage like flash or something). So that really only leaves processing power.

I personally don't see what the problem is with stuff like gapless playback, given that it all the music from the HD gets put into a cache and played from that. Gapless playback should be easy so long as the cache is organised correctly. However, this is providing there aren't a bunch of tasks/threads that need to run between songs that consume much processor time (like update the screen display with new track name, organise what next song is to play, blah blah...). Certainly doesn't sound like much...not sure why it's a problem (even for bloody Windows Media Player).

Stuff like viewing pictures while listening to music will impact much more on processor time because you need to run an interpolation algorithm to resize the picture to display on the screen, and do the same thing every time you zoom/pan/display a new pic...it's much more processor intensive than gapless especially if you are talking about a 4-5 Megapixel image from a camera.

Given that the firmware on the X5 will be the M3 with a much expanded feature set and i/o (just the GUI joystick and USB-OTG port I think isn't it?) it is starting with a pretty solid stable code base...however that kind of tends to hacking to get stuff working rather then implementing something nicely so it is maintainable. (I know lots about that

Oh and Danson...you're dreaming son. What you are talking about (as i interpreted it) would really only be practical with an ID3 tag database built already. Otherwise just imagine your 5000 songs distributed all over the disc platter along with all their ID3 tags. Then imagine the poor hard drive needle flying to every sector on the disc containing the bits of an ID3 tag. That's not so bad on a Pentium 4 with 512MB-1024MB RAM 7200rpm hard drive and 240V mains power, not so good for the poor little X5 with Motorolla Coldfire (I believe - I seem to remember someone mentioning, which is actually a fairly grunty little embedded processor), maybe 4-8MB RAM, I doubt it would even be laptop 5400rpm, I reckon it would be more like 2400rpm on about 9 volts battery

But then again...I am not a database programmer. I'm not aware of the complexities of how to implement a quick and fast search algorithm... but then again I can almost guarantee you the guys programming the X5 aren't database programmers either

Ahh...yet another epic...

danson · 05-10-2005, 14:21

ok, thats true korinengell.
but you could make a database of all existing files/paths (lets forgett about ID3 for a while)
each time you load something onto your X5 (the X5 writes the DB! not the mac!).
then the search algo only has to operate in this db/file, which could possibly be loaded into the memory...
all it has to do is filter this db according to your search and leave all the remaining songs in the "playlist" (a file with symlinks) and display it on the screen!

possible?

8ounce · 05-10-2005, 15:06

And the part about having your songlist shrinking when entering in more letters sounds pretty difficult when there's no keypad (like a cellphone, which it sounds like you're getting this idea from...) Might be nice but it would require a hardware overhaul.

danson · 05-10-2005, 17:01

the good thing about your objection, is that you will not have any problems with the processor speed

but you could enter your name like in a console game:
with a 2d field of letters and the joystick, like this every letter is at max 6 joystick moves away, 3 in average. with a fast gui (and a fast finger) it would still make me very happy.
ABCDEF (when the joystick knows more than 4 directions you could even make a O )
GHIJKLM
NOPQRS
TUVWXYZ
besides, the X5 could try to guess what you are entering, by checking in the db (like a cellphone)

2.) its not just a search function, also a immediate playlist generator. you could tag your songs (in the filename) with as many tags as you wish (eg /black/rnb/smooth-instrumental-....-artist). You could generate a "smooth" song playlist to chill with your girl or a playlist with any branch of your folder system... see what i mean?

korinengell · 05-11-2005, 07:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by danson

you could make a database of all existing files/paths (lets forgett about ID3 for a while)
each time you load something onto your X5 (the X5 writes the DB! not the mac!).
then the search algo only has to operate in this db/file, which could possibly be loaded into the memory...
all it has to do is filter this db according to your search and leave all the remaining songs in the "playlist" (a file with symlinks) and display it on the screen!

Are you trying to say that your database would just be the starting address of each song? I'm really don't understand what you mean...or even what good that would be... if you are not looking through ID3 tags you don't have a lot of searchable information left over except maybe: file name, bitrate, track length...

Darkroom · 05-11-2005, 11:16

I think we are unlikely to see viewing of jpegs while playing music. The reason I think so, is that looking at what the X5 does, it really seems the whole system is not set up to multitask. To be able to view photos, the system would need to process images and music simultaneously.

trivial as this simultaneous viewing may seem, it is very hard to implement. Unless the system was set up to do that from the beginning, it would require a massive re-write. Very likely also upgraded processor and more memory.
If you build in a better processor and add memory to view photos, you would also need to upgrade the screen... Wait, that's X7 I'm talking about there =o)

Fido · 05-11-2005, 19:25

Keep in mind that the X5 is really small, the DAP makers need to balance between size and power. But the X5 will not be able to play music and photo's at the same time unless they somehow make the processing more efficient, and that wont happen.
Gapless and Database are very much possibilities, but searching would come after the database function if at all.

zaphanathpaneah · 05-11-2005, 20:54

One thing to keep in mind is that if they did it, battery life would be only 2 or 3 hours. Remember how all DAPs work. the hard drive spins up and reads a few mins of information then spins down to save on power. It buffers the information in a cache that it uses then after about 10 mins, it spins up the platter again to read more information. now if you tried to play music and look at photos, the hard drive would be spining more often and the cache (which is usually no more than 5 -10mb) would not be enough to support both features. It is not fesible unless you go with a larger device that has a bigger form factor and battery life.

korinengell · 05-12-2005, 06:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darkroom

I think we are unlikely to see viewing of jpegs while playing music. The reason I think so, is that looking at what the X5 does, it really seems the whole system is not set up to multitask. To be able to view photos, the system would need to process images and music simultaneously.

You are actually talking about two completely different things. When people talk about multitasking on computers they are generally talking about a single processor which only performs a single task at a time (at an application software level). Windows performs multitasking and task switching in a simlar method... but each task is timesliced a little bit at a time to give the end user the impression that all these tasks are running simultaneously. But in truth only one runs at a time in very rapid succession. I'll guarantee you that the X5 has a multitasking kernel, and a resonably beefy one too because there is a lot of stuff it needs to do.

Simultaneously running tasks is a very different kettle of fish and is only capable with multiple processors as we are seeing the PC industry start leaning towards to now that they can't shrink die size much more. We are about to enter some very dark days of some very nasty multithreated software unless some smart bungle can figure out how to make multiple software applications running multiple threads on multiple processors safe... but that is a whole other topic in a whole other forum

neave · 05-12-2005, 06:47

My one wish is the ability to name radio stations (as you can currently only store them under their frequency). Surely that's a very easy firmware upgrade.

korinengell · 05-12-2005, 06:57

Yes neave that would be fairly straight forward. And yes I agree that would be a nice (not to mention sensible) thing to have.

05-11-2005, 20:54	#11
zaphanathpaneah Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: USA Posts: 521	One thing to keep in mind is that if they did it, battery life would be only 2 or 3 hours. Remember how all DAPs work. the hard drive spins up and reads a few mins of information then spins down to save on power. It buffers the information in a cache that it uses then after about 10 mins, it spins up the platter again to read more information. now if you tried to play music and look at photos, the hard drive would be spining more often and the cache (which is usually no more than 5 -10mb) would not be enough to support both features. It is not fesible unless you go with a larger device that has a bigger form factor and battery life. __________________ Call me "Z" Iaudio 5 Iaudio X5 Cowon D2 4gb + 8gb SDHC iriver 900 series Etymotic ear budds. (perfect sound) Metallica rules.

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05-10-2005, 08:39	#1
summerblink Member Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 140	i was wondering if firmware updates could possibly fix/solve/add these things: gapless playback viewing pictures while listening to music uhhh, well, i guess those are the only things that i can think of that i would want to fix on the x5 (not having one in hand). any ideas?

05-10-2005, 09:53	#2
danson Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Bern, Switzerland Posts: 74	good topic, lets make a wishlist: my #1 wish: search/jump function: search for words in the ID3 tags, in the filename or in the path of the file. As the Cowon OS is based on linux, this should be very easy to program, as linux has various ways to search stuff in a filesystem (e.g. whereis). While entering the word (part of it) a shrinking playlist (eg file with symbolic links to all the songs matching the current search word) should arise, which is constantly rewriten as you enter more letters to your word. You should be able to stop the search at any time and play all the songs which match, as if it where one folder (with symbolic links). This way you could forget the ID3 database stuff! You could play all songs of one artist, because all songs of one artist would have his name either in the filename or in the path. All you have to do is order your songs nicely.

05-10-2005, 11:00	#3
summerblink Member Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 140	hrmm. i wonder how easy the x5 would be to hack . . . has anybody hacked any of the other iAudio products? i could see some customized fonts, etc., all that jazz like what happened with the iPod and iPodWizard (btw, the main reason i'm ending up buying an x5 (besides the fact that it ROCKS) is that i lost my iPod photo) . . .

05-10-2005, 12:08	#4
korinengell Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 167	Well, technically speaking so long as it is not hardware limited, anything is possible in software. Let me give you my take on what is reasonable to expect and what is not.... The only things that really factor here are memory and processing power. Given that there is at least 20GB on the basic player we can pretty say that is unlimited for an embedded device (and I am assuming here the hard drive is partitioned with an area reserved for the OS as opposed to seperate storage like flash or something). So that really only leaves processing power. I personally don't see what the problem is with stuff like gapless playback, given that it all the music from the HD gets put into a cache and played from that. Gapless playback should be easy so long as the cache is organised correctly. However, this is providing there aren't a bunch of tasks/threads that need to run between songs that consume much processor time (like update the screen display with new track name, organise what next song is to play, blah blah...). Certainly doesn't sound like much...not sure why it's a problem (even for bloody Windows Media Player). Stuff like viewing pictures while listening to music will impact much more on processor time because you need to run an interpolation algorithm to resize the picture to display on the screen, and do the same thing every time you zoom/pan/display a new pic...it's much more processor intensive than gapless especially if you are talking about a 4-5 Megapixel image from a camera. Given that the firmware on the X5 will be the M3 with a much expanded feature set and i/o (just the GUI joystick and USB-OTG port I think isn't it?) it is starting with a pretty solid stable code base...however that kind of tends to hacking to get stuff working rather then implementing something nicely so it is maintainable. (I know lots about that Oh and Danson...you're dreaming son. What you are talking about (as i interpreted it) would really only be practical with an ID3 tag database built already. Otherwise just imagine your 5000 songs distributed all over the disc platter along with all their ID3 tags. Then imagine the poor hard drive needle flying to every sector on the disc containing the bits of an ID3 tag. That's not so bad on a Pentium 4 with 512MB-1024MB RAM 7200rpm hard drive and 240V mains power, not so good for the poor little X5 with Motorolla Coldfire (I believe - I seem to remember someone mentioning, which is actually a fairly grunty little embedded processor), maybe 4-8MB RAM, I doubt it would even be laptop 5400rpm, I reckon it would be more like 2400rpm on about 9 volts battery But then again...I am not a database programmer. I'm not aware of the complexities of how to implement a quick and fast search algorithm... but then again I can almost guarantee you the guys programming the X5 aren't database programmers either Ahh...yet another epic...

05-10-2005, 14:21	#5
danson Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Bern, Switzerland Posts: 74	ok, thats true korinengell. but you could make a database of all existing files/paths (lets forgett about ID3 for a while) each time you load something onto your X5 (the X5 writes the DB! not the mac!). then the search algo only has to operate in this db/file, which could possibly be loaded into the memory... all it has to do is filter this db according to your search and leave all the remaining songs in the "playlist" (a file with symlinks) and display it on the screen! possible?

05-10-2005, 15:06	#6
8ounce Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 22	And the part about having your songlist shrinking when entering in more letters sounds pretty difficult when there's no keypad (like a cellphone, which it sounds like you're getting this idea from...) Might be nice but it would require a hardware overhaul.

05-10-2005, 17:01	#7
danson Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Bern, Switzerland Posts: 74	the good thing about your objection, is that you will not have any problems with the processor speed but you could enter your name like in a console game: with a 2d field of letters and the joystick, like this every letter is at max 6 joystick moves away, 3 in average. with a fast gui (and a fast finger) it would still make me very happy. ABCDEF (when the joystick knows more than 4 directions you could even make a O ) GHIJKLM NOPQRS TUVWXYZ besides, the X5 could try to guess what you are entering, by checking in the db (like a cellphone) 2.) its not just a search function, also a immediate playlist generator. you could tag your songs (in the filename) with as many tags as you wish (eg /black/rnb/smooth-instrumental-....-artist). You could generate a "smooth" song playlist to chill with your girl or a playlist with any branch of your folder system... see what i mean?

05-11-2005, 11:16	#9
Darkroom Member Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 181	I think we are unlikely to see viewing of jpegs while playing music. The reason I think so, is that looking at what the X5 does, it really seems the whole system is not set up to multitask. To be able to view photos, the system would need to process images and music simultaneously. trivial as this simultaneous viewing may seem, it is very hard to implement. Unless the system was set up to do that from the beginning, it would require a massive re-write. Very likely also upgraded processor and more memory. If you build in a better processor and add memory to view photos, you would also need to upgrade the screen... Wait, that's X7 I'm talking about there =o)

05-11-2005, 19:25	#10
Fido Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 916	Keep in mind that the X5 is really small, the DAP makers need to balance between size and power. But the X5 will not be able to play music and photo's at the same time unless they somehow make the processing more efficient, and that wont happen. Gapless and Database are very much possibilities, but searching would come after the database function if at all.

05-12-2005, 06:47	#13
neave Member Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 30	My one wish is the ability to name radio stations (as you can currently only store them under their frequency). Surely that's a very easy firmware upgrade.

05-12-2005, 06:57	#14
korinengell Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 167	Yes neave that would be fairly straight forward. And yes I agree that would be a nice (not to mention sensible) thing to have.