General observation on multimedia part of cfw

[thibautser]

Hello,

I've been using miyoo cfw for about 1 year.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for your work on all the consoles using the Allwinner F1C100S.
I would like to make a few comments about the multimedia part of the cfw.
Currently, when you install version 2.0 beta 2, the only way I know of to play music is to use ffplayer, which plays the music after waiting several seconds and leaves you with a black screen with no visual interaction.
To remedy this problem I've picked up GMU, which was present on 1.3.3 and which, although basic (no fast forward or rewind) still lets you play music.
A second problem with FFplayer is that video playback is very basic, with no visual interface apart from the video to tell us which keys to use to pause ...
Was it me who misused the tools?
I also wanted to point out a problem with dosbox, when you download the version on the github pages all the configuration files are present but the main application is missing.
I've gone to get the app for 1.3.3, I don't know if the dosbox port maintainer is still active and if he's aware of the problem.

It would be a good idea to do a tutorial on how to port programs written in C or python (about library not present in the kernel) to cfw, I've seen that there are tutorials here and there in github and on reddit but it would be interesting if one of the developers could do a tutorial using the docker toolchain because it might allow more open source software to be ported to this machine (like cmus for example which is an excellent music player in the terminal on linux and which is open source which I found traces of on a port on buildroot but I don't know if it was successful (http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2016-August/170185.html)).

I'm a beginner but it would be good to include in this tutorial the differences between ulibc and musl because even though I know that in time you want to switch to the second option, I don't understand the implications of this change.

Thank you

[Apaczer]

@thibautser,

The ffplay was an obvious choice for media usage, because it was already available and easy to build from buildroot repo (in particural FFMPEG package), also it offers the widest compatibility.

the only way I know of to play music is to use ffplayer

There are others! Beside obvious like MPlayer and GMU, when using CLI or terminal app you have mpg123 (for MPEGs) and aplay (for WAV). I suggest you take closer look at mpg123 command line player, which offers a lot options also is easy to integrate with GMenu2X for e.g. create:

mpg123_launch.sh

#!/bin/sh
st -e "/bin/sh" "-c" "mpg123 -vq ${1}"

then create AppLink to it with file selector enabled, to launch track with visual progress representation (-v). Type "h" on virtual keyboard for available controls while playing. You could even add whole directories to playlists just by using asterisk wildcard (well first you should grab dirname $1). Lot of possibilites just read manual.

A second problem with FFplayer is that video playback is very basic

About that, I pushed changes (see MiyooCFW/buildroot#101) which should add controls for audio type media in FFplay (without SDL backend it wasn't possible), also outputs waveforms to screen when playing your music.

dosbox, when you download the version on the github pages

Well if it's not on main page, then there's possibly no maintainer or reliable source (in this case https://github.com/NxHope/miyoo_src/tree/master/dosbox).

It would be a good idea to do a tutorial on how to port programs written in C

If you think porting to MiyooCFW, take a look at my repos - I always try to put step-by-step instructions + docker stuff. There is also wiki page: https://github.com/TriForceX/MiyooCFW/wiki/Making-Games.
More mature projects very often use configuration scripts and in this case also cmus the C* Music Player, while I was able to build from older source (to be compatible with miyoo dependencies), there are still undefined references on LIBAVCODEC - so it would take more work I guess. Futhermore our simple terminal is limited if it goes for running ncurses apps.

the differences between ulibc and musl

Supposedly majority switches to musl nowadays (ref) for licensing and speed reasons (ref.2). I'm not an agitator of musl (quite opposite) and I'm in minority 😄, but generally speaking it's safer to link staticly with musl (MIT license) and good to have options, especially that not all stuff work with uClibc supprisingly (e.g. pcsx standalone if build that way).

[thibautser]

Thank you for your explanation and response. I will check the links in your answer to learn more.