On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 09:28:11PM EDT, Elizabeth Dodd wrote:

[..]

> no, if you have a system in which your mp3 files / flv files are not
> in a SINGLE directory TREE you could just point it at '/' and navigate
> anywhere but if you have /home/user/Music you point freevo at
> '/home/user/Music'

Thanks, this makes sense.

Having to customize via a configuration file is the price you have to
pay for the simplicity of the interface.

What fooled me is that the debian packaging should really provide a
post-install script that lets you set at least the basic options, and
optionally tell you where to go for additional customization.

I had not trouble editing the local_conf.py file - or rather the copy I
made to my home directory - and pretty much everything that I needed now
works (this is a laptop and I don't have a TV/radio card, for instance).

But I am an intermediate user of linux with a good command of his editor
and some knowledge of python syntax. I hate to think how long it would
take the average Windows defector to get this to work..!

Things that are not working smoothly at this point:

1. Switching to full-screen mode results in a blank (black, actually)
   screen: I have set freevo to start full-screen but after I hit 'z', 
   the currently playing video clip is scaled back to the default size
   that I specified in local_conf.py and positioned at +x+y = +0+0 (top
   left corner of display) and the rest of the screen is black. If I hit
   'z' a second time, I get a black screen - I have to hit 'z' again and 
   then the escape key to get out of this and back to the freevo menu. 

2. RSS is not working - neither with the default freevo feeds nor links
   that I copied from google.news for instance. I get a "No Headlines
   found" message. I don't have a standalone aggregator handy on this 
   system to help me make good guesses. I need to take a closer look.

Things that I would like to tweak/improve:

1. Keyboard actions do not suit my habits - mainly I would need to bind
   the hjkl keys to navigate the screens more efficiently and something
   like q to the "shutdown" option. I saw a stanza near the end of the
   local_conf.py file named "events" that has a few examples of how you
   define custom bindings but I would need a list of the events' canonical
   names in order to do that. I'll read the doc tomorrow - otherwise they 
   should be defined somewhere in /usr/bin/freevo.real, I guess.

2. Many of the .flv's that I have are music and I would prefer having
   them recognized as such by freevo in order to have the benefit of
   features like playlists (such as playing an entire directory) and
   possibly random play, repeat, etc. I have seen some promising hints
   in local_conf.py that this might be possible.

3. I haven't had time to look into web TV & radio as yet but this should
   be straightforward. I just need to retrieve the links from my bash
   history and figure out how to pass options such as cache size etc. to
   mplayer.

4. When using mplayer from the bash prompt, watching web TV or .flv
   clips, I specify a "geometry" so that the output is positioned in a
   small window somewhere near the top right corner of the screen, out 
   of my way, so I can get on with whatever I am doing. Then, I would 
   use 'f' to toggle full screen mode. Not sure if I can achieve something 
   similar with freevo. 

The irony of it is that I was looking for a curses-based front-end to
mplayer because as I may have mentioned elsewhere I didn't need the
aggravation of a GUI.. and I end up with this really delightful freevo
interface.. let's call it a "post GUI" concept. :-)

Outside the CLI or text-mode screen-oriented applications, it's the
first time I run into an application that does what the user needs
rather than what the developer thought would be good for the user.

Thanks much for help and any pointers and comments about the above much
appreciated.

Naturally, many thanks to the author(s) of freevo..!

CJ

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