S60 Open to new features

Eh? OGG a stranger to Series 60? OggPlay is one of THE most downloaded applications for the platform!! It's free, it's very efficient and it's currently the best way to play music on the majority of S60 phones in existence.

Steve Litchfield

Steve, I was there referring to formats that are supported natively in S60. Can you have Ogg files as ringingtones with OggPlay? WMAPlus adds that to WMA files, that's pretty nice.

Ah. OK. Ogg Vorbis has been a very good stop gap in the Symbian world for a couple of years, but with the next generation of Nokia devices, being able to play WMA natively will mean the same efficiency as Ogg Vorbis, but with far greater support from Microsoft.

Steve

Sorry to disagree, but you can put an ogg file as a ringtone. all you have to do is oggplay installed in your phone...

PS- is there something wrong with the cookies in this blog? It never remembers me... :(

Actually, I didn't say Ogg files couldn't be ringtones 8-)

I was skirting around the question because I'd never tried it!

Steve

You're right Steve. Sorry. Anyway, I confirm it :)

My question is: given a phone that supports MMF (Multi Media Framework) why can't we add support for WMA or OGG in the native player by just installing these moduldes (OGG from the OGGplay project, & WMA backported from the newer player)...

Heim?

Mike

Alexandre: yes there is something wrong since in other blogs cookies seem to work. I am checking on it.

Good that S60 phones support WMA format, especially when comparing with Windows Mobile phones. Also I read that
WM 9 Series can be as much as
30 percent better than MPEG-4
( from the book
"Programming Microsoft DirectShow for digital video and television"
by Mark D. Pesce. ).

Eric

It's all dependent on bit rate. Windows Media 9 and 10 are based around the same MPEG-4 technology. So they're all as efficient as each other. All depends on the bit rate you specify, and hence on the file size in megabytes per minute.

Complicated area!

Steve Litchfield

Is there an easy way to discover or buy music on s60? What do you recommend?

I download podcasts in .mp3 on my 9300 and I am very happy with it, but with S60, where do I find the music libraries?

What about S60 casting?

Eh? Buy Music for S60? What madness is this? 8-)

What about all your CDs? Just rip them to WMA or Ogg Vorbis, copy the folders to your expansion card and get rocking!

Full instructions at http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/musicuiq.htm

Steve Litchfield

Mike: it is working that way! If you install OggPlay, also S60 native player will play out Ogg. I tried this with 6630, but couldn't get OggPlay to find any files for some reason. Does it work for you?

WOuldn't work for me either.... Again on a 660. Anyway, I suspect that OggPlay uses less resources and wastes less battery power!

8-)

Steve

Steve, uses less resources comparing to what?

Less than RealPlayer, of course, but also possibly less than the new 'Music player' as well?

Maybe I should do some hard tests before opening my mouth though!

Steve

Steve: I was referring to the "old" embedded music player found on 2.x devices, it can take use of MMF codecs like OggPlay's if they are installed. For music, you don't need to use RealPlayer. I don't have hard data available right now, but I would think that using native applications which are anyway on the device ROM is the most efficient way resource-wise. But one can of course use whatever application, native or add-on, that's the point of open platform :) BTW, no luck with OggPlay in N90, UI seems to be broken, the same with WMAPlus!

Can I respectfully suggest you (the S60 team) contact both OggPlay and WMAPlus! authors and offer them help/machine loans so that they can tweak their apps to work properly on S60 2nd edition, FP3?

These two apps really need to be made to work, I'm sure the authors would put in their time....

Steve Litchfield

As much as I would like to see also those apps working properly, it is up to the developers to make the effort based on the demand from the market. Forum Nokia is there to offer the support, starting with the SDK. What we can do is to send them feedback and let them know we want those apps on the N70/N90 also :)

So...er.... has anyone told them that their apps don't work on the N70/90?

What the S60 team need is a platform evangelist (hey, hire me!) to make the right connections and pull these sort of strands together...

Steve Litchfield

you've come a long way on this platform,it's the best in mobile as a working musician and songwriter whois inpatiently waiting for the N91, i and thousands like me need the killer app on this platform...Ready? "TWO TRACK stereo record" now and only then will u get the artist support...-dp

dp: I would also love that feature! Do you mean stereo mic on the device, or line-in recording from a standard connector?

Why MP3? For me, it's simple. I have 60GB of music, mostly ripped from CD's, and I want it to be accessible on any platform by any player at any time -- single format, no conversions. My platforms include Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iPod, Xbox, Nokia phones, UPnP stream players etc. I believe it is easier to put slightly bigger hard disks into devices than to create a new audio format standard.

Actually, you're very unusual in wanting to span Mac and Linux as well. WMA is the best choice for most people because it's twice as efficient as MP3 and support is built-in to PCs, X-Boxes (and soon smartphones).

Of course, Ogg Vorbis is even better, but there's no way it'll really catch on because Microsoft isn't behind it!

So I've ended up with a hard disk full of .ogg files and rather wishing I'd gone down the WMA route. But there you go! 8-)

Steve Litchfield

I'm told that OggPlay 1.67 works just fine on N70/N90. Ok, so the bundled N90 skin doesn't work properly but that's because Nokia didn't bother putting the FP3 "Series 60 Sans" font on the phone. You can edit the skin and install your own fonts to make a skin that works though so it's not a big deal.

I'm sure WMAPlus will work when the people behind it get around to updating their code with the latest OggPlay changes!

Maybe we should have smart enough transcoding software between the devices, so that the format could be different for each device. Certainly possible to do, but maybe a bit idealistic still :)

Stuart: Thanks for the tip :)

Not about WMA but AAC that is the highest quality decoder -- I've been very happy with music capabilities of 6630 + OggPlay. Mp3 and Ogg metadata support helps in browsing the music collection but with AAC (.aac and .m4a) that is unfortunately broken. It's not a but of OggPlay, is this known at S60?

Not a direct answer to your Q, but the quality of each music file depends hugely on the bit rate used. As a rule of thumb, WMA and Ogg Vorbis are 'CD quality' (to the untrained ear) at 64kbps, AAC at 96kbps and MP3 at 128kbps.

Hope this helps,

Steve Litchfield http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/

It depends also on flavor of AAC. We have MPEG-4 AAC (LC), AAC+, eAAC+, etc. The "128 kbps MP3 quality" is achieved at very different bit rates. Personally I use 128-160 kbps AAC LC, 160 kbps Ogg and 192 kbps Mp3 but I'm somewhat "trained ear" and need bigger memory cards :^)

Ok, from my experience. The best player is the default player available through the gallery. You can fwd and rev within a track without a problem, can't do this using Music and in OggPlay the music breaks off when there is any other UI interaction.

All my music is in the Ogg format, I rename it to AAC and play it in the default player, works like a charm.

The Music player is a real joke, try using a stereo encoded track, stay in the "NOW PLAYING" view, hear the stutter!!! The progress bar updating causes the stutter.

The latest version of AAC, eAAC+ is there at roughly the same level than WMA and Ogg. It is supported already in Nokia N70/N90 and all the coming S60 3rd Ed. phones.

Yes, that maybe. But what about all the people with existing AAC tracks and those with software that rips to the 'old' AAC. Plus older devices, of course.

A new music format will take *years* to become a standard. Much as I love to hate Microsoft 8-), their WMA format (unencrypted, of course) is still the best option for anyone new to this field, IMO.

Steve Litchfield

If the AAC decoder of older device was done properly in the first place it will play out also eAAC+ tracks just fine, just with lower quality.

'lower quality' - exactly. Which brings us back to the start of the discussion!

Steve

Just giving you the facts :)

Some idea about various audio format's subjective quality can be found from here. The tests were done publicly in the internet so there is room for errors

128 kbit/s (overall ratings are in the end)
http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html

64 kbit/s
http://www.rjamorim.com/test/64test/results.html

I noticed there is a 32 kbit/s test as well

Nero's HE AAC + parametric stereo is the technique used in eAAC+ / HE-AAC v2

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/32kbps/results.html

I'd rather stick to my own listening tests, performed for PDA Essentials magazine a year ago. See my comment above 8-)

Admittedly, this was with bog standard AAC though...

Steve

"Bog standard" AAC and Vorbis are the way to go for highest absolute quality if you don't mind large file sizes.

No, no, any codec can produce fabulous results with high bit rates. For mobile devices, file size is a huge factor. That's the point of this discussion, working out the best codecs to support for best quality at minimum bit rates/file sizes.

Steve

Here we see that people have very different preferences for quality vs. size tradeoff!

For the mobile, eAAC+ is mind blowing. You've got to hear the quality at 32kbps, near CD quality and incredibly small file sizes.

AAC+ version 2 is what we call it :-) AAC with SBR and PS!

A small problem, the container for AAC+ V2 is still not finalised and everyone seems to be doing it differently, MP4 container at present is the most popular.

Yep, or HE-AAC v2 is the MPEG name :)

There's always the Ogg MMF controller from Symbian.

This allows you to play Oggs as ringtones etc.

http://www.symbian.com/developer/techlib/apps/ogg_vorbis.html