Tag: sheeva

  • the automatic podcast, by sheevaplug

    I’ve now got the automatic podcast running on the sheevaplug. Because I can’t so easily re-encode mp3s, I’ve had to come up with a different way to make the podcast. The file is much larger, but the sound quality should be better.

    It might be a few days before it runs from the sheevaplug every day.

  • fast fixed-point MP3 encoder for ARM

    CompRec, though extremely poor quality (no psychoacoustic modelling! Old-school twinkly-burbly MP3s here we come!) is a fast MP3 encoder you can build on the SheevaPlug. It’s perfect for my limited needs.
    (thanks to wb6ymh for finding this.)

  • time to get MAD

    The prime reason I bought the Sheevaplug is to run the automatic podcast. Every day, the script has to decode a bunch of mp3s to WAV format.On a normal computer, this takes a few seconds per file. On the Sheevaplug – with no floating-point instructions, things get painful:

    $ time lame --mp3input 03-in_the_aeroplane_over_the_sea.mp3 03-in_the_aeroplane_over_the_sea.wav
    ID3v2 found. Be aware that the ID3 tag is currently lost when transcoding.
    LAME 3.98 32bits (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
    Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 16538 Hz - 17071 Hz
    Encoding 03-in_the_aeroplane_over_the_sea.mp3
    to 03-in_the_aeroplane_over_the_sea.wav
    Encoding as 44.1 kHz j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (11x) 128 kbps qval=3
    Frame          |  CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU |    ETA
    7750/7750  (100%)|    8:45/    8:45|    8:46/    8:46|   0.3851x|    0:00
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    kbps        LR    MS  %     long  %
    128.0        2.1  97.9       100.0
    Writing LAME Tag...done
    ReplayGain: -8.9dB

    real    8m46.408s
    user    8m45.940s
    sys    0m0.090s

    That’s right – nearly 9 minutes to decode a song! My very first Pentium 75 could probably do better than that.

    I’d heard that MAD was really fast on integer-only CPUs, so I tried it:

    $ time madplay -o 03-in_the_aeroplane_over_the_sea.wav 03-in_the_aeroplane_over_the_sea.mp3
    MPEG Audio Decoder 0.15.2 (beta) - Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Robert Leslie et al.
    Title: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
    Artist: Neutral Milk Hotel
    Album: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
    Track: 3
    Year: 1998
    Genre: Alternative
    Comment:
    7748 frames decoded (0:03:22.3), +1.2 dB peak amplitude, 1423 clipped samples

    real    0m7.134s
    user    0m6.500s
    sys    0m0.580s

    Seven seconds sure beats nearly nine minutes. Now, if only I could find an integer MP3 encoder …

  • awe-inspiring terminal output

    sheevaplug terminal outputWell, not really that awe-inspiring. But it does show that the Sheevaplug boots and runs out of the box. Given that it has only 512MB of RAM and the same amount of Flash storage, it’s a fairly small system.

    I really want to have this replace my Firefly Media Server installation on the laptop. First, I need to work out how to get it to boot from an external HD.

  • sheevaplug

    I ordered one of Marvell’s SheevaPlug Development Kit; wonder when it will arrive? It will make the best mini-server I could ever wish for.