Err0r

I'm sure that there are many people wanting to help out with this project. Some more technical, some less. I'm curious to know what people can do to accelerate and help this project.

For instance, I've been thinking of chipping in some money and also set up a donation fund for this project, but what will the money be used for?

I hope this thread can prove to be helpful for the Meizu Rockbox project.

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markun

You could also donate some money to the rockbox fund. It will be used to bring developers together (there will be a european and american devcon this summer) and to buy new players for devs.

More and more rockbox devs are buying meizu's now (all 8GB M6SL so far), so when they all arrive the port will get some more attention.

A lot of work that has gone into rockbox was not target specific but benefits all players, including the meizu models in future, that's why I personally think it would be a bit unfair to set up a meizu port specific fund, but you are free to do so of course.

btw, I added a todo to the rockbox wiki so people can track the status of the various parts of the port and see who's working on what:

MeizuM6Port < Main < TWiki

EDIT: this is a nice summary of what people can do to help rockbox in general if they are not programmers:

daniel.haxx.se What Can I do for Rockbox when not Programming?

Err0r

It's impossible for all developers interested in Meizu products to receive a free player. Who decides which developers get the players?

I can see why you feel it is a bit selfish to donate only for the Meizu-specific port, but most people want to donate for their player to be Rockbox supported. Many players, such as the iPod, have huge fanbases. If a Meizu fan donates, it won't really help them as much...

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markun

Are you suggesting we should stop using ipod user money to pay for meizu players? Who do you think payed for my M6?

kalel90

No hes saying the m6 has a smaller fanbase and us giving to the overall project wouldn't do as much good to accelerate the progress rate on the m6 as a m6 specific fund would.
As in the money would go towards other players there by eleminating the point of speeding up work on the m6.

bagder

If you say you're "better" than being in the huge Rockbox family with all the other targets, why would the main Rockbox donation fund help out the Rockbox-on-Meizu project then? That money was donated by users of all sorts of targets.

Besides, the fact that the main fund is funded by users using something like 30 different players make it bigger and it funds Rockbox as a single project as that's what Rockbox is.

Rockbox-on-Meizu is a sub-project to get drivers and tweaks fixed to make it run on the Meizu models, by donating and throwing money only to the guys that work on these drivers you're purposely ignoring the vast amount of time and effort spent by hundreds of individuals to make Rockbox what it is. And all that sweat will come to the Meizu ones the drivers and tweaks are working.

Of course the hackers that work hard on getting Meizu support for Rockbox done are worth admiration, support and even perhaps funding if there's anything particular they need to reach results faster.

If you say that only the drivers and tweaks for Meizu are worth your donations, then I would accuse you of not understanding exactly what it means to create a project with 500,000 lines of quality code.

You're of course free to do whatever you want, but me being one of the Rockbox guys who've ordered a Meizu to get into this work I feel I must protest since I really don't like this kind of attitude. And if you decide to proceed with a Meizu-specific funding, I would like to you be clear and accurate in your description when you do this - that it isn't going to the "normal" Rockbox project.

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jbernardo

I wouldn´t donate on a meizu only project. Rockbox is the sum of its parts, and donating to the whole project is the way to get a better firmware to our specific device. Trying to restrict the donations to "meizu only development" will only alienate the developers.

Llorean

I think there may be some slight misunderstanding here too.

Rockbox is, essentially (when boiled down A LOT) two parts: the Application, and the Device Drivers.

Now, the part that receives the most work for a port is the Device Drivers. This is the stuff that is hardware specific (for the most part). The part that receives the most work, over all, is the application. The application is where all the codecs and functionality are. The bits you actually *want*. The application is worked on developers with any of a number of players, and when a feature gets added to it, it more or less is ready to be used on any of the other players Rockbox runs on.

So, while the idea of an M6-specific fund may sound good, there's already a decent amount of interest in the player. Money is somewhat unlikely to make a developer interested in your player. But if the money goes to the project as a whole, if a dev IS interested in your player, it might help him acquire it. Meanwhile, if a dev ISN'T interested in your player, but has another player that has just failed, it might also be used to replace that player, and fuel development toward a feature that will still come to your player anyway. It basically allows a much more flexible use of that money for funding overall development. In this way you get the maximum advantage out of the money, rather than potentially wasting it on trying to buy M6s for unknown quantities, or even simply donating them to well known developers who just aren't that interested.

kgb2008

As i known, all rockbox ports share the same codebase, we should not tear it off. Since we have gathered enough information to support the feasibility of this project, I believe all we need is just manhours for coding and debuging, The encourage from meizu's fans helps, but don't push them too much, just keep the developers cheering up and out of stress.

sere83

can someone please educate me. I don't really understand what rock box would bring to the M6? On something like an ipod fair enough but why the M6?. Although I am not that familiar with all the capabilities of rockbox it appears that the interfaces look very ugly and it often means a decline in battery life. I'm finding it difficult to understand what it could improve on the M6. The only real problem the M6 has is stuttering. It already supports many file formats and can be themed. In terms of video the 20fps limit is a hardware restriction so could not be helped with rockbox. What else would rockbox really bring?

Pytak

WhyRockbox < Main < TWiki

Llorean

Rockbox does not "often mean a decline in battery life". In many players it means an increase in battery life. Only the iPods with their very strange system on a chip have posed a significant problem to us improving battery life.

Rockbox supports more file formats for music.

The "20fps" restriction may not be as much of a hardware limitation as you think right now. I don't know about the Meizu hardware to be able to say for certain, but in the past on players we've supported, there has been thought to be a hardware restriction (either claimed by the manufacturer, or just due to the apparent slow speed of the processor, or other reasons) that we've shown to be inaccurate. If you don't want Rockbox, nobody's forcing you, but for some people having an open source firmware is enough on its own, even if it didn't offer more options. In this case, it does. The big key is that it's open source. If you don't like something about it, you can improve it even further yourself.

markun

I agree that rockbox on the Meizu M6/M3 is not as necessary as it is for other players. For me it's mostly about freedom to change whatever I want and having fun doing the port. Also, new players bring new developers to the rockbox community. I miss some features like replaygain, but I could live without it.

Well, that's subjective, but you can always try to make a better theme of course. Here are some which will work on the M6 models: Rockbox Themes

I wouldn't say often, but in the case of the Meizus you might be right, at least in the beginning. It depends on how much power the original firmware can save by running some stuff on the CalmADM coprocessor (which we will not be using at first).

Do you mean the LCD update is only done 20 times per seconds? I didn't look at the values in the firmware disassembly yet. Do you have some link for me with more info?

The Gigabeat has a 300MHz ARM9 and gets 48fps full screen with the rockbox video player, so I hope we can get 32fps.

Whatakevin

also, we can fix nearly all of the meizu's bugs including:

-stuttering
-bad random feature
-adding gapless playback
-adding reply gain (so the music's volume is reletively the same)
-adding apps
-fixing the clock
-fixing album art
-fixing the playlist

and much more that i cant name

wpyh

Looks like I'm late to the party here And it seems like Mr. Mod-and-Manners from the Rockbox forum has arrived on the scene

I agree with what was said above (about why we should have Rockbox on Meizu), and I don't have anything to add right now.

markun: I didn't know Rockbox don't have replaygain support. Meizu M6 / M3 certainly don't have one. I can probably code it, but is there a reason replaygain isn't implemented? It seems trivial to me (the fact that I can probably code it means it's most likely trivial stuff...).

Whatakevin

well it seems as if meizu isnt too public about their firmware. i would guess they are too busy on the m7 or m8

lunaticprophet

ROCK ON ROCKBOX!!

I, for one am looking forward with great anticipation to an op-src firmware. I've only owned my M6 for a few weeks and while it's a great little gadget -- the firmware is all over the place!

They seem to take good features out for no apparent reason (the tap to cycle from the end to the beginning & vice-versa) and add 'features' that don't make any sense (the auto-update of the music even when you haven't added anymore music).

My SP came w/ v. 1.010.3 (or something near that) and while it was slightly buggy... the 2.003.2 version --that seems to be universally acclaimed as the version with best trade-off between new and old features-- has just as many niggling issues. These two just off the top of my head:

** Why aren't playlists treated just like the album or artists categories?? I should be able to cue up playlists (by holding down the enter key) just as I cue up albums or artists -- that would be a consistent response. (sometimes I want to hear a combination of playlists.. not just one at a time.)

** When browsing a playlist, why doesn't double-tap work to begin playing song (must use play/pause button) as it does when looking thru artists, albums or song list?? (again... consistency)

There are several other issues with 2.003.2 that are just as annoying and the thing is... a lot of these issues only came up in later firmware versions. The firmware programmers were 'fixing' things that weren't broken. From reading the firmware reviews it seems that things are not getting better --- it appears that for every step forward, the firmware takes a 1/2 step (or full step) backwards. I'm thinking of updating to 2.004.6 just to see what it is like.... but those who've updated to that have complained about a number of major issues also.

Sry to be long winded, but it seems to me that Meizu isn't all that responsive to user input or have a separate set of goals with regards to this firmware. From a purely functional-consistency standpoint there are things here that defy logic.

This is a great gadget, but it's being held back by shoddy programming and that's a real shame.... I'm glad there are people looking to correct this issue!

markun

Rockbox does have replaygain. I was talking about the features I miss in the meizu firmware.

roelandb

how is the port of rockbox to meizu coming along? any progress being made on it recently?

wpyh

Ah, I must've misunderstood you