Video for Sharp Zaurus
Sponsored by Zookware
Download free TV Guide style Listings for Palm OS
The Sharp Zaurus is very cool because it is a real Linux platform with lots of open source options. The SL-5600 I have has a 400MHz Intel XScale processor which gives me the same horsepower as my desktop of a few years ago. I also have a 1GB Microdrive, so there’s lots of available storage. Unfortunately, as a PDA, it is falling behind the competion. Frequently the OS sleeps and 30-60 seconds is required before it wakes up and responds to commands. OS crashes are fairly frequent and reboot take 2 full minutes. Basically, as a real life PDA, I would go with my Symbian Smartphone or Palm first. But the Zaurus is cool as more of a handheld workstation.
Playback Tools
Mplayer (the best Linux player and free)
MPlayer is the most popular Linux media player and it is free. According to the FAQ, it is best to build on the Zaurus device, but this step is not easy. Mplayer does not use Qtopia; it writes straight to the frame buffer so the UI is a little messed up. There are some gui shells available, but I have not been able to get them to work.
- Precompiled Zaurus binaries here and here
- Binaries do work on my Z., but for some reason it is very slow with audio
- There is no gui—you need to run with a command line
- With video-only, it works pretty well, plus it’s free
- To run use this command line: mplayer –nosound –quiet movie.mpg
- Gui interfaces here and here
- I haven’t got these to work, but they look good.
- Instructions for building on the zaurus here
- Details for lines to change not quite right
- Also initially, I got the error “bad interpreter: no such file or directory”
- Chmod +x
- Can’t execute on cf card (?)
XMMS Embedded is a media playback system with an mplayer plug-in. It’s free, but I still like Dr. Z’s Video player better
- New versions require Open Zaurus. For the native sharp ROM, use 0.00005pre1 available here
- Make sure to download all three binaries: xmms-embedded-qtopia, mplayer-xmms, and xmms-embedded-skin-default
- Initially, when I did this my previous mplayer installation stopped working
- To fix, I downloaded libSDL (libSDL_1.2.6cvs-1_arm.ipk) and Zlib (zlib_1.1.2_arm.ipk) available here and here or here
Plugger Mozilla plugin to allow playing of movies from Netscape or Mozilla
Not ported to Zaurus, but it looks promising
For
about $20, it’s way easier to buy a commercial player. I bought Dr. Z’s which works pretty well for
$18. I highly recommend this since it is
way easier to install and has the best performance of the open source
apps. It plays DivX
with mp3 audio and is optimized for XScale. The navigation can use some improvement for
large movies.
tkcVideo – looks good, but it is a commercial app and I haven’t tried it.
Mediaplayer – comes with the Zaurus. Plays MPEG1 and MP3
DivX Codec
Dr.Z and tkc recommend DivX Pro and DivX 5.02, respectively
DivX codec 5.1 (free) (includes windows DivX player)
Mpeg 3 Codecs from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp
Tutorials
tkcVideo’s guide – recommends 2 pass; 250kbps