PupMTP file transfer, first video

I recorded a 59-second video of my custom recumbent trike, and uploaded it to YouTube. This is "putting a toe in the water", as I knew hardly anything about video recording, editing and completely new to publishing on YouTube. Still know hardly anything, but managed to create the video, convert it from 1080p to 720p and upload.

I recorded the video indoors, with my "Huawei Y9 Prime 2019" phone. This is the last one that Huawei made with Google Services -- after that, Huawei was forced to go it's own way, developing Harmony OS and becoming very successful in the huge Chinese market -- another example of the US shooting itself in the foot.

This is a budget phone, maximum video resolution is 1080p at 30 FPS; however, I only got 23.98 FPS (Frames Per Second). Interesting, watching playback can see the jerkiness when panning, at that low frame rate. The 59-minute video is 85MB, MP4.

I decided to process it down to 720p, to make the file smaller. I read online how to use ffmpeg, here. Following that advice:

# ffmpeg -i input-1080p.mp4 -vf scale=w=1280:h=720:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease:force_divisible_by=2 -sws_flags lanczos output-720p.mp4

...the result is 21MB.

Then I remembered that EasyOS has "yff" created by Jason (plinej in the forum, here. It is in the "Multimedia" menu. Used that, accepting defaults, and got a 14MB file, again MP4. Played both the 21MB and 14MB, they look the same. Wow!

Prior to performing the 1080p to 720p tranformation, I copied the file off the phone. Did this by plugging in a usb cable; and much to my surprise, up popped "PupMTP":

...I had just about forgotten that existed! The above photo is after I clicked on the "MOUNT" button. Also, a window popped up on my phone, and I clicked on "files transfer" radiobutton.

Thinking back, PupMTP was created by old-forum member mistfire, see here, and I introduced it into EasyOS in December 2020 -- four years ago. Here are blog posts:

"Considering MTP access to an Android phone"
https://bkhome.org/news/202012/considering-mtp-access-to-an-android-phone.html

"How to run long-time process on udev event"
https://bkhome.org/news/202012/how-to-run-long-time-process-on-udev-event.html

"Four ways to transfer files to and from a phone"
https://bkhome.org/news/202012/four-ways-to-transfer-files-to-and-from-a-phone.html

Very interesting, and I haven't looked at any of that since 2020. I have used the ADB method a few times more recently, which works via the desktop "share" icon. Was going to do that again, but, very interesting, PupMTP popped up, so used that instead.

Ha ha, haven't posted a link to my YouTube video, as it is embarassingly primitive. Only 59 seconds, yet I managed to get in a few "um" gap-fillers in the audio. Also, it was taken in my lounge room; would like to get the channel going with videos of the trike taken outside. Also, would like to achieve better video quality -- time for a new phone?

Flowblade video editor is builtin to EasyOS Scarthgap, and have started learning how to use it. Previously, have only tested video editors very superficially. Yesterday, I installed ShotCut and OpenShot flatpaks, and played briefly with them. Didn't get anywhere with OpenShot, as it crashed when attempted to drag my .mp4 file onto it -- but then, have read several online comments that OpenShot is prone to crashing. Staying with Flowblade.    

Tags: easy

/usr/games, .mhtml, .webp

The guys testing EasyOS Daedalus have discovered bugs...

Gnome-Mastermind installs an executable into /usr/games, but the .desktop file got deleted when a EasyOS version update. Forum member Caramel found the fix:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=135574#p135574

Forum member don570 reported that SFR's Uextract needs 'ripmime' to open .mhtml files:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=135648#p135648

don570 also reported that left-click on .webp image, it failed to view in gPicView, which is the default image viewer:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=135652#p135652

All of these are fixed, for the next release of both Scarthgap and Daedalus.   

Tags: easy

JWM window manager 2.4.7

I posted recently about a bug in the latest JWM:

• Latest JWM has wrong colours — November 05, 2024

Joe has fixed it, and Larry sent me an email that he tested it on EasyOS and the colours are now correct.

So have compile version 2.4.7 in OpenEmbedded and it will be in the next release of EasyOS.   

Tags: easy

EasyOS Daedalus-series version 6.4.3

See release notes here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2024/6.4.3/release-notes.htm

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2024/6.4.3/

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=135215#p135215

The latest Scarthgap-series is version 6.4.2   

Tags: easy

Redshift/brightness tray applet fix

There was a recent report, that the redhsift/brightness tray applet does not "kick in" until it is clicked on. In manual mode, it does remember your selection, which is saved in /root/.rshift; however, those settings are not read until the tray icon is clicked on.

In my case, I have one laptop that has a too-bright screen. I often use this in the evening, sitting in a lounge chair, and in the lower ambient light level, the screen brightness is a bit too much. So I have set brightness a bit lower, but then have to click the tray icon every time startup the laptop.

We have a fix:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=135207#p135207

I have updated the PET and it will be in the next release of EasyOS.    

Tags: easy

Rox right-click run-in-terminal

Forum member Vverve requested this:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=135081#p135081

He referred to an old PET package that provided a ROX-Filer right-click menu entry "Run in terminal".

Yes, that would be nice. You can left-click on a shell script or binary executable and it will run, but sometimes you would like to run the executable in a terminal to see any console output. Yes, ROX does have the ability to open a terminal, with backtick key or a menu choice, which I use often; but then you have to type in the name of the executable that you want to run.

It is pretty easy to implement, so it is now done. Right-click on a shell script or binary executable, and there is now an offer to run it in a terminal. For example, I right-clicked on the /usr/bin/partview shell script:

Choosing it, and a terminal starts. But instead of just starting the executable immediately, I have made it a bit interactive:

Also, when partview terminates, the terminal window stays open, so that you can view any console output. It is required to click on the window close-box to close the terminal.

Furthermore, you have the option of entering commandline parameters:

This will be very handy! This new feature is builtin and will be in the next release of Easy.

Here are the github commits:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/4f5446b81c93965236730ccf81b873fff44dcbe3

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/fc71e9c5020c1b862bc25496326a47d09bc908d2   

Tags: easy

Syntax fix for mimeapps.list

/usr/share/applications/mimeapps.list is used by many applications to determine what executable to handle a particular file, for example how to open or view a PNG image. This list is generated by /usr/bin/build-rox-sendto everytime a package is installed or removed, or the SFS layers change.

Easy Scarthgap 6.4.2 has UExtract, a universal archive extractor tool. However, a problem emerged, as discussed on the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=134984#p134984

I took out "inode/directory" and "inode/mount-point" from the "MimeType=" field in /usr/share/applications/uextract.desktop, which fixed the problem reported by bugnaw333; however, there was another problem, being that the mimeapps.list file had the wrong format.

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/8836d9758e8006ba9fe1e4117c207e211cc99199

That fixes the syntax, but doesn't automatically set a default. For example, this line in mimeapps.list:

application/pdf=uextract.desktop;evince.desktop;gimp.desktop;inkscape.desktop

...will set the first one, uextract.desktop, as the default.

ROX-Filer has it's own right-click menu mechanism and will offer a choice, but I don't know about apps that read mimeapps.list; maybe they will just use the leftmost entry instead of offering a choice. I haven't tried with KDE Dolphin for example.

Note, the correct syntax for mimeapps.list is defined here.  

Tags: easy

EasyOS Scarthgap version 6.4.2 released

The previous release is 6.4, announced here:

• EasyOS Scarthgap and Daedalus version 6.4 — October 28, 2024

To find out what has changed, read the release notes:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.4.2/release-notes.htm

...very interesting new applications!

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.4.2/

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=134985#p134985    

Tags: easy