ZenCoder: A Video Encoding software for the Creative Zen 28 August, 2008
Few days ago was girlfriend’s 22th birthday, and I gave her a Creative Zen with video support… to let her be able to cross the world watching her favorites cartoons and youtube videos! 
During last nights I worked hard (yeah it was my first GUI ever, and first attempt with Gtk#) to give them another gift (it is a surprise), and now something is working: ZenCoder is ready!
ZenCoder is an usable frontend to mencoder, with a simple usage: just drop your videos on the Zen icon to start the conversion!
You can also choose the video (xvid scaled 320×240) and audio bitrate (mp3lame abr), skip conversions and view queued files.
Of course it supports RGBA colormap!
Yeah my girlfriend is both pretty and uses Linux, why I’m so lucky?
P.S.: If you have suggestions for improvements in the code feel free to poke me, this was really my first attempt in GUI programming, and it may have odd points. It also lacks of a good Makefile, an installation script and a .desktop entry. Please write me an email if you want to contribute.
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine, Zencoder |
28 August, 2008 alle 11:28
Can you make package for Ubuntu?
28 August, 2008 alle 11:41
How about turning this into a generic “re-encode for external devices” app?
Other obvious choices come to mind: PocketPC Phones (both 320×200 and 480×320), PS3 (format-picky), PSP…
28 August, 2008 alle 11:54
@1:
I need a .desktop entry first and some kind oh installer… if someone wants to contribute
@2:
I had that idea but unfortunately 1) i have no devices to test the videos (DONATE!!! eheheh) 2) no time
anyway the project is open to anyone who wants to join it
28 August, 2008 alle 12:12
Nice idea! However don’t such things already exist? PyTube?
28 August, 2008 alle 12:13
Emmm… Could you give me your GTK and Emerald themes? Brilliants.
28 August, 2008 alle 12:13
Super gift for your girlfriend
28 August, 2008 alle 12:16
hey Cimi! Nice one!
My best wishes to your girlfriend
Please use http://www.launchpad.net and create a page for this project and a bzr branch; you could use the PPA feature (personal package archive) in order to create a repository with Ubuntu binaries.
Dad is not really a geek, but asked me a while ago to get rid of Vista from his new laptop and install linux on it; so i took the time and installed Kubuntu 8.04, running KDE 4.1
He has some mp4 device and he was always trying to install .exe applications for encoding vids…. he can’t really handle bash / terminal in order to use Mencoder….
Please allow this application to have/edit “profiles” (an user would set up multiple profiles for his devices) or something like that and have the applications develop a set of predefined profiles for as much as possible devices, also having some “quality” options for them.
Those are my 2 cents on how it could get better; would really like to use something like this; that would do so as well
28 August, 2008 alle 14:12
Can it be used without dropping a file on that dialog? Maybe there’s a regular file picker under the ‘file’ item in the menu? That would probably be more accessible. Looks nice though.
28 August, 2008 alle 14:27
@7: of course, but as I said I’m busy in the next month, an I don’t have a MTP to test the encodings. Someone could join, Gtk# is easy…
@8: yeah file menu should to it in the future
28 August, 2008 alle 14:57
i know c# quiete well and i can help you so much
an email will arrive
28 August, 2008 alle 15:44
Aren’t we supposed to be doing this via HAL and gstreamer, much like audio transcoding is handled for USB mass storage players? If you plug a USB audio device into a system then run Rhythmbox, AmaroK or Banshee then you can just drag and drop songs in any format to it and they know how to Do The Right Thing via the information in /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/10-usb-music-players.fdi . This is much more reliable and extensible than Yet Another Mencoder / Transcode GUI - the world’s already full of abandoned half-finished instances of those.
28 August, 2008 alle 15:51
@Adam:
Except that gstreamer’s encoders and muxers hardly ever work for video. Well - Theora works but is not supported by most of the hardware.
I’ve written a similar program using gstreamer as its base and while it does produce xvid or h264 files… gst can’t play the xvid files it produces (if you drop sound they seem to work) and both my PS3 and my HTC smartphone mark the h264 files as broken (but they play all the other h264 files just fine).
28 August, 2008 alle 17:47
@Patrys: While it is true that encoding so far has gotten less love in GStreamer than a lot of other things, it is getting better quickly. If you could file a bug and attach small file samples explaining whats wrong I am sure we could sort out things quickly. There is a summer of code mp4 muxer for instance which currently I am testing a lot myself to make sure it creates nicely working files.
28 August, 2008 alle 19:03
Loving one purpose no-nonsence apps like this. Very rare in the “does it all for all the devices, codecs and resolutions” world of FOSS.
Good stuff!
29 August, 2008 alle 11:55
Since you can’t test every single type of device there is why not add some sort of profiles. You could had a simple xml file (or other type) to a hidden directory like ~/.zencoder/profiles/ or something and show a drop-down list with current available profiles.
That could probably work instead of having to hard code them all in.
5 September, 2008 alle 1:36
Great app!
I have a Creative Zen myself and was looking for a Mencoder GUI. This is perfect. Please consider making an Ubuntu package and hosting the app on Launchpad, like previously suggested, so that it gets more exposure.
8 October, 2008 alle 0:53
Hi excellent application i was looking for one just like this but… how can i make this work in ubuntu? can someone help me please?
Thank’s in advance and sorry for my bad english.
24 October, 2008 alle 0:00
Amazing.. My sister bought a Creative Zen X-Fi just yesterday, and I spent 4 hours of my life to bend her Ubuntu’s installation of ffmpeg + winff + mtp + gnomad2 to my will - and explaining to her how she should convert + transfer videos to her box.
Today I came across your blog while looking up about rgba, and I come across your little app. I tested it with an mp4 music vid - works straight out of the box. This would be a good fit in AUR in my opinion, and definitely should go on launchpad. If you could support multiple formats painlessly, so much the better, but as it is I’m definitely using it for the X-Fi, so much easier than WinFF
Thank you very much!
5 March, 2009 alle 14:29
This is great, thanks Cimi.
For those wanting to know here is a quick way to make it work in Ubuntu.
1. Download zencoder.exe from the Google Code page (http://code.google.com/p/zencoder/).
2. Right-click on the file and select Properties. On the Permissions tab tick the box for “Allow executing file as program”.
3. Right-click on your desktop and select “Create Launcher…”, Browse and select the file as the Command.
4. Double-click the launcher.
Done.
5 March, 2009 alle 14:30
NB that assumes you have mencoder already installed, if not “sudo apt-get install mencoder”.
6 March, 2009 alle 9:38
I followed the instructions to get it working in ubuntu (64bit juanty) and no dice =(. using a zen vision W
6 March, 2009 alle 12:16
Matt, sorry to hear that. I should have said I am running 32 bit Ubuntu Intrepid.
Can you not get ZenCoder to run at all on 64 bit Ubuntu?
9 March, 2009 alle 17:32
It seems to run in Kubuntu. But then I hit the problem that I am unable to actually drop anything on it. It comes up with the red circle with a slash when I try. Am I missing a piece of software? Or does it only work with Gnome?
15 April, 2009 alle 2:22
The audio sometimes comes out of sync. I’m not sure if it’s zen coder or what I use to encode in windows(I have many files on my memory card). It may just be my zen. It may just be my zen becuase it plays fine in vlc and mplayer. I hope Creative comes out with a firmware update to improve playback. I have the most recent firmware.