En orsak till at de är svårt att ibland läsa tidningsrubriker på engelska är att ord har en tendens att starta som t ex ett substantiv för att sedan också börja användas som verb och adjektiv. I extrema fall kan man då skapa meningar som är någorlunda formellt giltiga med att bara upprepa ett ord. Jag bloggade tidigare om:

Ibland är det himla svårt att förstå engelska rubriker och ingresser

It may be revealing to read the sentence replacing all instances of the animal buffalo with "people" and the verb buffalo with "intimidate". The sentence then reads "Buffalo people [whom] Buffalo people intimidate [also happen to] intimidate Buffalo people."

Läs mer: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."

Läs mer: On gospel, Abba and the death of the record: an audience with Brian Eno | Interview | Music | The Observer

Nånting är fuffens med den här vintern!

Sammanfattning: Urstark bok och manus, stark ensemble och mycket bra scenografi ger en bra pjäs.

Fotograf: Petra Hellberg

Jag var lite orolig inför den här pjäsen. Det är svårt att leva upp till förväntningarna efter en sådana bra förlagor som Klaus Manns bok Mefisto och Istvan Szabos film Mephisto. Det finns också en uppsättning med Theatre du Soleil som jag inte sett. Klaus Mann är en av mina favoritförfattare och Mefisto min favoritbok av honom. Filmen Mephisto är på min topp 10-lista. Hur ska det här gå?

I London spelades "Burnt by the sun" i våras, en pjäs som mycket rör samma teman som Mefisto. Pjäsen baserades på den utmärkta filmen med samma namn av Nikita Michalkov. Den föreställningen levde inte riktigt upp till förväntningarna, kunde inte mäta sig med filmen den baserades på. Jag funderade på om det berodde på min relativa ovana att gå på teater och större vana vid film? Eller på min stora uppskattning av förlagan? Ska man hoppas något från att gå och se en pjäs med så gigantiska föregångare?

Men när jag tog plats längst fram på balkongen på Stockholms Stadsteater och tittade ut över scenen blev jag omedelbart lugnad. Scenografin var öppen och de skådespelare som redan gick runt på scenen, utstrålade självförtroende och samspelthet sinsemellan. Det här kommunicerade direkt till mig. Jag visste nu att detta i alla fall inte skulle bli dåligt.

Ensemblen är riktigt bra, det är hög kvalitet genom alla roller, och de har respekt för berättelsen och litar på dess styrka.

Gründgens

Björn Kjellman är lite för mjuk i sitt spelsätt, men jag tror att han har det som behövs inom sig. Min bänkgranne tyckte att han alltid ger lite sliskiga vibbar vilket hon tyckte passade, men jag får alltid hyvens vibbar från den mannen. Han måste bli lite mer energetisk. Å andra sidan måste man efter Klaus Maria Brandauers rollprestation i Szabos filmversion gå åt ett lite annat håll än Brandauer, för det går inte att toppa Brandauers rollprestation. Även om jag efter boken inte hade föreställt mig Gründgens precis så som Brandauer gestaltar honom, var det bara att kapitulera.

Kvinnligt perspektiv

Precis som den brittiska teateruppsättning av Burnt by the Sun, så har Stadsteaterns Mefisto ett starkare kvinnoperspektiv än sina föregångare. Ja, så speciellt starkt är det inte i någon av dem, men det finns i alla fall. Det finns ett samspel mellan systrarna Barbara och Nicoletta och en diskussion dem emellan om sina livsval. Man ser också lite av varför Barbara gift sig med Höfgen, men ändå lite mer kött på benen där vore intressant.

Intelligens

Pjäsen är också intelligent spelad. Cesar von Muck framställs kvickare än i filmen eller boken, och det finns små stick här och var, och en rolig konversation ("banter") mellan aktörerna som får en att dra på smilbanden. Det är uppenbart att alla som gjort föreställning har "grokkat" pjäsen, de förstår vad den handlar om och kan därför slappna av i sitt spelsätt och gestalta efter omständigheterna.

Fotograf: Petra Hellberg

Jag saknade dock scenen där Muck ska förklara Hamlet som en tysk hjälte (en kraftprestation om något). Scenen finns med men inte med just det innehållet.

Paralleller

Jag kom i pausen i samspråk med min bänkgranne och försökte förklara hur jag såg på Hendrik Höfgen, och hur han borde framställas lite mer framåt, dynamisk, och jag letade efter ett exempel, och det som dök upp i mitt huvud var en dokumentär av Björn Cederberg och Fredrik von Krusenstjerna om den östtyske kulturpersonligheten Sascha Anderson, som avslöjades som Stasi-spion Där finns många paralleler till Hendrik Höfgen.

Andra roller

Efter londonpjäsen var jag lite orolig för sådana här pjäser, men detta är en kraftensemble (hmm jag måste medge att just termen kraftensemble känns lite väl tidstypisk för pjäsen). Miklas framställs som mer brutal än i filmen och boken (jag har boken på tyska och svenska men kan inte hitta dem just nu), men det är OK för att hans blanding av enfaldighet, hat, och omtanke (om vissa) går fram ändå. Alla roller ned till minsta är gediget besatt. Stockholm slår London på fingrarna här.

Slutsats

Gå och se!, och jag hoppas att den kommer att spela längre än vad den först planerats till. Det har plöjts ner mycket möda i den här uppsättningen, det har gett resultat och det ska de ha en eloge för!

Mefisto – en karriär är på flera sätt en habil iscensättning med bred kontaktyta mot samtiden. Ändå har den en rad problem som ofta handlar om dramatiseringen och scenbild. Regissören Ragnar Lyth poängterar starkt, och gärna med interna lustigheter, det metateatrala draget.

Läs mer: Recension: Teater Mefisto – en karriär - Stockholms stadsteater (Teater) | Kulturnyheter | SvD

Föreställningen, som regisserats av Ragnar Lyth, tonar ner det politiska skeendet. I stället används händelserna i det omgivande samhället som resonansbotten för de dova stämningarna. Vad som pågår är ett gradvis andligt förfall. I dag har vi facit för vart detta ledde och hur tecknen i tiden såg ut.

Läs mer: Mästerlig och tidlös Mefisto - Kultur - UNT.SE

Moraliska dilemman i mötet mellan konst och politik, där verklighetens svärta översållas av glamoröst glitter, är tacksamt scenstoff. Men Björn Kjellmans Höfgen har mer än det och de ditmålade ögonbrynen gemensamt med exempelvis huvudrollen i ”Zarah” på Folkoperan i Stockholm för ett par år sedan – om hur Zarah Leander blev storstjärna i nazismens Tyskland. För även här förblir rollens inre själsliv till stor del en gåta.

Läs mer: ”Mefisto – en karriär” på Stockholms stadsteater - DN.se

Andra bloggare

Björn Kjellman spelar Hendrik Höfgen bra, även om jag hade önskat att han visat mer av opålitlighet, själviskhet och kanske till och med sårbarhet.

Läs mer: Kulturdelen: Mefisto på Stadsteatern

Länkar på denna blogg

Klaus Manns ande över Stockholm

Äntligen! Klaus Manns Mefisto på Stockholms Stadsteater

Illa ställt bland intellektuella i Europa redan 1949

(this review written in March 2009, but I forgot to post it so here it comes)

Summary: A reasonably well executed performance, conveying a very important insight. Go see it if:

• You have not seen the movie it is based on
• You prefer everything to be in English,
• Or just strongly prefer the stage before the screen.

However the movie in my mind surpasses it. But with some work it could get closer. Some of Kotov's lines and lines of reasoning are great in the play.

This review contains spoilers.

The play "Burnt by the Sun" is based on the superb film by the same name, by Nikita Michalkov. Peter Flannery has adapted it to the stage. Before the performance I listened to Flannery talking about how he adapted the film.

Not enough shouting and pauses :-)

Act 1 (of 2) suffers from not enough shouting, physical acting and meaningful pauses in conversation.  Emotions need to be acted out stronger whether they are from feelings of (true or feigned) joy, or from anger and malice. In film you get away with small gestures due to the camera's focus, but on stage stronger stuff is needed, especially if you do not use a spotlight. The play starts off unfocused emotionally due to this. Another way to get more focus to act 1 (besides shouting then) would be to cut down on the number of characters on stage. Two or three of the datja's inhabitans could have been cut from the script. Possibly rewriting lines to have more punch. This is all rectified in act 2 where fewer people on stage leads to stronger focus, and the language gets more direct.

The play stays eerily true to the film: Before seeing the play I hadn't realised that every scene and nearly every line of that film is etched in my memory. It was therefore easy to check off lines and plot devices as they came, and suffice to say that Flannery has not touched anything he wasn't forced to due to a different format.

Affability

In the last scene of the play  Rory Kinnear's Mitia comes off a bit too affable and emotionaly worked up, interspersing opera singing with his Russian roulette. Sitting still in a chair, reciting a children's rhyme and squeezing the trigger on numbers in the rhyme would be more consistent with the temperament of the character and his slavic devil-may-care attitude. He comes off as a bit too much of an affable tragic case now, like Jeremy Iron's Sebastian Flyte, or Klaus-Maria Brandauer's Hendrik Höfgen, while it is clear that Mitia knows exactly what game he is playing.  He could probaby still do the opera bit, but jump into some ridiculous pose before each pull to cut to the core of the character.

Kinnear does a good job otherwise in a demanding role and Ciaran Hinds as Kotov grows as the play progresses, but he needs to throw his weight around more in act 1. The actress playing the daughter does a perfectly good job. The play moves on quite swiftly and make it hard to evaluate the other performances in depth.

During the interview with Flannery that I attended I got interested in seing other things he has written. I like his ambition of presenting multiple views at the same time, and what seemed to be a humanistic approach, being mature enough not to cling to some extremist ideology. His work seems to be a quest for knowledge.

Compared to the movie the play more clearly depicts the main conflict as duty-egoism, but also subverts this by showing that also tough man Kotov can break, and just from one sentence. There is also a budding feminist angle present in the play that is missing in the film. Flannery actually lets the wife speak up a  couple of times about what she thinks of the situation. Flannery did mention that in the film the wife acts like a child, and the daughter more as a wife, and that he reversed this for the play, also to get some load off the actress playing the daughter.

One reason I went to see this play, that I stumbled upon due to me meting a friend and mixing up BFI and the National Theatre (the serendipity of being a tourist) and getting last minute tickets, is that I was curious about if it could help me figure out how much of the strength of the movie comes from the technical and artistic performances and how much comes from the drama itself.

When the play ended, I was as gripped of the drama of the story as ever before. And the end of the stage play is the same as in another film of the 90s, La Haine.

Nu recenserad av mig: Recension: Mefisto på Stockholms Stadsteater

Mefisto är kanske min favoritbok av en av mina favoritförfattare, även om den första bok jag läste av Klaus Mann var Symphonie Pathétique om Tjajkovskij. Nu sätts det upp en pjäs på Stockholms Stadsteater baserad på Mefisto. Premiären nu på lördag är slutsåld men det finns i skrivande stund ströplatser kvar de följande söndagarna.

Om du inte har läst boken kan jag varmt rekommendera den; den finns i svensk översättning. Den skriver så klarsynt om nazisterna att det är lätt att glömma bort att den är skriven redan 1936, flera år före andra världskriget. Klaus Manns prosa är rapp och lättläst  jämfört med hans far Thomas Manns alster. Faktum är att det går att läsa Klaus Manns böcker på originalspråket tyska med bara skoltyskakunskaper.

Klaus Manns sista bok "The turning point" är skriven på engelska som Klaus Mann såg som sitt nya språk efter kriget. Denna bok finns också på svenska med titeln "Vändpunkten" och är väl värd en läsning, även om det strikt personliga saknas i den med tanke på att det ska vara en självbiografi.

Istvan Szàbos film Mephisto, baserad på boken,  är också ett mästerverk. Försök att få tag på och se den! Bara gestaltningen av Göring är värd mödan och tiden.

Klaus Mann skrev också klarsynt om det intellektuella klimatet i Europa efter andra världskriget:

Illa ställt bland intellektuella i Europa redan 1949

Den här uppsättningen på Stadsteatern kommer att få svårt att hävda sig, det ligger både en fantastisk bok och film i arvet. Jag såg pjäsen "Burnt by the Sun" i London för några månader sedan, baserad på filmen av Nikita Michalkov, och jag hade hela tiden filmen som måttstock, och pjäsen nådde i detta fall inte riktigt lika långt. Det ska bli riktigt spännande att se vad pjäsen kommer att ge.

– Vi har väldigt lätt att moralisera över andra tider och hur andra människor har levt, men är blinda för vår samtid, säger Ragnar Lyth när han dricker kaffe och sträcker ut sina långa ben i soffan i ett av Stockholms stadsteaters rum några våningar bort från Klarascenen.

Läs mer: Fokus på nutid i Mefisto à la Lyth | Kulturnyheter | SvD

Klaus Manns ande över Stockholm

En dag som denna, trettondagsafton och minus 12 grader, hamnade jag utanför ett av Nordeas bankkontor. På en skylt står det att kontoret stängt 13.00 för att det är trettondagsafton. Men kanske något kontor är öppet längre?  Telefonnummer till Nordea är angivna, och jag ringer det för privatpersoner. Mitt syfte är att fråga någon på Nordea om något kontor är öppet längre än 13.00.

"Tryck ditt personnummer, och fyrkant" säger en automatisk röst. Den automatiska rösten upprepar anmaningen några gånger och lägger sedan på. Det går alltså inte att ringa Nordea och komma nånvart, utan att uppge sitt personnummer, ens för enkla frågor som öppettider. Det tycker jag är lite irriterande. Man kanske ska motfråga om personnummer eller i alla fall organisationsnummer om och när man kommer fram?

Webbsajten har ingen information om individuella öppettider vid helger heller.

Note to self:

ffmpeg -i input.flv -s 704x576 -ar 8000 -ac 1 -ab 10.2k  output.3gp

Neede to convert to an accepted size 704x576, an accepted audio bit rate 10.2k, an accepted audio sample rate of 8000.

Couldn't get it to work with avi or mov as input this time

It's a shell script that comes with mplayer, and I can imagine it coming in handy when you quickly want to have info on a clip.

Here is sample output from running it on a video file generated by a Casio compact digital camera:

ID_VIDEO_ID=0
ID_AUDIO_ID=1
ID_CLIP_INFO_NAME0=Digitization\ Time
ID_CLIP_INFO_VALUE0=2010/01/01/\ 01:59\ \
ID_CLIP_INFO_NAME1=Software
ID_CLIP_INFO_VALUE1=CASIO\ EX-H10
ID_CLIP_INFO_N=2
ID_FILENAME=CIMG0139.AVI
ID_DEMUXER=avi
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=MJPG
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=22629024
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1280
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=720
ID_VIDEO_FPS=23.976
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=0.0000
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=17
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=177000
ID_AUDIO_RATE=0
ID_AUDIO_NCH=0
ID_LENGTH=28.19
ID_SEEKABLE=1
ID_CHAPTERS=0
ID_VIDEO_CODEC=ffmjpeg
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=177000
ID_AUDIO_RATE=44100
ID_AUDIO_NCH=1
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=ffadpcmimawav
ID_EXIT=EOF

The best guide for understanding how to work with Cinelerra I have found so far is this one:

Cinelerra for Grandma

LOADING MEDIA - Import your resources in Cinelerra FIRST EDITING- Arranging edits in a basic layout SECOND EDITING - Finishing off and polishing

It answered the following questions for me (directly or indirectly):

Q: Why does my quicktime export have such weird colors and how do I change it?

A: You can adjust the codec used by clicking at the tool icon (Configure video compression) before the video in the render dialog.

Q: How do I make my labels into a selection?

A: Double click in the space in between two of them.

(check out my newer blog post on the subject)

Follow the instructions at the spotify site, but select OSS instead of ALSA.

If you have any other application open using sound, it won't work. At least I expect so, since closing youtube windows in Firefox made the sound come back.

Notes to self on how to play videos from the camera on my Linux computer.

The files that the Canon HD video camera outputs have the suffix MTS. These can be played by Videolan client on my Dell Celeron-equipped laptop. Well, kind of: It plays the first two frames or so, then chokes on the video and keeps playing the sound.

The mts files can be converted to other formats with ffmpeg. The video from the Canon camera seems to be interlaced. If you use ffmpeg straight off the bat like so:

ffmpeg -i canonvideo.mts -sameq video.mp4

lines will be all wavy because the canon format is interlaced. Use the -deinterlace option like this:

ffmpeg -deinterlace  -i canonvideo.mts -sameq video.mp4

Update 2016-03-07 ffmpeg tells me to use -qscale instead of -sameq:

ffmpeg -deinterlace  -i canonvideo.mts -qscale 0 video.mp4

The mp4 file then plays effortlessly with vlc on the computer.

It should be possible to make the output interlaced as well, with the ilme option

However this:

ffmpeg  -i 00002.MTS -sameq -flags ilme video.mp4

still creates wavy lines. There are a number of idioms with ilme in them floating around the Internet, and I am not sure how to use it.

Put together a video split in parts

Canon HF200 splits long videos in separate files, each part about 2GB in size. These files cannot be converted as individual videos! Well, the first one can, but the  following ones each depends on the one before. This is because the camera in order to save space writes incomplete frames to the files, frames that only contain the changes as compared to previous frames. Some frames however are complete on their own and are usually called key frames. Now when the camera splits the video into files, it does not take care to do this at key frames.

The video therefore before conversion needs to be put together into one large file. On Linux this can be done with the cat commmand:

cat 00001.MTS 00002.MTS 00003.MTS > whole-video.MTS

"Churchillian Drift" - process whereby the actual originator of a quotation is often elbowed to one side and replaced by someone more famous.

-Winston Churchill

Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, the risks to its future stability are much greater than terrorism. Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them.

Läs mer: Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com

Here’s a short, 5 questions, 2009 Python meme. Copy-paste the questions, and blog your answers ! (From Tarek Ziadé)

Note to self:

Twisted provides a variety of implementations of the twisted.internet.reactor. The specialized implementations are suited for different purposes and are designed to integrate better with particular platforms.

Twisted Documentation: Choosing a Reactor and GUI Toolkit Integration

Updated January 2 2012, December 21, 2010; May 31, 2011

DLNA is a set of standards for home entertainment equipment to interoperate. The equipment can be hardware devices, but also software applications running on an ordinary computer. There are four types of DLNA devices according to the standard says Wikipedia (my explanations):

• Digital media servers (DMS)
  A database of multimedia content, that other devices can play media from
• Digital media renderers (DMR)
  Plays stuff, that is it makes sound and in required cases shows moving images.
• Digital media controllers (DMC)
  A device that works as a remote control, can play stop, skip, pause, change loudness, brightness etcetera.
• Digital media players (DMP)
  Not sure what this is. Maybe it is a combination of a DMR and DMC, or all of the above.

I will try to compile a list of open source software devices when I find them, with an emphasis on components, i.e. no listing of all-in-one solutions and a preference for software that runs on Linux and that is maintained. Although they most likely aren't certified, they interoperate via the DLNA protocol.

gUPnP control point

Works as a

• Digital media controller

Gupnp is a project that provides components for upnp applications. One part of it is the gupnp control point. It gives "remote control" for upnp and dlna applications. It can be intstalled on e.g. Ubuntu 10.4 by using synaptic or apt-get, installing "gupnp-tools".

"Play" worked fine, "Next" and "Previous" did not work on my setup. Note Rygel logo in renderer selection field

The control point is invoked with "gupnp-av-cp". It needs a renderer to be present on the network. I tested by installing rygel-gst-renderer, then starting "rygel" from the command line. After that I started "gupnp-av-cp". It picked up the renderer, and a media tomb server on the network.

Selecting a file and clicking "Play", or just double clicking a file made it play

Rhythmbox Music Player with DLNA/UPnP plugin

Site

Works as a

• Digital media server
• Digital media renderer (tested with upnp-inspector)

I have successfully remote controlled Rhythmbox Music Player, making it play, pause and skip, from a DMC. Tested on Ubuntu 9.10.

Media Tomb

Media Tomb works as a

• Digital media server

I have successfully played a video from Media Tomb through Totem. Media Tomb has a web userinterface where you can add all files that the user account has the right to, the media tomb database. This means that if you are running it under your own user, all your files may get exposed.  From the Media Tomb documentation:

The server has an integrated filesystem browser, that means that anyone who has access to the UI can browse your filesystem (with user permissions under which the server is running) and also download your data! If you want maximum security - disable the UI completely! Account authentication offers simple protection that might hold back your kids, but it is not secure enough for use in an untrusted environment!

Tested as a static binary, version 0.11.0, on Ubuntu 9.10.

Totem with Coherence DLNA/UPnP Client Plugin

Totem with the appropriate plugin

• Works as a client

which means it can access and play media from media servers, but it does not advertise itself on the network, i.e. other dlna components cannot use Totem. It picks up Rhythmbox, Coherence:FSStore, Coherence:BBCStore and Media Tomb as mediaservers but not ushare, in my tests. upnp-inspector picks up all five. Tested on Ubuntu 9.10.

ushare

ushare works as a

• Digital media server

ushare can be configured to only serve content from one folder. ushare 1.0 tested on CentOS 5. According to the web site ushare is currently not actively developed.

djmount

djmount is a gateway between the UPnP world and the Linux file system. It allows programs who do not handle UPnP but can handle local files, to access files from devices as if they were on the file system. djmount mounts itself on a mountpoint and presents each media server it finds in a subdirectory. It can even do searches. (djmount is currently untested by me).

Linn Kinsky Desktop

Linn Kinsky Desktop seems to be an ambitious project with a unique interface for making a DLNA/UPnP control point, among other things. On my Ubuntu (tested December 2009) the text items of the UI do not show up and then the application crashes X. Maybe it works better on other platforms or will work better in upcoming releases.

I tried it again in a nightly build 2010-11-03, and now there is text and I can add a music library, but cannot make it play.

UPnP Inspector

UPnP Inspector is a great tool for seeing what devices are on your subnet and what capabilities they have. If you are running Linux, check the repositories of your distribution for it, or if you are a pythonista, use easy_install or pip to install it. The Inspector is a part of Coherence (see text further down about Coherence).

Update: I just realised you can right click the devices in the tree, and you get a remote control for that device!

Not only that, but you can drag songs from a media server to a media renderer and it plays the song. Amazing. It may nullify the need for the remote play-next-pause devide that I've made.

The Coherence framework

Coherence is a server that runs a number of UPnP/DLNA devices for you. These devices, that come with Coherence,  are called "plugins". You can enable or disable plugins in a ".coherence" file in your home directory. The coherence framework can be installed on Ubuntu 9.10 in the normal way with apt-get or synaptic, and I suppose similar is true for other Linux distributions. Otherwise if you cannot find a ready made package for your OS, Coherence is a python project so if you are a python developer familiar with how to install python things, you can use easy_install, pip or even buildout.

You can try out Coherence by just typing "coherence" at the command line. I will list some of the plugins in Coherence below.

Coherence: Gmediastreamer

• A digital media renderer

GMediastreamer is a pure media renderer. It has no concept of playlists and has no media database of its own. You need UPnP Inspector to give it files to play (by dragging them onto the UI of GStreamer in the inspector, hint: Right-click on the devices). It can then be controlled with the inspector or I guess any other digital media controller. Maybe there are or will emerge ways of providing it with a steady stream of files.

To enable GMediastreamer, put this in your .coherence file:

[[GStreamerPlayer]]
name= Myplayer

Change "MyPlayer" to whatever you want. Or keep the name :-)

Coherence: FSStore

• A digital media server

FSStore is a media server that serves up a directory and its sub directories. It is useful outside of Coherence, you do not specifically need the UPnP inspector. Totem can play music and videos directly from it.

To enable FSStore, put this in your .coherence file:

[[FSStore]]
name = Jorgen's video store  # default: my media
content = /home/jorgen/Videos/videos            # default: None
enable_destroy = no                  # default: no

Well, maybe you need to change "jorgen" to something else...

Coherence: BBCStore and TEDStore

• Digital media servers

BBCStore and TEDStore are media servers just like FSStore, put pull their content from external sources, in this case BBC Radio and TED Talks respectively. I have tried BBCStore and it works fine. It is useful outside of Coherence, you do not specifically need the UPnP inspector. Totem can play programs directly from it.

To enable BBCStore, put this in your .coherence file:

[[BBCStore]]
name = Coherence - BBC  # default: BBC
refresh = 2             # default: 1 (hours)

Rygel

Rygel is... I'm not sure what Rygel is from its web page or when installing it, but a friend installed it and he claims it is a working DLNA server.

Update 2011-November-04: The same friend now reports that rygel stopped working for him when upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10, and that he is now using minidlna instead to good effect.

Pulseaudio DLNA Streaming

Pulseaudio is an ambitious sound architecture which is installed by default on Ubuntu as of currently. Pulseaudo has many possibilities but is also widely disliked because of complexity and reliability issuues. In Pulseaudio I can now choose to output the music from one computer on the sound card of another, over TCP/IP. This means you can have one computer close to your amplifier, as a glorified wireless soundcard. I have only done preliminary tests, but is seems like the bandwidth of wireless 802.11g is not enough. while wired 1Gb/s Ethernet is. Would be interesting to check 802.11n and 100Mb/s wired Ethernet.

Leia Upnp Audio Control Point

Leia Upnp Audio Control Point is a control point, that according to the web site can do a lot of interesting things. It runs on a variety of platforms. Unfortunately on my current platform (Ubuntu 10.10) Leia 0.5.8 (tested 2010-12-21) crashes when it encounters a DLNA device. If no devices are available on the subnet, it does not crash though, but is of course in that case of no utility. I hope they get it working on Ubuntu because it looks cool.

play-next-pause

play-next-pause is my own try to make a simple remote control. It relies completely on the Coherence framework and was written largely from looking at the code of the UPnP Inspector. I have made two big binaries, one for Linux and one for Windows. These should have all dependencies included so you do not need to install Coherence, Twisted or GTK or anything else hopefully. The binaries weigh in at about 12MB which means they sport about 200KB per line of code (play-next-pause is about 55 lines of code) or about 2MB per button! This can surely be trimmed but hey, it works for me.

Update 2010-10-25

According to a discussion at Ubuntu Launchpad, the annoyance that the speakers aren't muted in Dell Vostro when you insert headphones should be gone come kernel 2.6.33. In the discussion there is also a patch for kernel 2.6.31.14 if you need something right now. It seems other laptops are also affected by this that use the same sound chip, the Conexant 5067.

Update 2010-01-07

Now if someone could just get the Option 505 3G modem to work on Ubuntu 9.10, I'd be a happy camper.

No, it'll be in 2.6.33. On Dec 4, 2009 5:56 AM, "foomor" wrote: Has this fix been added to kernel-2.6.32? I am arch linux user, i'd like to know which package should i wait to be updated. Thanks.

Read more: Bug #477154 in alsa-driver (Ubuntu): “When headphones are plugged in, the speaker does not get muted automatically.”

Well, at least in China it has, and it is calles Optima OP5-E.  It would be cool if we could get many devices on the Maemo platform, since it as far as I can tell supports more development frameworks than Android.

Since I filmed such a great video of it at IFA, OPTIMA TECHNOLOGY(SHENZHEN)CO.,LTD sent me a review sample of their new Optima OP5-E for me to publish an exclusive hands-on video-review. The new Optima OP5-E Maemo Linux based MID is now being released by http://www.chinaoptima.com/ and China Telecom on the Chinese market and they are now looking for global distributors (if many people demand it, there may be a distributor bringing this device to your local 3G telecoms market or sell it unlocked). (contact shkwan@wtpacific.com if you might be interested in ordering 300 units or more).

Läs mer: ARMdevices.net » Blog Archive » Optima OP5-E Maemo Linux MID video-review

DLNA is a standard for how multimedia components should interact over a network. Coherence seems to supply a lot of functionality for this. I will look into this, and see if I can make the Inspector component into an on screen remote control, a bit like how the different clients for mpd (music player daemon) work.

Coherence offers a toolkit including: * a DLNA/UPnP MediaServer stand-alone application, which exports local/home or on-line media files via its backends to other UPnP clients. * an audio/video DLNA/UPnP Media renderer stand-alone application, based on the GStreamer framework (early stages). * an image DLNA/UPnP Media renderer stand-alone application, called Cadre, to be used as a picture frame. * a standalone UPnP bridge application, called Mirabeau, to share your UPnP content between two or more local networks over the Internet (work in progress). * a UPnP Device and Service analyzer/debugger tool, called The Inspector , which can also be used as a UPnP control-point. * some plugins or extensions for other applications to open them to the UPnP world, thanks to the framework (either as media servers, control points or renderers). This includes Totem, Nautilus, Eye Of Gnome, Rythmbox, Banshee, Elisa, amarok..

Coherence - a DLNA/UPnP Framework for the Digital Living - Trac