So some months ago I got me an E71 Nokia phone, among other things I was hoping to use it as a music device so I slammed in an 8gb memory card, and was all set but for one factor: 60% of my music collection are in ogg format and nokia default music player does recognize ogg. Sure there are some 3rd party music apps for E71 which can play ogg files out of the box but they all lack the kind of integration which you get with the Nokia default music player. While in confused mode I decided to call up a friend nucco and he gave me the tip about .is_audio_player.

What is .is_audio_player

If like me, you have a music library made up of different music formats, and you want to be able to sync them to your portable music player in one music format say mp3. Example, my music collection is composed of different formats, .mp3, ogg, aac but I want to sync everyone of them as mp3 to my Nokia e71. This is where .is_audio_player comes in handy. Nope its not an application, nope its not a codec, its not a library either. Its just a file (yeah file) its a file you place in the root directory of the storage of your music device from where it does its magic.

Configuration

First you open your favorite text editor (gedit, kate, emac, nano, vi whatever). Then you place in the following entries:

audio_folders=Sounds/Digital/

folder_depth=3

output_formats=audio/mpeg

Explanation

audio_folders = Here you indicate the relative path of the music folder on your portable device. On my Nokia its in Sound/Digital

folder_depth = Here you indicate the folder depth of the music folder (remember that every storage device attached to your Linux computer is mounted on /media/ hence you will start counting from the device mount point. In my case it was.

/media/e71/Sound/Digital

Since our final destination ™ is Digital (in my case that is) which is 3 step away from /media I indicated the value for folder_depth to be 3

out_formats = The last parameter is quite straight forward it’s asking what media format you want your files to be encoded in before sync. In my case i want them encoded to mp3 hence i added audio/mpeg

Now configure the file the way it meets your needs and then save as .is_audio_player remember the . (dot) in-front of is_audio_player. Once the file is saved, place it at the root of your music device (Nokia, Sony Erikson, China Mp3 device etc). In my case i placed it inside the memory card of my nokia phone (make sure you are using a mobile phone that can be seen as a mass storage device)

Note: Any file with a . (dot) in-front of its name is hidden by default in Linux hence you may not see the file after saving it until you tell your filemanager to view hidden files (ctrl +h) for (gnome) and (alt + .) for (kde)

Below is the .is_audio_player file inside the memory card of my nokia.

Once all is set, you can now plug your portable music player to your Linux computer and open Rhythmbox.

If all goes well Rhythmbox will detect your audio device. (in my case my nokia.)

All that is left is for you to select the tracks you want to sync. (you can always create a playlist) Drag and drop them into your portable music player’s icon. (You can also drag from your portable music player into your Music library.)

Transferring from your music library in rhythmbox to your portable music device might be slow, especially if it has to encode them to another music format before the transfer.

In the end I was able to encode all my ogg to mp3 files and sync them with my freedom hating E71 on the fly. I hope this helps someone out there.

FYI:

• I don’t know if this method would work with ipods.
• Legends have it that Amarok supports .is_audio_player I can’t tell since I have not been able to get it to work in amarok 2.1. If you have been able to please let me know.
• The Original ogg file on my music computer library is unaltered.

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Remuco is a duplex remote control system for Linux media players and mobile devices equipped with Bluetooth or WiFi.

With Remuco, you can remotely control your favorite media player. You can switch to the next, previous, or any other media within the current playlist, browse your media library and activate other playlists, rate your media, adjust volume, and more. On the mobile device (the remote control), it displays information about the current media, including cover art.

source

**Ok the name is by no means cool or an a good indicator of what it can do, some of its features include**

Features

Remuco allows you to control:

* Playback

*Seek forward or backward in current playing item

*Set the playlist to repeat or shuffle

*Control volume

*Rate,

*Tag Media being played

on your PC from your mobile phone

It also Displays:

*Current playing songs including album art

*Volume level

*Progress level of current playing song and its current rating

Media browser features includes:

*Browse Currently active playlist and apply actions to them

*Browse the play queue and apply actions to them

*Browse the players media library and apply actions to them

*search for items in the player’s media library and apply actions to items in the search result

*browse the local filesystem and apply actions to files

*** Not all feature is available on all media player example Rhythmbox seems to be better support compared or other media player***

Installation

Installation of Remuco is in two part, A player adapter is installed on your PC and the client on your mobile device

How to install the player adapter:

(K)Ubuntu

First you need to add the 3rd party repository to your sources.list this can be done from synaptic

System -> Administration -> Synaptic Manager -> Settings -> Repositories.

Here you can enable the repositories for Ubuntu Software and Third Party Software.

For Third Party Software select Add -> enter the repository’s address.

Ubuntu 9.04

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Ubuntu 8.10

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Ubuntu 8.04

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Now you need install the repository Key

Open your terminal and enter:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 51A6F565

Now you will need to reload your sources by clicking the reload button on synaptic once done search for the team remuco, and you will see a list of remuco adapters for different Media players for linux

e.g I am on kde and i use amarok so i just installed the remuco-amarok package

Other Linux Distros can check here for installation Instructions

you now need to add remuco to the list of startup application

Amarok

The Amarok adapter requires Amarok 2.

The Amarok adapter can be started with:

remuco-amarok

Audacious

The Audacious adapter can be started with:

remuco-audacious

Banshee

The Banshee adapter requires Banshee ≥ 1.4.

The Banshee adapter can be started with:

remuco-banshee

MPD

The MPD adapter requires MPD ≥ 0.13.

The MPD adapter can be started with:

remuco-mpd

Rhythmbox

Start Rhythmbox and activate the plugin Remuco in the menu Edit → Plugins.

Totem

The Totem adapter requires Totem ≥ 2.22.

Start Totem and activate the plugin Remuco in the menu Edit → Plugins.

TVtime

The TVtime adapter requires TVtime ≥ 1.0.

The TVtime adapter can be started with:

remuco-tvtime

NOTE: With the exception of Rhythmbox and Totem, Remuco adapter for other Media players can be started automatically by adding remuco-media-player name to your startup session e.g for amarok add remuco-amarok to (gnome) System/Preference/Sessions (or startup application). (KDE) System-settings/ Advance Autostart

Client side installation

Installation on your mobile can be done by downloading remuco package here (the latest version on remuco in blog time is 0.9.0) extract the .tar.gz and goto /client/app/ and send the .jar file to your mobile device and install it from there

(Note: The client requires a mobile device with JavaME support (MIDP ≥ 2.0, CLDC ≥ 1.1). If you use Bluetooth to connect to a player adapter, additionally JSR-82 (Java Bluetooth) must be supported.)

Once installed on the device in my case i open terminal and run the following command remuco-amarok then i start amarok and start the client on my Nokia E71

Connected remuco to my laptop, it did its thing and yola i was able to control my amarok player from my phone.

Remember to first go to More and key-binding to set your own control key preference

Happy listening and I hope this helps someone .. (sorry if this is badly written haven’t had time to blog in a while been very busy so am a bit rusty i guess)