UKMP 1.5 is out and it's looking sweet

Big thanks to Roope Rainisto from Nokia for helping out tune up the interface. The song list now sports thumb interface for selecting songs. Looks better too, have a look at it yourselves:


Another big thing that's been asked for is kinetic scrolling. After trying it out for a while, I am very impressed by it. Yeah, I know, here is another developer again boasting his ego, but I am not applauding myself for that. Kinetic scrolling is really sall thing to add technically once you have smooth scrolling anyway. But the thing I've been thinking about now is that Nokia should implement that same thing to the web browser. It would be so much better to use that to scroll around the page. Let's say you've read the article through. Wan't to go up to the beginning of the page? No probs, just flick the finger quickly and it will scroll to the top in a split sec. Want to scroll in a controllable fashion, scroll with your finger and stop it before raising it from the device surface.

One more thing I have forgotten to write about is that this version also supports wma files and might also support aac files as well as some bug fixes related to continuous playback.


You can download the latest version of UKMP and UKTUBE from here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp

and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

As always, you can check out the new features from the video below:

UKTUBE 0.6 out, UKMP 1.4 out (in beta)

UKTUBE 0.6

Uktube 0.6 adds support for streaming of videos. You no longer have to wait for the video to finish downloading, as UKTUBE will just buffer the first one megabyte and then start playing.

I also added delete, which deletes the file, takes it out of the dropdown and selects the next video.




UKMP 1.4

UKMP 1.4 has major feature of supporting video. Now, basically that means that it also needs mplayer. As UKMP and UKTUBE are bundled together you would need mplayer for uktube anyway, so I don't see that as too much of a problem. What makes this really beta quality is that ukmp cannot make thumbnails of the videos by itself. It relies on UKTUBE to make thumbnails for the videos it downloads. If Serge (ssvb) can compile mplayer with support for -vo jpeg, I can add the thumbnails automatically on start.

Have a look at the video to see how watching videos works on UKMP at the moment.




About the release:
I managed to squeeze out the major bugs from UKMP 1.4 and UKTUBE 0.6. I'm about to leave for a week long vacation, so I felt that even though I would have wanted to give both of the apps some more polish, I just didn't have the time to do it. In any case, I'm relatively happy on how the new features turned out.

1.5 of UKMP will focus on improving the UI to look better. Thanks Roope Rainisto for a very good suggestion on the songlist part. I will implement that to the 1.5 version.

You can download the latest version of UKMP and UKTUBE from here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/ukmp

and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

UKTUBE 0.5 out

UKTUBE 0.5 is a nice small step for internet tablet users. Have a look at it:


Ok, since 0.3, there have been many great features.

1. Supports dailymotion videos
2. Allows you to play downloaded videos (there is a dropdown for those)
3. It's much faster in downloading
   
4. Paste link (now, that's hot) - you copy the URL in browser and then just press that button.
5. Allows you to also just download (if you don't need to watch it immediately)
6. Videos are automatically added to the list
7. If you download a video, after you've downloaded it or watched it, just press show in widescreen / normal to replay it. No need to select the same movie from dropdown.

So, there are two ways to copy the URL from youtube and dailymotion. The traditional is to navigate to the page where the video is located and click on the address bar and then select copy, like in the image below.




The second option is to hold your finger / pen over the link to the movie and keep it pressed for two seconds or so. Then a menu appear from which you can select copy link location, like in the image below.



Then you just open UKTUBE and click on the paste button.

URL address will appear in the text field and by clicking either of the show buttons, the video will be downloaded and displayed immediately after download is complete. If you press only download, it won't play the video.

UKTUBE works in 770 and N800.

Download UKTUBE 0.5 from here:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1677/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.5.deb
and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

UKTUBE 0.3 out

0.3 version of uktube out. I think this is what Ari Jaaksi meant by Release early, release often. Ok, perhaps not this early and not this often, but I thought you guys might enjoy the latest additions even though it means you have to download new versions this often.

So, 0.3 brings possibility to open file in 16:9 mode, which crops the video to use the entire N800 screen width. This is especially suitable for those videos with black borders. So, if you want to view the video in 4:3 mode, click on the 4:3 button and if you want it to be seen in 16:9 mode, click the 16:9 button. Simple!

Also, you can opt to not to save the file. It will make a temporary file though and next time you save something, it will be overwritten. Also, as a nice new feature, the application stall less. Maybe that's more of a bugfix and less of a feature.

I had a test and it seems that playing partially buffered video is completely doable, so that might be interesting to do next.



Download from here:
garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1667/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.3.deb
and remember that you need to have python and mplayer installed. If you don't have them, install them first from here:
Python
mplayer

UKTUBE 0.2 out

I just released a bug fix version of uktube.

You can download it from:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1664/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.2.deb

It handles youtube clips better than before (seems to download all clips while the previous version had problems with some of the clips).

Files are now stored with the video title instead of the youtube id. This makes it much easier to access the archived files in mplayer.

nl.youtube.com and others are now converted to use www.youtube.com address. Thus, you don't have to manyally change the url.

Video playback is now smoother than before and it uses the default mplayer config (you can seek, access mplyer menus and stuff like that).

Files are now stored in mmc1/Videos or mmc2/Videos.

UI stalls just a little less than before ;) - still, don't press the download button twice!

If someone knows hot to (or if) make mplayer crop the playback video, I could add the option of playing clips in 16:9 mode as well. Now all videos are played in 4:3 mode.

So, to wrap the install instructions, you need to install python and mplayer for uktube to work. Here are the installer links:
Python (as ever)
mplayer

And again, the updated uktube:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/1664/UKMP-1.3-uktube0.2.deb


Here is the initial uktube release video in case you missed in the last time.