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chumbysphere forum → Chumby, the Device → support for file formats(ipod)
I have realized that my chumby only shows the title of.m4a songs, but doesn't play them, and doesn't even recognize that other format that itunes songs come in.
is this normal or is my chumby messed up?
if it is normal, will support be added or not?
M4A songs are AAC songs, and I'm not sure the Chumby supports AAC playback. M4P songs are encrypted using Apple's FairPlay, and Chumby likely will never be able to play those songs. So this should be normal behavior.
The chumby *should* be playing your M4A/AAC files and MP3 files - however, it will *not* play M4P files, which are tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store. It also does not support "Apple Lossless" or Audible files.
In a somewhat related note... and perhaps I should make a new thread. I have an ol' Zen Touch. It *can* use the MTP protocol, but it appears it doesn't have to. I believe it just needs libnjb (is this library just peculiar to Nomad Jukeboxes?), libusb, and hotplug (which I'm guessing are already there). I can plug it in to my Chumby currently, the Touch lights, and dmesg indicates Chumby recognizes it as a mass storage device.
I don't imagine too too many people are using a device this old with a Chumby, so I think any trailblazing will be on my own. I see it that I should probably install the libnjb libraries (how would I do that in a read only file system?) and maybe take it from there. If I could somehow get chumbipod to recognize the libnjb libraries... Hmmm.
If I do get it to work, I take it wma files also will not work (even if there's no DRM on them?) I am guessing this is the case since it needs mplayer to decode files with Slimserver/btplay?
I think the upstream source distribution of btplay will support WMA, however, Chumby has not obtained the necessary licenses from Microsoft, so the binary version we ship with the device has WMA support removed.
For devices using libnjb (most of the older Creative Nomad and older Dell DJ series that are not MTP-based), I would recommend taking the same approach as was done with chumbipodd - wrap the libnjb library with a web server based on chumbhttpd. If you put something like that together, I'd consider adding it to the base configuration.
You can certainly run such libraries and binaries from a USB drive as long as you make sure the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH env vars are set correctly.
Cool.. Thanks Duane. I'll play around a bit with that (as soon as I get MythTV running on all the hardware the UPS man just chucked on my doorstep) 
shoe
What directory structure is Chumby expecting? I've tried putting MP3's on a thumbdrive and it doesn't see them. Tried in a Music Folder, and in the root.
For the iPod support, it's expecting a valid iTunesDB file as created by iTunes.
Support for arbitrary MP3 files on a USB dongle is forthcoming.
Does the Chumby require an actual iPod, or will it read a cloned image of an iPod on a flash drive.
Basically, If I was to clone the contents (including all the DB files) onto a thumb drive, could we trick the Chumby into thinking it was an iPod?
Just a thought.
I'll probably give it a try this weekend .
maybe you can install m4a codec. im not sure if itune also can convert to m4a format or convert m4a to other formats???
chumbysphere forum → Chumby, the Device → support for file formats(ipod)
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