[Bitpim-devel] Sound file identification

[Roger Binns]

The ringers pane now identifies sound file formats and details.
Please post if you have any files it gets wrong. (The same
is true of images). The identification is based on the file
contents, not the name.

Note that other than MP3 it doesn't show the duration of the
file. For the QCP format, it is possible but requires some
detailed reading of the spec to work out (the files are variable
bit rate). For midi you have to examine all the notes in each track
and add them up and then find the longest. If anyone wants a nice
standalone task then doing either of those may be of interest.
The code is in fileinfo.py

I have also updated the todo list which is at
http://bitpim.org/todo.html

Roger

[Vic Heintz]

Post by Roger Binns
The ringers pane now identifies sound file formats and details.
Please post if you have any files it gets wrong. (The same
is true of images). The identification is based on the file
contents, not the name.

Midi files seem to be identified correctly. It is identifying all my
"pmd" files as "unknown format". As you may recall, users are churning
these out by the dozens for the Samsung phones using a tool from
Qualcomm called CMX Studio. Do you want to see an example? I have one I
created by just copying a voice memo into my ringer dir and another
created by a user in CMX Studio. Neither is recognized by the phone
until the .pmd extension is added. I'm not sure but I believe you can
alternatively add a .mid extension.

Vic

[Roger Binns]

It is identifying all my "pmd" files as "unknown format".

It was an unknown format :-)

I have one I created by just copying a voice memo into my ringer dir

If you do that the phone then changes it from QCP to PMD? That seems
somewhat nuts.

and another created by a user in CMX Studio.

I made a few using that tool and worked out a bit of the format.
(Just for fun they came up with yet another way of encoding
meta data.) In theory you could work out the length but I am
not going to do that work :-)

The version is extracted from the file. However that version
is the file format version which isn't the same number as
CMX Studio shows. Presumably there is a mapping between the
two.

I won't touch that code any further, but feel free to update
it if you want.

I'm not sure but I believe you can alternatively add
a .mid extension.

I think most of the phone vendors write their code to only recognise
the .mid file extension. They then hand the file off to Qualcomm
library code which is smarter and looks inside to figure out what
to do with the file contents.

Roger

[Todd Imboden]

Post by Vic Heintz

Post by Roger Binns
The ringers pane now identifies sound file formats and details.
Please post if you have any files it gets wrong. (The same
is true of images). The identification is based on the file
contents, not the name.

Midi files seem to be identified correctly. It is identifying all my
"pmd" files as "unknown format". As you may recall, users are churning
these out by the dozens for the Samsung phones using a tool from
Qualcomm called CMX Studio. Do you want to see an example? I have one I
created by just copying a voice memo into my ringer dir and another
created by a user in CMX Studio. Neither is recognized by the phone
until the .pmd extension is added. I'm not sure but I believe you can
alternatively add a .mid extension.
Vic

The problem I see with the .pmd format is it's not only a ringtone,
not only can you use it for ringtones but you can also use it to make
animated screensavers.... as Samsung does not support animated gifs..
on my phone (Samsung spha620/vga1000) the different media elements are
put into different folders (ie Games, Aps, Wallpapers, and Ringtones)
and the pmd files are stored in both the ringtone or wallpaper folder
depending on their content

Todd

[Roger Binns]

Post by Todd Imboden
and the pmd files are stored in both the ringtone or wallpaper folder
depending on their content

BitPim will currently barf if you try to make a pmd as a wallpaper.
Someone will need to touch up the code a bit to cope with it,
and point to a different image to use.

Roger

[d***@netzero.com]

For midi you have to examine all the notes in each track and add them up and then find the longest.

Since I have quite a few of midi ringtones myself, I'll take a crack at it.

-Joe Pham



______________________________________________________________________
Speed up your surfing with NetZero HiSpeed.
Now includes pop-up blocker!
Only $14.95/month -visit http://www.netzero.com/surf to sign up today!

[Roger Binns]

Post by d***@netzero.com

For midi you have to examine all the notes in each track and add them up and then find the longest.

Since I have quite a few of midi ringtones myself, I'll take a crack at it.

Don't worry about it too much since all knowing the length does is let us
display that information. You may also be able to work out a way of
changing the MIDI type (especially type 2 to type 1 conversion) as
well as trimming the file.

I am currently working on doing all this for MP3 ringers. Yes, you
will soon be able to have real music as your ringtone rather than some
approximation :-)

Roger

[Todd Imboden]

Roger after your update to the fileinfo.py to add the pmd files I
opened up the ringers directory and it was only able to recognize
about half the pmd files.... upon checking the files themselfs the
'vers' is at offset 36 instead of 13.... when I added into the
fileinfo code to check at 36 as well as 13 it was able to recognize
all of them

[Roger Binns]

Post by Todd Imboden
Roger after your update to the fileinfo.py to add the pmd files I
opened up the ringers directory and it was only able to recognize
about half the pmd files.... upon checking the files themselfs the
'vers' is at offset 36 instead of 13.... when I added into the
fileinfo code to check at 36 as well as 13 it was able to recognize
all of them

Can you work out the format up till the 'vers' section? I'd rather
the detection was a little less brittle.

I have committed code to check at 36 as well.

Roger

[Vic Heintz]

BitPim now recognizes files produced by CMX Studio as PMD but still
says voice memos recorded on phone are unknown format.

In the process of testing this I noted that I can no longer upload or
download any ringtones (midi or pmd) on my Samsung A670. Could the
recent generic changes for sound identification have caused this or did
something else happens? I have not edited the A670 module in quite some
time and it used to work.

I don't have time now but I will look further into this later today.

Vic

[Roger Binns]

Post by Vic Heintz
BitPim now recognizes files produced by CMX Studio as PMD but still
says voice memos recorded on phone are unknown format.

Please email me one of those files.

Post by Vic Heintz
In the process of testing this I noted that I can no longer upload or
download any ringtones (midi or pmd) on my Samsung A670.

What happens?

Post by Vic Heintz
Could the
recent generic changes for sound identification have caused this or did
something else happens?

The sound identification affects the display and what happens when you
add a file via drag drop or clicking Add. It has no affect on what
goes/comes from the phone.

Roger

[Vic Heintz]

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Vic Heintz
BitPim now recognizes files produced by CMX Studio as PMD but still
says voice memos recorded on phone are unknown format.

Please email me one of those files.

Voice memos are found in /nvm/vst on the Samsumg A670 named as the
attached. Simply renaming with .pmd extension and adding them to the
/brew/ringer dir allows them to be used as ringtones (doesn't work
without the extension.)

Vic

[Roger Binns]

Post by Vic Heintz

Post by Roger Binns
Please email me one of those files.

Voice memos are found in /nvm/vst on the Samsumg A670 named as the
attached. Simply renaming with .pmd extension and adding them to the
/brew/ringer dir allows them to be used as ringtones (doesn't work
without the extension.)

The file you mailed doesn't bear *any* resemblance to QCP or PMD files
as I have seen so far. There is no discernable structure at all. It
looks like compressed data, but nothing liked it.

Unless you can figure out some way of identifying these files, they'll
just remain an unknown format.

Roger

[Mike Bonar]

Interesting tutorial site:

http://www.templeofdagon.com/misc/vga1000-ringtone-tutorial.htm

Bitpim is mentioned.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
Sent: January 10, 2005 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Bitpim-devel] Re: Sound file identification

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Vic Heintz
BitPim now recognizes files produced by CMX Studio as PMD but still
says voice memos recorded on phone are unknown format.

Please email me one of those files.

Voice memos are found in /nvm/vst on the Samsumg A670 named as the
attached. Simply renaming with .pmd extension and adding them to the
/brew/ringer dir allows them to be used as ringtones (doesn't work
without the extension.)
Vic

[Roger Binns]

Post by Mike Bonar
http://www.templeofdagon.com/misc/vga1000-ringtone-tutorial.htm

The GCD creator program is just some wacky scripting language (VB6)
and includes a copy of pvconv.exe. I wonder how he got Qualcomm
to agree to let him redistribute it?

Post by Mike Bonar
Bitpim is mentioned.

It usually is :-)

Roger

[Todd Imboden]

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Mike Bonar
http://www.templeofdagon.com/misc/vga1000-ringtone-tutorial.htm

The GCD creator program is just some wacky scripting language (VB6)
and includes a copy of pvconv.exe. I wonder how he got Qualcomm
to agree to let him redistribute it?

I seriously doubt he got 'permission' seeing as how it's freeware on a
site like sprintusers.com

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Mike Bonar
Bitpim is mentioned.

It usually is :-)
Roger

and this 'tutorial' is crap in my opinion as it just tells you to
overwrite old sound files on the phone, it doesn't actually teach you
how to upload new files to the phone

[Vic Heintz]

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Vic Heintz

Post by Roger Binns
Please email me one of those files.

Voice memos are found in /nvm/vst on the Samsumg A670 named as the
attached. Simply renaming with .pmd extension and adding them to the
/brew/ringer dir allows them to be used as ringtones (doesn't work
without the extension.)

The file you mailed doesn't bear *any* resemblance to QCP or PMD files
as I have seen so far. There is no discernable structure at all. It
looks like compressed data, but nothing liked it.
Unless you can figure out some way of identifying these files, they'll
just remain an unknown format.

I assume this means you tried opening it with CMX Studio. You'd think
if anything could open it, that would since that program comes from
qualcomm. Sounds like a challenge then. I don't have anything on my Mac
that recognizes the format. (I already tried "cat vst_memo3 >
/dev/audio" on my sparc/Solaris box. Static. That would have been too
easy. I don't know the identity of any raw audio devices in MacOS.)

I'll look into this further. I can think of some cool uses for voice
memos retrieved from the phone.

Vic

[Roger Binns]

Post by Vic Heintz
I assume this means you tried opening it with CMX Studio.

I hadn't but I just tried now. CMX Studio and player both reject
the file, which is hardly surprising as it doesn't bear *any* resemblance
to PMD files.

Have a look at PMD files and QCP files with a hex editor. Then look
at the file you mailed.

Post by Vic Heintz
I'll look into this further. I can think of some cool uses for voice
memos retrieved from the phone.

I use them when shopping. I record the model number of various things
and then look them up when I get home.

Roger

[Vic Heintz]

Post by Roger Binns
I hadn't but I just tried now. CMX Studio and player both reject
the file, which is hardly surprising as it doesn't bear *any*
resemblance
to PMD files.

Yet the phone is tricked into playing it as a ringer just by putting
.pmd at the end!

Vic

[Vic Heintz]

Post by Vic Heintz

Post by Roger Binns
I hadn't but I just tried now. CMX Studio and player both reject
the file, which is hardly surprising as it doesn't bear *any*
resemblance
to PMD files.

Yet the phone is tricked into playing it as a ringer just by putting
.pmd at the end!

I never tested it before now, but you can also trick it by adding .mid
and it will play as a ringer. (I imagine it doesn't bear any
resemblance to a midi file either.) I haven't found any other
extensions that will work.

Vic

[Roger Binns]

Post by Vic Heintz
I never tested it before now, but you can also trick it by adding .mid
and it will play as a ringer. (I imagine it doesn't bear any
resemblance to a midi file either.) I haven't found any other
extensions that will work.

It doesn't. There is the layer of software by Samsung which insists
on particular recognisable extensions. The file is then handed off
to Qualcomm code which ignores the extension and parses the file
contents to work out what to do.

The other format it may be is constant bitrate Purevoice, without
any meta-information, but there is little chance of being able
to figure that out.

Roger