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Since I got my 1GB MicroSD card for my Pearl, I’ve been toying around with trying to get Videos to work. Either the videos don’t look good, dont play at all or lag the controls. The best method I’ve found so far was using mencoder but due to its command line usage and not being able to find a UB for it made it difficult to encode videos. This is where this guide come in.

Getting Started

1) First off this is the command line we will be using:
“mencoder -vf scale=240:-10 <input.file> -o <output.file> -of avi -ofps 15 -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=230:acodec=mp3:abitrate=64″

2) Download the Universal Build of mencoder

Encoding

At this point you can just drop the mencoder into the same directory as the file you want to convert, start a terminal window and copy the command line to encode it. Be sure to change the input and output file. In a few mins you should have your video ready to be loaded on your Pearl. But as Mac users we will want a more elegant way of doing this. Enter Applescript and more importantly Automator.

1) Download my Automator Workflow (Updated 3/2/07)
2) Unzip the file into
“/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/”

3) Unzip mencoder.zip on your Desktop, start up Terminal and type “cd Desktop” then “sudo mv mencoder /usr/bin”. Enter your password when prompted too.

3) Now when you Right Click(Ctrl+Click) on a Video file, you will see the Automator Menu and under that you should see “Encode for Blackberry”

4) To encode, just chose “Encode for Blackberry” on a Video file

Thats it

The only visual indicator you have is a “Run Shell Script” in the Menu bar.

A Blackperry Pearl compatible file will be created in the same folder as FILENAME-bb.avi. You can edit the Workflow to output to the filename of your choice. You could even go as far as modifying the Automator Workflow to copy the file to your Pearl if you would like.

A 54meg Music Video that runs 3:32mins takes about 30secs to encode on a Macbook 2.0G and the ending file size is about 8megs. Not too bad at all. Most TV shows will be about 50megs for a 30min show and movies are between 150megs to 250megs in my tests. I’ve also noticed that the mencoder build will not take advantage of Duo Core’s.

UPDATE - 12/20/06
Here is a widescreen version that needs to go through some testing. Please feel free to try it and leave a comment on how it works for you. YMMV

UPDATE - 02/11/07
Dave Taylor has whipped up a shell script that does the same thing if you would like to do the command line route.

UPDATE - 3/2/07
Thanks to Chris for the tip, the Workflow now keeps accept ratio when encoding.

Setting your Blackberry 8100 (Pearl) to work with Gmail is pretty straight forward. There is two methods you can use but I’m only going to cover the one I’m currently using. I’m going to assume you have the Unlimited Data plan and its working and have already set up your blackberry.net address. This instructions are geared towards T-Mobile users but should be easily modified to fit your provider.

Gmail Setup

1) Log into Gmail and goto Settings
2) Click on the Forwarding and Pop tab at the top
3) Check “Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on”
4) Save Changes

Blackberry Setup

1) Log into T-Mobile
2) Under Messaging, click on “Set Up Blackberry Internet E-mail”
3) Click “Setup Account”
4) Enter your @gmail.com address and password
5) You should now receive a TXT message saying your account has been successfully setup

You should now start receiving your Gmail emails almost instantaneously.

Filters

One small problem you will notice with Gmail is that every time you compose a new email or reply to one, you receive a copy of that email on your Blackberry. Its annoying to say the least. We can fix this with a Server side filter.

1) Log into T-Mobile
2) Under Messaging, click on “Set Up Blackberry Internet E-mail”
3) Click the Filters icon under your Gmail account
4) Click “Add Filter”
5) Create a Filter name. This can be anything, I call mine “Gmail Sent”
6) Choose “From field” in the Apply Filter when:
7) Type your gmail.com address in the “Contains Field”
8) Select “Do Not forward messages to handheld”

You should now no longer receive replys on your Blackberry.

Anyone using a USB hard drive connected to Linksys’s WRTSL54GS Router and Mac OS X may come across an error that reads The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items when trying to copy files to the USB hard drive. If copying one file, it will finish copying but you will receive the error at the end. When copying multiply files, the first file will copy then you will receive the error and no more files will copy.

This only happens in OS X and more specifically, Finder. If you copy files using terminal, they will copy fine. I’m not exactly sure of the cause of it but it has to so with the SMB server and permissions. Problem is, since the SMB server is running through firmware on the router, we can’t do in and make changes. I’ve used hacked firmwares with telnet access and still cant get chown to work. So that leaves us with using a workaround on OS X’s side. There really is two ways of doing this. Both are similar.

First the hard way:

Since all the files on the USB HDD connected to the WRTSL54GS are owned by root, we will make a root account on the router.

1. Login to your router using its IP address, usually 192.168.1.1
2. Click on the Storage Tab, then click on Administration
3. First we are going to create a new group, name it root
4. Next make a new user called root and add them to the root group
5. Connect to your shares on the WRTSL54GS using �oot as your username

or a second way, and easier way, to do this is to use the built in admin account by setting a password for the admin account. Do this under Storage > Administration and not the Administration tab as that will change the router password. After that is set, when you connect to any share on the WRTSL54GS, make sure you login using admin as your username and use the password you set. No more error message.

Here is what i used to get OS X 10.4.3 x86 up and running using PC components as my everyday PC. This should last me until the Intel Mac Minis are released and I can actually get my hands on a real Mac.

I used macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd.dmg, converted it to ISO using UltraISO and then patched it with JaS 1111a Generic Patch v4.2b PPF. Burned it to DVD and that part was done. Next was putting together the hardware.

Motherboard: Foxconn 915GL7MH-S Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 915GL Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $66
CPU: Intel Celeron D 336 Prescott 533MHz FSB LGA 775 64-Bit Processor w/ Execute Disable Bit Model BX80547RE2800CN - Retail - $89
Memory: Corsair VS512MB400 512MB DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Retail x2 - $40.99
Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300S0 300GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer - $123.99
DVDROM: Pioneer DVR-110 16X Dual Layer DVD�RW Drive (Black) - $46.50
Case: Generic from local PC shop - $65
Keyboard: Apple Pro Keyboard - $29

Total: $501.47

Alright, now that we got our PC ready, its time to install. Now I’ve read a bunch of different methods to install involving partitioning with partition magic, windows diskpart, using vmware etc. I didn’t need any of that.

1) Boot up the PC with the DVD in the drive and set to boot.
2) At the Installation Screen, goto Tools > Disk Utility.
3) Choose the drive on the right.
4) Click the Partition button and choose 1 Partition from the drop-down menu. Hit the Partition button on the bottom to partition the drive.
5) Close Disk Utility and continue the install.
5) Click on the Customize button and Uncheck the Developer Tools and whatever printer drivers you don’t need.
6) Finish Installing.

Problems i ran into:
While USB keyboard and Mouse worked during the install, it didn’t after first boot. I had to use a PS2 Keyboard and Mouse to finish the setup then deleted AppleFPMemDriver.kext and AppleTPMACPI.kext from the Extensions directory. After that i rebooted with USB keyboard and mouse plugged in an they worked with no problem after that.

Sound output only works out of Line-Out, not Speaker-Out.