Robert Marcano's blog

Game soundtrack

robert — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:43:03 -0400

Sometimes when playing a video game the gamer has a wonderful experience, but many times we forget to acknowledge the help of the music to achieve it, take for example the introductory theme (flash player on that page, lyrics and spanish translation) of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Amazing how a lot PlayStation 3 owners are requesting the option of player customized soundtracks on all games. I am not one of them, for me the soundtrack is part of the game, removing it is like removing a weapon, a car, etc.

MP4 tags on a PlayStation 3

robert — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:53:32 -0400

The PlayStation 3 uses standard 3GPP tags and does not understand iTunes style tags so every song I imported do not show the correct information, so instead of fixing them on the PS3 (something that does not changes the file, only on the internal database) I wrote a script with the help of AtomicParsley:

#!/bin/sh

addTag() {
        line=`mp4info "$file" | grep "$2"`
        if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]
        then
                command="$command $1 \"`echo $line | sed -e "s/$2: //"`\""
        fi
} 

for file in *.m4a; do
	command="AtomicParsley \"$file\""
	addTag --3gp-title "Metadata Name"
	addTag --3gp-performer "Metadata Artist"
	addTag --3gp-album "Metadata Album"
	addTag --3gp-genre "Metadata Genre"

	exec 3<>"$file"
	read -n 8 <&3
	echo -n 3gp6 >&3
	exec 3>&-

	eval "$command" -W

	exec 3<>"$file"
	read -n 8 <&3
	echo -n mp42 >&3
	exec 3>&-
done

It add a few 3GPP style tags taken from the original iTunes style tags. As AtomicParsley rejects to add that kind of tags on non 3GPP files, the script changes the ftyp field on the file temporaly to 3gp6. The script process all files with the extension m4a on the current directory.

Folding@home Petaflop Barrier Crossed

robert — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:23:25 -0400

Amazing.... just look at the comparison with the other platforms, I am happy to have contributed at least a small part of it. This achievement is just only an example of how well made is the PlayStation 3 that its owners do not hesitate to left it turned on for continuous days doing CPU intensive calculations, with the fans working at maximum speed to reduce the machine temperature.