One More Tap » iPod touch

Screencasting Using Display Recorder for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch [Jailbreak Only]

xcool — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:49:31 +0000

True story: I finally did it and jailbroken one of my iOS devices. The victim happens to be my faithful first-generation iPad. I did it simply because I wanted to be able to do screencasting on my device.

You see, I have always been a fan of Street Fighter. I downloaded both Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter IV Volt the moment it was released. If you want a fighting game for your iOS device, the Street Fighter series is the one to get.

With the debut of Street Fighter IV Volt, online multiplayer became possible. I’ve spent countless hours before bed playing with people from all over the world. One thing I loved about the game is the ability to save replays of your favorite matches. Some of these replays were epic moments during game play. I hit the maximum amount of 20 replays quickly enough that I find it difficult to let go most of these replays.

At first, I thought of using a digital camera to record the screen while the replay plays. Not a very good idea. Truth be told, I’d even tried using my iPhone 4 to record the game from my iPhone 3GS. I’m a person who looks for perfection and has an eye for detail, and both options created videos that were lousy in quality or simply mediocre.

I did some research and found Display Recorder by famed jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich fitting my needs. There are other solutions out there, but Display Recorder gets the most attention. However, nothing’s perfect in this world, and so is Display Recorder. It does screencasting perfectly, but it doesn’t record any audio.

No worries there. We can always improvise. And I’ll tell you how in a while.

So, I set my sights on jailbreaking my iPad since its not my day-to-day device. I’m not going to detail the process of jailbreaking here, simply because jailbreaking is not the focus of this site and you can easily find hundreds if not thousands of articles on the internet regarding jailbreaking with a simple search on Google.

Once the iPad has been successfully jailbroken, I downloaded Display Recorder after paying the small fee of just $4.99.

Before you start screencasting using your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, it’s a great idea to check out Display Recorder’s settings. The default settings are okay, but I’d change it anyways. Display Recorder’s settings are available under the Settings app. Refer to the attached screenshot if you’d like to copy my settings. Here’s the tricky part. The framerate is set using a slider, but there’s no indication of what value is being set. It defaults to 20 frames per second (fps) but I thought I’d set mine to 24 fps. This value is stored in a file located at /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.booleanmagic.displayrecorder.plist. Look for DRFramesPerSecond and change the value to 24.

By default, Display Recorder can be activated by pressing and holding the Sleep button. A prompt will appear to confirm if you want to start recording. Feel free to try recording some screencasts.

Earlier, I mentioned about improvising on Display Recorder’s inability to record audio. My Unibody MacBook Pro came with an audio jack that functions as both audio in and out. What I did was to connect one end of an auxiliary cable into my iPad’s audio jack, and the other into my MacBook Pro’s audio in jack. Here’s a selection of auxiliary cables on Amazon if you need one to get one for yourself. Next, I launch QuickTime Player and voila! Just be sure that the volume from your iPad is not set to too soft, otherwise you’ll have a hard time later.

Now that I have everything setup accordingly, I am ready to record screencasts on my iPad. For Street Fighter IV Volt’s replays, I recorded the replays from start til end. At the same time, audio from the iPad is routed to my MacBook Pro and recorded as well. I end up having two streams of recording on my computer. One for audio and the other being the video.

It’s a matter of dubbing them and synchronizing the audio using any video editing software that you have. Mac users like myself may want to use iMovie that came pre-installed. I’m not a Windows user, but I heard that Windows Movie Maker fits the bill.

Display Recorder isn’t all perfect, as I’ve mentioned above. During my recording sessions, I observed lags and some flickering. But the resulting video came out okay with a little bit of lag, but minus those flickering. I’m perfectly fine with this, since it’s tonnes better than recording by holding another camera or iPhone.

What do you do with the video that you recorded? Well, I uploaded mine onto YouTube, of course!

iOS Firmware – Downloading Straight from Apple

xcool — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:25:47 +0000

I thought I’d upgrade my iPhone 3GS (which was recently semi-retired, but has since found a new home in my wife’s handbag) with iOS 4.2.1, since that is the first version to ever support Find My iPhone. I wanted to be able to locate the phone (and thus, my wife) if required.

So, I went ahead and search for the direct download, knowing that Apple would not be offering the said firmware anymore from within iTunes, now that iOS 4.3.1 is out in the wild. I found a couple of sites, and managed to grab a copy. However, upon trying to perform the upgrade, I was greeted with Error 3194. Yes, the darned error code which basically means that you can’t install that particular version of iOS onto your device because Apple would not allow you to do so anymore.

The story behind this is, Apple would stop signing older firmwares whenever new ones are made available. Signing is a process that happens when you install new versions of iOS onto your device, whereby iTunes checks with Apple’s servers and ‘signs’ the installation. I’m not about to jailbreak my device, so I went ahead and installed the latest firmware, which is 4.3.1 (build 8G4).

Anyhow, since this post relates more to direct downloading the firmware from Apple’s website (Apple continues to offer older firmwares, although they wouldn’t sign it, I am not sure why), we’ll stay on topic and provide you with the locations. You are free to do whatever you please with the IPSW files that you download, which I know most of you will use it to jailbreak older devices.

iOS Firmware – Direct Download Links

iPhone Explorer – Gem of a Tool

xcool — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 03:59:34 +0000

Here’s a tool that I recently used to do some crazy stuff on my iPhone. Now when I say crazy stuff, this means things that Apple would usually not allow you to do, that is if your device is not jailbroken.

Before I continue, I’d like to say that I am not a jailbreak person and that I would never jailbreak my device. Okay, I actually jailbroke my original iPhone 2G so that I can use it outside of AT&T’s network, that’s all.

Apple designed the iPhone to be more interaction, less interruption. You interact more with the phone’s functions and apps that you download from the App Store – you don’t actually need to see what’s under the hood, or how the file system looks like.

Yet, some people love to tinker around with their gadgets, either for fun or to do some basic troubleshooting. iPhone Explorer by Macroplant solves your need to see iOS’ file system. It is a software solution that runs on both the Mac and PC. And it allows you to browse the files and folders on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, as if it were a normal USB pen drive. Files can be added and removed thru iPhone Explorer using drag-and-drop methods.

Recently, I decided to see if I can modify a certain game’s saved state on my iPhone 4 (cheating is okay, sometimes) and since my iPhone 4 is not jailbroken, this would not have been possible using any conventional method. I found iPhone Explorer to be very useful here, I managed to browse my iPhone 4′s file system soon after plugging it in.

As you can see from the screenshot attached here, iPhone Explorer conveniently displays my iPhone 4′s contents separated into two categories: apps and media. The apps folder is self-explanatory, while the media folder holds all your media content such as iBooks, music, photos, podcasts and voice memo recordings.

Before we continue further, I’d like to advice that you take precautions when working with iPhone Explorer. Browsing your device’s file system may be adventurous, but you are also subjecting your device to accidental file removal which may render the device inoperational.

If you browse the apps folder, you will notice names of apps that you have installed on your device. Clicking on the arrow next to the app’s name will reveal even more folders. This is where iOS apps store their working documents, preferences and yes, saved states. And since iOS apps are run in a sandbox environment, an app will usually write their data into one of these folders: Documents or Library. If you are looking to change your game’s saved state, I’d suggest that you look within these folders first. Using iPhone Explorer, you can actually drag the file onto your desktop and open them up using a text editor. Most of the files will appear as garbled characters. However, some apps, especially games may have data files that are written in plain text. These are the files that you can easily edit. I will not go into details here, however.

As for the game that I tried to cheat—I realized that the saved state is in plain text, and it took me less than a minute to complete the task with iPhone Explorer.

Again, I’d like to stress that iPhone Explorer may be a gem of a tool, but it could also render your device inoperable should you choose to remove files that are required. Play safe! iPhone Explorer is compatible with both Mac and PC, and is available from Macroplant here: http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/.

iPhone/iPod touch Resets Its Date Back to 1970

xcool — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:37:21 +0000

This is a mysterious one. Ever since I got myself an iPhone 4, my original iPhone 3GS has been sent to semi-retirement. I occassionally use it, especially when my iPhone 4 is plugged to the wall socket and charging.

During a two-weeks trip to Australia, I brought my iPhone 3GS in the luggage as backup. And in order to conserve battery power, I decided to turn the device off instead of having it drip battery juice by sleeping. I never needed the iPhone 3GS throughout the trip. So, when I came back home, I powered the device back on. It worked like normal. It’d even sync with iTunes like normal. However, one thing was wrong until I realize it later. The date and time has been reset back to 1970.

I noticed the very same issue with my iPod touch as well. It was reset back to the same date and time in 1970. I guess this warrants an investigation.

A simple search across the internet made me realize that the battery may possibly be failing. It may seem very true for the iPod touch, which is about 2 years old now. However, my iPhone 3GS just passed its one year old birthday about five months back. I guess it all depends a lot on your usage pattern. As I have outlined before in my post regarding how I took care of batteries across all my rechargeable devices, this shouldn’t have happened, at least for the iPhone 3GS.

I’m still puzzled, but I’d rest my case that the battery on both devices are really dying.

Chillingo’s Vampire Origins Released

xcool — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:38:15 +0000

Chillingo has just sent us news of the release of Vampire Origins by Icehill Entertainment.

After his bride is murdered by a vampire, Vincent, (a dangerous hunter for a secret organization) sets out for revenge against the monster that killed his wife. Poisoned by hatred and driven by rage, Vincent wages war on the plague of vampires that has infested and destroyed all that was good in the world.

Game features:

Take control of Vincent in the most intense survival horror ever to hit the iPhone and iPod touch.
Dark gothic atmosphere with exquisite 3D environments.
Detailed character models and gripping realism.
Four weapons available to fend off the vampiric hordes.
Thrilling boss fights based on actual sword fighting techniques.
Multiple control methods: Dual-stick or touchscreen interface.
Three stages of detailed story-driven gameplay, or try your luck in Survival Mode.
Full Crystal integration including challenges, achievements leaderboards and social networking.

Check out Vampire Origins from the App Store, available now for only $6.99. Here’s a couple of screenshots and a trailer from the game to whet your appetite.

One More Tap » iPod touch

Screencasting Using Display Recorder for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch [Jailbreak Only]

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