Black Screen Videos

[Titcher]

Hi,
I've been attempting to play some videos on my pandora that seem to refuse to display. They're h264 and a resolution of 640x480 and 848x480, these show up as black in gnome-mplayer and VLC, however audio works. I've tried all the rendering modes available in both players without success. However oddly enough these videos work in XBMC. I'm guessing at this being a scaler issue. My question is; has anyone managed to get similar things working?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Hi,
I've been attempting to play some videos on my pandora that seem to refuse to display. They're h264 and a resolution of 640x480 and 848x480, these show up as black in gnome-mplayer and VLC, however audio works. I've tried all the rendering modes available in both players without success. However oddly enough these videos work in XBMC. I'm guessing at this being a scaler issue. My question is; has anyone managed to get similar things working?

change the video codec to ffmpeg i dont think the pandora can play h264 at the moment.Also go to half screen mode in mplayer and you can view videos.maybe its too big for the screen or something.edit i used a program called handbrake to rip dvds.set codec to ffmpeg and container to mkv file.This worked for me at least.also select 2 pass encoding and avg bitrate at 1500 edit i had the exact same problem when first trying to run dvd rips on my pandora

 

[WizardStan]

The mplayer rendering engines don't handle videos larger than the displayable screen area. A 480 tall video is too tall and tries to draw outside the screen, which the rendering engine doesn't like. You need to scale the image to fit: either choose half size in the view menu, or press ctrl-F to make it full screen.
h264 SD video should work reasonably well*, it's the HD videos, 720p and beyond, that the Pandora chokes on for sure.

(*all of my videos are divx/xvid, I'll try investing in some h264 so I can corroborate my claims with anecdotes)

 

[Titcher]

I should have mentioned I've tried fullscreen and small windows. For some reason it stays black or rather rendered black, like there's an area where it would display.

 

[WizardStan]

With xv as the video output? That's weird. I'll try to get some h264 videos so I can know what's happening.

 

[WizardStan]

Just finished watching Big Buck Bunny, 854x480 h264. You're right, xv doesn't work for videos larger than the screen res, even when forced to fullscreen or half size. I was, however, able to get it to work with SDL video output. It drops a lot of frames, and sudden scene changes make it stall for several seconds. The scene with the squirrel flying over the forest it absolutely couldn't keep up.
And then I overclocked Almost flawless.

 

[Titcher]

Brilliant! I'll try this right now. Tried it out, in VLC with SDL mode, I get a few frames, but now I also do with mplayer in XV mode too! As long as I'm overclocked it seems to display SOMETHING, but I guess this stuff is encoded too heavily for the pandora. I'll have to either transcode/rerip or wait for hardware accelerated h264 to show up.

 

[WizardStan]

Overclocked to 900, the command
mplayer -vo sdl -fs -frameskip big_buck_bunny_480p.mov
plays almost perfectly.

 

[Shaun]

I've been having this problem. If the problem is with videos larger than the screen size, then why is 480 height a problem? That's an exact fit.

 

[WizardStan]

I've been having this problem. If the problem is with videos larger than the screen size, then why is 480 height a problem? That's an exact fit.

Because of the window decoration, it still doesn't fit the screen.
The fact that it's h264 may also be factoring in to it remaining black as well.

 

[Shaun]

Oh, yeah, you're right. I also did realise I overlooked the h.264 problem as I thought my videos were encoded as XviD. They were not. I'm now going to try an MP4 OGM.

Edit: Gah, why are so many of my videos encoded as h.264?! This is going to require some major re-encoding, lol.

 

[Shaun]

I've got VLC working for the most part, but I'm having great difficulty accessing video playback controls when it's in full-screen (which I'll always want it to be) as the controls don't appear, and also returning to a windowed state. Another problem, though not a huge problem, is the horizontal tearing of the video I get when there's motion. Any fixes?

 

[WizardStan]

Nothing on the tearing, but controls can be done from the keyboard.
Space is pause, shift+left and right move forward and back 3 seconds, alt+left and right move back and forward 10 seconds, ctrl+left and right moves back and forward one minute, f is for fullscreen/window, and ctrl-q will quit.

 

[Shaun]

That's a shame. I thought with the video acceleration the tearing could be prevented. Ah well, it's not a massive deal. Maybe if I use a different media player (less intensive than VLC) it will be okay. I'll try different ones. Thanks for the controls explanation. My right nub is a bit weird. I hope it's not turning into a dud. I do wonder how long I'll have to wait if it dies and I have to send it back... :huh: I know that's off-topic though, so never mind.

 

[WizardStan]

The tearing is probably an issue with vsync. I don't know if VLC supports it or has it on or what.

 

[Wild_Duck]

Hi, I had trouble with Video playback the screen was black until I maximized it. Some clips including one of my own would freeze for a few seconds all the time. I used Prism Video File Converter Plus and after experimenting with various settings I found the following worked. (the input files were .FLV and .AVI)
Output Format - .avi
Encoder Options - ffdshow video encoder
Sound - pcm uncompressed
Sound Format - 16000hz 16bits stereo
Video Options - check "Resize Video"
- click "shrink or enlarge the video to selected size" button
- width = 800
- height = 450
- check "constrain proportions"
- click "16.9" button.
VLC was used for playback.
Bye.