Current State Of Video Playback Support?

[jose1711]

hello guys,

i am considering purchase of gp2x for sole video (Xvid/mp3) playback purposes. would you recommend this? i have read some rumours that videosupport has some serious glitches like problematic national characters support in text subtitles, tv-out, performance problems, freezes or crashes.

i am not really expecting h264/x264/wmv, ogg audiotrack support or audiotrack switching to work but i would be glad if essential things like 700 mb xvid files with one audiotrack in mp3 and srt subtitles would work as expected.

thank you for posting your experience/comments.

cheers,

jose

ps. i am aware of the fact gamepark holding is breaking gnu/gpl license with mplayer bundled w/o sources available to download and i reckon that releasing sources could make the progress faster but what are you gonna do..

 

[woogal]

Can't answer your question because I've not tried enough videos to know, but what I do know is that all sources were released a very long time ago and the gpl isn't being broken.

 

[sehs33]

if you are going to use srt subtitles with english only characters, everythingwill be perfect, the stories you heard were caused when people try playing large files (700 MB+) while using the normal performence settings (which are the default), but when that option set to "Full", everything will be perfect, and TV out works like charm, so there is nothing wrong at all with it.

 

[Jaguarandine]

Isn't the video decoder still an unknown? So any video apps we made wouldn't be as good.

Edit: I mean video processor more specifically

 

[PokeParadox]

There's a binary blob that is used for the hardware decoding. But that is closed source by MagicEyes, or something to that effect. All the GPL code is available.

 

[Chahk]

i am considering purchase of gp2x for sole video (Xvid/mp3) playback purposes.

I would not recommend it. Don't get me wrong, GP2X is an awesome gaming platform with many emulators and other applications. But if you planning to use it purely for video playback, I'd recommend looking for a dedicated PMP.

On the Pros side, the GP2X will play back Divx/Xvid w/MP3 audio just fine. Battery life is decent too: I've watched 2 full-length movies on a single battery charge (2x2500MAh). Another plus if the convenience of swapping the AA rechargeables, as opposed to built-in Li-Ion batteries most PMPs have that require you to recharge your entire player via a USB port or an AC/DC adapter that is not always available. Plus you get all the other uses this device was originally designed for: Linux, emulators and myriad of other applications.

On the Cons side, watching 16x9 content on a 4x3 screen leaves 2 black bars on top and bottom and wastes screen real estate. The couple of video players I've tried on my GP2X don't have a very intuitive interface. This will of course change as those players get developed further, but currently their GUI leave a lot to be desired. Things like fast-forwarding/rewinding, skipping and seeking are completely dependent on the quality/speed of your SD card; slower cards mean choppy playback and/or slow seek speed. The current 4GB limitation won't let you carry as much content as a HD-based PMP. Of course you can have multiple SD cards, but at some point this gets cost-ineffective. Dedicated PMPs also usually get more support from their manufacturers. For Archos players, for example, you can purchase firmware upgrades that add more codecs to the player.

In other words, use the right tool for the right job. A 30GB PMP will probably cost you the same as a GP2X unit with a few high-quality rechargeables and SD cards, but at the end you will be getting a device that was designed for video playback, as opposed to a hand-held gaming console that can also play videos.

 

[Shadowsithe]

For the money, you're better off getting an iPod if you just want something for multimedia. Install rockbox firmware on it and you've got most codecs available to you.

 

[Conan-san]

Personaly, avi speaking, only one avi didn't work and that was TV-Nihon's sub of ep 1 of sailor moon tokusatsu.

 

[jedisolo]

I think the video playback on the GP2X is pretty good. If you use Pocketdivx encoder all of your videos should play fine on it.

 

[abertalia]

Yeah, you can get rid of those black bars using Pocket Divx Encoder which is pretty nice but using it does make you lose a bit of quality I believe.

 

[fightingdreamer88]

I've got a bunch of quicktime, wmv and flv format files. Am I good to go with those?

 

[clone]

I've got a bunch of quicktime, wmv and flv format files. Am I good to go with those?

No, you'll have to transcode them all to xvid/divx.


Oh, and from my investigations, the media player does not support xvid video with GMC frames and or Qpel enabled? I've not checked since firmware 2.0, so need to check again I guess, is this still the case? (I almost always use GMC/qpel for the stuff I encode for shinsen subs, so this was quite annoying to discover.)

 

[Neil]

Oh, and from my investigations, the media player does not support xvid video with GMC frames and or Qpel enabled?

That matches my experience - any attempt to use qpel leads to the "not supported file" error screen.

One other encoding hint I can pass on: I recently wondered why my 25Hz frame-rate Xvid videos were showing rather jerky motion. I figured out that the player doesn't seem to support B-frames - it still plays the file, but it looks like it only actually decodes and renders the I and P-frames.

 

[PokeParadox]

Yeah confirmed for Qpel and GMC. Woo it's nice to see people actually notice things like encoder settings! :lol:
I made a post with my findings with Xvid/DivX playback when I originally got my GP2X and the next few replies were "What does that even mean?"

 

[fightingdreamer88]

Yeah confirmed for Qpel and GMC. Woo it's nice to see people actually notice things like encoder settings! :lol:
I made a post with my findings with Xvid/DivX playback when I originally got my GP2X and the next few replies were "What does that even mean?"

Whenever I see Qpel and GMC mentioned I cringe, aside from a PC it's near impossible to find a piece of hardware that supports them fully, even at the very highest prices. I would, however, like to think that the GP2X scene will produce something to sort it out someday. Have to say that the support of the OGM container format will almost make up for everything - I've got a ton of media that has gone unplayable on anything other than my PC until now (can't wait for that GP2X to arrive next week).

 

[clone]

One other encoding hint I can pass on: I recently wondered why my 25Hz frame-rate Xvid videos were showing rather jerky motion. I figured out that the player doesn't seem to support B-frames - it still plays the file, but it looks like it only actually decodes and renders the I and P-frames.

That seems to match what I've been experiencing now I think about it! Shit, that's pretty annoying, b frames are the key to pushing the bitrate down

 

[mylan]

problem with problematic national characters is simple. u should download modified version of MPlayer link. u have to change in mp2x.ini lang="ISO-8859-1" to lang="UTF-8" and the subtitle file convert into UTF-8 with notepad.