Release Panplayer 2 PND Update on the Repo


I used to use just the first Panplayer PND for video playback since I saw no real reason to switch and I guess I'll keep it that way.

I'll be frank: This release is horrible.
There's tearing all over the video. It's lacking ASS subtitle support. You may think it's faster in playback but it actually just goes out of sync where Panplayer 1 would've stopped rendering frames and caught up eventually.
One good thing is that the video is properly fullscreen, though. With Panplayer 1 it was offset by 1 in each direction, leaving two stripes of pixels of the underlying desktop.

Most, if not all, should be fixable with the proper command line arguments or a corrected recompile.
 
I did not update, as soon as he said the new version was slower I noped out. Which is also why I am still on a less than 2.0 version of Mupen.
 
I used to use just the first Panplayer PND for video playback since I saw no real reason to switch and I guess I'll keep it that way.

I'll be frank: This release is horrible.
There's tearing all over the video. It's lacking ASS subtitle support. You may think it's faster in playback but it actually just goes out of sync where Panplayer 1 would've stopped rendering frames and caught up eventually.
One good thing is that the video is properly fullscreen, though. With Panplayer 1 it was offset by 1 in each direction, leaving two stripes of pixels of the underlying desktop.

Most, if not all, should be fixable with the proper command line arguments or a corrected recompile.
I am working on a better Version after reading this.
Last 2 Days i played with differrent Mplayer Commands and found out that it go out of Sync only when too much Frames are dropped because of too slow Playback power.
The Mplayer Option -vo gl:backend=3 seem to handle that much better than SDL here.
This Command is for using OpenGL ES directly.
And i was able to get this Subtitle Support back which i never used :D
Tried many Settings and i thing that this Version will do the Job much better then.
New and fixed Version come soon.

btw: Thank you for testing..i am still learning.
 
New Version is on the Repo:
https://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=PanPlayer2-Zoom
It play much faster than the last Version.
Subtitle Support should be inside..i do not have Videofiles with Subtitle for testing here.

Trearing should be no Problem more because i added the powervr.ini here.

This Time it use a Mix of -vo gl:backend=3 for direct using gles and somehow Ptitsebs GL4ES is initialized too while starting Videos.
Notaz Export omapdss is inside too but all they seem to work fine together.(my Noob knowledge..lol)
The mixed Result is work fine for me:)

Even my uncleaned Technisat Transport Streams TS Files play fine which in fully
Pal Resolution the older PanPlayer never played. :$

720P MP4 is bit slow for the Pandora and will go out of Sync because too Heavy for the CPU.
Even with Neon support
For Musicvideos will 720P work fine..you can see this in this Video:
The first 2 played Videos in this Youtubevideo are in 720P,see it by yourself :)


I would be realy glad when anyone test it and report that it work fine :)
 
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New and important Update on the Repo.
I found now the right Commands to Sync Audio and Video perfectly.
https://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=PanPlayer2-Zoom
You can now play 720p Videos in Sync with Audio...yay :)


Can anyone confirm that Videoplaying is now much better and in Sync with Audio?
Can anyone confirm if Subtitle Support is working?
 
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Try it..
..720p work with little Frameskip but not that bad as many think :)
I have 720p Musicvideos from Youtube working fine here ;)
 
I will test once i get my Pandora back from the shop! I use panplayer 2 all the time to watch videos from freerapid downloader.
 
You could say it's an improvement, but it's still just not on the same level as PanPlayer 1 was.
There are no de-syncs or tearing anymore, but overall the performance is worse than before... in a way.
The h.264 480p encode I used to check the lagging behind now basically plays at half the frame rate instead. 720p is worse. I can't see how you can consider 720p youtube content as fine. Though the frame dropping tolerance is very high in this community, I guess.

Now wait a second before you flame me. I know the Pandora is not really cut out for h.264 decoding. This was just for testing. Though on Panplayer 1 the h.264 480p was something I'd still consider playable. Few hickups here and there, but still better than this.
I usually encode my files in native 800x480 MP4 and achieve smooth playback in Panplayer 1. This is still not the case in this version. These files were better in the Panplayer 2 version uploaded before, actually.

I'm not sure if using OpenGL for rendering is the right way. I can't quote anything here, but I remember reading that the texture upload on the Pandora isn't even fast enough to keep up the frame rate.

Compared to the last uploaded Panplayer 2, the subtitles aren't rendering at all. Before they were unstyled, but now the characters appear as black squares.
I usually just render the subs into the video when converting for the Pandora so it's not the most important thing in the end, but I still kinda bugged me since they worked in Panplayer 1.


Also sorry if I sound harsh here, but well, there are issues and there's no point in keeping quiet about them.
I may take my own shot at performant video playback if I get the time. Though I'm not a fan of working with other people's code. Ah well.
 
Dang!
@elvissteinjr
Wow you are hard to satisfy.
Okay first 2 Things where solved.
I am glad to hear that no Tearing and no desync is more.

I will try these Days a recompile of Mplayer with other Options.
My Build here do not have omapfb as Video Out for testing and i do not know why.
Maybe i get more performance with omapfb but i cannot
promise that.

To the FPS:
My excessive testing gave me the Result that lowering the Framerate to 22 is much more effective than full FPS Rendering because here where with full Rendering much more slowdowns and lost Frames.
In this way all my Videos work much more smooth than let it rendering the entire Frames.
Worked fine with all my 720p Videos.
I was glad to archive this playback speed and Critic is welcome because it show me what i can try to do better.
To the Subtitles:
I do not have any Video with a Subtitle and cannot solve this without a File with Subtitles.
Can you send me such a File or do you have a direct Link to such a Videofile?
 
Gave it a try.
Upgraded firmware to 1.76 then needed to re-install the codec package. That was needed to fix a problem mounting a NTFS formatted sd card.
Also needed to delete the app data folder panplayer2 (there was also a panplayer2zoom folder that I deleted)
After that tried some avi files and m4v files. The latter I re-encoded to H264 - 576x450 framerate 23.976 - audio MPEG AAC 48khz (one of the default settings in handbrake)

They all work fine in Panplayer 1 including subtitles. The m4v files worked for a while in Panplayer 2 as well, but it seems to be buggy.
After remounting an SD card and restarting it is continuously crashing even after deleting appdata folder.
 
oh the old Community Codec Pack is full of old Libs.
Maybe they broke something on your System.
You can easy activate NTFS on your Pandora without installing or downloading Things with a Terminal and type:
Code:
su
ln -s mount.ntfs-3g /sbin/mount.ntfs
And restart.
No need more for that old Community Codec Pack.
...
...
..hmm you write first Minutes it work fine and then not more?
I will check that because my Videos for testing werent longer than 4 Minutes.
But i must ask again:
Have anyone a Link to a Video with Subtitle for me?
 
Wow you are hard to satisfy.
I am seeking for software quality. In this case especially since it fixed one small annoyance from PanPlayer 1, but performs worse in a lot of other regards. It's just a shame, really.
I'm not forcing you to spend your time on this, however. Don't get me wrong.

My excessive testing gave me the Result that lowering the Framerate to 22 is much more effective than full FPS Rendering because here where with full Rendering much more slowdowns and lost Frames.
You're shooting yourself in the foot with this arbitrary framerate limit, though. 22 fps is not a integer divider to the screen or typical video material. You can't achieve consistent screen refreshes with that.

Regarding a ASS subtitle example... I can't really just publicly share what I used for testing before, but I took the latest video from the Pandora Youtube channel and put some silly subs on it.
It also includes a font, which is supposed to be loaded from the file if everything is working.
Btw. this video is 800x480 MP4 @ 50 fps and plays smoothly for the most part in Panplayer 1, at least while subtitle rendering is off.

Overall regarding performance, I don't think there are a lot of command line switches left that can help a lot. I'm still really skeptical about using OpenGL as output driver, though.
 

Attachments

  • ASS Test.zip
    14.6 MB · Views: 235
I asked for some omap patches for newest MPlayer a while ago :
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/need-updated-mplayer-mplayer2-mpv-sources-for-omapfb.79455/

But still no answer.
current mpv sources on github doesn't support SDL1.2 for video, only for audio. Did it supported it in the past?
I have mpv compiled, and can use x11, xv, sdl2 or opengl(es2) for output. Currently, OpengGLES|2 is the faster. It can render elvissteinjr video with ass subtitle, but is quite choppy when the subtitles are moving. It's fine (with a few dropped frame) when subtitle are static.
I tried a mkv with 5.1 audio and 720p video, and of course it's still too slow (video can't keep up with the audio, even with frameskip, the decoding stage itself is too cpu hungry).
 
I found out that the newer Version from DirectFB support TI Omap and maybe i can compile this new Version with Neon support on Mplayer.
I am working on a completly new Build :)
 
Sadly, the overall h.264 skills of the Pandora are very poor for whatever reason. I have to recode all my Videos to simple mp4 so they run good onmy classic Pandora via SMPlayer2. h.264 works somehow, at least in 480p but even overclocked it's not the real thing. I hope it will be better on the Pyra.
Didnt tried PanPlayer 2 afaik, but if it's faster than SMPlayer2, I give it a try. ^^

VLC could also need an update on the Pandora, it's version there is stone-old.
 
VLC could also need an update on the Pandora, it's version there is stone-old.

On my PC VLC is my favourite video player but it is definitely lacking on the Pandora (slow and issues playing some codecs)
If you haven't tried it yet, I can also recommend Kodi. It works better than you would expect from such a feature-packed video player.
 
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