Beta Panplayer Beta


JDGBOLT

Member
Joined
Aug 29, 2008
Messages
103
PND Out, and in order to play back 720P content, you NEED RC2 of hotfix 5, or later.

I am proud to present the PND version of PanPlayer, an optimized mplayer build for the pandora that is wrapped up in PickleLauncher with an awesome skin by EvilDragon. :)

From the Readme:

Code:
This is an optimized build of mplayer for the pandora, wrapped within the picklelauncher frontend.
 If you have Hotfix 5, RC2 or later, you can play back up to 720P files without quality loss using the omapfb video driver. 
Only problem is some files will freeze the player when attempting this, so if it does freeze:

If you are in xfce, hold down the pandora button to bring up a dialog box that you can use to kill the player. 
If in minimenu, most likely pressing pandora button will fix it. 

The next time you attempt to launch the file, mplayer will attempt to launch the file using the lowres option, which doesn't work for h264,
 but should work for at least divx encoded files. 
If this does occur, you have to play back another file using omapfb in order for display using xv to work, couldn't find a way to prevent this.
So keep this in mind.

The files created in the appdata directory are the following:

mpconfig.conf - The configuration that mplayer uses, you can say 
change the default audio and subtitle track that it looks for, 
or any number of other settings.

mpinput.conf - The input configuration file, which contains all the pandora specific keybindings,
you can find a list of the default bindings within the mpdefaults.conf file,
don't bother editing this, as it's just for reference.

mpdefaults.conf - The default mplayer keybindings can be found in this file,
it's only for reference, it's not referenced in any way by mplayer.

profile.txt - This is where picklelauncher stores it's commands and the like, 
you can add more file extensions to it so that you can then use picklelauncher to launch those files with mplayer.

config.txt - This is where picklelauncher stores it's configuration, 
it's not recommended to edit this file unless you know what you are doing,
as it can break the skin, or even worse.

omapfb-blacklist - This file lists files that failed for whatever reason when trying to attempt playback using omapfb. 
If the video freezes, press and hold down the pandora button to try to kill mplayer, but a hard reboot may be sometimes necessary in some cases. 
After you kill the player, be aware playing a video that uses omapfb is necessary in order to fix the output. 
Omapfb is invoked any time you try to play back a file that is larger than the screen size.

The default keybindings for picklelauncher are:
B - Select a file or directory
X - Go up a directory
Esc - Quit the application

It is also possible to type on the keyboard to filter the file list for files containing that string. So just type some characters to filter the list. Backspace to delete.

Default keybindings within the player are as follows:
B - Play/Pause
X - Quit
Y - Change audio track
A - Change subtitle track

Dpad:
Left/Right - Seek -/+ 10 seconds
Up/Down - Seek -/+ 60 seconds.

For most files, the default settings should just work, a safe default for a large number of files is 600mhz, but for playing back h264 files and the like, I would recomend putting it to 750, or even 800. Unfortunately 720P h264 files is just too much for it, so keep that in mind.

Download Links
PND Version
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,114,329
http://apps.openpandora.org/cgi-bin/viewapp.pl?/Application/PanPlayer.inf

Binary Version
http://www.mediafire.com/file/sdkeu5nzb7gh7el/panplayer-b4.zip
The binary version you invoke by cd'ing to the directory with mplayer, /media/card/panplayer, for example, and doing a ./mplayer.sh filename. The script should handle the rest. Also this version isn't stripped, so if there is a problem, use this version and perhaps do a gdb dump by taking the options passed to mplayer,the first thing the script prints, and then passing that to mplayer, as well as the file, and running that with a gdb --args ./mplayer options filename , then typing r in the prompt. It should tell you at least what function failed, which I can try to look up.

Thanks,

JDGBOLT
 
Thank you very much! It's nice to see there are efforts put into mplayer improvements!
 
New beta up, post changed to reflect changes, mainly in allowing 720p output, mainly for xvid and theora, as h264 is too intensive, at least for the moment. Omapfb no longer needing to be manually added, it will automatically use it if you pass it a file larger than the screen size.
 
Alerino said:
much better player than the stock one, thanks a lot. although it crashes on playing flv's (Mplayer crashed by bad usage of CPU/FPU/RAM) and >480p (Source image dimensions are too high: 1280x542 (maximum is 800x480), it happens with 480x576 too
Do you have some URLs to those videos, so that JDGBOLT can actually test it himself and try to work around the flv problems?
 
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Nice to see, that people care about good Video Players onto the Pandora. :)
It's sad that we cant't use DSP HW Features because of the old Kernel, I hope that the Performance even get higher when this will work some day.
Anyway, I plan to watch alot of TV Series onto my Pandora, they are usualy encoded in XviD with 624x352 Pixel. I guess this is no problem for the Player (standard Clocking?).
But most important for me would be propper subtitle Support in .srt format, do these Pandora Players offer this Feature?
 
Okay, new beta is up, should hopefully fix the flash video problems, but may have introduced other regressions in files that used to work, as I changed how I fixed neon asm files, doing it selectively rather than the whole group. Let me know if any files that used to work don't anymore. :)

JDGBOLT
 
PND is up, packaged by our very own Evildragon, think we've fixed most of the glaring issues with the picklelauncher integration, everything I've thrown at it has played with varying success, except for 720p h264 files, which is too much for it unfortunately. Let me know of any issues, and, if possible, if a Mod sees this, I would like to change the title/description of the post to:
Panplayer Beta
Optimized Mplayer with frontend for Pandora, PND for Testing

Thanks,

JDGBOLT
 
Works great with anything I've thrown at it so far, and no overclocking required!! Fantastic work, thanks a million!!
 
fusion_power said:
It's sad that we cant't use DSP HW Features because of the old Kernel
I'm tired repeating this, but doing it once more: the real problem is not the old kernel but the DSP framework requirements to reserve RAM (so that Linux can't use it) and no one capable doing such work wanting to get the damn thing working.
 
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I'm tired repeating this, but doing it once more: the real problem is not the old kernel but the DSP framework requirements to reserve RAM (so that Linux can't use it) and no one capable doing such work wanting to get the damn thing working.

i) Regardless of this issue, isn't it good to move to the new kernel?

ii) Whats involved in reserving the RAM, isn't it just a boot parameter and then the TI libs (Bridge/Gateway) start working again?

Sorry for the two stupid questions notaz, but I'm intensely interested in this DSP subject and a discussion with you about it is bound to be enlightening ..
 
torpor said:
ii) Whats involved in reserving the RAM, isn't it just a boot parameter and then the TI libs (Bridge/Gateway) start working again?
It is a basic parameter, still: this RAM is lost to *all* applications. So instead of say 256MB for the OS and the applications you suddenly only have say 200MB. Eg Wesnoth does already run into too limited memory even with the 256MB limit when you play longer scenarios with many units and will crash with an "out of memory" error. So further limiting the memory on the device available is *not* a good idea! It is not possible to "dynamically" reserve the RAM for the DSP at runtime. It will be completely "gone". This makes no sense to have with no programs available that actually use the DSP (since making use of the DSP requires quite some additional programming efforts on the coders side to actually use it in the programs!).
 
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Interesting discussion. Is it then reasonable to say that we will certainly never use the DSP capabilities of the Pandora, due to these constraints?

Edit: Oh and thanks a lot for the PND version!!
 
notaz said:
fusion_power said:
It's sad that we cant't use DSP HW Features because of the old Kernel
I'm tired repeating this, but doing it once more: the real problem is not the old kernel but the DSP framework requirements to reserve RAM (so that Linux can't use it) and no one capable doing such work wanting to get the damn thing working.
Sorry, I just don't understand much of this technical stuff, so I had to ask. ^^"
And actualy it should be the Job of TI/SGX and/or Angstrom devs to implement such basic stuff, not yours. ;) Nobody should release a Chipset without full implemented and working Feature Support in Software. At least they have to give others the Source Code if they are not able to do it right themselves.
This is the point that makes me sad and not your very valuable work onto fixing all the stuff, others made wrong. ^^
 
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Yeah, it's a shame that the DSP stuff has to work like that, only thing I could think of is putting in an entry in the bootup menu that enables you to go and enable that functionality, as 720P h264 I think is impossible without the added support of the dsp, though a shame they are only in a gstreamer format, though I think mplayer can do that, not sure, haven't really looked much into it.
 
I have mkv file :

Quality : HDRip 720p
Format : X264
Resolution : 1280 x 688

I download panplayer.pnd on openpandora.org

I want to play a sample from the movie "127 Hours" but panplayer.pnd freeze why ?

And for movies that exceeds the size of 4 Go, how do I copy them to my SDXC card ? ( fat32 format )

Thanks
 
trevormacro said:
And for movies that exceeds the size of 4 Go, how do I copy them to my SDXC card ? ( fat32 format )
format you Sd with EXT format in place

Why use 4Go movie size ion place of 700Mo or 2Go? to not have to recompress the video?
 
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trevormacro said:
I have mkv file :

Quality : HDRip 720p
Format : X264
Resolution : 1280 x 688

I download panplayer.pnd on openpandora.org

I want to play a sample from the movie "127 Hours" but panplayer.pnd freeze why ?

And for movies that exceeds the size of 4 Go, how do I copy them to my SDXC card ? ( fat32 format )

Thanks
That file unfortunately won't work, as it is an h264 720P file, which is too much for the cpu of the pandora to decode, at least without using the DSP, which seems to have it's own caveats, and is not currently enabled to work in the current OS. If it was an SD resolution file that is h264, it might work, but HD h264 is too much. And X264 is just the name of an incredibly used and popular h264 encoder, and is what was used to encode that movie. 720P output really is only for lower requirement codecs like theora or xvid, mpeg4 and the like. :)
 
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Yod4z reply :

700 Mo or 2Go is DVDRip ( like Xvid or DivX )
4 Go file or more is a HDRIP (720p) ( compress BLUE-RAY DISC )


Thanks JDGBOLT for your informations.

If i want to look a movie, I must downloaded files type Xvid, DivX or DVDRip.
 
torpor said:
i) Regardless of this issue, isn't it good to move to the new kernel?
Sure but the new kernel has some missing stuff and several regressions, and there is no one wanting to work on these. Properly maintaining a kernel is almost a full time job really, and it's a bit too much for me with unrelated day job. Yeah maybe I could somehow manage it (like I did with current .27 kernel over the years) but would have to kill all my 'fun' projects for this. Still I'll be trying to get something for upcoming major firmware update (Y*).

fusion_power said:
notaz said:
I'm tired repeating this, but doing it once more: the real problem is not the old kernel but the DSP framework requirements to reserve RAM (so that Linux can't use it) and no one capable doing such work wanting to get the damn thing working.
Sorry, I just don't understand much of this technical stuff, so I had to ask. ^^"
And actualy it should be the Job of TI/SGX and/or Angstrom devs to implement such basic stuff, not yours. ;) Nobody should release a Chipset without full implemented and working Feature Support in Software. At least they have to give others the Source Code if they are not able to do it right themselves.
This is the point that makes me sad and not your very valuable work onto fixing all the stuff, others made wrong. ^^
TI only provides 'raw' software, it's still up to the integrator (which is unfortunate enough to be me) to set things up correctly. And if something goes wrong, something won't work, we are on our own because this is too small project (not enough parts sold) for TI to provide support.
 
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