Running Anime 720 Mkvs?

[Darksci]

nooooooooo I know mkv is the container and 720p is the size. Typically all the things I'd got is encoded using H264. Just wanted to know whether that runs.

But since you're saying 720p divx will run fine I'm gonna assume thats entirely on the CPU alone aka no DSP acceleration used.
In that case I'm kinda relieved.

 

[Username]

Just wanted to ask a quick question. Would it be possible to run anime 720p mkv videos with subtitles on them?
And actually show them?

I heard the Pandora DSP can take care of the 720p bit but would mkv files be supported for this?

While you should be able to run 720p mkvs just fine, keep in mind the built in region chip on the pandora that blocks out any video of japanese origin. No amount of DSPs or mkvs will ever be able to play anime.

 

[Yigguth]

While you should be able to run 720p mkvs just fine, keep in mind the built in region chip on the pandora that blocks out any video of japanese origin. No amount of DSPs or mkvs will ever be able to play anime.

you best be trollin

 

[cbox]

There is no region chip on the Pandora.

 

[femngi]

While you should be able to run 720p mkvs just fine, keep in mind the built in region chip on the pandora that blocks out any video of japanese origin. No amount of DSPs or mkvs will ever be able to play anime.

you best be trollin

Think about what he just said for a moment and then quietly delete your post.

 

[Darksci]

I kinda lol'd at his post. Still, would be nice if someone with a beagle board could test out a 720p H264 mkv file

(with subs)

 

[mukiex]

As far as I know, there's no h.264/mkv playing app available that uses the DSP yet.

Embinux's Android port should support H.264 up to 720p, but currently only works in a 3GP container.

ti_openmax-enhanced Gstreamer apps should support MKV and 720p just fine, but currently ti_openmax is in alpha and only does MPEG-4 part 1 (e.g. DivX(pre-7)/XviD style codecs). As Gstreamer works in a "modular" basis, however, it shouldn't matter if the MPEG-4 video is held in an MKV, MP4, or even MOV container.

Anyhoo, that's just what I've been able to put together based on my own Googlin' research.

 

[Izomiac]

Well, watching most anime basically requires four things. A player capable of handling the matroska container (no problem AFAIK), AAC audio (IIRC, again not a problem), 720p h264 video (might be an issue), and ASS subtitles (might be an issue). The last two tend to be the biggest problems on desktop linux. The video acceleration API seems to be defecient or something... Intel's working to create a new VA-API standard. Anime encoders also aren't all on the same page with h264 L4.1 or L5.1. The former is what BluRay uses, and is generally acceleratable with hardware. The latter generally isn't except with the latest iterations of ATI and nVidia cards. Without HW acceleration I wouldn't expect the Pandora's CPU to be even close to fast enough for 720p. The subtitles basically work in very recent builds of VLC (and not perfectly) and MPlayer. Even then, animated subtitles can be a beast, using ~10% of a Core2 Duo. IMO, as things currently stand, I'd expect something between jittering to slideshow during OPs when the CPU is taxed with both fast motion video and advance subtitles. Hard subbed Xvid files should play fairly easily, but I'd suspect one would have difficulty reading the subtitles, since text doesn't resize all that well (one of the disadvantages of hard subs).

Hopefully these issues will improve over time. Reencoding is an option, technically. I think it's cheating myself, since one could easily reencode a video to play on basically anything with a screen (e.g. 8x8 dot matrix watch screen). Plus, the Pandora is perfectly capable of downloading video via BitTorrent or Samba, or whatever else. I don't want to imagine how long it'd take to reencode high bitrate h264 video using the Pandora itself.

 

[Dead1nside]

Forgive my stupidity but what is the planned approach at tackling the wider problem of supporting DSP/GPU off-loading when playing back videos? Is there currently a project modifying Mplayer for support or is this in the DSP driver? Are the DSP's specifications available and is there an open source driver?