Release The right version of mplayer

[Vitel]

Have you noticed that the default version of mplayer crashes on some h264-files and does not play theora video?


Use this version instead:


http://maemo.org/packages/source/view/fremantle_extras_free_source/mplayer/1.0svn20091221-4/


It plays everything: mp4/theora-vorbis/h264/flv and does not crash!

 

[dewc]

In case it hasn't been noticed, this informative post has been appreciated.

 

[skeezix]

Any speed improvements over the built in one?


jeff

 

[alastor]

Can anyone tell what is the actual performance of mplayer ? Say at 500 MHz ?

 

[sebt3]

Can anyone tell what is the actual performance of mplayer ? Say at 500 MHz ?

define "performance" please.


IMHO the answer is : good enough until we get a hand on that DSP

 

[alastor]

define "performance" please.


IMHO the answer is : good enough until we get a hand on that DSP

Ok.


CPU load spent on playing 480p/576p/720p DivX or H264 decoded video containers with MP3 or Flac decoded sound ? ( Something similar ? ) B)


Lets say:

mplayer -vo xv -ao alsa (file)

( OSS is ancient ...)


If the performance is good, I would expect < 20 % CPU load at 500 MHz playing 640 x 480 AVI ( DivX + MP3 ) without hardware acceleration of decoding.


BTW is there still no support for DSP ? I though that there is DSP Bridging available in kernel. <_<

 

[sebt3]

CPU load spent on playing 480p/576p/720p DivX or H264 decoded video containers with MP3 or Flac decoded sound ? ( Something similar ? ) B)

480p cool enough


576p will need a bit of overclocking


720p is a slide show

 

[WizardStan]

( OSS is ancient ...)

May be so, but OSS wrappers still exist in modern sound systems and, for reasons unknown (to me, maybe someone else knows) OSS output is slightly less CPU intensive than ALSA output.

 

[alastor]

480p cool enough


576p will need a bit of overclocking


720p is a slide show

What can I say ... This is amazing ! You have raised my hopes.


( Are you talking about h264 here ? If so, it means Pandora will be very near in performance to my 3.2 GHz POWER5+ processor. :blink: That is shocking. )


EDIT: Ye, Stan, I have heard about that from our community too. ( A lot of people were choosing OSS over ALSA when we were tweaking PS3 linux. ) And, ALSA includes OSS emulation.

 

[skeezix]

Lots of other mplayer options can help performance too; send it to fbdev, use ofbset to make it fullscreen with scaling up or down? or use the sizing command line bits to mplayer to scale it down and then fullscreen it to bring it up, is net speedup, goofy as it may sound. Fiddle around


jeff

 

[Vitel]

Can anyone tell what is the actual performance of mplayer ? Say at 500 MHz ?

http://vminko.org/it_notes/benchmarks#mplayer

 

[alastor]

http://vminko.org/it_notes/benchmarks#mplayer

Nice, but you only give the video decoding time of Cortex A8 compared to Pentium 3 ( Really ancient ...) and Celeron playing the video of unknown length and FPS measure. ( One would need to download the video file to find its frame rate and length. Otherwise there is no way to calculate the number of frames decoded per second of particular processor, using information you have given. The number of decoded FPS is the actual performance. )


I.e I was not asking about performance comparison, but only the actual performance.


( Your mplayer revision is of 2009 - a lot of ARM optimizations have been done since that time. )


Off topic:


Btw you have an interesting article about design comparison of Pandora and Zaurus. I have neither of them, so I can't really comment. But is it really true that:


a) There are two empty LED slots in Pandora ( Keyboard background light ... - would be nice )


b.) There is a microphone ( :blink: - some news )


?


Thanks

 

[Vitel]

Any speed improvements over the built in one?


jeff

Nope

 

[WizardStan]

a) There are two empty LED slots in Pandora ( Keyboard background light ... - would be nice )

The Pandora has two empty LED contacts where you can solder your own on and make them do whatever you want.


It also has a third PWM pad labeled KeyPad BackLight which you can wire in an led to light up the keyboard if you have the skill to do so.


There's a lot of other pads inside it, including additional buttons and i2c pads for hacking around with if you are so inclined. The EXT port has even more I/O pins and useful features. The Pandora is truly a hackers dream machine which will receive some great mods, just as soon as OPT starts getting more out there

b.) There is a speaker ( :blink: - some news )

Two speakers for full stereo, and a build in microphone. Plus a headphone/microphone jack, and line in/out on the EXT port for even greater quality.

 

[Vitel]

One would need to download the video file to find its frame rate and length.

That's why I used a widely known movie (BBB). And I agree that the numbers are not very convenient, maybe I'll fix this some day.

( Your mplayer revision is of 2009 - a lot of ARM optimizations have been done since that time. )

I tried the latest versions (from the Gentoo repo) - very unstable. And for me stability is more important than performance.

Off topic:


Btw you have an interesting article about design comparison of Pandora and Zaurus. I have neither of them, so I can't really comment. But is it really true that:


a) There are two empty LED slots in Pandora ( Keyboard background light ... - would be nice )

True. This may be interesting for you:

b.) There is a speaker ( :blink: - some news )

Actually there are two speakers (stereo).

 

[alastor]

That's why I used a widely known movie (BBB). And I agree that the numbers are not very convenient, maybe I'll fix this some day.


I tried the latest versions (from the Gentoo repo) - very unstable. And for me stability is more important than performance.


True. This may be interesting for you:





Actually there are two speakers (stereo).

Sorry, have not watched a lot of movies lately. :lol:


So the newest revisions are not stable ... You have a unit, so you know. And does this instability depends on resolution, video codec, audio codec, video output, audio output, etc or anything ? ( For me mplayer was unstable when I was using xf86-video-spu driver as xvideo vo on ps3 - anytime the video resolution was not a multiple of 16 the GUI crashed. :lol: )

 

[Vitel]

And does this instability depends on resolution, video codec, audio codec, video output, audio output, etc or anything ?

Of course it does, but I have not made a detailed investigation. This version just failed to play most of the files I tried (different resolution and codecs). Event the default version works much better.

 

[alastor]

Of course it does, but I have not made a detailed investigation. This version just failed to play most of the files I tried (different resolution and codecs). Event the default version works much better.

Ok, we will wait for future revisions.