Video Playback

[squirrel]

not sure if Pandora will come with mplayer or vlc or some other program but how well will it be able to play the films i use my gp2x a lot for watching films in bed with the wife.
i know the gp2x has a dedicated processor for scaling the film to fit the screen.
will the Pandora be able to scale films to fit the screen when i am watching them on its screen?
and will the tv-out play films in full scale

 

[Tobriand]

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: Some thread ago Squidge posted some videos on Youtube showing the OMAP3530 devbox (i.e. exactly like Pandora, but 640x480 screen) displaying a 700mb XviD video no problem - no sound, but only because he didn't have speakers to plug in (it was being outputted). In the same thread, he tried H.264 (or whatever it's called), and it also worked fine.

So yes, anything that works on the GP2x video-wise should work on Pandora with very few problems whatsoever. And indeed, fingers crossed, other things will so work too , and should be scaled to the screen with few (or no - depends on the method used) issues.

 

[Suntan]

and should be scaled to the screen with few (or no - depends on the method used) issues.

So just for clarity, it has not been shown that the Pandora can run h264 encoded at native res of 800x480? Let alone with more advanced features like CABAC?

-Suntan

 

[sindbad]

So just for clarity, it has not been shown that the Pandora can run h264 encoded at native res of 800x480? Let alone with more advanced features like CABAC?
With absolutely no modifications to mplayer, h264 barely ran realtime at full resolution. However, there is a lot of room for optimisation.

 

[theoddbot]

So just for clarity, it has not been shown that the Pandora can run h264 encoded at native res of 800x480? Let alone with more advanced features like CABAC?
With absolutely no modifications to mplayer, h264 barely ran realtime at full resolution. However, there is a lot of room for optimisation.

Can't find the link at the moment, and we don't know if it will be released with Pandora at this point, but TI have a whitepaper that claims their DSP implementation can handle h264 at 720x576 on the 3430. It's probably a cut down version of the spec, similar to what the iPod does.

Aside from that TI and Neuros are sponsoring some work on integrating VLC with the omap chips.

In short, expect the pandora to have kickass multimedia

 

[magicman5421]

will it come preinstalled with vlc?
not too much of a hassle to install...since the os is based on debian...
i vlc

 

[AireTamStorm]

After some optimization, anyone know if it will be able to do 720p and scale it down to 800x480 with either XviD / DivX or h.264? The hardware seems capable.

 

[javaJake]

I guess, if TI goes with VLC, I'll just have to live with it (instead of dear ol' mplayer).

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

After some optimization, anyone know if it will be able to do 720p and scale it down to 800x480 with either XviD / DivX or h.264? The hardware seems capable.

What would be the point, though? At such a small resolution, even non-HD video will look crystal clear and sharp as ever on the Pandora screen, and since it only outputs Composite/S-Video, you can't push anything more than 480i.

 

[dblank]

After some optimization, anyone know if it will be able to do 720p and scale it down to 800x480 with either XviD / DivX or h.264? The hardware seems capable.

What would be the point, though? At such a small resolution, even non-HD video will look crystal clear and sharp as ever on the Pandora screen, and since it only outputs Composite/S-Video, you can't push anything more than 480i.


To avoid reencoding, I'd guess.

 

[magicman5421]

I guess, if TI goes with VLC, I'll just have to live with it (instead of dear ol' mplayer).

vlc>mplayer
imo...

 

[javaJake]

vlc>mplayer
imo...

You obviously haven't realized mplayer's potential.

Here's where I'm coming from: I hate when software doesn't tell me exactly what's going on right at that moment and then let me actually fix it or work around it. That's why I use mplayer. Everything else, it either works or doesn't. With mplayer, it's "oops, half-downloaded AVI file with no index, let's generate a temporary index..." or "shoot, not downloading fast enough, let's increase cache" or "grrr, resolution is too high, let's tweak the video driver options..." or "wow, I like this debate, let's record this live internet broadcast".

These are just a few examples off the top of my head. I don't know what VLC does, but I'd be willing to bet it doesn't do everything mplayer does. At least if mplayer freezes or crashes, it does an awesome job of reporting what's going on.

 

[magicman5421]

hmm i guess i haven't. next time i'm streaming or playing some video, i'll give mplayer a try. just never got around to trying it.

 

[Esn]

VLC's good at plenty of things, but there's one thing I don't like about it (maybe I'm not using it right): Whenever I want to start a movie at a certain place other than the beginning, it doesn't start at the exact place where I move the pointy thing; it always seems to skip some random distance forward from where I want it to start from.

Windows Media Player, the only other media-playing program I have, doesn't have this problem... so I assume that it is avoidable and is some sort of bug...

 

[sindbad]

hmm i guess i haven't. next time i'm streaming or playing some video, i'll give mplayer a try. just never got around to trying it.

Try SMplayer, it's a more friendly front-end. And it remembers the position and volume of the movie after you close it and open it again.

 

[Kyo]

I'm a windows user, and I have noticed that VLC lags with music (not videos) when I have paint.net open at the same time. Windows media player does fine.

mplayer I have not used, but I do like detailed reports of what's going on

 

[Chip]

So just for clarity, it has not been shown that the Pandora can run h264 encoded at native res of 800x480? Let alone with more advanced features like CABAC?
With absolutely no modifications to mplayer, h264 barely ran realtime at full resolution. However, there is a lot of room for optimisation.

Actually, with no modifications at 600MHz, h.264 playback was just shy of realtime. To get full speed high-bitrate h.264 you're going to have to either optimize the code for the DSP (that's what it's there for), or overclock the CPU.

 

[kloplop321]

optimising the code would be a better idea, more battery

 

[javaJake]

VLC's good at plenty of things, but there's one thing I don't like about it (maybe I'm not using it right): Whenever I want to start a movie at a certain place other than the beginning, it doesn't start at the exact place where I move the pointy thing; it always seems to skip some random distance forward from where I want it to start from.

I heard that if you skipped forwards, then backwards, it wouldn't use the same time length for both times for some reason. It could be that skipping bug also affects you if you try and skip to a specific spot.

Then again, it might be because (watch out, I know nothing about this stuff) video playback always has to start at a keyframe, which are placed at standard intervals in the video.

 

[WizardStan]

I heard that if you skipped forwards, then backwards, it wouldn't use the same time length for both times for some reason. It could be that skipping bug also affects you if you try and skip to a specific spot.

Forward skips by 1 minute, backward skips by 15 seconds. I'm pretty sure this was a design feature, though not one I agree with. I prefer forward and backward skips to be equal as they are in mplayer.