Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

OK, compiled the first experimental test build with N800 framebuffer based video output support (check mplayer_1.0rc1-maemo.10 at https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=54). I only added some tweak and it got a lot faster. Screen update is now done from the other thread, as YUV screen updates on N800 are synchronous and ARM cpu was just idle waiting for graphics chip to do the scaling. Unfortunately tearing problems are not solved yet. Also I did not have much time to test this code, so it may still have bugs. Anyway, feedback is welcome, it should help to get N800 support stabilized faster :)

Once N800 video output related problems are resolved, it should be possible to concentrate on armv6 video decoding optimizations. By the way, upstream ffmpeg SVN already has some optimization for armv6 done, they can be backported to N800 optimized build of mplayer quite easily.

Also we may get a new firmware update with some video related fixes *very* soon: http://jaaksi.blogspot.com/2007/02/h...l-roadmap.html

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

mplayer_1.0rc1-maemo.10 is looking real, *REAL* good Serge! :)

The OSD doesn't seem to be working though, and is there any way for mplayer to remember the last volume setting - I'm always having to whack up the volume as soon as the video starts (and the max volume is still a bit on the low side).

The tearing is terrible but hopefully Nokia will fix that in a future firmware/patch - it affects Opera too (eg. dragging a page around) and has been reported by one of the Canola developers as a major issue.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Playing around some more I realise my N800 is using the Nokia770 video output driver which seems to work quite well. However the xv video output driver is repeating frames and getting stuck during playback.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

New thread on N800: :D
Mplayer which version is suitable for N800
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?p=34709

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Do you mean time indicator? Unfortunately it seems to be broken in 1.0rc1 release, see https://garage.maemo.org/tracker/ind...id=54&atid=269
If you actually wanted to report something different, please provide a bit more details.

Sound volume currently is always set to 50% on start, probably it can be changed to remember previous settings but I did not look at it yet. I'm sorry for being formal, but feel free to submit bugreport or feature request at garage trackers, so it will have more chances to get improved :)

Yes, that's the most important issue. I tried different methods to workaround it, but nothing seems to help (a curious thing is that N800 framebuffer driver seems to have some options for enabling vsync, but they do not seem to have any positive effect).

Yes, I decided to make 'nokia770' framebuffer based video output driver default instead on xv at the last moment. It seems to be much more reliable and faster right now. Hopefully the next software update will make xv a more attractive option.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Forgive me, I'm a total newbie to all this... But, I have installed the recommended version of MPlayer, and I'm happy to report that it plays, rather well, in fact, a WMV file I've been looking to play. The only problem is when I skip the play ahead, it will usually freeze my unit totally requiring a total reboot of the system to get out of it. Is this because the file I'm watching is a bit too taxing on the N800 (it's 480x360 and 56bps... it's a downloaded stream off of an Irish television site... and I wanted to see if MPlayer could play it without any recoding!)

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

I think its because mplayer on the N800 is still a little experimental - skipping forward and the OSD in general can cause mplayer to hang for quite a while before it resumes. I'm confident Serge will nail it eventually. :)

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Serge, thank you so much for this version. It really does work great. I have not noticed problems navigating through the movie, but the one thing I have noticed is that subtitles flicker a little on the very bottom. This probably has something to do with the fact that its using framebuffer.

Just thought I'd let you know, not sure if anyone has tried subtitles on this one yet.

Thanks again. This really does make my day.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Thanks for your work Serge.

Version mplayer_1.0rc1-maemo.10 is usable unlike the prior version on my N800 due to the freezing problem. I am still having some slight audio sync problems along with of course the tearing and skipped frames. The frame skipping is really not too bad even on the divix DL.TV episode I downloaded and played w/o conversion.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

III was playing a little bit around with the new version of mplayer. I tried three different
files which I recoded with media converter(400x240@512kbs) and all of them have
sync problems. The video stream has a delay of about 1 second. Unfortunetly, the OSD audio delay option is not working, I cant change the setting. I read that some of us got sync problems...I should check thr previous mplayer version to see if audio syncing behaves the same...

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Well, I'm already tired of asking this over and over again :) Please provide some reliable way to reproduce this problem (surprisingly I got no files with audio delay problem here, encoding with various settings including those you mentioned). Either a detailed step by step instruction is needed (including all the information about source video file that was used for transcoding) or just one of your bad samples uploaded somewhere. Only after that I may have a chance to check what's wrong and hopefully fix this problem.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Ok, I am going to make some small sample files after Tuesday.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Serge, can you even *change* the audio delay value in the OSD? Even if a video is properly synched with the sound you should be able to alter the audio delay so that it isn't anymore.

The audio delay value is unchangeable for me - I click on it in the menu so that it's selected, but the arrow buttons do not change the delay value.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

No, I can't change audio delay settings either, but that's a different bug of minor significance (it is also present in desktop x86 version of mplayer). I'm much more interested in fixing audio sync problems for sure.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Hey Serge!
Today everything I do sucks. I am starting to believe in Murphy's Law again.
I just booted my windows machine, after approx. 2-3 months to cut the video to a sample length. VirtuaDub has some problems with my file, so I started to encode a new file with media converter. It's the same format file format (Same series, different part) and suddenly it works good on my n800. While trying a diferent one, my f****** windows machine died, besause of a virus I got right now. Wtf!? After 3 Months, I boot this crappy BillyBoy machine and get a Virus after 5 min of use? It's actuall a icq protocoll virus. Ok, back to topic...Some parts of windows still work good, so I am trying to reproduce the problem.
The last time, I tried 3 Files and all were out of sync. Will post progresss in a couple of minutes.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Ok, there is definitely something strange going around.
The 550mb async movie file is on my device and still async. I can't edit it in virtuadub, because the audio gets complete out of sync after that. The original file is 200km away, so I called my dad and instrcuted him to encode a 30sec preview in media converter. He just send me the file and I tried on my n800 and it's perfectly synced. Same file, same settings. The one fully encoded, the other one just with the 30sec option. Strange? In the meanwhile I encoded about 10 different files and all work well. So there, on the other computer (200km away) should be the other two full length movies which were out of sync. I guess the problem is not related to mplayer after all, but to media converter? Nevertheless the async one is synced in my windows machine and I definitely can't cut it with virtuadub.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Hi, you might want to try out the 1.31 version which contains updated version of mencoder. The new version especially improves the conversion on AMD computers. For you this might mean that your videos stay in sync.

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa...dows_setup.exe

If it works for you, please let us know.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

I tried the movies on different players. WMP , VLC and gXine on Linux. They're in sync on my desktop machine. And suddenly every movie I encode is in sync on my N800. My Linux System is fried because of a hd failure and I use puppy Linux for a couple of weeks. I'll have to get a real system back because I can't install stuff like media converter on puppy.
According to the date, I might have 1.31 installed on my windows box, already.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

I wrote the message minutes after uploading the new one. I only uploaded the 1.31 for you ;) I was planning on adding some other stuff as well, but I had the 1.31 ready and one guy had tested it already (fixed problems with his AMD processor) and thus I felt this could solve your problem as well.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

In that case, does anyone have a config file change that allows me to alter the audio delay at a touch of a button? I had that set up in input.conf for the up/down buttons, but now if I use it, mplayer freezes and needs to be killed. I think it gets confused between audio synch +/- and its default action of fwd/back 1min(?).

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

@konttori:
Hehe thanks :) I will try the new version on my billy-boy machine, hope it will work long enough. With M$ you never know, especially when some virus is freaking you out.
So my windows will either die by itself(with a little help from my nasty icq-virus) or by steel(...an axe lying around).
Is this AMD problem only related to a AMD+windows combination, or is there a 1.31 linux version, too?
I am going to test about10-15 avi files. Will report if the sync problems occurs.
Thanks again.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Ok, another file out of sync. Tried with MC 1.30 for Linux and 1.31 for Win. One-Pass and Two-pass. Serge, I can't cut the movie because then it's comletely out of sync. I can put it on my private ftp or http server (190mb) and you can download it if you want. Please PN me... Must hurry now...

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Can you check the original file properties ('mplayer -identify' output would be nice to have) and post them here? It might have something special in it. Also try watching both the original and converted file with the pc version of MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html) and some other video players to check if there are any sync problems.

Audio sync problems could be caused by mplayer not having enough cpu resources to play video in realtime (if you disabled -framedrop option for example). Try transcoding the same video with lower bitrate/resolution and check if it helps.

Another source of problems could be DSP audio decoder, you can try running mplayer with '-ao esd -ac ffmp3' options to use ARM core for decoding audio.

If nothing helps, I'll try to download and have a look at this video file myself.

Even if you find a solution that works for you, please provide some kind of feedback, it may help other people having the same problem. Thanks.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Unfortunetly, I am not at home and have no Linux PC(Can't even try on n800, cause I send back my SD card today), so I can't give you mplayer output right now. But the -ao esd -ac ffmp3 parameter worked when I tried tonight. The problem is that the performance got very bad with this option, even while the cpu ist just 3/4 of maximum (2/4 when without -ao esd -ac ffmp3). Isn't mplayer using ARM Core for decoding, so cpu should be 100% in use? Or did I misunderstand something? Nevertheless, I'll have my Tux back soon (And hopefully a new working SD card) and I will post outputs.

PS: The movie worked good in every other windows player(WM,VLC) and Linux player(mplayer,vlc) I tried...

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

I did some testing with latest mplayer (mplayer_1.0rc1-maemo.10) with default settings (VO nokia770). And i got N800.

Very high quality 1500 kbps 704x384 XviD (audio 150 kbps mp3) seems to lag, but maybe armv6 video decoding can be optimized little bit.

High quality 4:3 512x384 1070 kbps XviD (audio 128 kbps mp3) and 711 kbps 352x288 XviD (96 kbps) seems to work pretty fine. Of course there are some serious tearing problems, but hopefully Nokia will fix that in a future firmware/patch.

Do you have any idea how much mplayer performance can be optimized? Whats the limit of flawlessy playback?

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Why would you need a video of this quality for a screen that is only 4" wide? I use between 2000 to 2500 kbps to reencode my DVD's for a 37" LCD screen an I don't notice a difference. On a 4" screen 800kbps is more then enough.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

That was just a test ;). I am so lazy that i don't want re-encode my XviD files which i have already on my computer.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Cpu usage is not constant when decoding video and can vary quite a lot between different frames, so having cpu loaded too high is generally a bad sign (you may run out of cpu resources any time). It is very important to have framedropping enabled (it is set by default, so you don't need to do anything) so skipping displaying of some frames may help to keep video and audio in sync for complicated scenes. If you are getting too much frames dropped and playback is not very good, you need to transcode video to lower bitrate or resolution or both.

MPlayer is using ARM core for decoding video and can use DSP core for decoding MP3 audio.

Anyway, was the audio/video sync better for '-ao esd -ac ffmp3' option?

Also please try to run a few more tests to check that the results are reproducible. Do you always get audio sync problems when trying to play this video with the default mplayer settings or it can occur sometimes?

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Yes, it can be optimized for sure. Upstream ffmpeg has some armv6 optimizations in SVN already that are still not used in mplayer build for N800. Using these optimizations is in my todo list for the next version of maemo mplayer. I can't provide precise predictions about optimizations limits. Benchmarking, identifying bottlenecks, optimizing them, benchmarking again and so on is the process of improving performance. Once there are no bottlenecks visible, we can consider that the optimization is mostly done.

Actually tearing problems in mplayer are now worse than they could be. After trying different methods of fixing tearing without much success, I disabled all vsync completely and used what seems to provide the best performance (another option was to still have tearing but work slower).

I got a bit busy lately at work (yes, even on weekends), so did not have much time left for mplayer. Also I'm waiting for n800 firmware update as there does not seem to be much point in trying to workaround tearing problems currently.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Ok, here's my output from within the n800:
Without any parameters I got a video(!!!) delay of approx. 1 sec. So the audio is too early. Serge, you said that framedropping is on by default, so I used that, cause I haven't toggled framdropping off. With "-ao esd -ac ffmp3" the A/V is nearly synced. There's just a delay of ~100ms, so it's quite good, except for the overall perormance.
The delay occurs every time I used this converted movie. There are files which work perfect, but there are encoded with the same options. From now on I will put all my converted movies together to collect them and hopefully see any similarity in movies which work and which do not work. Right now I just see randomly working and not working movies...

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Thanks for posting log and providing additional details. Looks like mplayer detects audio as 32kbit, that's extremely low bitrate (minimal supported by mp3). Did you transcode your movie with variable audio bitrate settings? That could be a source of audio/video sync problems. Try using constant audio bitrate for this movie and check if it works better.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

I used media converter, there is only a slider for choosing audio-bitrate. I always chose 96kbits. I tried 1.30 on Linux and windows and 1.31 for windows. The results are the same. Perhaps I can somehow reeoncode this already encoded movie with an other audio format...

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Also try using 770-encode.pl from http://www.bleb.org/software/770/
If we find a good settings for encoding this movie, it will be easier to investigate the problem. If variable audio bitrate support is really buggy, properly working constant bitrate audio will confirm this supposition.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Heck, 300kbps should be more than enough. I always encoded at 300 for my Tapwave Zodiac. Sadly, that 3 year old Palm plays video *much* better than this brand, spankin' nw n800 in my hands. I can't wait for the sw update.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

The "made for PDA" (not the iPod or PSP ones) movies on this site (http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/index.html) play rather well. They're 320 wide (usually 240 high, depending on the aspect ratio), 23 fps and around 250 kbps (I keep getting different numbers from different encoders, so there...).

Strangely, videos play a lot better on my N800 through Canola than through the regular video player (I can't figure out why, as Canola is supposed to be just a frontend). Mplayer is really awful on my system; tears like mad.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Updated build of MPlayer for N800 is available at garage project page: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mplayer/

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Can you give us any details of what this offers please?

Do you yet see a day we'll be able to play the Divx TV stuff I download without having to re-encode it?

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

In the changelog:
* Now it is possible to exit from MPlayer by tapping close window icon
users trying to do this in previous versions could encounter problems
* Reduced tearing on N800
* Added ARMv6 optimized IDCT taken from upstream ffmpeg SVN.

I made a quick test, and YES, the tearing effect did not show anymore!
Continue the good job guys, LOT of people will love you ;)

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

I have seen a small amount of tearing,but the videoplayback is so much better now.

Re: MPlayer which version is suitable
 

Hi Serge, I have a small bug that's been around a while: try opening a mp3 file using the launcher. Once you hit play the music will start but gmplauncher will immediately freeze, requiring a kill to get rid of it. Besides that, keep up the good work!

Larry