Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I downloaded and got an error playing it back when it was trying to create the dsp node. This file "should" play back fine without any new stuff to install. I suspect we need an update for gst-dsp and the file should play ok then. I will ask the relevant people and get back to you.

I managed to play it with a custom GStreamer pipeline without using the dsp video decoder and it started playing but the cpu is not enough to decode 720p MPEG4 without help from the dsp.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I have done this (well not wmv but another format) with flumotion. I plan on cleaning up packages etc. and putting up in extras-devel to make this easy.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

So 720p mpeg4/divx is not supported by the dsp decoder. That is why these don't play.

i filed a bug on maemo bugzilla at:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6165

so they can clean up the error message.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

From a practical point, why would we want 720p?

1. Pointless on 800X480 display
2. Space hog
3. Battery hog
4. N900 has no practical heat dissipation (720p is hot)
5. Archos 5 with both a metal case and a heatsink runs hot with 720p.
6. The composite output would be 480 lines interlaced of resolution, so no advantage outputting externally either.

Is this just to test the ceiling of the chipset? I can say that 720p does work with the 3430, because I have last year's Archos 5 and it uses the same chipset and plays them fine- but REAL hot.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Why Rushmore?

Because we can. It's about pushing the boundaries.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Not having to convert if you happen to come across that high res, downloading directly from the browser

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Understood, just the point that the device would probably fail after about ten minutes due to no practical heat dissipation for such heavy bandwidth. Perhaps if it had a metal case, it could have piped to that, but it does not. Still be warm to hold though ;)

Again, the 3430 DOES play 720p, so it would be a case of drivers being made. Archos may suck with sound quality, but they are kings with video drivers.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Sorry to sound like a complete newb, but I just want to know, is VLC available for the N900 yet?
I've checked both the downloads section here and VLC's website, and I've yet to see a Maemo5 version. But, I can always hope. :D

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

There's a version of VLC available, but it isn't for "newbs". It is missing a GUI (meaning it can only run from the command line) and it has to be installed with root and "dpkg -i" from a developer's server...

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

We have the WIndows/Linux PC UI somewhat working now using Qt4.5. You can get it from the "fremantle" branch at http://git.remlab.net/git/vlc.git/

Better than CLI, but still far from satisfactory. Also, the build process still needs to be cleaned up. So I am dubious about releasing to Fremantle Extras in this state.

Basically, a UI developer would be needed and there is currently none.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Can the Maemo community lend a hand in this regard?

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

The way I see it, there is absolutely no reason I shouldn't be able to take a video from my computerl, copy it to my N900, and play it wherever I am. I have tried copying a movie over that was .avi format and was not able to. I used HandBrake to transcode the movie into .mp4 format, at which point i was able to copy it over. Yet, when I want to play it via the media player, I get an error message saying "Unable to play media. Media format not supported." Anyone know if VLC will be able to clear this up with all its built in codecs?

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

i cant play a simple flv file. I'm ready for vlc now

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I second that

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Urm, I was able to move an xvid file (The Office episode) from my computer to the N900 and play it in the default media player. The few who were at the DFW N900 Meetup saw it playing just fine.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

install gstreamer0.10-plugins-flv and gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg then try and play the flv file

zoutube has no problems playing the "simple" flv files.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

There is actual a reason why you should not be able to copy a video and play it.

If you're using a non-DSP-accelerated codec, beyond a certain resolution, you'll just run out of CPU. From my non-scientific tests, you can play MPEG-2 Video at DVD resolution in real-time. But if you add audio decoding, software de-interlacing, and, well, PulseAudio overhead, then you do noticeably loose frames, although it remains watchable. The Cortex-A8 is much more powerful than any other ARM processors in earlier smartphones, but it's not as fast as a PC.

Also, currently I believe only gstreamer can use the DSP. So mplayer or VLC or whatever non-gstreamer thing will have to do the decoding on the Cortex. Not only am I not aware of any DSP support plans for non-gstreamer apps, but I am not sure if the DSP arbitration allows for third party application.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I agree that VLC would be nice to have now- if optimized for the N900. Too many videos do not work that I have tried and this includes some MP4's that work on the Droid and G1. One of the advantages of the N900 is no need to convert, but not seeing that advantage yet. Sure it will come, just not seeing it yet. As long as the videos are less than 720p, I would expect avi, divx, mpeg, mp4 and wmv to play with no problems- just like VLC.

Again, the Archos 5 from last year has the same chipset and does play everything. Why are the current codecs so picky on the N900?

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

From: the Linux Journal (re archos 5):

"My biggest gripe is that there is no out-of-the-box support for playing h.264-encoded video. This is a major limitation. It's not a question of ability, because there's a plugin you can purchase to enable it (which I did reluctantly). The plugin bundle to enable h.264 video, AAC audio, HD video support and MPEG-2 video support costs 30 euros, which worked out to about $43 at the time I purchased it. The three plugins separately are 15 euros each, so I guess I'm getting a good deal, but it just feels like Archos is trying to fleece me. On top of that, the HD plugin is not yet available. "

Nokia have provided the TI DSP codecs for decoding. These will not do 720p like the HD pack but an enterprising dev or company could create better optimised codecs and sell them on ovi store or provide them in extras. However it makes less sense on the N900 with no way of outputting on anything larger than 800x480 (tv-out is just a composite video output).

UPDATED: I went and looked on archos's site and they say for the hd plugin: "Support WMV/VC1 AP at 720p / 24fps / 6Mbps max. Support Mpeg4 ASP w/o qpel and gmc at 720p / 24fps / 6Mbps max." So there is no 720p H.264 either. Also from what I have read there is no mkv support either. I think using the Archos 5 to beat down the N900's video playback qualities is counter-intuitive!

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

480p is HD and should be a good fit for the n900. Downscaling 720p on-the-fly so you don't have to transcode doesn't seem reasonable to me. Get an ION netbook if you want to watch 720p. And like someone said, the TV out is only PAL and NTSC.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

480p is SD not HD.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

You're right, thanks. I think I meant to say that 480p is one of the standard ATSC formats. Totally unrelated.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

zaheerm: Do you see any possibility of bringing DSP-accelerated decoding to third-party apps (mplayer & VLC)? Or do you agree with redenisc?

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I guess the TI DSP codecs are closed, but is there documentation on how to access them from outside of gstreamer?
And of course, what redenisc asked, whether third party apps can at all access them or if it's locked to gstreamer :)

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

gst-dsp is free software

http://github.com/felipec/gst-dsp

The code could be adapted for other media players like mplayer and vlc. Just a matter of work.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

That was not my point. Yes, the code is open-source, and nothing prevents mplayer, VLC or whoever else from re-implementing it (except time constraints).

But that does not prove that access arbitration will work and the device won't burn in flames if say mplayer tries to use the DSP at the same time as gstreamer.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

The dsp would error out on one or the other if it failed. This would happen if multiple gstreamer based processes used it too, so no different. I don't mind only having GStreamer but if others want mplayer/vlc let them do the work to get the dsp stuff working.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Oh I seriously hope either VLC or MPlayer gets some DSP code.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

oh yeah that would be sweet!

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I'm sorry, I normally consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but could someone explain what "access arbitration" is, how it relates to this discussion and what it has to do with my future N900 dying in a fire?

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

The DSP (Digital Signal Processor) in the N900 is ensentially a co-processor which handles the chores of decoding video and sound streams (in this context). It's very much more efficient then having the main CPU do the same chores. But there is only one DSP and there isn't standard driver/process which controls access to it. That's the access arbitration that's needed.

The dying in a fire it more a metaphore of overdriving the DSP which might led to a catastrophic chip failure. In the past very extreme failures of chips have been the chip literal catching on fire. It's very doubtful the N900 could literally get that hot. Well unless the LION battery went kablooey.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I vaguely recall some rumors that this would rather cause a device reboot than a mere failure of GStreamer, although I never checked (I wouldn't even know how to do that quickly):confused:. But even in the latter more optimistic scenario, we should expect quite nasty usability problems and bugs.

Also, I would not be surprised that the DSP would have some further limitations of its own.

Last, if the DSP can decode it, then gstreamer can decode. Then I don't know if there is much added value for DSP on Mplayer or VLC. Then it might be difficult to find a motivated, skilled, and free enough person to do the work:(

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Access arbitration just means a way of mediating or dealing with multiple users of a common resource. The implication here being that if two different media apps try to use the dsp at the same time, the overload and/or collision between data streams would cause harmful effects. Whether that's a realistic concern or hyperbole (exaggeration), i don't know.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Well, the reason I'm interested is that VLC's streaming capabilities have been more mature than gstreamer's on the last few versions of Maemo.

Perhaps this is changing, however. I notice that gstreamer now has an http sink available, although I haven't attempted to use it yet...

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

if you need streaming, i have flumotion working on the n900 and that uses gstreamer and python and twisted. i am porting the UI to be hildonised. if you want i can push a non hildonised pkg to extras-devel

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

well the thing about vlc is that you can stream any media

even iptv or satellite tv to your device and transcode it on its way before it hits the device with udp,http,rstp or whatever you like

and that is what is rocking vlc that you can stream in anyway you like

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

zaheerm: flumotion will be a killer app for Maemo. Looking forward to seeing your work.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

Just vlc with a good GUI would be enough, but from what I can see flumotion looks quite promising.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

I've gotten some flv's to play after getting the extra codec package, but I still have videos that don't play. And some were downloaded using my various Symbian devices, and they played just fine. But my device has been acting funny, so maybe it was the firmware. I'm reflashing as we speak. Hope it works out ok.

Re: VLC Player Officially coming
 

fixed! reflashing rocks