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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] MPlayer
  • Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 18:56:47 +0000 (UTC)

-vo xvidix did not work. No vidix driver found.

In x11, -noaspect changed the shape from movie-screen (1:33 to 1) to monitor shaped.

In vesa, -noaspect had no effect. The screen remains movie-screen shaped.

-vc ffmpeg12 (for smoother video)
Forced video codex ffmpeg12

In vesa, which looked fine to start with, it may have caused a few skips.

In x11 with -framedrop, which normally is rather jerky, this improved the picture. It looks just as good as vesa now.

If you switch vts while watching a dvd with this -vc switch the movie ends abruptly.

So, -noaspect and -vc ffmpeg12 are recommended for use in x11 on a 'slow' computer (if you lose sound), but if you have a VESA 2.0 video card use that instead. Since you can't switch vts in x11 with the -vc switch it has no advantages over straight vesa video.

Our 1950 black and white movie lost its sound just as quickly as the colored ones when played in 16-bit color.


I tried playing this B&W DVD, and also a color DVD with reduced color depth.

Xvesa -screen 640x480x1 &rxvt and then playdvd (default video). It won't play in mono: X11 error: BadValue

4-bit color: X11 error: BadValue
8-bit color (Xvesa looks okay so far with no icewm)
No accelerated colorspace conversion found
BGR not supported, please contact the developers
FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver


Mplayer appears to require at least 16-bit color. Abiword and Links2 accept 8-bit color (I think).

A SURPRISE:

I then tried 800x600x16 without a window manager, and without -framedrop. Occasional colored blocks appear in this BW movie near the beginning (buffer still filling up?) but it straightens out shortly. The sound and speed are just fine. Apparently icewm made just enough difference to overflow the buffer on a BW movie, which uses less cpu than color.

Without a window manager, -noaspect had no effect (nor did it in vesa).
Maybe the window manager is actually using up more cpu time to change the aspect to normal monitor ratios instead of movie-screen ratios (the way it was filmed)?

Colored movie without a window manager: sound already out of sync and then cut out, but later than usual, meaning the buffer took longer to fill and overflow?

So to watch a BW movie you have a choice of:

vesa if available (needs vesa 2.0 video chip)
x11 (with icewm) -vc ffmpeg12 -framedrop
x11 (without wm)

Vesa fills the entire width of the screen, x11 leaves about 1/2" at each side of our 17" monitor in 800x600 Xvesa mode, so I prefer it.

For a color movie, you have only the first two choices.

Was there anything else I should have tested?

The latest mplayer plays mp3s (offline) very loudly, and it also plays DVDs louder than #1. Why? We have the sound output plugged into the 'aux' input of a radio with a volume control. I can't try it online jsut now because I am online on this other computer (could not go online while watching dvds on the same computer).

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org




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