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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

-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