OESF Portables Forum

Model Specific Forums => Sharp Zaurus => Zaurus - pdaXrom => Topic started by: DaMightyWhightyMan on October 17, 2004, 05:27:41 pm

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: DaMightyWhightyMan on October 17, 2004, 05:27:41 pm

What is the status on movie playing on pdaXrom.  As it is now, i can only play fullscreen vids /w mplayer in the console (which gets garbled afterwards).  or Windowed (un resizable) in X.  Are there video player alternatives?  Other ways to configure mplayer?  any kind of improvments in the works?  etc etc

thanks.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: alan on October 19, 2004, 03:14:08 am

i guess you are still using 1.0.5... RC5 solved the grablled screen pb and you can use xmmsmplayer as a frontend under X.

As a general remark, i would say that many improvements have occured since 1.0.5 so if you have this possibility, i think you should upgrade.

good luck.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Xumbi on October 19, 2004, 08:09:14 am

I'm using RC5 and I still get the garbled screen after playing a movie from the console.  He's right, playing movies through xmms you can't resize them.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: gtJormungand on October 19, 2004, 10:09:20 am

You can write a script for changing the resolution dynamically in X as follows:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash
xrand -s 1 && mplayer $1 && xrand -s 0
Put this in a file like 'playvideo' and then in a terminal, run 'playvideo filename.avi'.  Just make sure that you are using a desktop other than the first one because of the panel.  This changes the resolution to 320x240 and then returns it to 640x480 afterwards.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: omega on October 19, 2004, 10:11:37 am

how do you change desktops? more to my point how do you know which desktop you are in?

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Laze on October 19, 2004, 10:54:02 am

Please read the FAQ and search the www.pdaXrom.org site before posting questions.

http://www.pdaxrom.org/index.php?showid=25&menuid=8 (http://www.pdaxrom.org/index.php?showid=25&menuid=8)

You can also make mplayer run fullscreen that way by using this:
xrandr -s 1 | mplayer movie.avi

then press Shift+Alt+Right to move the video window onto a free desktop and press key 'f' for fullscreen.. :-)

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: jerrybme on October 19, 2004, 10:57:05 am

The command in the above script has a typo & both instances of xrand should be

Code: [Select]

xrandr
As for changing desktops: a quick trip to the pdaxrom.org FAQ (don't forget to click on a ad while you're there  ) will tell you that ctrl+alt and left & right arrows will move you through the desktops. (Calendar & Address buttons are the default keys for ctr & alt)

Cheers,
Jerry

#######
Doh, Laze you beat me to it!

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Xumbi on October 19, 2004, 01:30:04 pm

I just wanted to post my own experience with experimenting with this, since I really want to see fullscreen playback of videos in X.

xrandr -s 1 | mplayer movie.avi works, but the video only takes up the width of the screen.  xrandr -s 1 | mplayer -fs movie.avi sort of works, but the matchbox panel is still visible.  Oh yeah, and after exiting the movie you're still stuck at 320x240, so I had to do xrandr -s 640x480 to get my screen back.

If someone knows how to hide the matchbox panel while playing movies in fullscreen with mplayer, that would do the trick, and I could make a short script that anyone could use to play fullscreen videos in X.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: ads on October 19, 2004, 01:43:59 pm

Sorry if this post is a little vague , but I just reflashed so this is from memory.

If you use xmms and go to "plugins"?

under "plugins ?" you can select mplayer plugin and then select configure.

there are some options here (maybe advanced ) that you can simply check uncheck to allow full screen playback

I did it.....if this post helps you thanks.....if its a load of trash...just ignore it and send me some nasty comments...(sorry too much beer tonight!

ads

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Xumbi on October 19, 2004, 01:58:48 pm

Quote

Sorry if this post is a little vague , but I just reflashed so this is from memory.

If you use xmms and go to "plugins"?

under "plugins ?" you can select mplayer plugin and then select configure.

there are some options here (maybe advanced ) that you can simply check uncheck to allow full screen playback

I did it.....if this post helps you thanks.....if its a load of trash...just ignore it and send me some nasty comments...(sorry too much beer tonight!

ads

Hmmm... I just looked at it, and I couldn't see anything like a "fullscreen" option.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Laze on October 19, 2004, 02:22:30 pm

Quote

xrandr -s 1 | mplayer movie.avi works, but the video only takes up the width of the screen. xrandr -s 1 | mplayer -fs movie.avi sort of works, but the matchbox panel is still visible. Oh yeah, and after exiting the movie you're still stuck at 320x240, so I had to do xrandr -s 640x480 to get my screen back.

Do this:

Code: [Select]

xrandr -s 1 && mplayer -fs movie.avi  && xrandr -s 0
As soon as the movie playback starts make sure the mplayer window is selected and press the Shift+Alt(Adress)+Right combination - that moves the mplayer to the "empty" desktop. When movie playback is done you can use the ctrl+alt+left/right to return to normal desktop. Sadly at the moment there is no way to hide the matchbox panel or move mplayer to certain desktop (that i know of).

UPDATE !!!!

Couldn't live with the above solution... So I played around for a while and found this:

Code: [Select]

xrandr -s 1; sleep 1;  mplayer -fstype fullscreen -fs movie.avi; sleep 1; xrandr -s 0
The above is sometime a bit buggy :-) The sleep 1 was just added because sometimes the Aterm "crashes" when too much is happening at once ;-)

Futhermore the -stop-xscreensaver can also be used for enhanced playback without poweroff - great if you use mplayer for mp3 playback.

More nice "features" are here.. http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html)

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Xumbi on October 19, 2004, 03:23:28 pm

Perfect!  From your help Laze I made the following script:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash
xrandr -s 1; sleep 1;  mplayer -framedrop -fstype fullscreen -fs "$1"; sleep 1; xrandr -s 0It kept freezing on me until I added the -framedrop switch.

Just chmod +x it, put it somewhere in your $PATH to make it convenient, then type mymplayerscript.sh mymovie.avi for full screen videos inside X!  

EDIT: Videos are still freezing once in a while, I'll keep at it...

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Laze on October 19, 2004, 04:07:36 pm

If i get the time later tonight i will try to throw together a small python gui for controlling mplayer - just for practice - basically if you know the keyboard shortcuts and the commandline parameters there is no need for a gui :-) I couldn't find anyone google that had made anything like it ;-)

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: gtJormungand on October 19, 2004, 06:13:04 pm

I had a problem with the video freezing before when using RC3.  I downgraded to 1.0.5 and just installed the necessary packages from the RC3's feed and installed a subtitle font.  It worked after that... so I don't really know what the problem might have been.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: ikm on October 20, 2004, 07:29:55 am

Quote

If i get the time later tonight i will try to throw together a small python gui for controlling mplayer - just for practice - basically if you know the keyboard shortcuts and the commandline parameters there is no need for a gui :-) I couldn't find anyone google that had made anything like it ;-)

Laze, don't waste your time! Mplayer has its own native gui available, with skins and everything else, and it should be explicitly enabled with one of the ./configure options when building mplayer.

Here:

http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/gui.html (http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/gui.html)

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: DaMightyWhightyMan on October 20, 2004, 02:27:45 pm

thanks everyone for your help

xrandr -s 1; sleep 1;  mplayer -fstype fullscreen -fs movie.avi; sleep 1; xrandr -s 0

froze my c860 while trying to seek, seems to be a better solution ATM though.

Is there going to be any movie watching improvments in the next pdaxrom release?

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: gromituk on October 21, 2004, 04:21:00 pm

I presume, as nobody mentions 640x480, that this resolution of video replay is impossible on the Z - not enough hardware acceleration or something?

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: DaMightyWhightyMan on October 21, 2004, 07:42:31 pm

I was able to play at .5 fps

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: gromituk on October 22, 2004, 08:59:51 am

Ha ha ha!  Presumably there's something more wrong than just four times the data rate. though, or you'd only be able to play QVGA at 2fps!

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: scoutme on October 24, 2004, 05:39:15 pm

the fact is that there is NO possibility to use direct frame buffer acceleration in 640x480, since the ati chip has 384 k of vram embedded

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: rgrep on October 25, 2004, 12:34:36 am

Quote

EDIT: Videos are still freezing once in a while, I'll keep at it...

I think I might have solved the freezing problem by disabling use of the RTC device with the -nortc option.  My movie playing script is:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh

xrandr -s 1
sleep 1
mplayer -nortc -framedrop -fstype fullscreen -fs "$@"
sleep 1
xrandr -s 0
It's still early days in my testing but so far I haven't had any movies freeze on me.

Matt

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Laze on October 25, 2004, 04:38:42 am

We have also discovered that turning of transparency and other "eye candy" in aterm removes the need for sleep 1 - also try using xterm - it seems to be alot more stable when resizing the screen up and down.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Xumbi on October 25, 2004, 12:27:51 pm

Quote

Quote

EDIT: Videos are still freezing once in a while, I'll keep at it...

I think I might have solved the freezing problem by disabling use of the RTC device with the -nortc option.  My movie playing script is:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh

xrandr -s 1
sleep 1
mplayer -nortc -framedrop -fstype fullscreen -fs "$@"
sleep 1
xrandr -s 0
It's still early days in my testing but so far I haven't had any movies freeze on me.

Matt

The -nortc switch seems to do the trick!  I've played through a simpsons mpeg, and another divx movie without any freezing.  Before they would freeze about half way through.

Thanks for writing a better script than I did by the way.

Now all we need is a gui, and some simple instructions on how to encode DVDs into the best format for mplayer pdaXrom.  I'm guessing it would be divx.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: pgas on October 25, 2004, 12:42:40 pm

Quote

Now all we need is a gui, and some simple instructions on how to encode DVDs into the best format for mplayer pdaXrom. I'm guessing it would be divx.

You can start looking at the video howto  (http://www.zaurususergroup.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpWiki&file=index&pagename=MPEG%20Encoding)  here on the ZUG

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: hwkeye on October 30, 2004, 05:47:13 pm

Hi guys,

Anybody knows how to increase font for subtitle ?

Thanks a lot.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Newbix on November 02, 2004, 10:03:29 pm

Quote

the fact is that there is NO possibility to use direct frame buffer acceleration in 640x480, since the ati chip has 384 k of vram embedded

So, how does the X server gets 640x480 ?

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: scoutme on November 03, 2004, 02:23:03 am

simply, the chip uses ram instead of videoram

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Zumi on November 03, 2004, 03:17:21 am

Quote

Hi guys,

Anybody knows how to increase font for subtitle ?

Thanks a lot.

Download one of the font packs from here (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html) and follow the instruction in the file. It works for me on my desktop computer this way, haven't tried on my Z so far.

Hope it works,
Zumi

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: hwkeye on November 03, 2004, 04:59:29 am

Hi Zumi,

Thanks for your tips. I will try when I go back home.

Have you ever tested the subtitle ?

mplayer -vobsub subtitle_file movie_file

warning : you must have subtitle_file.idx and subtitle_file.sub in the same directory.

Of course you can use all parameters (for fullscreen) talking above on this thread.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: Zumi on November 03, 2004, 05:55:54 am

Quote

Hi Zumi,

Thanks for your tips. I will try when I go back home.

Have you ever tested the subtitle ?

mplayer -vobsub subtitle_file movie_file

warning : you must have subtitle_file.idx and subtitle_file.sub in the same directory.

Of course you can use all parameters (for fullscreen) talking above on this thread.

I'm using subs with the mplayer quite frequently. You're using wrong options. "-sub <subtitlefile>" goes for subtitles which are in regular subtitle format (.sub, .srt for example). You need -vobsub only when you want to view subs ripped from a DVD. (which consist of a ".idx", ".ifo" and a ".sub")

From the mplayer man page:

Code: [Select]

     -vobsub
              Specify a VOBsub file to use for subtitles.  Has to be the  full  pathname
              without extension, i.e. without the ".idx", ".ifo" or ".sub".

Code: [Select]

      -sub
              Use/display  these  subtitle files.  Only one file can be displayed at the
              same time and the files can be switched with "j".

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: cjiph on November 08, 2004, 10:19:14 pm

Am I the only one with a C860, who gets a system crash in RC5 upon pressing the extrernal on/off button after using mplayer with pretty much ANY command line configuration?

Do people know what (might be) causing this, or have found any work arounds?

Needless to say the impressiveness of the C860 playing an MPEG4 encoded movie is considerably degraded when the only way to turn it off afterwards is to rip the battery out!

- Cj

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: xiaman on November 08, 2004, 10:26:45 pm

ok i have 750 when i play a movie if i close the movie pannel  it sort of locks up . if i close by the mmx console it doesn't.
hope that helps.

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: bastichelaar on November 09, 2004, 05:24:34 am

You can also use this line:

xrandr -s 1 && mplayer -ac mad -vo xvidix -vop rotate=1 -really-quiet -framedrop $1 && xrandr -s 0

This will only work with files that are really 320x240...

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: omega on November 09, 2004, 05:45:21 am

Okay if 640*480 is not possible i'm not really worried. What is the max resolution that can be played on the Z with the amount of buffer memory that the ati chip has? What is the max decent resolution that people have played.  I'm even talking mpeg1 here...

Title: Movie Playing
Post by: DaMightyWhightyMan on November 09, 2004, 02:34:57 pm

320x240 MPEG 2's play very very very nicely