AAARRGHH! I just want to watch a movie!

[wuurp]

Why is setting up a Z to watch movies so difficult?

I have a C750, stock rom. The included Video Player works well but very limited on encodings it supports. So, I\'ve been trying to get mplayer to work.

Posts recommended installing Kino2 since it included an optimized mplayer. I tried Kino2 0.21 (I think) a while ago. Playback was never as smooth as Video Player playing the same file. Later upgraded to 0.22, not much better, perhaps even a tiny bit worse. Kino2 0.3 doesn\'t work at all. I get the same \"bus error\" mentioned by others with the included mplayer. Doesn\'t seem very optimal to me.

So, I decided to try other mplayer packages. Read about mplayer-w100_1.0pre3.1-2_arm.ipk at http://wiki.self-core.org/atty/
I installed that along with all the libraries.  From the command line it seemed to play much better. I haven\'t figured out how to get mplayer to play full screen yet, but the small output looked better than previous versions. I tried using these binaries from Kino2, didn\'t work.

I read some posts about using mplayer fullscreen under pdaxrom using vidix and tried the command line suggested there. Video was still just small in the corner, with the corner above distorted with vertical lines moving horizontally. A screenshot didn\'t really capture it, so I am guessing it is an overlay. After that, the Qtopia desktop had display problems until rebooting.

It also screwed up qkonsole somehow. Any attempt to access the menu, or use function keys, and it would just quit. Reboot didn\'t help, had to reinstall.

So, if anyone gets good fullscreen video playback from mplayer (or anything else that supports more that Video Player) on a C750 using the default rom, I would really like to hear how you did it.

Mike

[yodabob]

Hmmmm, just invest a few bucks in TKCVideo and watch away without all that hackin\' around.  I\'ve got 4 of the Hitachi 4Gb drives that hold 8-10 full length movies each that I take all over the place with me, and have never had a problem.  I\'ve got an 860, but your results should be about the same.

[Omicron]

Hmmmm, just invest a few bucks in TKCVideo and watch away without all that hackin\' around.  I\'ve got 4 of the Hitachi 4Gb drives that hold 8-10 full length movies each that I take all over the place with me, and have never had a problem.  I\'ve got an 860, but your results should be about the same.

I just tweaked the heck out of my defualt process this week and am very pleased with the results.  If anyone wants movie snippet to check out PM your email address (that can take a 16MB snippet) and if you like what you see I will post the EXACT steps.  

I have the C860, which has a 200Mhz bus, but not sure if 750 would have the same speed?

[nathanwms]

Omicron,

Mind posting your newly tweaked default process and what video player you are using?

[merlin]

Here is an mplayer setup and virtualdub guide
very straightforward

http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...iewtopic&t=5085


 

[Omicron]

Omicron,

Mind posting your newly tweaked default process and what video player you are using?

Yeah, sorry, was hoping to get a snippet on site.

The process is pretty much the standard SmartRipper/DVD2AVI/Headache/VFAPICONV/VirtualDub...Then Windows Media Encoder EXCEPT in Virtual Dub I boost BPS to 1000K (Yep, you read that right) and I Decimate the frames by 2 (every other frame).

Perhaps you videophiles would not like the results, but the 320x240 1000Kbps frames expand to 640x480 like they were made for it.  

No slow downs, no audio sync problems, and I even crop my wide screen to remove top and bottom bars and cut 50 pixels from each side to use the full screen.

It is the best I have found and I tried alot of variations.  The frame decimation is really not noticable on such a tiny screen and us old 5500 users are way used to it

Try it out and tell me what you think.  I could go through my WHOLE process, but that would require a bunch of uploads to this site and a FAQ file in addition to the windows media encoder one that already exists.

I was hoping we could host the 16MB snippet here but I can't send the file to moderators due to size....I will post again if that gets resolved.

oh yeah and player is stock video player (not Kino) on Cacko QT ROM.  BTW does anyone know how to stop the player from freaking out when you touch the screen...it comes back after a bit, but it is REALLY annoying.

O
PS(For those of you with old car adaptors for cassette/CD players, the Z works great to listen to movies while you drive, and by closign them and tunring off the screen, the bttery last a good while...though I use an extender or (on LONG trips_) a car adaptor

[ThC]

I'm using VirtualDub too and finally managed to find some settings that suits my c860 perfectly :

Video : 320x240@380Kbps Divx pro 5.1.1
Audio : 22Khz mono@4Kbps Mp3 (radium codecs)

expands fullscreen with no problem under kino2/mplayer either in Cacko and in pdaXrom .
Movies takes ~300Mb and Anime/Series/simpson/futurama/whatever 20mn episode takes ~70Mb. Can someone tell me approx size of files using mpg and wma codecs ?

[Omicron]

I'm using VirtualDub too and finally managed to find some settings that suits my c860 perfectly :

Video : 320x240@380Kbps Divx pro 5.1.1
Audio : 22Khz mono@4Kbps Mp3 (radium codecs)

expands fullscreen with no problem under kino2/mplayer either in Cacko and in pdaXrom .
Movies takes ~300Mb and Anime/Series/simpson/futurama/whatever 20mn episode takes ~70Mb. Can someone tell me approx size of files using mpg and wma codecs ?

Well, WMA encodes the LOTR Trilogy at 850KBps Decimated by 2 at about 700 to 800 MB per theatrical release.

Are the movie you watching widescreen with borders top and bottom?

[ThC]

These settings works either with border, cropping borders or without borders so full choice is your
(cropping is to be defined when you set resizing options)

[Omicron]

These settings works either with border, cropping borders or without borders so full choice is your
(cropping is to be defined when you set resizing options)

I would love to see a snippet of these  settings to compare to my own.

Please PM if you can and I will send my email address.

[Omicron]

I just found htat 850Kbps works just as well and produces smaller files (still decimated by 2 though).

[Ling]

I am still fooling with mine based on feedback from these forums. I use DVX http://www.planetdvb.net/dvx/ and used xvid (video)/ogg 90k stereo (audio)/ogm (container) to encode a full length movies. I set it to 640x480 (which came out to 608x?). It played and the audio was in pretty good sync, but I had some wavy stuff at the top and bottom that I want to eliminate. I am going to go back and try an approximation of 320x240 (whatever it comes out to) and see how that works.  I am using Kino2 (which uses mplayer) to view the movies. I was pretty impressed. Once I get a configuration that works, I should be able to save and post the config file. That should allow someone who wants to do the same thing to just load DVX, load the config file and go.

[tumnus]

I have no problems watching movies with mplayer + MPlayerShell after using the following quick script I wrote for re-encoding movies:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$#" -lt 2 -o "$#" -gt 4 ]; then
 Â  echo "Usage: zvidencode [0|1](Rotation) [mono(default)|stereo]"
 Â  echo "e.g. zvidencode my_movie.avi my_zaurus_movie.mpg 0 stereo"
 Â  exit 1
fi

if [ "$4" = "stereo"  ]; then
 Â  oacopts="mp3lame -lameopts mode=0"
elif [ "$4" = "copy" ]; then
 Â  oacopts="copy"
else
 Â  oacopts="mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64"
fi

if [ "$3" = "1" ]; then
 Â  mencoder "$1" -vop scale=320:,rotate=2 -o "$2" -oac $oacopts -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=128 -ofps 15 -sws 2
else
 Â  mencoder "$1" -vop scale="320:" -o "$2" -oac $oacopts -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=128:autoaspect -ofps 15 -sws 2
fiIt uses mencoder on my dekstop Linux box which I think is compiled into mplayer by default and it has lame mp3 encoding support compiled in too. With the win32-codecs package installed, it can re-encode just about any video for my 5600, which plays beautifully.

The rotation command is there to rotate movies like those done especially for Pocket PC where they seem to encode the movie in portrait orientation, whereas the Zaurus just need the movie to be in normal lansdscape orientation.

The version of mplayer that was compiled to work fine with MplayerShell doesn't seem to be available anymore, but if you want to know the command line arguments MplayerShell gives to mplayer, they are:

 -menu -cache 256 -ao oss -vo fbdev -framedrop -quiet -sws 0 -slave -fs -vop ,scale=320:-2

[cmisip]

tumnus, does your mplayer crash when you press the pause button in qtopia.  Mplayer on my 5600 crashes when I do that in Qtopia.  When I am outside of qtopia, it is rock solid.

[Omicron]

We should have a contest of who can produce the best quality snippet at lowest MB size ... all nippets being the same scene.

I recommend The Lord OF the Rings Two Towers - Begining (for credits) upto and including the end of the "Dream Sequence" until Frodo Wakes up talks to Sam and lies back down "it was just a dream" (4 mins).

Thoughts?