mplayer and pdaXrom

[cjiph]

Does the mplayer package in the stable pdaXrom feed include all of the features touted by the version of mplayer bundled with kino2? (i.e. ASM optimised DCT transforms, double buffering...)

If not, is there anywhere I can get the kino2 source to build their version of mplayer?

Also, I seem to be having a number of problems with the pdaXrom "stable" version of mplayer, particularly I find that on my C860:

* The w100 vidix driver doesn't work properly; it doesn't orient the overlay correctly, leaving the exposed edges full of garbage, and it seems to easily loose A/V sync even with -framedrop.

* If I run mplayer (from the console) and then load up X, pressing the external On/Off button causes the Z to crash.

Has anyone else run into these issues/found work arounds?

Thanks,
-Cj

[time]

I have given up on mplayer under pdaXrom.

In fact, I donated $50 to the project in the hopes that mplayer would be fixed in time for my 20 hour (each way) flight, but now I will be going without any entertainment, even after spending almost $1000. Very disappointing.

[cjiph]

I don't think mplayer in pdaXrom is a lost cause, it just doesn't work very well.

If all you want to do is watch a long movie (without stopping and starting, as you can't turn off your Z once you've run mplayer in its current state) you just have to follow the following recipe:

1. Install mplayer and all its dependencies from the pdaXrom stable feed

2. create a file called /etc/fb.modes which contains just:

mode "qvga"
geometry 320 240 320 240 16
timings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
endmode

2. Drop to a console (for example run 'killall X' from a terminal)

3. Run from the command line:

mplayer -framedrop -vo fbdev -vm -fbmode qvga -ac mad file.avi
(you might also want to try -vo cvidix instead, but this doesn't work properly on my 860)

4. watch the movie

5. When mplayer exits the display will be garbled, and although you can 'startx' to restore it, you won't be able to turn off your Z. So best thing to do is to just run 'reboot'.


In order to play the movie at any reasonable rate, you will need to follow one of the many HOWTOs to downsample your movie. Particularly you probably want to drop the res. to exactly 320x240, and you might want to halve the frame rate of your movie.

This should work fine, but because mplayer is not well optimised (at least the pdaXrom version), you will find it gets a bit jerky in scenes with lots of motion.

- Cj