how do you get mplayer to play HD wmvs ?

[Carpo]

ok i did use search and there used to be a post on this (i made it!! but seems to be gone now)

i have an old p4 1.7 im using as a HTPC to watch all my films, i recently purched T2 Ultimate edition and have been trying to play it on here, but both xine(1.1.3) and mplayer(1.0rc1) play it really sluggy, im not that great on all the filters and swtiches - so is there anyone who can point me in the right direction?

Thanks

[Hellworm]

did you try it with the latest svn version of mplayer?

[Carpo]

i have 1.0rc1 - will give svn a look over later - i think there may be an issue with the disc/file as other hd wmvs i have play ok (ish) on mplayer from command line - its even acting wierd on the other pc i have and that has a cpu that can handle 1080 - if i kick it up the arse ;)

is vlc any good for such files i hear it has native support for wmv files - or should i just stick to mplayer ?

[nm]

is vlc any good for such files i hear it has native support for wmv files - or should i just stick to mplayer ?As does MPlayer SVN (both use the new decoder in FFmpeg/libavcodec). IMO MPlayer is better than VLC for video playback if you don't mind the interface (I prefer MPlayer's anyway).

[Carpo]

ye i d/l and compiled the svn version - bit late now i will try some hd wmvs on it in the morn, although the one test vid i did do, mplayer said pc was too slow but still played the vide half tidy :)

[Hellworm]

If the Problem is disk speed you could try a high cache value in mplayer.

[Carpo]

discs are 133 but pc is old and can only do ata100 (i did have them on a ide/raid card which could do 133) but i kept getting errors in dmseg about disc read/write errors so droped em back

its more a case of pc is old - i am hoping to update it to a amd64 x2 4200 (2.21ghz) after xmas but will have to wait and see

pc atm is old p4 1.7 with 1.25 (133 sdram) would it be worth it to try and use the cache function to store up a fair amout of the film and then play it ? or use scale to drop it down ?

[DarkZell666]

If you're using mplayer, I'll suggest you downsize the video using -vf scale=1024:768 (1024:576 or whatever your screen resolution is). This will avoid too much data transiting via the graphics card bus for nothing (which is also a possible bottleneck on HD material, it is one for me anyway).

[Carpo]

it dont help when you have a 8x agp card but the sys only has a 4x agp slot ;) - with a bit of luck i should be upgrding in the new year so i wont have these issues any more :)

tried mplayer on my xp box - it even tells me that pc is too slow to play the file and its a 3.4ghz cpu in there!!! ;p

[pinkie_1]

Greetings, Carpo.

Please check out the following :
"-vo vidix"
# vidix as ouput driver (if supported)

"-sws 2"
# bicubic scaler

"-vf scale=1024:-10:*a::*b:*c:::"
# *a interlaced scaling ('0' disabled&default, '1' enabled)
# *b, *c tuning of sws 2 - the same params as in any bicubic resizer

Additional hints :
--- don't rely heavily on a bigger cache. IMO it doesn't bring that much benefits.
--- disable any postprocessing (-vf pp/fpp/spp/uspp). you won't need 'em for a good HD source anyway. :p

[Carpo]

Greetings, Carpo.

Please check out the following :
"-vo vidix"
# vidix as ouput driver (if supported)

i tried - its nots there. although when i did configure i seen it was there :/


"-sws 2"
# bicubic scaler

will give that a try


"-vf scale=1024:6:*a::*b:*c:::"
# *a interlaced scaling ('0' disabled&default, '1' enabled)
# *b, *c tuning of sws 2 - the same params as in any bicubic resizer

tried that last night well a diff format but same idear still looked off


Additional hints :
--- don't rely heavily on a bigger cache. IMO it doesn't bring that much benefits.
--- disable any postprocessing (-vf pp/fpp/spp/uspp). you won't need 'em for a good HD source anyway. :p

im not even using a cache yet - main problem is that video plays ok but the sound is always out of sync, if i could fine a way to found out by how much i might be able to fix all the probs im having :)

[pinkie_1]

main problem is that video plays ok but the sound is always out of sync
1. Let me see if I understood correctly : this only happens with a single file, i.e. that HD WMV of yours ?

2. What audio output driver do you use ?

3. The out-of-sync interval is time-variable or not ? Does it change when you perform seeking ?

4. Were you able to test this file on another system ?
[if the problem can be reproduced then perhaps an improper muxing is to be blamed)
if i could fine a way to found out by how much
There is... ;)
Use '-msglevel ao=9:demux=9" to find more about how mplayer handles the audio stream, and "-msglevel avsync=9" for checking the a/v delay on a frame2frame basis.