XCD + RV9 - any news?

[kilg0r3]

quite some time ago some people tried to play rv9 files from an xcd but encoutered some problems. i just coudn't find the thread yet wnated to know if there has been anything new in this department.

a search "xcd rv9" yielded zero matches.

cheers to every one

[RadicalEd]

Ah I was one of those people, but I gave up and decided to just wait until Helix went opensource and hope for a RV/RA capable ogm muxer to pop up :/

[bond]

On de_xt's Mode2 CD Maker Pätsch (http://webs.ono.com/usr016/de_xt) you'll find a mode2real plugin (http://es.geocities.com/dextstuff/mcf/mode2real.zip) ("Plugin to read Mode2 CDs containing RealVideo streams using RealPlayer 9").
Try that and plz report your results :)

[Ramirez]

Don't even bother to D/L this plugin
Completely none functional (already been there :) )
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35814

Maybe a good C+ programmer could check it out?
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31725

[baddbill]

Can anyone help with this? It sure would be nice to have. It sounds like if you know what you're doing it would be easy.

Bill

[kilg0r3]

ping :)

btw, the plugin workes fine for me. i tested it with an imageof a mode2cd mounted with daemon tools. real one tends to crash when seeking, though. i am using realone v1!!

[karl_lillevold]

There will be problems with the current RV9 decoder, when it encounters bit errors in the bitstream, which there probably will be on XCDs, where there is no error correction. The reason is that the RV9 decoder is optimized for packet loss, where the transport system will inform the decoder which slices or packets are lost. The decoder will try its best to cover up the missing areas. Under "normal" circumstances it will never encounter random bit errors. When it encounters such bitstream errors, worst case is that it could crash, since potentially it could be decoding for instance motion vectors way out of range.

Anyway, it's reasonably easy to make it resilient to bit errors as well, in fact, it's a little project I am doing right now (currently decoding a 2 hour clip at 5% error rate. It does not look too pretty, but it is not crashing). We were not originally planning to put this in the standard decoder, but I think it would be useful, and the only negative effect, is a tiny increase in CPU cycles doing some bounds checking on motion vectors, prediction modes, and macroblock types.

[kilg0r3]

little kilg0r3 jumping with joy :). btw, when can we start expecting v3?

[karl_lillevold]

So I have a stack of 650 MB CDs I want to get rid of, and I also have some ~700 MB RV9 files. I figured I could use Mode2CDMaker to fit a 695 MB file onto one of the 650 MB CDs.

According to the readme.txt file for mode2cdmaker, one can fit up to 738 MB in Mode 2 on a CD that fits 650 MB in Mode 1.

So I run mode2cdmaker. It creates a .bin (798 MB), a .cue, and a .toc MB in size), but when I load the cue file in Nero, it claims the required size is 695 MB, the same size as my original file, and I have to enable over-burning, which happens to not work for my CD burner. It appears that Mode 2 makes no difference... I am sure I am missing something.

==edit==
all I had to do was mark the file as Form2. In the readme for mode2cdmaker, it says Form 2 is default, but in the GUI, Form 1 is default. It seems to be working now. Next, of course is playback :)

[Ramirez]

Just wanted to say thanks to kilg0r3 for bringing this issue
up again,and of course thank you Karl for looking into it.:)

[DeXT]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
all I had to do was mark the file as Form2. In the readme for mode2cdmaker, it says Form 2 is default, but in the GUI, Form 1 is default. It seems to be working now. Next, of course is playback :) Sorry about not clarifying this. I'll add a small readme for the GUI part about how to use it properly. Anyways, all you have to do is click on "Add Movie" button and the files will be automatically added as Form2 ("Add Files" is intended for Form1 content such as executables, text, graphics and the like).

Hopefully the next GUI version will feature a Preview bar showing the actual space taken on the target CD (much like the Nero one) so you can have a better control about what you are actually doing.

[ohliuv]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
There will be problems with the current RV9 decoder, when it encounters bit errors in the bitstream, which there probably will be on XCDs, where there is no error correction.

Might be a stupid question, but:
Karl, what if the stream is encoded with loss-protection? How big will the overhead be?

[ohliuv]

***bump***

[Sirber]

@ohliuv

Your question isn't stupid. I wanna know the answer.

For example, I have a 700 Mo RMVB. How big my movie will be with error-thing... ?

[karl_lillevold]

Sorry for the delay, I got stuck with the XCD file system plugin, which does not seem to work in RealOne V.2, so I wanted to figure out that problem before going back to this thread.

The loss protection that can be enabled in producer is intended for typical streaming packet loss, and will insert one or more full packet of ECC information per frame. It will also increase the key frame rate. So I am afraid the overhead is too large for an occasional bit or byte error in XCD.

[karl_lillevold]

I have the RV9 mode2 file system plugin working in 'splay' now. Splay is the command-line player from the Helix community. However, RealOne V2 still wants to auto-update when I try to open 'mode2://g:\filename.dat'. I will let you know what I find out.

[karl_lillevold]

As it turns out, there is a bug in RealOne V2, where it for .dat files will try to play them back as VCDs. This prevents the mode2real plugin from working correctly. This should be fixed in V3.

In the meantime, remember how you have to type mode2://G:\filename.dat in the open dialog (G: being your CD-drive). You can instead copy the .dat file to your hard-drive and rename it something like filename.dtx, and then use mode2://filename.dtx in the open dialog. I have verified that this works.

I will, however, modify the plugin such that you will just have to type mode2://G:\filename. The player will then not think it's a VCD, and the modified plugin will add the .dat extension automatically, and everything should work in V2 as well.

Check back shortly for this new plugin.

[karl_lillevold]

try this plugin for XCD and RV9 in RealOne V2
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47910

[kilg0r3]

@karl

will your modificatio also work with files that have some other extension?

[karl_lillevold]

I will reply on the other thread.