Anyone else having a problem with WMP4Player?

[shahmat]

I've downloaded this thing from both Doom9 and Rarewares and each time it crashes. I don't think it's the MP4 file I encoded, as when I encoded and muxed it there weren't any problems, but every time I open it in WMP4Player, the thing crashes, usually taking down wmp4client.exe first. Checking the log, the only problem I see is something like:

16:34:49.647-plugin-3: Can't find export point in plugin SDL.dll

So I'm guessing something's screwed up with the Simple DirectMedia Layer. I've run this program on two separate Win2K machines and a box running WinXP Pro. Does anybody know what's going on or is everybody else's version of WMP4 working just fine and it's only me that's having problems? :scared:

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

[neo_sapien]

Mine isn't working either. The video window appears, but it just stalls on what appears to be the first frame.

[kastro68]

Originally posted by neo_sapien
Mine isn't working either. The video window appears, but it just stalls on what appears to be the first frame.

I think your problem may be trying to play a divX5.01 encoded video with the divX5 codec installed.

I'm most likely wrong because i have no idea what wmp4player is.

Edit: I still think it is a conspiracy by DXN and not a bug. I hate having to use a product from someone I no longer trust. I can't wait till the Xvid team gets B frames up and running...that would be the day I would gladly wave bye bye to DXN.

[neo_sapien]

the movie was encoded with DivX 5.01, and I have the DivX 5.01 codec installed.

[Chibi Jasmin]

Current WMP4Player only plays movies encoded with DivX5(.01), if no b-frames, no gmc and no q-pel options were used...also you can try turning debug/iso encoder on/off...for me it works iso decoder turned off...

XVid on the other hand works fine, but only if h263 matrix is used...this is still all alpha software, don't forget that!

BTW: You have the sdl.dll in the player's dir?

[DeXT]

@shahmat: this SDL.dll error is perfectly normal. When you run wmp4player it starts looking at all the dll files in the current directory, searching for plugins. SDL.dll is not a plugin, so that's what this error means.

I think your problem may be due to either a) a wrong MP4 encoded stream (perhaps it's a DivX 5.01 fault, perhaps you are using unsupported features such as B-frames or GMC?), or b) some kind of incompatibility between wmp4player and your system. Wmp4player is still very early beta and it may not work properly on all configurations.

@kastro & neo_sapien: wmp4player does not make any use of the system installed codecs, it has its own mpeg-4 decoding engine. So this has no relation with this problem.

I'd suggest you to use a XviD encoded video which seems more compatible with the current tools.

[shahmat]

@DeXT: I should have said this earlier but I forgot. I am using an XviD encoded video stream rather than DivX 5 (gave me all kinds of muxing problems when I forgot to change the FourCC), and as far as I know, XviD doesn't support B-frames yet. I encoded everything as per Doom9's MP4 guide, so anything you see on there is what I did (except subtitles...)

As I said before, I tested this and got the same error ("Client Session Crashed") on three separate machines, although each was using Win2K or derivatives (XP). Could this maybe be a Win2K incompatibility? I tried using the Win98 compatibility and got the same errors... Would have attached the system dump info when it crashed, except Windows wouldn't let me copy it.

@neo-sapien: you're lucky, I don't even get the window. Occasionally it won't crash outright, it'll just sit there with the green "play" button lit up but nothing happens. If I play just the AAC audio track, it works fine, however, but video usually always crashes it...

Oh well, guess I'll just have to use XviD AVIs till MP4 is into late beta/RC stage...

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

[Chibi Jasmin]

shahmat: well, xvid movies only work here, if muxed with mp4creator and using h263 quantizer....mp4creator screws frame rate if it's not integer. That's how far I got.

DeXT: What is normal about the sdl.dll error? I never had it...

[shahmat]

Okay, here's a little update. I played around with it some more and I found a setting on the help menu (debug tab) called "use ISO decoder" which actually gave me a video window! The bad news is that the video was horribly garbled, little green blocks everywhere (ever watched a DVD rip without pulling off the CSS first?). So that was a no-go. However, without another player to compare it to, I don't know if the problem is in the player's decoder or if something got screwed up while the video was being muxed into the MP4 stream. The original XviD AVI looks fine, and I don't think it's the audio stream at fault, because I muxed the AVI into a separate MP4 without the audio and had the same problem.

@Chibi Jasmin: used the h263 on first pass, Modulated on the second pass, just like the guide said. Still didn't work.

So that's where I'm at right now. Any new ideas?

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

[Chibi Jasmin]

I'll tell you a third time:

It does not work with XVid containing anything else than h263 quantizer....if you chose modulated it alternates between h263 and mpeg matrix depending on quantizer....choose h263 on both passes and mux with mp4creator and it should work (with ISO decoder off actually).

And congratulations for "finding" that iso decoder option...I told you about it...

[DeXT]

@Chibi: this SDL.dll error message is at the LOG file generated by wmp4player (sorry I don't remember the exact file name). Open it and you'll find the error message, provided you have the SDL.dll in the same directory as wmp4player.

[shahmat]

@Chibi Jasmin: Okay, my bad, I just misunderstood you. When you said "iso encoder" I thought you meant the XviD codec settings (which isn't in any of the codec menus I looked at, of course). I didn't play around with the player debug stuff (as I thought I didn't need it) and I didn't see it in there the first time through. As for the h263, the guide said to use modulated for the second pass; however I have been using h263 (also per the guide) for first pass so I thought that's what you meant. Thanks for the additional clarification. I'll try it tonight and see what happens.

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

[neo_sapien]

I just downloaded the newest WMP4player (the one that doom9 added today), then downloaded a sample mp4 clone wars trailer, disabled "Use ISO decoder", and it now works perfectly, except zoom and full screen. Those don't work.

when "Use ISO decoder" is enabled, I get a css-like shitwindow. It looks like a q3 engine game when it crashes, all sorts of little icon-like things all over the place.

So no b-frames on wmp4player yet, correct? Do qpel and/or GMC work? I'm going to pick up some mp4 tests now.

[neo_sapien]

Okay, I did 4 tests:

Test 1:
B-frames, GMC, Qpel
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player won't play it

Test 2:
GMC, Qpel
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player won't play it

Test 3:
GMC
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player won't play it

Test 4:
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player will play it

All tests were run with "Use ISO decoder" unchecked. That settles that, I guess. No MPEG-4 tools, but psy works.

[Chibi Jasmin]

Originally posted by DeXT
@Chibi: this SDL.dll error message is at the LOG file generated by wmp4player (sorry I don't remember the exact file name). Open it and you'll find the error message, provided you have the SDL.dll in the same directory as wmp4player.

Okay, thanx :-)

[DeXT]

I just downloaded the newest WMP4player (the one that doom9 added today), then downloaded a sample mp4 clone wars trailer, disabled "Use ISO decoder", and it now works perfectly, except zoom and full screen. Those don't work.

when "Use ISO decoder" is enabled, I get a css-like shitwindow. It looks like a q3 engine game when it crashes, all sorts of little icon-like things all over the place.

So no b-frames on wmp4player yet, correct? Do qpel and/or GMC work? I'm going to pick up some mp4 tests now.
Zoom and Full Screen works fine for me, with or without the ISO decoder. For full screen you'll have to press Alt+Enter since the menu item isn't implemented yet.

About the ISO decoder "garbage", remember this decoder is MUCH slower than the internal (divx) decoder, so I think this just means you don't have enough machine to play it in ISO mode. Wmp4player tends to output garbage when that's the case.

About B-frames, Qpel and GMC, well the internal (divx) decoder only supports Simple Profile I think, so any Advanced Simple Profile feature is not supported. The ISO decoder may support it, though (haven't tried it), buth with a severe performance penalty of course.

[neo_sapien]

Not machine enough? In that case, DVD 2.0 standalone players with the capability to decode MPEG-4 ISO are going to be rather expensive. :D

Athlon XP 1500+
512MB PC266 DDR RAM Mushkin Basic
Geforce3 Ti200
WinXP Pro
120GB RAID 0 array (2xIBM60GXP)
Audigy Platinum

And etc etc. Everything is consumer state of the art minus 6 months.

[DeXT]

Well I think you haven't got enough machine to play with the ISO reference decoder in real-time, and no one can, since this is an un-optimized code which is only suitable for tests. So you'll have to wait for a good, optimized ISO implementation.

BTW in everwicked I saw the new version (0.9.3.10) uses XviD decoder instead of OpenDivX, so it's faster and also support more Advanced Profile features. I'll try to download and compile ASAP.

[neo_sapien]

Yeah I know, just acting a bit indignant. My bad. Would an XviD decoder support DivX 5.01?

[Chibi Jasmin]

Originally posted by DeXT
Well I think you haven't got enough machine to play with the ISO reference decoder in real-time, and no one can, since this is an un-optimized code which is only suitable for tests. So you'll have to wait for a good, optimized ISO implementation.

BTW in everwicked I saw the new version (0.9.3.10) uses XviD decoder instead of OpenDivX, so it's faster and also support more Advanced Profile features. I'll try to download and compile ASAP.

Great, can't wait for your binaries!

[Chibi Jasmin]

Originally posted by neo_sapien
Yeah I know, just acting a bit indignant. My bad. Would an XviD decoder support DivX 5.01?

XVid decoder doesn't support the mpeg4-tools (b, gmc, qpel) of DivX5.01.

[Chibi Jasmin]

@DeXt...just made a new cvs-checkout, there seems to be V0.9.3.11 out!

[Chibi Jasmin]

Still waiting impatiently :D I have many problems compiling with VS.NET, so I need your binaries :)

[Doom9]

dext: last time you were concerned having the binaries up for too long.. if you want you can just send them to me (I'll tell you the correct email so that it gets straight to me if you agree) and I'll put them up with the next site update

[DeXT]

@Chibi & Doom9: well the fact is that due to the somewhat profound changes, 0.9.3.10 and 0.9.3.11 didn't compile "out of the box" with VC++, since the project files were outdated. This is why neither me nor anyone else has been able to release binaries from this.

Now we have 0.9.3.13, I've just downloaded it straight from CVS, and I hope this time it's working (btw I just saw wav_plugin.dsp was missing, I added it from an older release). Don't worry, as long as I have working binaries I'll release them. So be patient :)

BTW everwicked has also been compiling MPEG4IP, his 0.9.3.9 binaries are on RareWares and I think they should be faster than mine because he uses ICL.

[DeXT]

Here you have, below are the compiled binaries for 0.9.3.13 release. I just tried the player and works great :) These guys are really doing an excellent work.

What's new since 0.9.3.9, and some release notes (Bill, from MPEG4IP forum):

I've just put 0.9.3.10 up on CVS - this will
probably become the 0.9.4 release very soon.

It's got a number of interesting things, including
the long await integration of Xvid into mp4live
and the player. It also fixes one of the more
noticable player bugs - the jerkiness when playing
using the ISO decoder. It also updates SDL to
version 1.2.4, and removes sndfile and DSS from
our CVS tree.

[...]

I know it's bad to follow up to your own posts,
but I forgot a few things about Xvid - first
of all, with nasm installed, it's lightning
fast - I was able to play 720x480 on my 650 Mhz
machine. Haven't done a complete list of test,
but it's great there.

However, if it tries to play simple profile from
others, where open divx would just play really
weird video, xvid crashes. I'm going to try
to work with them on that to keep from crashing.

If you do get an xvid crash, try playing with
mpeg4 ISO only set up before you report it to
us.0.9.3.11: fixed XviD *.dsp's (some problems still remaining)

0.9.3.12: more XviD fixes

0.9.3.13: fixed XviD encoder

As you can see, it now uses XviD as video encoder, too. Oh and the ISO decoder now works GREAT! (seems this garbage was just a bug; sorry neo_sapien ;))

webs.ono.com/de_xt/mp4player-0.9.3.13.zip
webs.ono.com/de_xt/mp4tools-0.9.3.13.zip

Hope you find it useful.

DeXT

[Nic]

Bill has recently posted to the xvid forum, so i'd guessed that was on the way :)

(De_XT: cleaned up the filter code today...might add buffering tonight :) )

-Nic

[DeXT]

Uh? No reports?

No one tried the 0.9.3.13 release? I really like the new player. A big step ahead... and with no glitches! :)

@Nic: GREAT!! ;)

[Chibi Jasmin]

Originally posted by DeXT
Uh? No reports?

No one tried the 0.9.3.13 release? I really like the new player. A big step ahead... and with no glitches! :)



I can't get the files linked above, will try later again...thanx already for compiling them!

[Chibi Jasmin]

Still can't get'em... :(

[DeXT]

It's strange, it works for me, althought it takes a while (seems the server has some bandwitdth problems) and you cannot use any download manager.

I'll try to find another decent free Web account, althought I know this is an almost impossible task. :) Any suggestion?

[Gawen]

@DeXT
High speed for free: Compuserve Germany has a free account for their so called office dialup tarif. Its charged by the telco provider so no bank registration is needed and you even dont need to use it. 20 MB Homepage with 5Gig / month and ftp access for free. And its really fast.

http://www.compuserve.de/cso/_promo/registrierung.jsp?pid=0000

[Chibi Jasmin]

Somehow get them over to Doom9, that would be enough :)

[Gawen]

Seems your provider doesnt like mpeg4ip. I get a 403 if i try to download.

Forbidden
Your client is not allowed to access the requested object.

[Chibi Jasmin]

I finally got them ! :)
Thanx again...

[Chibi Jasmin]

WMP4Player finally plays XVID-content that uses MPEG-Matrix :)

[Koepi]

WMP4Player finally uses XviD core to decode :P (I think even to encode).

Regards,
Koepi

[Chibi Jasmin]

Player used XVid to decode (if not set to use iso decoder, which still doesn't work for me very well), and there is a util called XVidEnc...guess what it does :)

[DeXT]

Well from what I've tried, the ISO decoder works fine with Real or Dicas MP4 samples, but fails miserably with the Starwars and K19 samples RefDivx made some weeks ago. It has been the same since 0.9.3 at least. Anyways when it works, it seems more stable.

[DeXT]

New MPEG4IP version, not very impressive changes, though:

0.9.3.14:

- new version for ipv6 stuff
- fixed xvid avis not being recognized by mp4creator
- some libmpeg3 fixes

I see the XviD fix the most important one because you couldn't import an XviD avi directly into mp4creator without converting the FOURCC to DivX first. And if you have problems with the frame rate just specify the source frame rate with the -r option.

Get it here:

http://webs.ono.com/de_xt/mp4player-0.9.3.14.zip
http://webs.ono.com/de_xt/mp4tools-0.9.3.14.zip

[Chibi Jasmin]

Thanx for the files....I am excited to see, if frame rate setting with -r really works (it never worked in previous versions)... :)

[Chibi Jasmin]

-r still doesn't work...old problem 23.976 fps results in 23.000256, with or without -r!

[DeXT]

Well this was not the problem I was referring to. In MPEG4IP forums it was said that mp4creator sometimes cannot convert a xvid file because it does not support variable frame rate files. So the fix for this is specifying a fixed frame rate with the -r option. Sorry to dissappoint you... again.

About the problem you are talking about, a fix was discussed here some weeks ago. Should I do a new build with that fix inside? I cannot see any good reason why they chose to do it this way.

[Chibi Jasmin]

If you refer to the "fix" posted by me, it is not fully working...it results in a frame rate closer to the original one, but it's not perfect...so still useless...or was there another fix? Must have overlooked it...

[DeXT]

Yes you are right... it was you who posted that "fix". I remembered someone talked about this but not who did it :)

I think the problem still remains due to this:

MP4Duration mp4FrameDuration = (MP4Duration)(mp4TimeScale / frameRate);

MP4Duration is an u_int64_t, i.e. it's an integer. And since 90000/23.976 gives a non-integer value (abt. 3753.753753753...) it has to be rounded to the nearest one (3754 I guess). I think this may be a design issue, i.e. it simply doesn't allow non-integer framerates. Anyways I've posted a small question in MPEG4IP forums about this issue.

[Chibi Jasmin]

Well, if you looked at the code, you saw that this integer-rounding only happens on win32...for whatever reason...so in principle non-integer frame rates seem to work...and the help for the -r parameter says 'e. g. 29.97 or 30' :-)

Let us know, if you get an answer, please.

[DeXT]

Yes but apart from this known win32-only rounding, there is another rounding which affects every system and not just win32, it's the one I've post above. So I think this second rounding is what causes the problem still remaining even after applying your patch.

Anyways it seems a much less important problem since it's not like rounding 23.976 to 23, but just 90000/23.976 = 3753.753 to 3753.

[Nic]

(remember of course that Win32 does not do "rounding" when casting....it simply just discards all information after the decimal point. If you want it to do rounding when casting then add 0.5 to the number
i.e.
float f = 23.97
int a = (int)f; // a will equal 23
int b = (int)(f + 0.5); // b = will equal 24, rounding will always be correct if adding 0.5

Just thought id mention it :)

-Nic

[Chibi Jasmin]

I am not that far into this material as you two are...if you read my other post with the "fix" again, you can see the result after removing that win32-special :-) Wasn't it something like 23,98...don't remember exactly at the moment...but if you can fix this problem to get exact 23.976 fps, I'd be thankful...be sure to commit it to the mpeg4ip people then...

btw: can anyone report mp4creator 23.976-muxing to work correctly on non-win32 systems?

[Chibi Jasmin]

Well, what I found out by analyzing other mp4s is that you don't have to use a value of 90000 for the time scale, you just have to adjust the duration accordingly, so that it finally fits...you it should be possible to find values that make a perfect frame rate.
For example:

I have a clip that is 1120 frames long with an fps of 23.976. What DivX5 MP4-Creator makes out of it is:

Timescale 23976
Duration 1120000

Perfect result!

It's that easy...problem is DivX5-created mp4's don't play in wmp4player, but it was just meant to show how the values could be adjusted to have a perfect frame rate.

Above example is from the media header of the file...in track headers etc. also divx5 uses a scale of 90000. I see the problem of mp4creator in using a scale of 1000 in the media header (where divx5 uses 23976 in the above example), which is a too small number to get a perfect integer for the duration value for an exact frame rate of 23.976! In case you wonder, I got the numbers from loading the mp4s into dumpster.



Guess someone would have to dig into mpeg4ip's code to implement it that way...