In the ffmepgGUI v3.0 news item Phantom made the following statements regarding MPlayer for OS4:
Quote:

"Nice effort, thanks, but we don't have a serious player..." "The problem is not the GUI, but the player itself. Even MPlayer under AmigaOS 4.1 is really bad."

While the above comments aren't very productive because they don't offer any reasons why it's "bad", I thought I'd start this thread because we do have two people, Varthall and abalaban who are taking on support of the OS4 version of MPlayer so it might be productive to list some opportunities for improvements that could perhapse be made. Keep in mind that MPlayer is a big open source project and I'm sure Varthall and abalaban aren't going to make major changes to the "guts" of MPlayer so we need to be realistic in pointing out improvement opportunities.

Please let's contain the discussion to improvement opportunities for the OS4 version, although it would be good to know if the MOS and AROS versions have solved any of the problems pointed out so perhapse the code could be leveraged. Feel free to start a seperate thread for improvement suggestions for non-OS4 versions. I have nothing against the other OS's and am glad there are alternatives but I'd like this to be focused on the OS4 version since there is some new energy around it.

First let me state that I personally don't think MPlayer on OS4 is "bad". In fact I think it has a many good points, am happy we have it and thank the coders behind it for their effots. I'll point out just some of the good things here and do a followup post with opportunities for improvement as I see them.

OS4 MPlayer good points (just a few, there are to many to list):
Plays just about any video/audio format you can throw at it.
Streams video/audio from the internat.
Has great keyboard control of just about every aspect of playback you can think of.
Has support for subtitles and conversion from one format to another.
Is capable of much..much more than just playback. (ie. frame capture, format conversion, , etc.)
Has a very nice AREXX port.

Last edited by ktadd on 27-Nov-2010 at 05:26 PM.

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Kevin - X1000 First Contact / A1222+

@ktadd

Actually every video clip I threw at it, only half of them played.

Also most of them have distortion in graphics, or the voice is ahead or behind of what you see in your screen!!!

I remember when I had MorphOS, MPlayer played everything, without tweaking with extra options.

I don't know if that's a problem with the port of MPlayer under AmigaOS 4.1, or it's a general problem with SAM boards.

So, that's "bad" for me, not about the guyz who ported MPlayer to our AmigaOS. Just to make things straight. I really thank them for their efforts, and I surely support them. But as I said, maybe the SAM boards are the "bads" here, who knows.

Last edited by Phantom on 27-Nov-2010 at 05:14 PM.

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@ktadd
Replying to my own post. Here are some areas where I think the OS4 version of MPlayer could use some improvement. The first two are the most important to me as I use MPlayer from the programs I write and these cause problems.

Mplayer doesn't exit properly with a proper exit code.
When streaming videos or audio from the WEB not all memory is returned when quit.
Would be nice if it had a built in GUI. (being worked on)
The AREXX commands don't work when playing audio.
Videos with high resolutons >720 play back with only part of video in color.

These are just a few off the top of my head. Hopefully some of these will be solved by updating the MPlayer core to the lastest released version.
Ok, your turn. Let's hear your opportunities for improvements and hopefully we can stay positive.

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Kevin - X1000 First Contact / A1222+

@ktadd

Well, as you said.

Video resolutions greater than 640x480, aren't played very well. Small videos play normally.

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Quote:

Phantom wrote: @ktadd Well, as you said. Video resolutions greater than 640x480, aren't played very well. Small videos play normally.

Thanks for joining the discussion.
Yes, larger resolutions become a problem. I'm sure the sync problems are because our machines are a bit under powered and perhaps the color issue is an MPlayer problem. It will be intersting to see how an updated MPlayer affects some of these issues.

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Kevin - X1000 First Contact / A1222+

@ktadd

What only i miss from mplayer on os4:

-- no gui (really miss it)
-- some time crashes at exit (annoy pretty well)

In others all videos which i try works fine and fast all the time (peg2/1ghz)

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Quote:

Phantom wrote: @ktadd I remember when I had MorphOS, MPlayer played everything, without tweaking with extra options. I don't know if that's a problem with the port of MPlayer under AmigaOS 4.1, or it's a general problem with SAM boards.

Without getting into a discussion on MorphOS, what machine were you running it on?

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Kevin - X1000 First Contact / A1222+

@ktadd

Under Sam440ep Flex @ 800MHz. But the strange fact is that currenctly I'm using (sort of) an oldest release of MPlayer (I think it's since 2005 or 2006), and not the latest available.

Last edited by Phantom on 27-Nov-2010 at 05:43 PM.

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My suggest are:

- No GUI, so we need one, altough keyboard support isn't that bad
- OSD menu are flickering, very annoying for my eyes ...
- Certain options doesn't work properly
- Some MP4 doesn't work properly, maybe we need a more recent svn snapshot

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Sam440ep Flex 800 Mhz 1 GB Ram + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6
AmigaOne XE G3 800 Mhz - 640 MB Ram - Radeon 9200 SE + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6

For a brief time, I was without a functioning graphics card in my linux box (though it would still boot into a textmode console). During said time, I had to use MPlayer on my A1 to watch stuff that was on a network accessible drive.

I have to say, other than HD stuff which was a bit too taxing, it worked fine, though I think a GUI would be a most welcome addition for most people.

I never noticed a problem with flickering OSD menus but as I wasn't really using them, it's possible I am not remembering clearly. If they do, then that would be annoying and should be fixed, along with any other obvious bugs.

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@ktadd

I don't see the halv-video-in-colour problem anymore. Don't know when it stopped, if it was with OS4.1.2 or when I got the Radeon 9250.

Anyway, mplayer has problems with any mpeg4 video that is too large for it to handle, especially h264. It will loose A/V sync and sometime gradually slow down until it basically hangs. Now it cannot be quit but just hangs, sometimes in a CPU loop.

Exiting is often unstable, especially when using SDL. Then it always crashes. It also always crashes after ClipDown for me.

Some files display horizontally misaligned, meaning that you can't see a thing. Everything is just a diagonal mess. Using SDL often works better in this case, but instead crashes on exit. Guessing an overlay alignment issue with some video widths.

Some wmv display greenish delta(?) residue. Using an older version(!) fixes that problem.

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> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

@Thread

I'd like to see the Altivec version still supported and also the possibility to use 440/460 instructions and/or Xena for the X1000.

Regardin the external GUI, I find MPlayerGUI very useful.

Well, since we cannot use hardware acceleration from the graphic card, we have to find other possibilties to improve speed

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@samo79

I don't really see th lack of GUI to be such a big problem. Either I run mplayer from the web using getVideo/ClipDown or I use MPlayer-GUI which I find quite comfortable.

I don't use the GUI control panel much though, keyboard control is better when it is running.

The flickering OSD menu is annoying, I agree. Something that also annoys me is that it unpauses too easily. If it is paused you can't do anything really without it starting to play again. I looked at the main event handler once and it is truly a great open-source typical mess. Way too many cooks in that soup.

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- Don't get fooled by my avatar, I'm not like that (anymore, mostly... maybe only sometimes)
> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

@ktadd

Have you played an .mp3 or run an A/V file with video output set to "null" in MPlayer-GUI?
Under OS4.0, both will result in a DSI.
What about under OS4.1?

#6

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@Deniil715

Quote:

Something that also annoys me is that it unpauses too easily. If it is paused you can't do anything really without it starting to play again.

True. You can use frame-by-frame advance to reach a frame to snapshot. But once you have performed the 1st snapshot, the video exits paused/frame advance mode. This is not good.

#6

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What I wish for the next release doesn't look like much, but I'd consider it an achievement: that it would combine the good from a couple of older releases, so that I could always use just the latest mplayer. Now I use the current release for most stuff, and then an older version for things that the other cannot handle.

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: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
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@number6
Quote:

True. You can use frame-by-frame advance to reach a frame to snapshot. But once you have performed the 1st snapshot, the video exits paused/frame advance mode. This is not good.

Use the MPlayer GUI provided in ffmpegGUI v3.0 and it won't do that. When you save a frame it will only advance one frame. Would be nice if it worked that way from the keyboard as well though.

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Kevin - X1000 First Contact / A1222+

@ktadd

I like Mplayer and the GUI. I know the GUI isn't 'built-in' but I still like it.

The only problems I have is some AVI's don't play and neither do HiDef videos. I don't have many of either so that's not a big problem for me.

I'd also like to thank all the developers of Mplayer (and it's GUI), past, present and future, for their efforts!

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'unfixed' A1XE, 512mb RAM, plug-in USB card, Sil 0680 IDE card, Radeon 9250, built-in sound, OS4.1 update 5.

@ktadd

Downloaded and installed ffmpeggui (version 3.0) and ffmpeg (version 0.6.1).
Changed tooltype to complete path to MPlayer (in this case version RC2)
Ghosted Mplayer controls became unghosted as expected.
Entered a file name in "Input 0"
Clicked "preview".

Whereas some other folks in irc got playback by doing this, I got a response, but not a good one.

Quote:

Requested video codec family [wmv9dmo] (vfm=dmo) not available. Enable it at compilation. Requested video codec family [wmvdmo] (vfm=dmo) not available. Enable it at compilation. Unable to open a window FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver. FATAL: Could not initialize video filters (-vf) or video output (-vo).

Nothing to do with the file tested, btw. The identical file plays just fine when I use the identical version of MPlayer with MPlayer-GUI from Deniil.

Note: different files chosen just produced similar variations of the same error message. All of those files played just fine when run from MPlayer with MPlayer-GUI.

Any ideas?

#6

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@RacerX

Quote:

The only problems I have is some AVI's don't play

Do they play if you switch to sdl for playback?

#6

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