> is there really that much high definition content to watch?
> On minuscle hobby computers like ours?

I think that the amount of HD content out there is barely dependent on the kind of computers we use ;-) To get an idea, go to Youtube, search for a random term and compare the total number of results you get with the number of results you get after applying the HD filter in the search options.

> techcnically impossible in the end...

HD at 720p resolution is possible on the faster G4 based systems we have today. HD at 1080p resolution is said to be possible on the even faster G5 based systems we'll hopefully get some day.

Not tomorrow, guys. It's possible today. First we have to be able to read UDF. Then we need the key for decryption (that's why I mentionrd MakeMKV). Then, we'd have to do some conversion 1080p to 7290p). Mone of this has to happen in real time.
Finally, once we have the 720p files, we have enough CPU/GPU power to play it back.
How many LCD TVs are limited to 720p?
We could do this and we could do it now.

The G5 is only necessary if you insist on playback direct from the disk.

>> HD at 1080p resolution is said to be possible on the even faster G5 based
>> systems we'll hopefully get some day.

> Not tomorrow, guys. It's possible today. [...] we'd have to do some conversion
> 1080p to 7290p). Mone of this has to happen in real time. Finally, once we have
> the 720p files, we have enough CPU/GPU power to play it back. [...] We could do
> this and we could do it now. The G5 is only necessary if you insist on playback
> direct from the disk.

When I talk about 1080p playback I refer to actually playing back 1080p content as is, not 1080p content converted to 720p content. That would be 720p playback. Going by what you say we could even play 1080p content on an Efika 5200B, namely by converting it to 360p beforehand ;-)

> How many LCD TVs are limited to 720p?

I think that computer screens with resolutions of 1920x1080 or more are very common these days. Unfortunately, I still have 1680x1050 ;-)

Anyway, could 1080p playback from an mkv file (let's leave aside the BR thing) be possible with the fastest G4 cards?

In my 1.25Ghz G4, 1080p is not so slow... I should make deeper analysis, but I'd say I got around 18fps, and around whole 25fps with low-bitrate parts (very darks scenes, and all that).

Could anyone with a 1.8Ghz sonnet card try 1080p mkv reproduction in mplayer? It might be enough... I don't know...

does anyone know, how does Sam440 play hd videos or 720p ones? i don't know it exactly, but altivec is a big addon on our g4 cpus. afair, the altivec can make some operations upto 10 times faster, than just the cpu without altivec... isn't there a possibility of improving the altivec support inside the mplayer for these high resolution videos?

i just don't like the way, when sth doesn't work, buy a stronger machine... i like optimizing, and smart usage of the cpu abilities...

remember what could Amiga do in it's times? :)

bye, MarK.

Quote:
Seems unlikely (if we are talking h.264 content), also you should have a gfx card capable of handling overlays wider than 1536 pixels (that is a 8500/9100 as far as R200 cards are concerned).

> could 1080p playback from an mkv file (let's leave aside the BR thing) be
> possible with the fastest G4 cards?

It depends very much on the video encoding that is used (MKV being just the container format). If we're talking about H264 encoding, then I'd say no, it's not possible on a 1.8 GHz G4 (or even 2.0 GHz G4, which exists for PowerMac, but haven't seen so far in use with MorphOS). Additionally, bitrate and nominal FPS have some weight in the outcome (the lower, the easier to play in realtime).

> In my 1.25Ghz G4, 1080p is not so slow... [...] I'd say I got around 18fps, and
> around whole 25fps with low-bitrate parts (very darks scenes, and all that).

Which video encoding?

I'll check that at home. I tried to play a movie I had just to see... It was 1080p, and probably H264, but I can't confirm it. The film was Rockanrolla, so it is modern, and probably ripped in quite high quality... i'll say.

> how does Sam440 play hd videos or 720p ones?

With H264 encoding in realtime not at all, AFAIK. They struggle to play DVDs on non-overclocked ones:

"we can read DVDs at nearly full speed on a Sam440 667 Mhz"
http://www.amigans.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=53421#forumpost53421

Quote:

Yes, if you use GPGPU you can decode H.264/MPEG-4/AVC; for example: http://www.divideframe.com/?p=gpudecoder

I don't know about the OpenGL implementation on MorphOS (TinyGL), I assume that GPGPU technologies such as CUDA and OpenCL require most of OpenGL to be available. You probably need a much more modern GFX card than those currently supported by the latest MorphOS, too.

In conclusion, this route is not impossible but there are many difficulties.

@mark

Clearly not, since a Pegasos2 G4 can't do it already, while it still performs *much* better than a SAM.

On a SAM, with OS4 MPlayer port (DVPlayer is excluded since it's even slower), you can't expect to read at full speed something heavier than a 360/400p H264.

And regarding altivec, globally (total time spent in decoding + displaying), it brings a 20-30% speedup for H264.

> I assume that GPGPU technologies such as CUDA and OpenCL
> require most of OpenGL to be available.

I know that both OpenCL and CUDA can interoperate with OpenGL, but that OpenGL is required is news to me.

Quote:

My mistake, it was my stated assumption and it appears to be wrong.

Isn't Fab's mplayer port already AltiVec optimised, or is there some more optimisation that can be done ?

I don't know why everyone is so hung up on 1080p, 720p would be fine for me (and the comparison with a downgrade to 360 silly). Again, many people watch bluray disks on televisions that are limited to 720p.

Right now we can play 720p content ripped on other platforms. It would be nice to do all this under MorphOS.

Well, it is true 720p is a very nice resolution to see a film, but... I would love, to be able to see a film as is, and not after 6 hours of transcoding (and an aditional amount of disk space)... of course, that is just my opinion XD...

@koan

It uses ffmpeg and mplayer AltiVec code already.

Ok. The film I was trying, was not really 1080p, because of the aspect ratio. It wass 800px tall. Anyway, it was 264...

The framerate, was not terrible at all... Can I measure it with mplayer somehow?

@amiades

Use the -benchmark option.

-benchmark indeed to have precise information about the time spent in video decoding, audio decoding, blitting,...

And don't forget -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all to give a 20% boost or so (at quality expense).

But standard 1080p/H264 is definitely not doable at proper speed on a 1.5GHz G4, anyway, and 1.8GHz wouldn't be either.

[ Edited by Fab on 2010/11/25 23:06 ]

how do you use this opt (-lavdopts skiploopfilter=all) in gmplayer. I use the gui rather than command. I would like to see the speed difference

add in conf/config (or uncomment, rather):
lavdopts=skiploopfilter=all

And just for the record, you can also run the gui from command line...
mplayer -gui 1 <other options> ... yourvideo

[ Edited by Fab on 2010/11/26 1:20 ]

@Fab

I bought the 1.8ghz sonnet.

I can watch BluRay at 1280x720x24fps just fine with no need to skip any loop filters.
The problems I have are that about half of the YouTube HD videos are not standard format. Many of them are 30fps or have other oddities and no matter which switches I use from a shell with MPlayer I cannot get the audio and video to sync on these oddball formats. Even on some of them which are the correct 24fps I still cannot get them to work right even though the playback speed is more than adequate they are just not going to sync right.
I tried using mencoder to reencode one of these problem videos but I simply didn't have forever to wait around for it to get done so I gave up. I am still using the limited version of MOS so 30 minutes is not enough time to convert.
All in all, BluRay quality works fine (even on a 1ghz machine) as long as the video conforms to standards. I can prove that it will work on a 1ghz machine if need be, just pop the old processor back in.

the options are:
lavdopts=skiploopfilter={value}

{value}
bidir
nonref
nonkey
all


You will find that only nonkey and all will produce the speedup. However, the video lost clarity and appeared to be grainy looking when I used this option.

> BluRay quality works fine (even on a 1ghz machine) as
> long as the video conforms to standards. I can prove
> that it will work on a 1ghz machine if need be, just
> pop the old processor back in.

Yes, please do so, because I'm in doubt.