Full HD H264 doesn't work well on my G5, but I've noticed that DivX works very well. Bigger files, yes, but very little usage of CPU, even in full HD.

Is there any way to convert H264 to DivX in MorphOS? I can do that on Windows naturally, but I wanna be able to do this on MorphOS.

Yes, you can do it with MEncoder (included in MPlayer package). It will be probably slower than on Windows, but can be done.

Thanks!

I tried to find a manual or instructions of some sort in the drawer, but I can't find anything. Do you know the lines I need to use, or at least know how I can find some sort of instructions?

> I tried to find a manual or instructions of some sort in the drawer, but I can't find
> anything. Do you know [...] how I can find some sort of instructions?

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/mencoder.html
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/encoding-guide.html

Thanks! Wow, this will take a while to get through. Does anyone who is good at this know what lines I should use? It would save me time

MEncoder in extremely lengthy in process for doing this. Whenever possible I try to use ffmeg for my conversion needs.
commands seem simpler. Not sure if that help you though. Same principle on search if you wish.

I will try this as well. Thanks

Quote:

First, what is your G5 spec exactly? On a 2.3GHz or more, full hd h264 is most of the time fine. If not, you can uncomment "lavdopts=skiploopfilter=all" option in conf/config to give an additional 20% speedup.

Regarding conversion, mencoder is just fine (and included with mplayer). I could also compile a ffmpeg binary if there's really demand for it, but mencoder does everything ffmpeg does, and more, which is why i usually don't release it.

Converting with mencoder isn't much trouble, that would be something like mencoder yourfile -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts fixed_quant=2:autoaspect -lameopts q=0:aq=0 -o destfile.avi

Read the doc for more information, of course.

A simple way to encode a full HD H264 with mencoder is this:

Code:

If you desire more quality you can use the video options that are really a lot!. Another example with increased bitrate:

Code:

Notice that you can change option "autoaspect" in "aspect=the_one_you_prefer" (16:9/4:3 etc).

With those codes I encoded a h264 video 1280x550 (length 1:30) in almost 4 minutes (more or less). I f you want to add more quality you can use more options. Better look here and learn how:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/index.html
Specifically:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-enc-libavcodec.html#menc-feat-mpeg4-lavc-example-settings
In the last link there are some examples. I tried to encode the video with a high quality settings and it takes almost 15 minutes to perform the encode with a G4 @ 1.25.
I can't post all the commands I have tried with both mencoder and ffmpeg because those damned gremlins erased my encoding directory. Really I don't understand why inside that dir there's nothing.... Who did it?!? Mistery....
By the way, here you will find more about ffmpeg encoding commands:
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg.html

EDIT:
I forgot to say that h264 videos are not that bad on G4 (with obvious limits) and really nice on G5 (dual 2.7).



[ Edited by Jambalah 22.09.2013 - 15:29 ]

Thanks for the codes! It's not easy to know what you need when you are not used to this stuff. I'm used to GUIs and they are usually quite straight forward, or at least have some sort of default setting that works with only a little tweaking. Having so much options isn't really useful when one doesn't know what one needs.

So I'm grateful for all the help here.

I have tried to get this to work before on standard h264 but unsuccessfully. The lag is terrible no matter what I do (I will try your suggestion Fab). I have a dual 2,7 GHz G5 with Radeon 9600XT with 128 MB VRAM. That should be enough right?

Maybe it's some setting in GMplayer or Pach Chrysalis that messes things up?

[ Edited by Yasu 22.09.2013 - 16:26 ]

For example: downloading anything from Youtube with 1080 setting will lag terribly.

I tried all the three codes from Fab and Jambalah and Fabs is certainly slowest, but the quality is the same as the original file. The other two codes have a lot of artifacts. If there is a quicker way to compress without loosing quality I'm all ears

I have a powermac g5 2.3ghz with radeon 9600.

I am playing 1080p movies fine unless they came from youtube.
I am using gmplayer.

Fab,
Quote:

I am interested new version ffmpeg.

By the way, why does MPlayer not plays both channels of the sound HiFi stereo without ++ ?

When will in Macs native audio frequency of 48000 Hz and Efika audio frequency of 44100 Hz ?

pegasos.audio native frequency: 8000 Hz, 11025 Hz, 16000 Hz, 22050 Hz, 32000 Hz, 44100 Hz, 48000 Hz http://skolman-mws.w.interia.pl/mos/pegasos_audio.png

@SKOLMAN_MWS:

By the way, why does MPlayer not plays both channels of the sound HiFi stereo without ++ ?

This is because "Stereo" mode uses different audio stream layout than "Stereo++" mode. The first one takes separate channels loaded as two different sounds. The second one takes interleaved stereo stream. MPlayer only supports the latter.

When will in Macs native audio frequency of 48000 Hz and Efika audio frequency of 44100 Hz?

There is no native 48 kHz in most of Macs and no native 44,1 kHz in Efika. Other frequencies may be achieved only with software resampling (which is what AHI does, admittely with poor quality).

Krashan,
Quote:

EFIKA 5200B

Code:

Mac mini G4

Code:

@bash64

Does that mean that Youtube HD movies doesn't work for you but other HD movies does? I havn't tried that many others, but I remember Dredd on 1080 also lagging a lot.

@Fab

Maybe you could send me your configuration and I can see if that helps?

Quote:

Give an exact youtube link and we can see then. But when i tried youtube full hd links one year ago or so on my G5@2.3GHz, it was fine and i even had a few percent CPU left. It was even almost ok when played from inside OWB builtin mediaplayer (which has a slightly higher cpu load due to networking).

This is the one I've been using to test MPlayer in HD:

http://youtu.be/IDCU17wXktY

@Yasu

Ok, i had time to switch on my G5@2.3GHz / Radeon 9600 and make some tests.

Your link is somewhat dead unfortunately (youtube sucks), but i tested this one instead : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY# (mp4/1920x1080 version, 182s clip).

And here are the results with MPlayer (latest version from april 2013 with lavdopts=skiploopfilter=all enabled in conf/config file) :

I started MPlayer (GUI mode), and it plays perfectly in sync, with about 70-80% CPU usage.
Then I benchmarked it precisely with the following command line in a shell:
mplayer -benchmark -nosound -ao null file.mp4 "datas:Man of Steel - Official Trailer 3 [HD].mp4"

BENCHMARKs: VC: 65.331s VO: 65.037s A: 0.000s Sys: 2.318s = 132.686s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 49.2370% VO: 49.0158% A: 0.0000% Sys: 1.7471% = 100.0000%

As you see, the whole 182s movie is played (without audio decoding/output) in 132s, so there's definitely quite some CPU left here.

Do the same test on your setup, and we'll see. It should be even faster for you (even with loopfilter enabled, considering your CPU frequency). If not, then you have a serious configuration issue.



[ Edited by Fab 24.09.2013 - 12:15 ]

How much do the movies grow from h264 to DivX? 10-20% or 50% and more? Would that also be a valid way to play 1080p movies on a G4 or will it still be too slow?

Have a look here:

1) MorphEnc: http://aminet.net/package/util/conv/MorphEnc

2) mengui: http://aminet.net/package/gfx/edit/mengui

Hope it helps

:)

Quote:

To be seen how much bigger it would be, but in any case, 1080p divx is no trouble for a G4 > 1GHz.

Thanks. I will try to find some demo video and try that.

@Fab

I tried the way you described (excellently I might add!) and I suffered from some serious lag, the same as before. No change.

Here's my benchmarks:

BENCHMARKs: VC: 92.186s VO: 67.902s A: 0.000s Sys: 2.349s = 162.437s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 56.7518% VO: 41.8021% A: 0.0000% Sys: 1.4461% = 100.0000%

For some reason my system doesn't work as well as yours. But I have no idea of what's wrong. I'm using the same settings as came with MorphOS (plus Pack Crysalis).

@Connor

The file I converted to DivX with the same HD quality grew from 153 MB to 497 MB. Quite a bit.

@Mabo

Thanks! I will take a look at those