I think it was a year ago that we got into a discussion of playing bluray quality movies in MOS. It has taken a year for me to get around to testing out some of the suggestions and here is what I have found:

Short Story:
The video needs to use the xvid codec and the mp3 audio codec and the file needs to be a MKV file and the resolution needs to be the same as or smaller than your screen.

Long story:
Someone suggested converted h.264 videos (bluray codec) which requires too much cpu power over to xvid. I have tested this as follows:

1) Purchased a bluray movie (Hotel Transylvania).
2) Installed DVDFab 9.1.8.1 with woookao (http://www.woookao.cn/; required for USA users only)
3) Ripped the movie into an avi file using xvid and mp3.

DVDFab supports a lot of video formats:
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/ad171/bash64000/Selection_034_zpsd0b13dae.png

but only the AVI format will allow for xvid and mp3. However, MPlayer on MOS will lockup if handed this file. You will have to convert it into a MKV file first without changing the codecs as such:
>mencoder HOTEL_TRANSYLVANIA_€“.Title1.avi -ovc copy -oac copy -o ht-xvid-mp3-1080p.mkv

The video codec and audio codec are defined as 'copy' so that they do not get changed to a different format. Just changing the AVI into an MKV file.

As long as the movie is an mvk with xvid and mp3 codecs and it is the same size or smaller than your screen then sit back and enjoy your movie. I used GMPlayer and 'allow frameskip' was not used. The laptop is a Powerbook G4 1.67ghz with 1.5gb of ram. The movies are stored on the ICE filesystem due to their large size. SFS will not do.

I tried playing the video at 1920x1080 on my 1440x900 screen and it was just not going to work. I reduced the video in size to 1440x900 and 1280x692 and both worked fine.
You can change the target size in DVDFab in AVI->Advanced settings:
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/ad171/bash64000/Selection_035_zps514c9b3a.png

Grabbing popcorn....

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Wasn't this supposed to be about bluray quality movies? ;)

Quick tests with video playback and letterboxed h264 encoded 720p files do not stutter on my machines
But yeah.. full screen, full motion 720p videos (that are not xvid/mpeg4/mpeg2) are simply too demanding.

Britelite >>I wouldn't consider avi bluray quality but AVI is just the container and the only one I can get DVDFab to use, thus I convert to MKV when done. The video inside is bluray quality at 1920x1080p.


NicePics13 >> What is a "letterboxed" video? I can download some h.264 videos from youtube that do fine but nothing very large.

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You're re-encoding it to xvid, probably with a lesser bitrate than the original bluray, so it's NOT bluray quality. Resolution has nothing to do with it.

Well, it looks the same, I am not seeing any loss of quality or color.
I will look into xvid.

@bash64,

Links of some videos hd that I have founded on youtube :

- big buck bunny hd - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk
- gigapixels of andromeda 4 k - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udAL48P5NJU
For this one it is indicated 4k, the highest resolution is indeed 2k 1/2 and it is possible to get it hd.

Brumiga

> it is indicated 4k, the highest resolution is indeed 2k 1/2

4K refers to the horizontal resolution of about 4000 pixels (3840 to be precise). 2160 pixels is the vertical resolution of 4K videos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2160p

I did a google search for x264 vs xvid.
I looked at bitrate. x264 has a smaller bitrate than xvid simply because x264 is compressed better. It has nothing to do with quality. There are some things in AVC that are better than ASP like with dark movies. Otherwise I think the argument that one is better than the other isn't as true as some think it is.
Converting to xvid removes the heavy compression which requires heavy cpu usage to play back.

Honestly, I don't see the difference.
I am watching Dawn of the planet of the apes @ 1440x900 which is way better than DVD quality on my powerbook g4.

I do think I should bump the audio quality somewhat, but still have some testing to do with that also.

NOTE: I have noticed that at 1440x900 I need to checkmark allow framedrop. This is not needed for 1280x720.

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Doesn't matter, it's still not bluray quality. You're recompressing something lossy with another lossy compression (with most likely an even worse bitrate than the source material), so the result will not be as good. It may be good enough for you, but it's not bluray quality anymore :)

Does anyone know the key to turn off subtitles?
It is supposed to be 'v' but that just pulls up the volume control in the MOS version.

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Pretty much those youtube trailers, they don't use the full 720p vertical resolution (anamorphic?). Early DVD releases were even worse throwing away screen estate on black bars

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j = change/disable subtitles
# = change audiotrack

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Hmmm.. for me the "v" does the trick on MorphOS.. maybe some config issue.

I am using the latest code 08-07-2014.

The 'v' key pulls up what looks like a volume control but it actually controls your position in the movie. I think the issue is that the move Dawn of the planet of apes has a bunch of apes using sign language so you cannot really turn subtitles off or you won't know what they are saying. In other words the subtitles are permanent.


[ Edited by bash64 06.02.2015 - 15:46 ]

Question: does mplayer for MOS support videos made using CBR (controlled bitrate)?

I lowered the bitrate on a video with mencoder and the final file locks up mplayer.
I did not change the codecs.

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Look at following file:

<MPLAYER-Dir>/conf/input.conf

Here you will find all defined input-keys....and here you can redefine them on demand....

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thanks for the tip

Found the issue with CBR.
For whatever strange reason when using CBR it warned me that the output format would be AVI even though I had specified MKV by giving a filename ending in .mkv.
As I have found out an AVI of super high quality will not work in MOS mplayer.
So it created an .avi file but left the name as ending in .mkv, but with a warning.
That is sooooooooo wrong!
It should have renamed the file to .avi rather than hoping I'd see the stupid warning.


Converting to genuine .mkv now and it should play.

> CBR (controlled bitrate)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_bitrate

well, it seems that converting an avi into an mkv as I stated earlier is a bogus answer.
I just checked one of the converted vids and it still lists as an avi.
not sure why it worked afterwards but not before.

I dropped the bitrate on a working video (movie.mkv) that shows up as an avi internally (show media properties) from 3500 to 1500 and the final video will not play.
Just testing how low you can go on the bitrate.

BTW: It seems from forums that mencoder has an issue with .mp4.
This is the only flick that I ripped to .mp4.
The rest ripped into .avi.

ok, found out the problem.
I use an ntfs partition on a usb drive to share files.
something is corrupting the file system.
I don't know if it is ntfs-3g on the linux side, but I pulled up vmware with windows 7 and reformatted and let windows copy the file to the partition and the video worked.
MOS just reads the drive. It does not write.
I will assume that linux is not reliable for writing to ntfs until told otherwise and will avoid copies to ntfs volumes.
No other filesystem supports large files except for ext2, but I tried that and got lots of errors sharing files with MOS.

anyway, seems going 1500 on the bitrate is a bust. video becomes grainy. still slightly out of sync also. lowering the bitrate did not fix that.

So with a powerbook g4 1.67ghz my best option is:
1280x720px3500bitrate using xvid and mp3 codecs.
AVI or MKV does not make a difference, file corruption caused me to think that was an issue but it was not.
The actors lips may be out of sync by a hair but movie is watchable.

A mac G5 will definitely cure that issue.

I still vote for iMac G5 support at some point.
Even if it is half-assed.
Thanks

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And neither has container format (avi/mkv etc.), what matters is what you put inside (which codecs with which settings)

Of course codecs can have restrictions on which codecs / settings you can use.

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Sounds like that distro didn't use ntfs-3g but the regular read-only kernel driver that will corrupt the filesystem (I know) if used in R/W mode

This is the output from mount:
/dev/sdc2 on /media/dad/shared-files type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096)


Would fuseblk be correct for ntfs-3g?