Hi all,

I wonder why MPlayer & Mencoder 0.91 (which I still prefer for DivX encoding because the DivX files which 1.0pre8 produced cannot be played on my stand alone dvd player) is unable to read some of my DVDs which 1.0pre8 does read without problems.

I ran Snoopdos to see whats going wrong, and I can see that opening my dvd device works on both MEncoder versions but 0.91 aborts nevertheless with the message that my dvd device cannot be opened.

So, what is the problem of 0.91? An outdated version of libdvdcss, maybe?

[ Edited by Schlonz on 2006/12/17 23:17 ]

Quote:

Not really, nothing changed with that aspect of libdvdcss for a looong time .. however the problem is likely to be a bug in the MorphOS code which was fixed for 1.x that caused problems with certain drives...


- CISC

Well, at least there was one further release of libdvdcss (1.2.9) - Mencoder 0.91 uses 1.2.8 of libdvdcss. But I have no clue if that version of libdvdcss is any better.

As Mencoder 1.0pre8 for MorphOS still misses MP3 audio format, and as the mpeg4 files produced by this version seem not to be as standard compatible format as the files produced by Mencoder 0.91, would it be much work to fix the bug which prevents 0.91 to read certain dvds and recompile 0.91?

Adding mp3 support in 1.08 would make more sense.

Quote:

No, like I said, nothing really changed there...

Quote:

I'm not sure what you're basing this on, but I'm assuming it's the new fourcc (that changed from DIVX to FFMP), you can fix that easily with "-ffourcc DIVX", and it should play in most players again (ie, the ones that don't know about the new fourcc)...

Quote:

No, not at all, go ahead (iirc all you need to do is update libmpdvdkit2/ioctl.c). ;)


- CISC

CISC, you are my hero

-ffourcc DIVX did the job. Now my stand alone dvd player likes the output file produced by 1.0pre8. Thanks! (Why did the MPlayer team change the fourcc to FFMP if this leads to a silly behaviour of stand alone dvd players?)

If now Fab would compile a Mencoder 1.x version with mp3 support... that would kick pretty much ass!

Well, i already tried and didn't have much luck with libmp3lame, which only produces an horrible sound. I probably did something stupid. I'll check that again when compiling a more recent version of mplayer.

Glad to hear that, Fab, and thanks for your efforts.

I hope that you can manage to fix the mp3 problems.

Quote:

Because libavcodec's MPEG-4 codec doesn't actually output the b0rken mess that is called DivX (although it can be made to do so to some extent if that's what you really want), changing the fourcc is really a fix as it means the video has a chance to be recognized as what it is and decoded accordingly (it's more or less a fluke that it happens to be viewable with the old fourcc ;) ), however it is a slightly "reptile and externally born hard-shell cased embryo" situation as players need to recognize the new fourcc too, but the cycle needs to be broken at some point if you want a decent outcome...

Anyway, if you have no way of influencing what fourcc's your player handles there's the solution mentioned above, and even if you already have files with the new fourcc you can change them post-mortem with a hexeditor or a fourcc tool.


- CISC

Hi Fab,

I just tried out your just released port of MPlayer & Mencoder 1.0rc1, and it seems to be GREAT. Thank you very much for mp3lame encoding support. I did a quick test with mp3 encoding, and it worked. Fantastic!

I have just tried the latest version of MPlayer too. Some initial problems with wmv3 playing are now being resolved and it looks good, but there are a few things still missing from this player:
Support for several AVI codecs like IV40 and CRAM (or something)
There is no sound in 3gp videos.

I have a number of old AVI files that need IV50 codec. Currently I can play them only on my Amiga4000 by means of AMP. I would like to be able to convert these movies into a more modern and universally viewable format.

MPlayer plays the sound of these AVI files but complains since the video codec is missing. This codec, as well as IV40 and others, is available here at the MPlayer homepage in Linux-PPC format.

I hope that Fab will be able to insert all these codecs into MPlayer and MEncoder when he will compile the next versions...

Quote:

AMP works on Pegasos too doesn't it? Besides, Frogger (hmmm, maybe not 2.07) supports these as well...

Quote:

It's not that simple (completely new code to load them must be written), and thus not likely to happen, especially since these codecs no longer are used.


- CISC

@ CISC

> AMP works on Pegasos too doesn't it? Besides, Frogger
> (hmmm, maybe not 2.07) supports these as well...

Argh!

Frogger060 (with xanim Indeo decoders) freezes the system when I try to play those old AVIs.
FroggerNG plays the soundtrack of the movies, but displays nothing.
AMP2-BETA (030331), that I tried successfully on the Amiga4000, does not recognize BGRA video modes on the Pegasos and quits.

After your comment I searched for more recent versions of AMP and found them on AmiDog's website [AMP2-BETA (040716)] and on Aminet [AMP2-MOS].

AMP2-BETA (040716) shows the first frame of the movies and then stops and complains: "Failed to create audio decoder task".
AMP2-MOS gives the same result.

Anyway both play perfectly my Indeo-coded AVI movies with the NOAUDIO option...

In conclusion, either I see silent movies, or I hear soundtracks only! I'm a bit disappointed...

[ Edited by DoctorMorbius_FP on 2007/1/10 0:14 ]

So you just need to make a script to play audio with mplayer and video with frogger and pray that it's synch'ed. Ok, i'm already out. :)

About that binary codec support in mplayer, i never looked at that part and i don't know how easy/hard it would be to adapt, so don't hold your breath too much.

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You mean play the audio with frogger and video with amp... :P

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Well, like I said, you need to write new loader code, though since AMP2 is GPL now you could probably get a little head start by ripping off its loader code...


- CISC

Actually also MPlayer plays the audio part of all those old Indeo IV50 movies. So Fab should do only half of the job...

Anyway, let me set an equation:

(Fab is curious about these missing binary codecs in MPlayer) + (CISC says that the loader code of AMP2 for those codecs is GPL) = (I hope something may be done...)


[Whatever you will do, thank you Fab for your precious work!]

@ Fab

In a previous post in this thread Schlonz asked you to insert libmp3lame encoding support into MEncoder.

After a while you distributed a new version of the program (MEncoder_1.0rc1) that was able to do the job.

A few days ago I tried to do an audio track conversion (ac3 -> mp3) and discovered that libmp3lame encoding support is missing again both in MEncoder_1.0rc2 and MEncoder_1.0rc1_dev-SVN.

If you have time and will, can you restore libmp3lame encoding support once again?

Let me thank you in advance for all your efforts.

Dr.Morbius

I checked and mp3 lame support is really compiled in in 1.0rc2.

Good news!

I recognize part of the problem now. The parameters I passed to MEncoder_1.0rc1 were something like this:

... -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp3:abitrate=256: ...

Instead MEncoder_1.0rc2 does not accept acodec=mp3 (which I erroneously interpreted as the absence of libmp3lame).

I presumed that it required the exact option specified by the manual: acodec=libmp3lame , but with this choice I obtain only a hiss.

I'm sorry: I am still [libmp3]lame...

Can you help me?

Thank you.

[ Edited by DoctorMorbius_FP on 2007/12/16 2:20 ]

I only knew this way to use mp3 lame:
-oac mp3lame -lameopts ...

btw, -oac help gives available audio encoders, same for video encoders with -ovc help.

I didn't know there were other ways to use mp3lame in mencoder, but maybe they were removed since.

Nevermind... too slow :)

[ Edited by Golem on 2007/12/16 3:17 ]

@ Fab

Thank you, everything is fine for me now.

> I only knew this way to use mp3 lame:
> -oac mp3lame -lameopts ...

Now I remember that I read in the manual about this option, some years ago, but since it was not enabled for a long time, I forgot it and then started to use the other one.

@ Golem

When you encode movies and want high quality results, times are usually measured in dozen of hours. Anyway, since MLDonkey runs on my Pegasos 24/7, I really don't care. I just start MEncoder at priority -1 and forget, until it has done its job.

@DoctorMorbius_FP

That's fine, don't mind me, I just noticed fab had already given you the answer :)

K another interesting topic for me. Well I still use MPlayer to play
videos on my Peg. I have copied the codecs folder that I found in my
Frogger 2.0 -unregisttered- that came pre installed in my Peg, into
the same folder that MPlayer is installed so MPlayer is now able to
play many video formats. But I still got some questions:

Is there any free Media Player that I can download to check out apart
from Forgger and MPlayer? Frogger is sitll unregistered and allows me
to view only the first 15 min of a movie and MPlayer does NOT have a
scroll / control bar with the play / pause / fwd buttons on it -or is
it just my version-? Perhaps an updated verison of Mplayer ma exists
or an option that would bring that scroll bar on screen? If this can
not be fixed I would move to the optionally Media Player that you may
propose in here.... And YES I will register Frogger (yes it has that
scroll bar) in any case but I am just aksing for an optional software
until this happends....

I guess that my codec package is not complete. I sitll can not play
some wmv files.. Is there any complete codec package available for
downloading or buying?

I sitll got not a DVD player on Peg I am ussing my CD-ROM to view
movies and video clips stored on AVI / MPG format or some other
formats that ussually do not play due to lack of codec.....