Hello

I'm interested in playing 720p smoothly and without audio sync issues on my Mac mini 1.25Ghz (CPU speed upgraded to 1.5GHz; VRAM is 32MB)

Latest version of MPlayer on MorphOS 3.1 runs quite fine , it runs better than XBMC on Mac OS X in terms of smoothness in video.

But there are issues in audio sync and apperantly it stems from video being played a bit slower. The video simply lags behind the audio.

To help on this matter, xyphoid suggested in a prior thread, to adjust the sync using +/- buttons. That actually works and puts the video in sync but with a side effect: The CPU fan speed goes noticably higher after I make such an adjustment. I guess it tries too much CPU to make the adjustment.

Fab suggested disabling h264 loopfilter (by editing conf/config file)

But couldn't find I conf/config file? Where is it?

Furthermore, after I installed MPlayer in Grunch, I can reach the install dir of MPlayer only through the "Open installdir of 'MPlayer'" in left click menu in Grunch It shows as "MyMorphOS System: Applications MPlayer" but when I browse to this path outside of Grunch, there's no MPlayer in Applications. Does Grunch hide the applications it installs?

Thanks.

Switch the Ambient-Window to all files, in order to see files and directories without icon.
In the MPlayer directory open conf/config with the editor and add lavdopts=skiploopfilter=all

Thank you for the tip

After selecting the All Files, it started to show the MPlayer folder, finally.

I've added the line to config and the sync is now better but still one gothca: It's good only for the first one or atmost two minutes, then gradually the video starts to lag behind again.

Also, after the config change, the CPU fan revolves really high (estimatedly as high as 5000rpm) but that's tolerable and not much of a problem. The real problem is to to watch a 720p movie without much sync issues from start to end. Whan more can be done about it?

Hi aurora72,

In mplayer preferences (right click>settings>preferences) you can also set auto synchronisation factor to 30 to help smooth a/v sync problems. You could also allow framedrop which should also help.

PS - By default Ambient will only show files/folders which have an icon (eg a file/drawer named 'foo' would have an icon named 'foo.info'). This default behaviour can be changed in Ambient settings should you desire (rmb on desktop>Settings>Ambient>Window>View Behaviour).
You can also override this default behaviour for individual drawers by 'snapshotting' using the context menus - for example you may want to have the drawer containing your pictures set to display thumbnails rather than icons. (Note that this only works where the drawer has an icon, since this is where the snapshot information is held.)

[ Edited by boot_wb 28.01.2013 - 12:39 ]

Or simply add an icon file to the MPlayer directory.

Show all files in the Applications directory. Right click on the MPlayer directory's icon image. Select Information. Drag another icon image into the new window, on the area displaying the current icon image. Press save.

Usualy Grunch creates icons for an application.

In this case the archive has a random value (time) within the directory name within the archive.

I reworked and cheated around. Next Grunch update will create an icon as well.

Sorry simply forgot to improve.

Geit

Don't forget to rename MPlayer and his icon to GMPlayer and GMPlayer.info for activate GUI mode.

@clr666

No need to rename anything.

Just click GMPlayer icon itself to start it in GUI mode (it's a project icon and it's done on purpose).
Alternatively, one can also enable GUI tooltype in MPlayer icon.

@aurora

If video still lags a bit behind with loopfilter disabled, then you can't do much more. Keep in mind it's much slower on OSX or Linux, but 720p can be a bit too much for a 1.5GHz G4 if bitrate is a bit too high.

Thank you for the suggestions.

I basically got over (got used to) hidden files in MorphOS, it's ok.

I've set allow framedrop to yes and set synchronisation factor to 30 but sync problem still occursafter one or two minutes.

I guess, a Mac mini G4 (with 32MB VRAM models) will never be able to play 720p's. Even a fast OS like MorphOS doesn't seem to help it.

I've watched many series with my 1.5GHz mini. So better say some higher bitrates videos won't play at full speed, but some definitely do.

> I guess, a Mac mini G4 (with 32MB VRAM models) will never be able to play 720p's.

It's got nothing to do with the VRAM size. A genuine 1.5 GHz Mac mini with 64 MiB VRAM isn't any faster at playing 720p video than your Mac mini.

aurora72,
Quote:

I have a mini with 32MB VRam and a PB with 128MB. Guess what the the mini outperform the PB.

My mini clocked at 1,58GHz and my PB runs at 1,67GHz. So what?

I think on all the G4 system the playback of movies (1080, 720p and even lower) is heavily affected by ram bandwith, ram latency, and FSB. Because all the g4 apple family FSB is stuck at 167MHz (or worse), even if you have DDR2 memory modules inside. Everybody talks about the needed processor power, but the truth is that in these system the real bottlenec is the low FSB.

My mini is overclocked at 1,58GHz, but it outperforms the 1.8GHz 2.0 GHZ minis/powermacs in memory speed. (dont't know how yet, maybe this OC setting has a lot better latency than for higher settings) For example my Minis has 503/1044 r/w MB/sec ramspeed, while my PB is 334/680.

On the movies side: the same 720p mkv (matrix, 6300Kbits/s video 640kbits audio, 1280*544) with the same mplayer setting:
On PB: avarage cpu load 82-85%
Mini: avarage cpu load 75-79%

Anyway most of the 720p movies is playable on my mini, half of them has the audio is not in syncron after a half our, and the rest is after a few minute. On my pb the things worse. Of course this is for above 5000 Kbits/s. under that everything is flies.

How can the to smoother the playback:

-Try to playback from ram. (or ssd) I suspect that playing from an ide hdd is 1-3% slower than from ram.
-try different filesystem. Don't know how it effects, but SFS has its limitations.
-ask Morphos developer to enhance the ATI drivers

Thank you again for the helpful tips.

First, on the issue of VRAM size of Mac mini G4's: On eBay and similar sites, the Mac mini G4's with 64MB VRAM are sold with the statement "it can play 720p movies" And more interestingly on Mactracker (an app which lists all Apple hardware) Mac mini G4 with 32MB VRAM is listed as "obsolete" whereas the one with 64MB VRAM is listed as "vintage" So I believe there should be a difference because of the VRAM size, though I never had the opportunity to test by myself.

Derringer: How do you display the Video bitrate of a movie in MPlayer? In my installation, the MPlayer shows only the audio bitrate but not the video bitrate. It either shows the video bitrate os 0 or doesn't show it at all. The audio bitrate varies between 192 - 1524kbps among various movies.

Many movies have "DTS" audio in addition to the AC3 audio. When a movie has only DTS and no AC3, the Media Player tries harder to convert it to AC3 or Analog. So I try to choose AC3 audio whenever it's available in a movie in XMBC or Plex in Mac OS X. Is there such a setting in MPlayer?

How do you play a video from RAM? How is it done?

How do you measure the RAM speed?

Lastly, I remember overclocking to 1.58GHz was not recommended in the Mac mini G4 Overclocking tutorial, because of the heatsink capacity. But according to what you say, an OC to 1.58GHz looks quite fine and preferable.

> on the issue of VRAM size of Mac mini G4's: On eBay and similar sites,
> the Mac mini G4's with 64MB VRAM are sold with the statement "it can
> play 720p movies"

There may be 2 reasons for this statement:
- I can imagine that on MacOSX, playing 720p video may indeed require more than 32 MiB VRAM. Note that such restriction is *not* there with MorphOS.
- The 64 MiB VRAM model is also the one with the fastest CPU. All 32 MiB VRAM models have slower CPU (unless overclocked of course).

> And more interestingly on Mactracker (an app which lists all Apple hardware)
> Mac mini G4 with 32MB VRAM is listed as "obsolete" whereas the one with
> 64MB VRAM is listed as "vintage"

I fail to see the specific connection to the 720p video issue.

> So I believe there should be a difference because of the VRAM size

Of course having 64 MiB instead of 32 MiB makes a difference with many things, but as said not with playing 720p video on MorphOS.

> How do you play a video from RAM? How is it done?

The same way you play a video from HDD, except you copy it to the RAM Disk beforehand :-)

> How do you measure the RAM speed?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7474&forum=11

aurora72,
Quote:

Try the command line version from shell. It reveals everything from the video, audio etc.

Quote:

The first batch of the minis have smaller heatsink thean the last versions. AFAIK 1.25GHz and most of the 1.33GHz version has a smaller heatsink, while the rest have bigger. My original clock rate was 1.42 GHz. Hadling this heat issue is no problem here, while if i raise volts and clocking higher than 1,8 GHz will surely needs a bigger fan+heatsin which is not applicable inside the mini.
And i don't think towerized minis has a reason.

> The first batch of the minis have smaller heatsink thean the last versions.
> AFAIK 1.25GHz and most of the 1.33GHz version has a smaller heatsink,
> while the rest have bigger.

1.25 and 1.42 GHz models are the older ones. They were later silently replaced by the 1.33 and 1.5 GHz models.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini#Specifications

ok to clear this:

Based on scattered info, I've learned that the 1.25 and 1.42GHz Minis have different size CPU heatsinks. I read that when a person who owned one of each mini swapped the heatsink, he was able to get his 1.25 running at 1.58GHz reliably. So, depending on which Mini you own, take it easy on the overclock. It seems that the 1.25 will do 1.42GHz reliably. The 1.42s seem to do 1.58GHz reliably.

http://www.hirny.com/main/MacMini/macminimain.html

So the 1,25 and maybe the 1,33 GHz has smaller heatsink than the 1,42-1,5 GHz modells

[ Edited by Derringer 02.02.2013 - 18:09 ]

Thanks for the info. Just one more question: There's a 1.67GHz Powerbook for sale, it's in mint condition and quite cheap.

Here are the specs: 1.67GHz PowerPC, 167MHz System Bus, 2GB DDR RAM, 1440*900 dıilt-in display, 128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9700.

What if I buy it; would it play 720p movies without those issues that we encounter in Mac mini G4's ?

> There's a 1.67GHz Powerbook for sale, [...] would it play 720p movie
> without those issues that we encounter in Mac mini G4's ?

Less issues for sure, but not completely without, especially with high bitrate movies. Compared to the Mac mini, the PowerBook has a faster CPU but the same FSB speed.

aurora72,
Quote:
I have a Powerbook 1.67 GHz (5.6) and the 1.5 GHz mini silent upgrade. Both replay most 720p stuff I throw on them okayish, albeit not always totally perfect. Differences between both machines are small. In fact it seems to me the (nominally slower) mini handles some stuff better. One thing that annoys me on the mini is the rather loud fan during load, the powerbook's fan is pretty silent, but then again the overall ergonomics are better with a desktop machine (keyboard - display distance, mouse, bigger display). I am using both machines pretty much, but find myself more comfortable in front of the mini.

aurora72 : try to press "d" two times when playing a big video in MPlayer, it may help for watching with sync audio.

Thank you for the comments coming from real experience. The 167MHz System Bus speed of this generation of Macs seems to be the greatest bottleneck for 720p videos.

[ Edited by aurora72 11.02.2013 - 13:16 ]

I converted some HD films with handbrake (on windows) FFmpeg/avi with 1280x544 2500mb/video 128mp3 audio and play perfect on mac mini and the quality video is very high with full sync audio/video without skip´s-

Mplayer fab port is awesome :)

Resurecting this thread.

I have converted a 1280x588 movie to MPEG2 and I've tried every trick in the book (including testing everything above) and I still get audio out of sync problems. And once it goes out of sync it never corrects itself. Is this i bug in MPlayer or something else?

@ Yasu

Have you tried different versions of MPlayer to see if this makes any difference?