Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!

[Llorean]

Right now it has to be a video-only Mpeg-1 or Mpeg-2 stream, I believe. The extension expected is M2V.

[crescentfresh]

Ah, ok.  From the release notes, I thought it could play any mpg1 or mpg2 files, but with no sound.  My bad.

[Llorean]

It's very *very* far from being particularly usable yet.

[saratoga]

In terms of complexity, how complex is MPEG2 to decode? I know H264 is more much more complex, but what about straight MPEG4-V?

The short answer is that I don't know - but I would expect MPEG-4 to be more complex.  Newer codecs normally are...  But then again, I expected mpegplayer to perform better with MPEG-1 files than MPEG-2, but it seems to decode them at a similar speed.

IIRC for progressive scan video, MPEG1 and MPEG2 are actually very, very similar.  I don't really remember where I heard that though.

[senab]

I'd love for the future of this, that Rockbox could output a PAL/NTSC TV resolution picture. I don't think it really matters what the codec used is (although the OSS encoders for the MPEG4 are much better than MPEG2). For this to happen though, I can see three stumbling blocks:

1) The broadcom core (on iPod 5G) needs to figured out how to be used
2) The decoder will need optimizing big time (as will the audio)
3) The iPod's video out pin on the 3.5mm needs to be figured out how to be utilized

This may well just be a dream lol.

[bk]

1) The broadcom core (on iPod 5G) needs to figured out how to be used
2) The decoder will need optimizing big time (as will the audio)
3) The iPod's video out pin on the 3.5mm needs to be figured out how to be utilized

I believe the broadcom chip does the bulk of the decoding (not sure if it's both audio and video), so that leaves number one as the major obstacle.

[senab]

The broadcom would mainly do the video decoding due to it support floating point. The PortalPlayer chip is mainly used for audio.

[linuxstb]

The broadcom would mainly do the video decoding due to it support floating point. The PortalPlayer chip is mainly used for audio.

The Broadcom chip appears to do both audio and video decoding.  There is also nothing to suggest it has a hardware floating point unit, but it does have DSP hardware.

My understanding is that Apple firmware (running on the PP chip) reads the compressed data from disk and passes it to the Broadcom chip.  The Broadcom chip does the decoding, displaying the video on the LCD, and passing the uncompressed audio back to the PP chip for it to send to the DAC.

So the Broadcom chip isn't there to help the main CPU - it does the whole job, with the CPU just managing the process.

[senab]

Hmmm, I'm sure read somewhere that the Broadcom chip supports floating point. I'll have a dig around to see if I can find it again.

According to this article, the Broadcom chip doesn't display the video but still passes it to the Toshiba LCD controller:
http://www.commsdesign.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177105035

As with the PortalPlayer SoC, Broadcom's processor integrates an LCD controller. However, Apple is using a separate LCD driver/controller from Toshiba in the iPod Video.

[linuxstb]

According to this article, the Broadcom chip doesn't display the video but still passes it to the Toshiba LCD controller:

Passing the data to the LCD controller is what I meant by "display the video".

[Mad Big Sausage]

Not on the H100 at least.
Heck, MP3 playback doesn't even boost. At all, under most circumstances.

I can't speak for the H300 as I don't have one, but it *shouldn't*.

There were issues with skipping while scrolling but they've been sorted now for the most part.

[senab]

According to this article, the Broadcom chip doesn't display the video but still passes it to the Toshiba LCD controller:

Passing the data to the LCD controller is what I meant by "display the video".

Aah ok, I know the Broadcom chip has a LCD controller builtin too, so I thought u meant using that.

[Corius]

Ha ha I just encoded a m2v file for this, even in early days it looks nice
well done, althought as has been said already it is slow, but it wasn't as slow as i expected it would be

[axlgreasetires]

Great Work.  MpegPlayer Works better than I had Expected. 

Amazing

Works Perfectly on My 5g(Not Perfectly but Is above My Expectations).
THANK YOU

[saratoga]

Hmmm, I'm sure read somewhere that the Broadcom chip supports floating point. I'll have a dig around to see if I can find it again.

According to this article, the Broadcom chip doesn't display the video but still passes it to the Toshiba LCD controller:
http://www.commsdesign.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177105035

As with the PortalPlayer SoC, Broadcom's processor integrates an LCD controller. However, Apple is using a separate LCD driver/controller from Toshiba in the iPod Video.

H.264 is an integer format, and MPEG4 SP can be decoded in int pretty easily anyway, so I don't think fp would be very important even if it was included.