ipod video mpeg player

[gnu]

Don't they have a Wolfston chip?
Anyways, the other Ipods don't have this chip, and the Ipod video doesn't really need a mpegplayer, since the original player will always be way better!

[Llorean]

No, the Wolfson chip is the audio chip. The video chip that the 5G uses is Broadcom. As well, what makes you think that it will "always" be better? There is no guarantee we won't be able to use it in the future, for example.

[lachlan]

Don't they have a Wolfston chip?
Anyways, the other Ipods don't have this chip, and the Ipod video doesn't really need a mpegplayer, since the original player will always be way better!

I can think of one glaring reason: more format support.
Mpeg, avi, mov, m2v, wmv, asf, flv?
Not that Rockbox will end up supporting ALL of these formats, but it will be good to be bale to play mpg's at least.

[gnu]

I may be terribly wrong, but:

I don't think the Ipod CAN play wmv, flv and other "new" formats, because the CPU is too slow + it has no ability to process floating point operations (which are used in most video formats, I think).

[lachlan]

Yeah, I don't really hold any hopes of it being able to handle wmv, but the point is that there will eventually be a wider selection of formats avaiable, and these formats will include some that are in regular use, as opposed to h.2blah blah and the mp4 container.

[Noxneo]

It would be technically possible to decode WMV, but don't expect that too soon. First, we need to fully optimize the player to decode video and sound. Only after that we can focus on porting codecs to the player.

[Llorean]

I'm not sure WMV is likely to ever be supported.

Videos are pretty much always going to need to be transcoded to whatever the screen size of the player is, so in the end there's not *that* much reason to support too many formats, since conversion will almost be mandatory anyway.

[senab]

Yeah, I don't really hold any hopes of it being able to handle wmv, but the point is that there will eventually be a wider selection of formats avaiable, and these formats will include some that are in regular use, as opposed to h.2blah blah and the mp4 container.

@Lachlan, you're obviously being slightly short sighted in your view of video formats. H264 is becoming one the most mainstream codecs available, due to its high quality. FLV is closed source and to be honest, only really used on the web, therefore useless.

In the end ask yourself, why support a lot of formats badly rather support one format well?

[gravedigg154]

I don't know why people wanna run videos on rockbox so bad. Just use iTunes. It seems to be less hassle and the videos actually play with sound. I don't know what people have against iTunes. The apple firmware is much more user friendly than rockbox.

[Yotto]

Well, speaking as a Linux user who abhors the iTunes and iPod interface, I would like it if video played on Rockbox.  Yes, I know I can get the video into the database via special programs in Linux.  I just don't want to.

Not that I'm impatient.  I own a television and it plays video just fine.  I'm just saying, until Rockbox supports video, I won't be watching video on my iPod

[lachlan]

Yeah, I don't really hold any hopes of it being able to handle wmv, but the point is that there will eventually be a wider selection of formats avaiable, and these formats will include some that are in regular use, as opposed to h.2blah blah and the mp4 container.

@Lachlan, you're obviously being slightly short sighted in your view of video formats. H264 is becoming one the most mainstream codecs available, due to its high quality. FLV is closed source and to be honest, only really used on the web, therefore useless.

In the end ask yourself, why support a lot of formats badly rather support one format well?

Flv is the format all youtube videos are in. I have about 100+ .flv youtube clips on my harddrive, and I'm sure there are other people out there who have done similarly, as the clips are quite easy to get. I didn't realise that it was closed source, but then again aren't most codecs/formats barring Xvid closed source? (this is a legit question- I'm genuinely usure of which video codecs are/aren't open sourced)

[senab]

FLV actually uses the codec VP6, and afaik only a open source directshow decoder is available, and no encoder.

Open source Video formats include:
Xvid
Ogg Theora
x264
Dirac
VP3 (which Theora is loosely based on)

[lachlan]

Those formats all seem relatively obscure (except Xvid). Is it due to them not being as good/efficient as other closed source formats, or is there a different reason?

[Noxneo]

Ogg theora is very efficient, it's just that closed source formats are more popular, and therefore pretty much nobody know about those formats.

[senab]

x264 is a H264 encoder. H264 is part of the Mpeg 4 standard (as is ASP, which xvid is an encoder of) therefore it's popular. H264 has been used recently as a HD format due to its excellent quality at small bitrates.

Dirac is an encoder being developed by the BBC for HD. See here: http://dirac.sourceforge.net/overview.html