MPEG player optimization

[jdoe]

Is anyone even working on optimizing the MPEG player? i cant code myself but i was just wondering if any progress was being made. Also, is it possible to take another codec (FFDshow) that can read other video formats and use it on rockbox?

[aznofazns]

YEAH i was wondering the same thing. I'm not a programmer either, so i can't do anything. I've been patiently waiting for the mpegplayer plugin to be enhanced so that it rebuffers video rather than only play the amount of video that fits into my player's (Gigabeat F40) 29 megs of memory, as well as include controls for pause/play/ffw/rew/volume. It would be greatly appreciated if it was updated.

[nls]

No one of the regulars are currently working on it, there are a couple of patches for it in the tracker tho, one which yields a speedup on coldfire targets and one for volume controls. Developers work on what they want and there is no way to make them do anything else :-)

[aznofazns]

darn... oh well i'll just wait. i wish i was pro and had 1337 pr0gr4mm1ng 5ki11z...

[scorche]

...and had 1337 pr0gr4mm1ng 5ki11z...

If you did, I doubt we would ever accept your patches

[ColdSphinx]

yesterday the volume-control had been commited and linuxstb is working on a av-sync.
his patch currently works on sansa and iaudio, but breaks the sound on ipods (the other payers i don't know).

[jdoe]

Interesting... Is there any work being done the it to support other formats (MPEG4)?

[midgey]

There is no work being done to support other formats from what I'm aware. One of the suggested Summer of Code projects is to improve video support. It is indeed possible that someone may begin work on MPEG-4 but currently this is not the case.

[gnu]

Isn't the CPU in most devices too slow for mpeg4?

[linuxstb]

Isn't the CPU in most devices too slow for mpeg4?

Maybe, maybe not...  

Someone needs to port an MPEG-4 decoder and compare real-life performance on Rockbox targets with the MPEG-1/2 decoder already there.

[jdoe]

linuxstb,

where is your a/v sync patch? I have a sansa and i would like to use it. I checked in the patch tracker but i couldnt find it.

[ColdSphinx]

jdoe: it will come if it's ready, but at the moment it breaks sound on iPods
linuxstb: or do you allow to publish the current version?

[benosoft]

What kind of optimisation would the Mpeg player mostly benefit from?
I might want to give it a try to get more into programming, but what would
be more concrete things that could improve performance?

I'm wandering the same for the Rockboy plugin, where would I start
to make speed improvements?

[mattandme]

hey, my iPod doesn't work with that plugin, it always plays it very crazily, with slower video than audio. It doesn't make for good viewing,and i have an iPod video! It would be really cool if someone could make a plugin that would make excellent use of that video "chip" that apple so kindly provided us with. (how nice of them )

but yeah, I've tried tinkering with the settings, and it only makes it worse. any suggestions would be appreciated!

[Llorean]

If you'll provide us with datasheets for the chip, I'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't mind trying to make use of it. As it is, the chip is a black box, and pretty much unusable for the time being.