Rockbox Technical Forums

Support and General Use => Plugins/Viewers => Topic started by: jvhc on October 14, 2008, 01:07:21 PM

Title: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 14, 2008, 01:07:21 PM
Hey,

I've read the wiki page about the mpeg player, and various threads on this forum, but I still don't really understand how to play videos.

I have a gigabeat, and i'm using a pretty recent build.

So, I downloaded WinFF, and installed that fine. I then downloaded a video of youtube using 'kissyoutube'.

http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=vthpdqtOXeM

It downloaded into an .flv file.

I then went on WinFF and added that file and pressed 'convert'. I selected to convert to Rockbox, Toshiba Gigabeat F/X 4.3, and didn't change any other options.

It then came up with an error, saying..

Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 1000.00 (1000
/1) -> 25.00 (25/1)
Input #0, flv, from 'C:\Stuff\bif.flv':
  Duration: 00:04:37.68, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 64 kb/s
    Stream #0.0: Video: flv, yuv420p, 320x262, 25.00 tb(r)
    Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 22050 Hz, mono, 64 kb/s
WARNING: The bitrate parameter is set too low. It takes bits/s as argument, not
kbits/s
Could not open 'C:\Stuff\Vids\bif.mpg'


However, it said 'Could not open 'C:\Stuff\Vids\bif.mpg'', but the file I downloaded was in .flv format.

...Which makes me think that i've missed out a step??
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: Llorean on October 14, 2008, 01:15:57 PM
This is a problem with WinFF, not software we write or provide support for.

You should see if WinFF has help channels (or in this case, probably you'll get redirected to ffmpeg support, which is the program that does the actual conversion).
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 14, 2008, 02:11:54 PM
Ah right okay. I thought it was something that I missed out.

So basically, all I have to do is download the video from youtube as a .flv file,
then convert it into mpeg? Then it'll play on the mp3 player?

Thanks.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: LambdaCalculus on October 14, 2008, 02:14:20 PM
That's pretty much it, although I have had better success using VLC to convert FLV files to MPEG2 videos for Rockbox.

Your mileage may vary, of course.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 14, 2008, 02:26:32 PM
Okay, tried using VLC, using the info on the wiki.

I downloaded the VCL-transcode.bat file, and drag&dropped a video onto that, but the command prompt just flashed up once and went, and I don't think anything happened.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: Chronon on October 14, 2008, 02:46:48 PM
Did you install VLC?  The batch file won't do anything unless VLC is installed on your computer.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 14, 2008, 03:15:10 PM
Yeah, downloaded VLC, installed it, then downloaded the batch and unzipped it into extensions..
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: Chronon on October 14, 2008, 03:32:16 PM
And the path to VLC at the end of the batch file is correct?
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 14, 2008, 03:49:48 PM
Oohh okay!

So I think i've edited it so it has the right path...

I've now dragged the video onto the batch file.. Don't think anything's hapenned... The VLC player opened.. and that's about it.

"C:\Stuff\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" %1 --sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp2v,vb=%VIDBR%,width=%WIDTH%,height=%HEIGHT%,acodec=mp3,ab=%AUDBR%,samplerate=44100,audio-sync}:std{access=file,mux=ps,url=%1.mpg}

That's what I have at the bottom, when I went on 'edit' the batch file.



Page stretch, my bad.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: Chronon on October 14, 2008, 06:42:57 PM
I don't know what the issue is, since it looks like you removed the "vlc:quit" as suggested for such behavior in the batch file.  As with WinFF/ffmpeg, you can take up further issues with the maintainers of the program.

(And I assume that you set the dimensions and video bitrate in the file.)
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: cool_walking_ on October 15, 2008, 04:15:06 AM
I've had issues (mostly sync issues, but sometimes the program would flat-out crash) with FLV in all of VLC, mplayer, and ffmpeg.  I think you should try downloading the Youtube video as MP4 (http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html) instead of FLV.  The MP4 file still needs to be converted, but hopefully WinFF will play nicer with it.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 15, 2008, 11:14:29 AM
(And I assume that you set the dimensions and video bitrate in the file.)

No.. How would I go about doing that? Do I change the batch file?
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: Chronon on October 15, 2008, 01:46:17 PM
jvhc: Yes.  Though, the batch file probably has default values in it already.  If that's the case it won't explain VLC exiting instantly.  I don't have any more advice as I am only a casual user of these programs, myself.  You should follow the support channels for these programs if you want to resolve this.  In the meantime, cool_walking_ offered a good workaround for your particular problem here. 
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 15, 2008, 02:18:09 PM
Ah ha! I found a program called Super, and it is awesome! Reallly easy to use, no errors, worked perfectly.

It looked a bit iffy when I went to the website, (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html) probably because the website looks naff. But the program is great!
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: cool_walking_ on October 15, 2008, 08:41:08 PM
SUPER is just a frontend to ffmpeg and mencoder.  It's also in our bad books because it violates the GPL.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 16, 2008, 10:21:07 AM
Violates the what?

Yeah it's a frontend, but it seems to make it alot easier..
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: cool_walking_ on October 16, 2008, 10:35:58 AM
The GNU General Public License.  It's pretty much the standard free software license.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: GodEater on October 16, 2008, 10:50:10 AM
...and the one under which Rockbox itself is licensed.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: jvhc on October 16, 2008, 10:52:46 AM
Oohh I see. Well that's a shame, as it seems to be a pretty useful piece of software.

By the way, is there a way I can put DVDs on to my mp3 player?

Because I have the dvd, and I've done the standard copy&paste of the whole of the folder of dvd contents onto my hard drive, but now I have a two folders called AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS.

I can get to the dvd menus if I open a video inside the video_ts folder, using windows media player or something. But I tried converting all of them and putting them on the mp3 player, and it seems like they're just random sections of the dvd.
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: GodEater on October 16, 2008, 11:04:15 AM
They need converting to Mpeg1/2 like all other videos for Rockbox - but teaching you how to do that is quite a long way outside the scope of these forums.

Check www.doom9.org
Title: Re: Mpeg Player walkthrough please
Post by: Llorean on October 16, 2008, 12:16:46 PM
Just as a clarification: SUPER may or may not violate the GPL. It's licensing is a mess and generally unclear.