Rockbox Technical Forums

Support and General Use => Plugins/Viewers => Topic started by: Atheistic Freedom on August 07, 2006, 07:52:57 PM

Title: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Atheistic Freedom on August 07, 2006, 07:52:57 PM
I was just looking at the recent changes on the front page and saw the "Initial commit of work-in-progress MPEG video player plugin based on libmpeg2."

It's interesting that it's optimized for the Photo/Color and Nano instead of, well, the Video, but time will tell how good this will turn out to be.

Keep up the good work!  :)
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Jon_ on August 07, 2006, 08:01:46 PM
I KNOW THIS IS AMAZING!!!
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 07, 2006, 08:08:40 PM
Well, we don't know how to use the Broadcom chip still, so for now video will be faster on the Photo and Nano than the 5G.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Jon_ on August 07, 2006, 08:10:05 PM
Well, we don't know how to use the Broadcom chip still, so for now video will be faster on the Photo and Nano than the 5G.
:D ;D :D :D ;D :D :D ;D :D
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 07, 2006, 08:11:28 PM
Really, the Nano's going to be the fastest simply because it has the smallest screen to update.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Jon_ on August 07, 2006, 08:12:34 PM
Darn it, might be slower on the video ipod since it has the biggest screen out of all of em. Is that correct?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Atheistic Freedom on August 07, 2006, 08:13:14 PM
^ Quite possibly...

What's stopping the people from properly using the Broadcom chip?  Is it that they can't decipher it, or they don't know how to handle it?

No offense to anybody if that sounded insulting, but I was just curious what the barrier was.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Jon_ on August 07, 2006, 08:14:44 PM
So since we already have some problem with cpu power just playing audio might we have a much bigger problem trying to play video since it'll require much more cpu power than just audio?

Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 07, 2006, 08:15:15 PM
The 5G iPod is currently the slowest one we've got for screen updates. Why do you think it's the one that suffers the most skipping during playback and such? Currently it has to spend more time than the others updating the screen.


As for what's stopping people: The chip is undocumented. There's very little we know how to make it do.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Jon_ on August 07, 2006, 08:18:35 PM
Oh, i never knew that the 5th Gen iPod skips the most during playback. But my ipod hasn't skiped during playback for the longest while i play music and a game at the same time and no skipping. But get why the ipod 5th gen skips alot when playing a game. Alright thanks alot.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 07, 2006, 08:20:13 PM
On the Nano I almost never get skipping while scrolling lists (which is a big one, since that one involves updating the screen) unless I do it for quite a while even.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Jon_ on August 07, 2006, 08:24:26 PM
On the Nano I almost never get skipping while scrolling lists (which is a big one, since that one involves updating the screen) unless I do it for quite a while even.
Wow, amazing, but so far the rockbox development for the ipod 5th gen is getting much better. Especially with those new LCD Speed up patches they decrease the amout of skipping by a bit. Development is going great might be awhile until we get skipless playing but for now this is perfect. Does audio skip on any of the iriver devices?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 07, 2006, 08:26:55 PM
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*.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Jon_ on August 07, 2006, 09:15:12 PM
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*.
Oh alright cool thanks...
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: 2202083 on August 08, 2006, 04:06:51 AM
I just saw this. Pretty fucking sweet if I may say so.

Totally unrelated but where's Rockboy headed?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 08, 2006, 04:43:53 AM
It's interesting that it's optimized for the Photo/Color and Nano instead of, well, the Video, but time will tell how good this will turn out to be.

This post doesn't belong in this iPod Video forum - the mpegplayer now in CVS is implemented purely using the CPU, and not using the iPod Video's Broadcom chip.  Hopefully this thread will be moved, so I'm posting a little status update here.

I own an ipod Color, and the Photo/Color and Nano share the same LCD driver, which is why those targets have received the first optimisations.  I also own an ipod 5g, and will be working with that as well. 

All ipods (with colour LCDs) have a more or less identical main CPU (the PortalPlayer chip), which means that out of those targets, the Nano is most likely to get working video support first - a full-screen video on the Nano is only 176x128, compared with 224x176 for the Photo/Color and 320x240 for the Video.  So there is both less data to decode, and less data to write to the LCD.

Currently, the player can play back a 176x128 MPEG-2 file at around 24fps on the ipods - so this means either full-screen on the Nano or smaller than full-screen on the Photo/Color and 5g.  Full-size videos on the Photo/Color and 5g play much slower than that.  The aim is to get this up to at least 25fps (PAL framerate) and hopefully 29.97fps (NTSC framerate) for full-size video on all targets.

The PortalPlayer chips inside the ipods have two 75Mhz ARM cpu cores.  Currently the video player (and Rockbox in general) is just using one.  The hope is that if one core can cope with full-speed video decoding (and writing to the LCD), the other core can be brought into use to handle the audio decoding, buffering the data from disk, and whatever else a video player needs.

Things are not looking as bright on the Coldfire-based targets (iriver H300 and iaudio X5) - full-screen video is around 9fps on the H300 at the moment when running the CPU at the full 124MHz.  And there is no second core to use for audio - the main CPU will need to handle everything.  But these are early days - all the audio codecs were also worryingly slow when first run on the Coldfire.  I personally will probably not be working on the Coldfire version (I don't own a H300 or X5), so developers are needed...
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: senab on August 08, 2006, 05:24:45 AM
In terms of complexity, how complex is MPEG2 to decode? I know H264 is more much more complex, but what about straight MPEG4-V?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: The D on August 08, 2006, 07:13:10 AM
It's interesting that it's optimized for the Photo/Color and Nano instead of, well, the Video, but time will tell how good this will turn out to be.

This post doesn't belong in this iPod Video forum - the mpegplayer now in CVS is implemented purely using the CPU, and not using the iPod Video's Broadcom chip.  Hopefully this thread will be moved, so I'm posting a little status update here.

I own an ipod Color, and the Photo/Color and Nano share the same LCD driver, which is why those targets have received the first optimisations.  I also own an ipod 5g, and will be working with that as well. 

All ipods (with colour LCDs) have a more or less identical main CPU (the PortalPlayer chip), which means that out of those targets, the Nano is most likely to get working video support first - a full-screen video on the Nano is only 176x128, compared with 224x176 for the Photo/Color and 320x240 for the Video.  So there is both less data to decode, and less data to write to the LCD.

Currently, the player can play back a 176x128 MPEG-2 file at around 24fps on the ipods - so this means either full-screen on the Nano or smaller than full-screen on the Photo/Color and 5g.  Full-size videos on the Photo/Color and 5g play much slower than that.  The aim is to get this up to at least 25fps (PAL framerate) and hopefully 29.97fps (NTSC framerate) for full-size video on all targets.

The PortalPlayer chips inside the ipods have two 75Mhz ARM cpu cores.  Currently the video player (and Rockbox in general) is just using one.  The hope is that if one core can cope with full-speed video decoding (and writing to the LCD), the other core can be brought into use to handle the audio decoding, buffering the data from disk, and whatever else a video player needs.

Things are not looking as bright on the Coldfire-based targets (iriver H300 and iaudio X5) - full-screen video is around 9fps on the H300 at the moment when running the CPU at the full 124MHz.  And there is no second core to use for audio - the main CPU will need to handle everything.  But these are early days - all the audio codecs were also worryingly slow when first run on the Coldfire.  I personally will probably not be working on the Coldfire version (I don't own a H300 or X5), so developers are needed...
What did you use to encode the videos?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 08, 2006, 08:07:00 AM
What did you use to encode the videos?

I'm a Linux user, and used mpeg2enc from the mjpegtools project, converting from an existing MPEG-2 file using mpeg2dec.  An example command is:

mpeg2dec -t 17 -o pgmpipe < inputfile.ts | pgmtoy4m -i p -r 60000:1001 -a 16:9 | y4mscaler -O size=320x176 | yuvfps -r 30000:1001 | mpeg2enc -a 3 -f 8 -q 6 -D 10 -E -10 -K tmpgenc -4 1 -2 1 -o test-320x176.m2v

This example takes a high-definition (1280x720p) 59.94fps input file (MPEG-2 transport stream) and converts to a 320x176 (16:9 aspect ratio, 29.97fps) file for my 5g ipod.

But any MPEG-2 encoder should work - but you'll need to tell it to create a ".m2v" raw video stream, or if your encoder only generates .avi or .mpg files, then you'll need to find another tool to demux the .m2v stream before copying it to your player.

An important thing to remember is that MPEG-2 works with 16x16 blocks - so you should encode to a multiple of 16x16 - e.g. 224x176 for 220x176 LCDs, and 176x128 for the Nano's 176x132 LCD.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 08, 2006, 08:11:49 AM
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.

There is a port of an xvid decoder on the patch tracker - so it's possible to use that to do some basic speed tests and compare with libmpeg2's performance.

But I don't think it really matters which codec Rockbox supports - to get the best performance, you will always be required to re-encode videos on your PC so that they match the resolution of the LCD on your player.  And I don't think MPEG-4 will give great quality/bitrate gains at such low resolutions -  I'm getting excellent quality at around 450kbps for a 320x176 30fps video stream which is low enough for me.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: senab on August 08, 2006, 08:25:42 AM
MPEG4 would be better than MPEG2 at low bitrates and H264 would be alot better than both of them. To be honest I don't actually think MPEG4 is that much more complex in terms of computing, H264 would be though and you'd definetly need the broadcom core on the 5G for using that.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: michael.conner on August 08, 2006, 09:37:05 AM
Are there any plans to get the video out on the Photo/Video models (the composite signal from the headphone jack) working in Rockbox?  I mean, first things first, obviously -- but it would be really cool to be able to use Rockbox to watch video on a TV.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: The D on August 08, 2006, 10:08:03 AM
What did you use to encode the videos?

I'm a Linux user, and used mpeg2enc from the mjpegtools project, converting from an existing MPEG-2 file using mpeg2dec.  An example command is:

mpeg2dec -t 17 -o pgmpipe < inputfile.ts | pgmtoy4m -i p -r 60000:1001 -a 16:9 | y4mscaler -O size=320x176 | yuvfps -r 30000:1001 | mpeg2enc -a 3 -f 8 -q 6 -D 10 -E -10 -K tmpgenc -4 1 -2 1 -o test-320x176.m2v

This example takes a high-definition (1280x720p) 59.94fps input file (MPEG-2 transport stream) and converts to a 320x176 (16:9 aspect ratio, 29.97fps) file for my 5g ipod.

But any MPEG-2 encoder should work - but you'll need to tell it to create a ".m2v" raw video stream, or if your encoder only generates .avi or .mpg files, then you'll need to find another tool to demux the .m2v stream before copying it to your player.

An important thing to remember is that MPEG-2 works with 16x16 blocks - so you should encode to a multiple of 16x16 - e.g. 224x176 for 220x176 LCDs, and 176x128 for the Nano's 176x132 LCD.
On my gen 5 the video is messed up, odd colours ect.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 08, 2006, 10:10:38 AM
Rockbox always plans on supporting every feature of the hardware eventually. It's just a matter of how long.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 08, 2006, 10:13:03 AM
On my gen 5 the video is messed up, odd colours ect.

Please edit when you quote...

What encoder did you use?  It's been reported that mpegplayer has problems dealing with files encoded by ffmpeg (including mencoder).  That's on my list of things to investigate.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: The D on August 08, 2006, 10:18:01 AM
What encoder did you use?  It's been reported that mpegplayer has problems dealing with files encoded by ffmpeg (including mencoder).  That's on my list of things to investigate.
lol, guess what I used  :-[
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 08, 2006, 04:24:16 PM
The video glitches with ffmpeg encoded files should now be fixed in CVS - you can try the latest build from here:

http://www.rockbox.org/cvs.shtml
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: laberlaber on August 08, 2006, 06:17:08 PM
Rockbox always plans on supporting every feature of the hardware eventually. It's just a matter of how long.

Sorry if this sounds stupid, but does this mean that video playback support for the H1x0 series will eventually be implemented?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 08, 2006, 06:38:34 PM
They're discussing what to do with H1x0. They're considering taking a different path with it, but we shall see. There will be *some* sort of video support, at least.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: crescentfresh on August 08, 2006, 07:12:20 PM
Is there some sort of player you will need, or should video just start simply from selecting a file from your list?  I popped an mpg1 file on my player just to see how things would look on it, and it didn't even recognize it as a supported file with today's daily build.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 08, 2006, 07:14:10 PM
Right now it has to be a video-only Mpeg-1 or Mpeg-2 stream, I believe. The extension expected is M2V.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: crescentfresh on August 08, 2006, 07:18:22 PM
Ah, ok.  From the release notes, I thought it could play any mpg1 or mpg2 files, but with no sound.  My bad.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 08, 2006, 07:20:04 PM
It's very *very* far from being particularly usable yet.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: saratoga on August 08, 2006, 07:35:44 PM
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.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: senab on August 09, 2006, 01:06:23 PM
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. :D
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: bk on August 09, 2006, 06:34:19 PM
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.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: senab on August 10, 2006, 05:05:29 AM
The broadcom would mainly do the video decoding due to it support floating point. The PortalPlayer chip is mainly used for audio.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 10, 2006, 05:31:11 AM
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.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: senab on August 10, 2006, 05:40:41 AM
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

Quote
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.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 10, 2006, 06:28:50 AM
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".
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Mad Big Sausage on August 10, 2006, 10:53:53 AM
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.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: senab on August 10, 2006, 03:47:13 PM
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.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Corius on August 12, 2006, 10:04:13 AM
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
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: axlgreasetires on August 12, 2006, 05:12:53 PM
Great Work.  MpegPlayer Works better than I had Expected. 
Amazing
Works Perfectly on My 5g(Not Perfectly but Is above My Expectations).
THANK YOU
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: saratoga on August 12, 2006, 07:41:45 PM
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

Quote
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.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: psycho_maniac on August 13, 2006, 10:47:06 PM
so this does not have audio yet though. am i correct on this? anybody have a video of the ipod playing a video? i know they have a video of the ihp140 playing a video or a screendump mabey?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 13, 2006, 10:49:58 PM
Out of curiosity, why do you want a video of it playing video? Why not just play one? It looks like *gasp* a video.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: psycho_maniac on August 14, 2006, 12:27:04 AM
because i dont have an ipod video yet as i am broke. i guess i could run one in the simulator ?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 14, 2006, 12:31:53 AM
It just looks like a video. And it runs on any of our players with color screens.

I mean... a full screen video looks like a full screen video...
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: epithetless on August 14, 2006, 11:22:04 AM
It just looks like a video. And it runs on any of our players with color screens.

I mean... a full screen video looks like a full screen video...

Llorean, while I have the utmost respect for your extraordinary level of attentiveness on these boards, are you just trying to be difficult here? It seems pretty clear to me that psycho_maniac would like to see how well video currently plays in Rockbox, namely on the iPod. Quality, as I know you are aware, is dependent on both the hardware available and the software implementation of it, and will vary from source to source. Sure, he could just cue something up in Windows Media Player if he'd never heard of "videos" before and simply wondered what these "digital moving pictures" were all about...but I have a feeling he wants to assess things like: Does it skip on the iPod? Are there glitches on the iPod? How smooth is it on the iPod? How is playback speed on the iPod?

Not unreasonable things to wonder, methinks...A bit premature, perhaps, but not unreasonable...
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 14, 2006, 01:28:34 PM
We've got numbers:
~20fps on iPod Nano, as low as ~8fps on iPod Video. Again, he could simply record a video to the format we've mentioned and play it back in a software media player.

In all truth, a video of an iPod playing a video will *always* look worse because you don't see the full screen, then you have compression happening to a picture of a compressed video. As well framerate disparities can make it appear even slower than it is.

The only way to get an even remotely accurate estimation of what playback looks like is to actually encode a video to our specs, then limit playback speed to the number of FPS we're claiming it hits right now, and see what it looks like, or to actually play a video on-target.

I mean, I have nothing against it, I was just honestly curious *why* he wanted to see the video. As in, was there anything productive he actually hoped to gain from it.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: afruff23 on August 14, 2006, 04:10:32 PM
What's the specs for iAudio X5?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: RaeNye on August 14, 2006, 06:00:29 PM
~12.5 fps.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: mightybrick on August 16, 2006, 02:21:32 PM
I was testing the video plugin today on my nano with the elephants dream video, and I could find a way to exit the plugin without reseting my player.  I tried several different keypresses that typically will exit any other plugin. 
Have any keypresses been designated to exit the video plugin?
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 16, 2006, 02:23:54 PM
I was testing the video plugin today on my nano with the elephants dream video, and I could find a way to exit the plugin without reseting my player.  I tried several different keypresses that typically will exit any other plugin. 
Have any keypresses been designated to exit the video plugin?

Yes - the MENU button, as listed here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/PluginMpegplayer

But you are probably running an old version of Rockbox - for the first few days of mpegplayer's life, there was no exit button.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: mightybrick on August 16, 2006, 03:16:47 PM
I was testing the video plugin today on my nano with the elephants dream video, and I could find a way to exit the plugin without reseting my player.  I tried several different keypresses that typically will exit any other plugin. 
Have any keypresses been designated to exit the video plugin?

Yes - the MENU button, as listed here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/PluginMpegplayer

But you are probably running an old version of Rockbox - for the first few days of mpegplayer's life, there was no exit button.
Hmmm.  That's funny.  I just tried it with the latest CVS Build, and I couldn't exit.  I had to restart to exit.

EDIT- I just tried again and it worked.  It turns out that if playback is paused, the plug-in will not exit.  If playback is, uh, playing, then the proper keypress (menu, in my case) will exit the plug-in.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 16, 2006, 03:18:55 PM
You did install the full build, including .rockbox folder and all plugins, and not just a new copy of the main Rockbox file? 'cuz it Works For Me(tm) as well.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: mightybrick on August 16, 2006, 03:20:44 PM
You did install the full build, including .rockbox folder and all plugins, and not just a new copy of the main Rockbox file? 'cuz it Works For Me(tm) as well.
Yes, I installed the full new build.  As I editted above:
EDIT- I just tried again and it worked.  It turns out that if playback is paused, the plug-in will not exit.  If playback is, uh, playing, then the proper keypress (menu, in my case) will exit the plug-in.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: momo_101 on August 17, 2006, 12:54:17 AM
I was just wondering, if all the iPods have coprocessors, and work has started to enable the coprocessor, then could you use te coprocessor to play the audio or somthing? Sorry if this is a dumb question, i'm still new to forumns and i try to read most of them.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: mightybrick on August 17, 2006, 01:08:06 AM
IIRC, only the iPod video has a second processor, the Broadcom chip.  The other iPods have a second core in the PortalPlayer processor, but at the moment, we don't know how to use/access(?) the second, only the first.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Llorean on August 17, 2006, 01:31:32 AM
No, we have some limited code for accessing the second core (which is referred to as the coprocessor or 'cop', the Broadcom chip is nearly always simply referred to as "the Broadcom chip") and there is a possibility that audio decoding will be handled on it. It really depends on whether this makes battery life worse, or can be used to improve it.

As it is, the plan for video is to have the second core on iPods play the audio so that what you're getting as a framerate right now is the *lowest* it should ever be if things work out right.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 17, 2006, 02:57:44 AM
Just to clarify - all iPods (from the first generation up to the fifth) have a PortalPlayer CPU - this consists of two ARM cores, each running at up to about 75MHz - known as the "main cpu" and the "cop".  Work on implementing support for using the COP in Rockbox has just started - we more or less know how to do it, it just hasn't been done yet.

The 5g (Video) also has the Broadcom chip which the Apple firmware uses for video playback.  We have no idea how this works, and Rockbox doesn't make any use of it at all.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Cho03 on August 19, 2006, 01:23:25 AM
This is damn awesome. I can't wait for the video player to be finished. If theres any way I can help out, just give me a shout.  ;D

EDIT

I just tested the mpeg player out with rocky 1 and this years e3 2006 mgs4 trailer. works a treat.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: linuxstb on August 19, 2006, 03:57:35 AM
This is damn awesome. I can't wait for the video player to be finished. If theres any way I can help out, just give me a shout.  ;D

EDIT

I just tested the mpeg player out with rocky 1 and this years e3 2006 mgs4 trailer. works a treat.

There are definitely ways to help out.   If you're a programmer, then come along to IRC and chat with the devs - we can point you in the direction of work needing to be done.

But if you're not a programmer, you (or anyone else reading this) could help by testing various different MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoders and trying to determine the best encoder settings for encoding video for Rockbox - and document your setting on the PluginMpegplayer wiki page:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/PluginMpegplayer

Even better would be if you could find a freely redistributable video and encode it at a similar quality settings for the various different target LCDs.  We could then host the files at http://download.rockbox.org/mpeg/ for use as test files when benchmarking mpegplayer.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: Cho03 on August 20, 2006, 12:01:01 AM
well im not sure i could be a help with the video. maybe i could test out the audio if you guys are working on it. im willing to make my nano a guinea pig.
Title: Re: Holy cripes, the video project has finally gotten started!
Post by: momo_101 on August 20, 2006, 11:25:40 AM
same with my ipod photo. I'll do anything you guys want (if it's RockBox related)!  :)