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douw
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 Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 3:27 am |
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Joined: Wed May 31, 2006 6:54 am
Posts: 52
Location:
Pretoria, South Africa
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What is the pro's and con's to using the Internal player vs. mplayer or xine? I've searched the forum and google and can't seem to find many discussions on the subject. It seems odd to me that so much effort goes into mplayer wrappers and resumers when the Internal player already does that including PIP etc, etc. and is much more tightly integrated with mythtv.
Comments?
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Douw Steyn
LinHES 6.03
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5400+ , PVR-150, GeForce 8100, 2GB RAM,
600GB in Storage Groups
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tophee
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Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 5:45 am |
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Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2005 10:48 am
Posts: 852
Location:
London, UK
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Hi douw,
I perhaps should say before I start this is my own opinion based on next to no research, but I beleive this to be the case (hopes to avoid flame war.)
In the dim and distant past there was no Internal player. This necessitated alternative players to be used: xine and mplayer. Traditionally xine was used for DVD playback, while mplayer was used for everything else because they were the best solutions available at the time. (And they are still fine solutions.)
When the Internal player was first developed it didn't really compare to players like xine and mplayer for stability or features and subsequently the were still used in the majority of instances for media playback. Oh how I remember having to recompile mplayer for extra codecs. It felt very perilous as I was just following instructions without an real understanding of what I was doing.
I think there is a reason for little or no discussion of a xine / mplayer vs Internal player is down to the Internal player having superceeded both in ease of setup and features. This is partially down to the ease of setup due to it's tight integration into MythTV (just change the command to Internal); VDPAU works out of the box; and it has been a feature of MythTV for a number of years gaining acceptance (slowly gaining market share, if you like.)
It is, incidently now the recommended player for MythTV.
HTH.
Chris
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Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)
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douw
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Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:27 am |
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Joined: Wed May 31, 2006 6:54 am
Posts: 52
Location:
Pretoria, South Africa
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Thanks tophee.
Internal being the easier choice is very much the sense I got but it's not realy articulated anywhere. Possibly others are also weary of being flamed by die hard external player users and script authors.
Anyway I'm a newby with no affiliations so I'll try internal for now and see how that goes.
I also hope this reply does not add any fuel for possible flames.
_________________
Douw Steyn
LinHES 6.03
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5400+ , PVR-150, GeForce 8100, 2GB RAM,
600GB in Storage Groups
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tjc
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:25 pm |
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location:
Arlington, MA
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The internal player wasn't ready for prime time for quite a while. It's gradually gotten more mature and now works much better.
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abmoraz
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Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:57 pm |
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Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2005 11:40 am
Posts: 22
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add me to the list of people that use the internal player for everything
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\\ENVY - LinHES 7.2
Athlon 64 4000+
2GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 8400GS
Hauppauge 350
MCP61 High Definition Audio
300GB
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djb61230
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Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 9:53 pm |
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Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:57 am
Posts: 106
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If you are using storage groups then the Internal player is the only way to go. Storage groups have other benefits too - one is you can move video files around and not lose metadata. I recently moved all my video files to a FreeNAS server (using my old backend hardware) and just updated by storage group to point to the NFS freeNAS directory and it just worked - no rebuilding of metadata required.
In the past one would have to rebuild all the metadata that was a PITA even when using bulk updating scripts.
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Too Many Secrets
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Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:16 pm |
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Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:04 pm
Posts: 905
Location:
LA, CA
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I just started to use Internal for everything. I still think mplayer handles some files better and sometimes vobs need a seek table rebuilt which is annoying, but ok I guess. Also mplayer can skip back and forth at any time increment you plug in, Internal does not as far as I can tell, Internal only jumps at the pre-set increments.
BUT... internal has the nice menu making it easier to; change audio track, subtitles, zoom, etc. Plus it has a higher WAF as she already knows what the buttons do...
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tjc
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Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 9:39 pm |
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location:
Arlington, MA
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That last is just a matter of consistent mapping. Just for my own sanity the buttons on the remote had to do more or less the same thing whether the player was the internal one, mplayer or xine. It probably took all of an hour one weekend to get it sorted out.
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poflynn
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Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 9:02 pm |
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Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:55 pm
Posts: 306
Location:
CA,USA
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Based on this thread I switched to the internal player last night. I tried one .ISO file & the MKV file below - neither were very successful. I didn't play the ISO for very long - during one of the intro sequences it went all blocky & messed up. The MKV seemed to play ok initially so I went to ffwd & the first thing I noticed was it ffw'ed extremely slowly, as in, maybe a minute fwd every 1-2s. I let it run for a while to see if it would improve but it didn't. Then when I went to play it it went all blockish & messed up very quickly. It would fix itself briefly & mess up again. Alas, not a very successful test. My system is and old P4 which probably contributed to the slow ffwd speed but still. It plays & ffwds recorded TV just fine.
I would really like to just use the internal player if possible (right now I am forced to use 3 which I find a bit annoying).
Any thots?
Code: P4
2.4GHz
~760MB RAM
PCI-based 8400GS
R6.02
Code: poflynn@theworld:~> mkvinfo /bigfiles/mythfiles/video/_MomDad/<<name>>.mkv
+ EBML head
|+ Doc type: matroska
|+ Doc type version: 2
|+ Doc type read version: 2
+ Segment, size 9381805565
|+ Seek head (subentries will be skipped)
|+ EbmlVoid (size: 4010)
|+ Segment information
| + Timecode scale: 1000000
| + Muxing application: libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1
| + Writing application: mkvmerge v2.9.7 ('Tenderness') built on Jul 1 2009 18:43:35
| + Duration: 7196.194s (01:59:56.194)
| + Date: Fri Apr 2 20:14:49 2010 UTC
| + Segment UID: 0xb0 0x54 0x4e 0x3a 0xee 0x27 0x7e 0xf8 0xb6 0x42 0x6b 0x51 0x45 0x68 0x4d 0x77
|+ Segment tracks
| + A track
| + Track number: 1
| + Track UID: 1
| + Track type: video
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 1
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 0
| + MinCache: 1
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 42
| + Default duration: 41.708ms (23.976 fps for a video track)
| + Language: eng
| + Video track
| + Pixel width: 1280
| + Pixel height: 534
| + Interlaced: 0
| + Display width: 640
| + Display height: 267
| + A track
| + Track number: 2
| + Track UID: 2024468370
| + Track type: audio
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 1
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 1
| + MinCache: 0
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: A_DTS
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + Language: eng
| + Audio track
| + Sampling frequency: 48000
| + Channels: 6
| + A track
| + Track number: 3
| + Track UID: 2606355595
| + Track type: audio
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 0
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 1
| + MinCache: 0
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: A_VORBIS
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 3562
| + Language: eng
| + Name: Commentary
| + Audio track
| + Sampling frequency: 48000
| + Channels: 2
| + A track
| + Track number: 4
| + Track UID: 183557797
| + Track type: subtitles
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 1
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 0
| + MinCache: 0
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: S_TEXT/ASS
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 783
| + Language: eng
| + A track
| + Track number: 5
| + Track UID: 937253045
| + Track type: subtitles
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 0
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 0
| + MinCache: 0
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: S_TEXT/ASS
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 783
| + Language: fre
| + A track
| + Track number: 6
| + Track UID: 2626677390
| + Track type: subtitles
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 0
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 0
| + MinCache: 0
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: S_TEXT/ASS
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 783
| + Language: por
| + A track
| + Track number: 7
| + Track UID: 4180285360
| + Track type: subtitles
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 0
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 0
| + MinCache: 0
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: S_TEXT/ASS
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 783
| + Language: rum
| + A track
| + Track number: 8
| + Track UID: 2900249997
| + Track type: subtitles
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 0
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 0
| + MinCache: 0
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: S_TEXT/ASS
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 783
| + Language: spa
|+ EbmlVoid (size: 1024)
|+ Attachments
| + Attached
| + File name: CronosPro-Bold.ttf
| + Mime type: application/x-truetype-font
| + File data, size: 108928
| + File UID: 438313916
| + Attached
| + File name: CronosPro-Semibold.ttf
| + Mime type: application/x-truetype-font
| + File data, size: 109724
| + File UID: 964268476
| + Attached
| + File name: CronosPro-SemiboldIt.ttf
| + Mime type: application/x-truetype-font
| + File data, size: 135684
| + File UID: 4215728010
|+ Cluster
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Paul O'Flynn
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Too Many Secrets
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Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 9:47 pm |
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Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:04 pm
Posts: 905
Location:
LA, CA
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I'm now seeing some funky skips and another bug that's really bugging me too from Internal. Happens when playing .vob's I'll skip the credits or forward a bit and it will actually skip backward a minute or so. Then if I pause and keep it paused until the xscreensaver blanks my screen, then play it will play about 5 seconds and dump to Play-Done screen, lock for about a minute, then you realize you lost your bookmark. Duh! Repeatable and on two FEs
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douw
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Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 2:39 am |
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Joined: Wed May 31, 2006 6:54 am
Posts: 52
Location:
Pretoria, South Africa
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Perhaps the internal player needs a bit more horesepwer than mplayer for the same content? It seems to play mkv's better than mplayer on my system though, less stalling and tearing, that's why I switched. I don't have VDPAU on my 5200 GPU so it stutters allong with XvMC, I think.
From my mythfrontend.log: Code: VideoOutputXv: Desired video renderer 'xvmc-blit' not available.
codec 'H.264' makes 'xv-blit,xshm,xlib,' available, using 'xv-blit' instead.
VideoOutputXv: XVideo Adaptor Name: 'NV17 Video Texture'
Anyhow, when there's no transcodeing going on in the background I have almost no stalling or tearing, and skipping forward and back works fine.
_________________
Douw Steyn
LinHES 6.03
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5400+ , PVR-150, GeForce 8100, 2GB RAM,
600GB in Storage Groups
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mediathreat
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Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 12:44 pm |
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Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 7:42 pm
Posts: 63
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I love using the internal player because you can bring up the title and info from the database so easily on all your movies and other video content.
What i don't love is that it doesn't quite handle the wide swatch of formats like mplayer can. It handles a ton more than it did - but I have files that either won't play - skip horribly , won't play audio, etc.
The only work around is to go is to make exceptions for a given file, or switch that whole type of file to mplayer or xine at the moment.
That being said, hopefully the internal gets better, or I have to find a utility to just covert everything to a nice tidy h.264 that the internal loves.
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