[RiXst3r]

after several tests last night, i was able to get this working pretty good! here are my findings...

my test setup is a p4 2.4 box, an xbox (softmodded) with the 01-15 built of xbmc running at 1280x720p on my jvc 52" fixed pixel 1280x720p hd-ila (lcos) display with the monster cable hd pack with optical audio out to my kenwood thx receiver.

-bframes crash the decoder, and even hard locked my xbox a few times... from what i have found on other forums, bframe support in ffmpeg and mplayer is currently being developed.

-phsycovisual enhancements overload the cpu, if i take it down one notch, my rip of the highway scene of badboys ii played great. (cept it doesnt look quite as pretty as it would with those features on, played on my pc).

-he aac audio, with 6 channels (5.1) worked awesome!!! i don't know how you did it, but it worked perfect, all channels, decoded properly and sent over optical to my receiver, worked perfect, every sound was in the right place... i was able to get 5.1 cd quality audio at 128kbps... amazing... my ears were very pleased... no more strereo files for me!

the only downside to all this is that disabling the features above, kinda kills the advantage that avc had over other codecs like xvid.

hopefully the guys at ffmpeg and mplayer can get this working good enough to show off the real power of avc.

btw... if anyone wondered why i want to use avc (nero digital h.264)... it is becuase of the fast and easy encoder (nero recode), the 5.1 surround in he aac, and because it wooped up on all the other codecs in the doom9 codec shootout.( http://www.doom9.org/codecs-104-1.htm ).

thanks again to the xbmc team for all their hard work!!

-rick

[RedDwarf69]

well, i have videos that work very well and others that have a lot of dropped frames and stop playing after some seconds. i don't know exactly how are they encoded but i suppose the difference is the use of more advanced options.

matroska+avc support works perfectly, thanks.

no one has one of these 1400mhz xbox to try?

[fogbav]

so ... if matruska + avcs works on xbox very good - why do you think the cpu is not powerful enough to decode avi avc ....?

doesn't sounds logical for me ...

i think a piii 700 mhz with nvidia card could do that very well ...

[shred]

how did you create the matroska containers?

[RiXst3r]

it seems that the combination of decoding he aac audio and decoding avc video with advanced features turned on, and at any bit rate overloads the cpu, i had luck if i used less audio channels, or less features on the video, but the combo of both kills it. nero showtime plays this back on an p3 800 that i had laying around... (with 5.1 he aac and all avc features (3 bframes, high deblocking, high psycovisual, etc)...

so it seems with some better coding, it should be able to do it, since xp has more overhead it would seem than an xbox running xbmc... i am interested to see how this develops once the guys at ffmpeg and mplayer finalize their h.264 code, and add in all the features, and optimize it... it seems very beta right now...

also, this seems of note... dvd players that play back nero digital with a hardware decoder chip are already availible in europe... so h.264 is really catching on... thats much quicker than it took to get a standalone player that played xvid or divx... and these players also play divx5 and xvid along with nerodigital h.264. ess tech. makes the chip that does this... there have also been several implementations of h.264 used in the proffessional broadcast world, several companies are starting to offer h.264 real-time encoders and decoders for sending broacast quality video over frame, t1, ds1, fiber, dark fiber, and others... i work at a tv station and we are considering one for our new master control as a backup to send video to our offsite broadcast facility if the microwave connection goes down....anyways, i got a bit off track.

keep up the good work xmbc!

-rick

[pike]

you pretty much nailed it there.
we're at the mercy of ffmpeg here, we don't have the time or resources to dive into specific codecs.

[chilledoutuk]

im sorry but i dont think the issue is cpu power as mpeg-4 avc wihtout in loop post processing does not need much more cpu power for playback than mpeg-4 asp when encoded with the same resolution.

my encodes dont use anymore than 25% of my xp2500 for playback.

[Gamester17]

my encodes dont use anymore than 25% of my xp2500 for playback.

i hope you realize you can never compare the performance on an xbox with a pc, (exspecially not if a pc with amd-xp/semperon/64 or intel p4+, it's more than just mhz that differ) :hmm:

[RedDwarf69]

my xp 1800+ takes 50% cpu with a good avc video and he-aac 5.1 (there is really a difference using 2.0 or 5.1 !!! using linux mplayer. i should try in windows with nero decoder to see the difference. but seeing how much takes with mplayer is normal it can't with xbox cpu.

when i sayed "matroska+avc support works perfectly" i talked about the support of playing avc inside matroska container. i was not saying that inside matroska takes less cpu than inside mp4 and plays fine.
to put avc in matroska -> mkvtoolnix.

[pgen]

i encoded the 3 lotr (long version) on 1 dvd in avc (x264 109, cabac on, 2 pass, max quality, 2 ref frames, 2 bframes max) and aac - nearly 12 hours :-)

the xbox plays them fine with the experimental dll provides from charly and xbmc 05-01-31

the quality is not as good as on pc (ffdshow) but good anyway

[johnh123]

so it seems the experimental mplayer works for nd, but the one in xbmc builds doesn't?

[Gamester17]

so it seems the experimental mplayer works for nd, but the one in xbmc builds doesn't?

please read this entire thread from the beginning and realize that ffmpeg/mplayer cvs'es gets updated every day, we don't have the time nor will to port every single update to own own xbmc cvs every day, what we instead try to do is update/port their whole code when mplayer release a point release (like 1.0-pre5 and 1.0-pre6), so if you want to have the very latest latest updates from ffmpeg/mplayer cvs'es in xbmc today (or any day) then you need to lean how to port the updated code over to xbmc source code and then compile it yourself, ...or you just have to have patience and wait for the next mplayer point release and then for the official xbmc devs to port it to xbmc cvs. ps! the h.264 code in ffmpeg/mplayer cvs'es really have been updated every day for the last month as it's gaining codec developer so it is getting many new features/functions/bug-fixes fast so best thing for you to do if you can't code is to support those (ffmpeg/mplayer) developers by submitting proper bug-reports and problem-samples to them, (and not team-xbmc as we are not codec developers).

[bob0r]

try this totally unsupported and likely never to be updated dll. if it works, great, if it doesn't, i won't be fixing it.

i only tried a few nero digital avc samples but most of them required too much cpu power so it plays with late frames, dropping frames or just doesn't play at all. so if it's not playing try encoding it with less options, less bitrate, less audiochannels...
merged some matroska demuxing stuff in there too but i have no idea if it works.

unsupported, hmm time to start a paypal thread for new coders.

i think xbmc should have support for any possible codec out there, programmable as modules.

anyways, i quoted this .dll post to share my results.
xbmc.2005.0203
bbc.2.england.20.jan.2005.x264vfw.revision126.default.settings.nfo:
source: satellite astra 2a/b/d 28.2e, bbc 2 england
video: x264vfw.revision126 1019kbps
audio: he aac, nero vbr (radio low) ~47kbps
lenght: 00:05:18.200
 size: 41,677 kb

bbc.2.england.20.jan.2005.x264vfw.revision126.default.settings.avi

default mplayer.dll and codecs.conf
video plays, but seems to "stall/stutter", probably a buffer problem, as skipping goes smooth as hell.
no audio (.aac merged into .avi).

this updated mplayer.dll and codecs.conf
same video as above, still stalls/stutters, but the audio is working, and even though it stalls/stutters, the audio stays in perfect sync.

avc (nero/x264) aac (nero he aac+ v2) etc... are the future, its already changing the internet radio scene.

knowing xbmc does not support mp3pro   , not properly supporting aac (he + v2) will not be a good thing.

an educational remark:
if we have to wait for others to make our players and take in account legal issues, i guess its time for others to step in and change this monopoly position  :lol:

(or we just wait for the next-gen consoles  :nuts: )

[pike]

maybe you fail to realize why "mp3pro" (cool name for a crappy format) and he-aac is poorly supported?

not all codecs are opensource you see, even licenscing is involved. when it comes to these 2 codecs, thats the exact reason why it will be hard to add support for them.

and we said this many many times before, we don't have time to develop codecs/decoders, we rely on mplayer for that task, thats the tree you should bark on.

[bob0r]

ok :verysad:

relying on open source for a player that only plays on a hacked console.

oh well, i had my hopes up, now they are all gone.
god bless the grey areas...

... anyways.
i have read x264 was supported, can anyone explain to me why x264 video stalls/struggles with playback?

when you skip the x264 video, it goes very smooth, telling me the xbox is fast enough. or am i wrong?

it's open source, so why isn't it supported properly?

http://www.videolan.org/x264.html