YDL 6.2 Unofficial Updates! Mplayer-Mt-PS3

[antonlacon]

By the way, i have wrote a message to Stream asking him to include missing header for spu scaller and also to correct his patch. ( This means that i am going to build an object file of spu scaller using cbexlc compiler to improve perfomance on PPU and SPU part. )

If you get source for spu-scaler that compiles, please share.

[alastor]

By the way, i have wrote a message to Stream asking him to include missing header for spu scaller and also to correct his patch. ( This means that i am going to build an object file of spu scaller using cbexlc compiler to improve perfomance on PPU and SPU part. )

If you get source for spu-scaler that compiles, please share.

Of course i will - there are some clues now.

EDIT: Stream replayed to my message and after 15 mins i have got the spu_scaler.o object file, which is working ( tested by building mplayer against it ).
However there are some changes that are necessary, apart from missing header - removing strip option from makefile in the spu dir and adding -m32 option to embedspu in the same makefile. Just download a little bit modified source, extract, run make in the source dir and you should have your spu_scaler.o file.

EDIT2: Another small update. After some time i have got ppuxlc to work during build process of spu_scaler. Here is the spu_scaler object file, that has optimized PPU part in it ( built with -O5 option which gives maximum perfomance bonus using ppuxlc insteed of gcc ).

[otakusupreme]

hey... i think everything looks grand.. got everything to work that i wanted to... one thing is though that when i go to full screen in the gnome mplayer it does't really go full screen. size is the same as when video starts and it expands with like a screenshot in the background... dont know if anyone else is having this issue but then again i dont know what the above post mean... otakusupreme=extreme linux noob. well thats all i think. Thanx though, i like the players.

[gazik]

Hi all,

I wanted to thank you for your work and effort for PS3 community. I have one question regarding movie playback.
I tried to play some random video encoded in h264 in mkv container with multi-channel audio track, but i had no success.
It was very choppy. Is PS3 not capable playing this type of files, or it is not optimal for now? I mean How is done decoding process
of h264? Is it single thread on ppu? Thank you for your answers and comments.

Regards,
Petr

[otakusupreme]

ahem... sorry to botherr... but does anyone know how i can get the subtitles to work on the ps3 mt player... i dont see a menu... and is the ps3 mt-player the same as the game os video player. id like to test videos first to see if they will work in game os b4 i actually take them there... Thanks alot

your friendly neighborhood noob,
otaku supreme

[ppietro]

Hi all,

I wanted to thank you for your work and effort for PS3 community. I have one question regarding movie playback.
I tried to play some random video encoded in h264 in mkv container with multi-channel audio track, but i had no success.
It was very choppy. Is PS3 not capable playing this type of files, or it is not optimal for now? I mean How is done decoding process
of h264? Is it single thread on ppu? Thank you for your answers and comments.

Regards,
Petr

The default mplayer uses single thread w/Altivec on PPU. We are experimenting with a multi-thread version - again PPU w/Altivec. (You'll want to set your threads to 2 - the PPU is single core, dual threaded. ) Also - there is an experimental patch that adds SPU scaler support.

So far, our best performance version is patched mplayer with multi-thread & spu-scaler support. Still - probably not enough to play your mkv, though. Because the PS3 Linux screen is hypervisor abstrcted to a framebuffer display only, videos at 720p or 1080i appear to use too much processor time to deal with decoding H.264 properly.

Where the multithread/spu version of mplayer shines is in DVD resolution video (~480p) upscaled to 720p/1080i/1080p full screen. That looks very nice indeed.

If you want to try these custom builds, read through this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5975&start=60#p36528
and using ppu-gcc & multi-thread patch:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5975&start=90#p36723
and adding GUI to the above:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5975&start=135#p37060

I've tried to document my build procedures pretty well - upon review, they could be better.

In addition, jaybps3 has created an RPM of these mplayer builds, as described in the first post of this thread. It requires a little setup to install, but might be a good solution for you, if you don't feel like building from source.

Cheers,
Paul

[gazik]

Thank You for the clarifying current state of development. I'm not familiar with programming SPU, but has someone tried to port
decoding process to SPUs? If that makes a sense. I guess that scaling is least to handle for this type of video playback. The point
of my post is to get some information and possibly participate on progress.

[ppietro]

Thank You for the clarifying current state of development. I'm not familiar with programming SPU, but has someone tried to port
decoding process to SPUs? If that makes a sense. I guess that scaling is least to handle for this type of video playback. The point
of my post is to get some information and possibly participate on progress.

Here's all I know:
http://wiki.ps2dev.org/ps3:spu-medialib

Cheers,
Paul

[billb]

In addition, jaybps3 has created an RPM of these mplayer builds, as described in the first post of this thread. It requires a little setup to install, but might be a good solution for you, if you don't feel like building from source.

I've added jaybps3's RPMs to the ps3bodega testing repo to make installation a little easier.

[superryu]

This is cool and more cool because i was able to get a good korean avi movie in fullscreen with SUBTITLES!!! No Lags or anything!!

I even tried to compare it with the Totem movie player and Mplayer-Mt-PS3 just outshines it~~~~

Only small thing i see are minor vertical tearings which can really be neglected (this must be the case for not having a GPU in 720p mode)

Another thing is that when a play a 720p h.264 MKV file (yep, it's anime) then lag occurs... is this still on the fix? I know h.264 720p files

are really heavy... ( I am watching Macross Frontier)

Anyway, thanks because i don't have to run another PC for a PS3 Media server to activate subtitles while transcoding.... I can watch it

straight up in the Linux OS

[sevensharp11]

Hey Guys

I'm getting the same issue as otakusupreme. I had never used Linux until a few days ago when I got my ps3 so sorry for this!

Also i'm not sure what to do with spu_scaler files.

When I use the mplayer that is on my desktop, with the black ps3 as it's logo, I get fullscreen smooth playback of some 720p MKV files, but they are from the animated show 'the life and times of tim' which is southpark style animation so probably isn't too taxing. All other avi's play great so thanks for that. However when I fullscreen it it scrambles the desktop abit, graphics on the toolbars go missing and then come back somewhat if i hover the mouse over them.

The Gnome Mplayer, as I said before, has the same issues as otakusupreme, fullscreen doesn't go fullscreen, its the same size, but centered in the middle of the screen, with a screenshot in the background of whatever was on screen when I clicked fullscreen.

Not complaining though, I'm grateful these files are playing at all! If anyone knows of any fixes though, it would be much appreciated!

[ppietro]

When I use the mplayer that is on my desktop, with the black ps3 as it's logo, I get fullscreen smooth playback of some 720p MKV files, but they are from the animated show 'the life and times of tim' which is southpark style animation so probably isn't too taxing. All other avi's play great so thanks for that. However when I fullscreen it it scrambles the desktop abit, graphics on the toolbars go missing and then come back somewhat if i hover the mouse over them.

Right - that's exactly what's going to happen. The mplayer-ps3 code writes directly to the screen, ignoring X Windows requests. The launching script tries to work around this by opening up a big window, but there will always be some issues.

For mplayer-ps3, you're really supposed to run it from a text mode, not a graphics mode. Nothing bad will happen if you run it from a graphics mode - just the symptoms you're describing.

The Gnome Mplayer, as I said before, has the same issues as otakusupreme, fullscreen doesn't go fullscreen, its the same size, but centered in the middle of the screen, with a screenshot in the background of whatever was on screen when I clicked fullscreen.

That's because it appears to be using the original X11 video driver, not the PS3 specific driver. If I understand the installation instructions correctly, you configure gnome-mplayer by using

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/mplayer

I could be wrong, but the way I interpret this command, you're calling mplayer using the default video driver, not the PS3 specific one. That would be something like

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/mplayer -vo ps3

- which, based on its inability to handle an X Windows display, might lock-up your system.

If anyone knows of any fixes though, it would be much appreciated!

Nope - probably no fixes to either of these issues. As they say - this is behavior by design.

Cheers,
Paul

[sevensharp11]

Thanks for the reply Paul, much appreciated.

This thread has still sorted me out playing MKV's and other 420-720p files so I'm happy. I'm also considering running Linux as an OS on my other computers.. I think I may have been converted..

[otakusupreme]

hi all... im still not figuring out how to get subtitles up on .mkv files. I downloaded WORKING!! (an anime) and it has soft subs but i dnt know how to get them on with any of the video players. the mplayer mt-ps3 works well with it but i dont see a menu to turn on subtitles. any help would be appreciated.

[Jaybps3]

This is cool and more cool because i was able to get a good korean avi movie in fullscreen with SUBTITLES!!! No Lags or anything!!

I even tried to compare it with the Totem movie player and Mplayer-Mt-PS3 just outshines it~~~~

Only small thing i see are minor vertical tearings which can really be neglected (this must be the case for not having a GPU in 720p mode)

Another thing is that when a play a 720p h.264 MKV file (yep, it's anime) then lag occurs... is this still on the fix? I know h.264 720p files

are really heavy... ( I am watching Macross Frontier)

Anyway, thanks because i don't have to run another PC for a PS3 Media server to activate subtitles while transcoding.... I can watch it

straight up in the Linux OS

Cool man this insures that all the time I spent putting this together wasnt a waste