MPlayer Weekly News #1 - December 1st, 2002 =========================================== Welcome to MPlayer's first weekly newsletter! We have decided to release news often, to get an easier job, when writing the ChangeLog. Note: all of the listed efforts are mostly in the CVS! 1, Help in MWN (MPlayer Weekly News) needed! Contact the creators (listed in the bottom of this text) if you want to join! 2, Active Developers and Doc-Writers wanted! We need more doc-writers, because most of them are away and the developers have to write the documentations themselves! It'd be nice to have some other doc-writers, that the developers can concentrate to their work. If you feel yourself courageous enough and have some language knowledge, please contact us and join the team! Translators are wanted, too! Currently MPlayer contains 6 translations of the docs. Some of them are more up-to-date than the others. Note: the main (english) version is also a bit outdated! 3, Release is coming Yes, the new release will come...someday ;) Some "magic" days: Dec. 6, Dec. 24, Dec. 31, Jan. 1 (0.60 was released on 2001. jan. 1). There's no freeze date decided yet, as usual. Use the latest pre or cvs versions only! We do not accept bugreports with older versions! 4, QuickTime efforts Yes, as you should have noticed, MPlayer is the first project, which supports the QT codecs under Linux x86 (FreeBSD was reported as working too!) There's a HOWTO out there at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/~alex/codecs/qt-howto.txt Good news: SVQ1 decoding and both QT5 and QT6 DLLs are working! 5, DMO Audio/Video API support -- WMA9 and WMV9 This one comes from the avifile project (especially from Zdenek Kabelac). Download the codecpack from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/Win32_dmo.tgz Note: only this version of codecpack is reported as working! 6, MJPEG2000 support First only with 2 DLLs: one from ImagePower, the other from Morgan MultiMedia. Use latest CVS and download the dlls from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/~alex/codecs/mjpeg2kdlls.tar.bz2 7, Lots of GUI fixes and cleanup It's in the CVS, it should be now more robust, with a smaller codebase. 8, Short changelog: * ao_oss + menu, xscreensaver fixes Now the fd opened by ao_oss isn't given to the child processes. * menu + solaris fixes * some input code fixes * DOCS: Nvidia TV-Out and Skin-Howto updated. * NAS audio output volume setting support 9, Future plans Short term plans: * ZyGo, BeHereiVideo and other QT codecs working * QT cleanup Long term plans: * release * SVQ1/3 encoding * opensource Indeo, QDM, Qclp and SVQ3 * more modularized codebase 10, Actual flames (A = the assumption, T = the truth) A: LOTR: The Two Towers trailer isn't working T: It is! The problem is that the trailer includes one (or more) jpeg still images with a lower video id than the video track. By running MPlayer it should display some information about the available tracks: -------------- MOV track #0: 175 chunks, 1308 samples Image size: 320 x 240 (24 bpp) Display size: 320 x 240 Fourcc: SVQ3 Codec: 'Sorenson Video 3' -------------- MOV track #1: 88 chunks, 0 samples Audio bits: 16 chans: 1 rate: 44100 Fourcc: ima4 -------------- As you can see the video track id is 0, in this case it plays it fine, no need to specify extra parameters. And here comes the Two Towers sample: -------------- MOV track #0: 1 chunks, 0 samples Generic track - not completly understood! (id: 0) -------------- MOV track #1: 1 chunks, 0 samples Image size: 640 x 272 (24 bpp) Display size: 640 x 272 Fourcc: jpeg Codec: 'Photo - JPEG' -------------- MOV track #2: 1 chunks, 0 samples Generic track - not completly understood! (id: 2) -------------- MOV track #3: 1 chunks, 0 samples Generic track - not completly understood! (id: 3) -------------- MOV track #4: 1 chunks, 0 samples Generic track - not completly understood! (id: 4) -------------- MOV track #5: 730 chunks, 4394 samples MOV: Found unknown movie atom SMI (21)! Image size: 640 x 272 (0 bpp) Display size: 640 x 272 Fourcc: SVQ3 Codec: 'Sorenson Video 3' -------------- MOV track #6: 367 chunks, 0 samples Audio bits: 16 chans: 2 rate: 44100 Audio extra header: len=92 fcc=0x77617665 Fourcc: QDM2 -------------- You can see, track#0 isn't a valid video stream, track#1 is a jpeg still image (!) and so it will be defaultly selected. If you start MPlayer with the -vid 5 option, it will play the right track! A: Bad QT DLLs! T: Read the 4. point of this MWN. A: "Encrypted" MPEGs are badly playable. T: Some mpeg1 and mp3-only files are badly detected, thus they're badly played. Most of them are repeating one of the following lines: Encrypted stream but you did not request authentication!! Encrypted VOB file (not compiled with libcss support)! Read DOCS/cd-dvd.html. You can workaround most of the bugs using the -demuxer switch. For example -demuxer 1 means MPEG-ES, -demuxer 2 means MPEG-PS and -demuxer 17 means AUDIO (== MP3). (You can also have a look at the main/libmpcodecs/demuxer.h file, where all of these values are defined) 11, How can one support the MPlayer developers? Take a look at the http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/donations.html page or read the first and second point of the MWN. 12, Weekly fun Donations needed: SCSI HOWTO for Gabucino He has received a SCSI HDD and Controller this week. Thanks for the donator, but, why he hasn't included a howto for Gabu? So a howto (or help?) is awaited! ---- Impressum: Homepage: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/~alex/mwn/ Authors: Alex Beregszaszi , Istvan Sebestyen and Attila Kinali