[MPlayer-dev-eng] Writing a brand new D3D video output to fix Vista Aero disabling

[Georgi Petrov]

Hi guys,

> D:\>mplayer -vo gl:yuv=1 somefile
> VO: [gl] 640x480 => 640x480 Planar YV12
>
> on a geforce3 win2k:
> mplayer -vo gl:yuv=1 -nosound -benchmark -frames 500
> BENCHMARKs: VC:   0.188s VO:   0.048s A:   0.000s Sys:   7.904s =    8.140s
> BENCHMARK%: VC:  2.3096% VO:  0.5897% A:  0.0000% Sys: 97.1007% = 100.0000%
>
> mplayer -vo directx -nosound -benchmark -frames 500
> BENCHMARKs: VC:   0.047s VO:   0.595s A:   0.000s Sys:   8.015s =    8.657s
> BENCHMARK%: VC:  0.5429% VO:  6.8731% A:  0.0000% Sys: 92.5840% = 100.0000%

Interesting... I should perform a couple of tests when I get home
tomorrow. Does -vo gl support YUY2/YV12? I'm a little bit off those
things lately. Back in 2003 I think I wrote Voodoo Banshee VIDIX
driver for MPlayer and it worked, but I never submitted it...
Nevertheless 3DFX was already dead...

I will perform tests and will post the results. I'm with the
impression that every player, which doesn't have issues with Vista
Aero uses D3D. DirectDraw uses 2D surface and it's not really
compatible with composited 3D pipeline as far as I understand. OpenGL
(-vo gl/gl2) may be an option, but I should investigate its
advantages/disadvantages. If it happens that gl/gl2 is good enough,
why doesn't it become the default renderer for Windows?

>That would be really wonderful! I wanted to do this long long ago but
>never had enough time, not to mention that I don't have much D3D
>knowledge either.

I haven't written a single line of code related to D3D, but it
shouldn't be much of an issue. Well, time should tell me. I will be
even interested in performance comparison to DirectDraw/OpenGL. And as
you guys said - having another video output will be cool. We already
have all those caca/matrix/whatever, so why not a very useful D3D? It
won't make the world worse. It may be not useful, but something tells
me it will be once it's ready :)

I will do it for fun :)

>BTW can u pls enlighten me the difference between D3D and VMR? I once
>thought the latter was intended to replace overlay in DDraw but then I
>checked VLC D3D code and found it didn't mention VMR at all

Well, it would take me a couple of days to figure everything out and
afterward I will explain everything I understand, I promise :)