[MPlayer-users] About the news : MPlayerXP - 2002.03.18

[Alban Bedel]

Hi everybody,

First like said in the news this topic alredy made I big flame war on -devel. So please
no flame here :)
Their just 2 things I like to react on as I kept my mouth shut during the flame war and
I also did something similar to what nick did (but never released). So all what I will
say is related to my experiments, but the underlaying concept is the same.

"He forked because we didn't accept his patch"
It's perhaps the case, but I didn't feeled it like this. As pointed out on -devel it's 
normal as the core concept is different and he will need more than just some patchs. 
Beside this Nick want to do something new based on mplayer. I don't think he forked 
just because of this, he surelly have some other reasons.

"His method gains not speed but smoothness" :
Really, you gain only smoothness. My version usally dropped more frames than
the classic mplayer. But beside this the overall experience was far better, I think
it was mainly comming from the fact that because it was quicker to drop frame it was
also quicker to recover.

"It helps only in some rare files on about ~400Mhz Intel speed category
systems, but it won't be faster decode (total decoding time will be the same)."
I have to say that I really disagree on this point. My system is K6-2 333 (so
really slower than a "~400Mhz Intel speed category") and as I said before
the OVERALL experience was better. Why did I say this ? A few weeks ago
I tried to watch 12 Monkeys. My file is a divx in high res (720xsomething).
Even with libavcodec many sequences where unwatchable. What happend
is that mplayer start drop frames, but for seconds. So durring all this time
the picture stay the same while the sound continue going. It's normal but
when it hang for 2~3 seconds you can't really enjoy the movie :(
Sometimes after I did the ahead decoding stuff and tried to watch this movie.
I could watch the whole movie WHITOUT ANY HANG. The average dropped frames
was of 25% (really many dropped frames) but I could see the whole movie.
All scenes where complete, I really enjoyed the movie while the first time I 
was complaining all 5 minutes because it was hanging for seconds.

So my conclusions where :
It's of no use for ppl who can alredy enjoy all their movies beacuse their box is a 
fast one.
It's really useful for low-end boxes where only PARTS of the movie are really too 
hard to be decoded in real time.

Note that I never tried Nick version. All I want to say is that imho this news is just the
pending of the flame war and not objective at all.
My opinion is that both way have their advantages, I don't want to join mplayerxp 
(because I want a full featured player wich can support both way ;) but I fell bad about 
this news entry. I hoped a little more respect for other ppl work especially when it's
only a question of programming concept and the news came from somebody who is not 
a devellopper himself (no offence here Gabucino I just disagree on what you said and 
how you presented the facts).

	Albeu