[MPlayer-users] How to identify missing video-codec?

[Ivan Kowalenko]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Apr 18, 2006, at 09.38, Bernt Christandl wrote:

>
> Hello,
>
> i'm using mplayer since years and from time to time i've upgraded
> the version and the codecs up to now "...pre4" (or "pre7" my laptop)

pre4 is ancient, and pre7 is pretty old. You might want to consider  
upgrading to the latest CVS version.

[snip]

>
> My question is now: how can i find out which video-codec is missing
> and even more, whether this missing codec is available for linux and
> mplayer? (Isn't quicktime quicktime? Are there {many???} versions?)

At the moment, there is QuickTime 7. But, QuickTime files (.mov) are  
just containers, like AVI, OGM, MKV, and NUT. It's what's in the file  
that counts.

>
> Thanks,
>
> Bernt Christandl
>
> -------------------------------
>
> Output of mplayer:
>
> <user> 309 -> mplayer basic_instinct_2_h480.mov
>
> MPlayer 1.0pre4-3.3.2 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team

Yep, that's two years old.

>
> CPU: Intel Pentium 4/Xeon/Celeron Northwood 2795 MHz (Family: 8,  
> Stepping: 4)
> Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes
> CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
> Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2
>
> Reading config file /usr/local/appl/MPlayer-1.0/etc/mplayer/ 
> mplayer.conf: No
> such file or directory
> Reading config file /afs/mpa/home/beb/.mplayer/config
> Reading /afs/mpa/home/beb/.mplayer/codecs.conf: Can't open
> '/afs/mpa/home/beb/.mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
> Reading /usr/local/appl/MPlayer-1.0/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: Can't  
> open
> '/usr/local/appl/MPlayer-1.0/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf': No such
> file or directory
> Using built-in default codecs.conf.
> Font /afs/mpa/home/beb/.mplayer/font/font.desc loaded successfully!  
> (206 chars)
> Failed to open /dev/rtc: Permission denied (/dev/rtc should be  
> readable by the
> user.)
> Using usleep() timing
> Could not access the 'termcap' data base.
> Can't open input config file /afs/mpa/home/beb/.mplayer/input.conf:  
> No such
> file or directory
> Can't open input config file /usr/local/appl/MPlayer-1.0/etc/ 
> mplayer/input.conf
> : No such file or directory
> Falling back on default (hardcoded) input config

That stuff there might be kind of bad, but I can't speak for it. It's  
probably not bad.

>
> Playing basic_instinct_2_h480.mov.
> ISO: File Type Major Brand: Original QuickTime
> QuickTime/MOV file format detected.
> --------------
> MOV track #0: 557 chunks, 3337 samples
> MOV: Found unknown movie atom avcC (43)!
> MOV: Found unknown movie atom colr (18)!
> Image size: 480 x 260 (24 bpp)
> Display size: 480 x 260
> Fourcc: avc1  Codec: 'H.264'

This is probably your problem. I don't think Apple started using H. 
264 in QuickTime until mid 2005. As such, there was no real call for  
H.264 in the main stream, and its development was kind of ignored for  
the time being.

Anyway, your version of MPlayer is way out of date, and it doesn't  
know what to do with H.264 video. You should be warned that the  
version of H.264 produced in open source (known as x264) isn't  
totally up to snuff. The FFMPEG H.264 decoder is pretty good, though,  
but not perfect. Playing a two and a half minute long trailer (Apple  
produced, H.264, 480p at 2.35:1), MPlayer produced a lot of "Error  
while decoding frame!" messages, mostly because all of H.264 hasn't  
been fully reverse engineered. Your experience might be better, since  
you're using an x86 CPU and might be able to nab some QuickTime DLLs,  
but using FFmpeg, we'll see.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFERX28187keuSyQSQRAoW5AJ0cHGpokv8xe7aZXU+BBVewDFOgaQCeL53e
XLBTlzfuzFa2DyzZqATOqKw=
=JoYt
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----