[MPlayer-users] Trouble playing HD Windows Media

[Corey Hickey]

Jeff Cook wrote:
>> I'm not sure why you would expect the video to be downscaled by default;
>> mplayer doesn't upscale unless you tell it to, either.
>>
>> Actually, there is a bug somewhere when playing the hd wmv files I've
>> seen -- the aspect ratio is wrong. Such files are not actually HD
>> resolution: they're 1440x1080 instead of 1920x1280 and need to be
>> upscaled horizontally or the aspect ratio is incorrect. I don't know if
>> it's an mplayer bug; I've been too lazy to investigate it, so that's my
>> fault. The workaround is to use '-aspect 1920:1080' to force the scaling.
> 
> Hmmm. OK, thanks for letting me know. : )
> 
> 
>> That does indeed sound like your system is too slow, but I agree that an
>> Athlon64 3200+ should be more than enough. We'll see.
> 
> Yeah. I can play even other Windows Media videos of higher resolutions
> without  a hitch -- I'm pretty sure it's not my hardware.
> 
>> Ick, I can't get to those files. Picking through a bunch of
>> subscriber-only webpages to download a file is beyond the attention span
>> of most of us. Please do one of these:
>>
>> 1. Upload the file to your anonymous http/ftp server if you have one.
>> 2. Upload the file to ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming.
>> 3. Try to find a publically available file that has the same problem.
> 
> OK, I guess I'll just upload brothersarms3_ot_mul_050106_hd.wmv to the
> mplayer ftp; it should be up within an hour or two (of 1:02 PM CDT).
> Thanks for the help. : )

You mean 169_brothersarms3_ot_mul_050106_hd.wmv.

Anyway, I took a look at it -- I see what you mean. Offhand, it appears 
to be a demuxer issue, but I can't tell any more. Sometimes in these 
situations '-demuxer lavf' helps, but it doesn't here. It does print 
some interesting lines:

[wmv3 @ 0x85fd2e8]This decoder is not supposed to produce picture. Dont 
report this as a bug!
[wmv3 @ 0x85fd2e8]Profile 1:
frmrtq_postproc=6, bitrtq_postproc=31
LoopFilter=0, MultiRes=0, FastUVMV=0, Extended MV=0
Rangered=0, VSTransform=1, Overlap=1, SyncMarker=0
DQuant=0, Quantizer mode=0, Max B frames=0

This issue is probably beyond my abilities within the free time I have, 
but hopefully another developer take notice and try see what's happening.

> Also, I'm a developer and I've always wanted to get more into projects
> like mplayer, but I don't know enough about programming video or
> whatever to do much of anything. Is there a good resource I can go to to
> get the foundation I'd need to be valuable to mplayer? I'll try to hunt
> down and subscribe to a dev list soon.

Great! I recommed subscribing to some mailing lists:
mplayer-dev-eng at mplayerhq.hu
mplayer-cvslog at mplayerhq.hu
mplayer-docs at mplayerhq.hu
ffmpeg-devel at mplayerhq.hu
ffmpeg-cvslog at mplayerhq.hu

You can find useful information, learn who does what, and get used to 
the terminology.

-Corey