[MPlayer-users] Trouble playing HD Windows Media

[Philip Walden]

Philip Walden wrote:

> Corey Hickey wrote:
>
>> Jeff Cook wrote:
>>
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> I'm having problems playing a few high-definition Windows Media movies
>>> with mplayer. First off, the video is not scaled to match my display;
>>> I'm running 1024x768 at the moment and these files are higher 
>>> resolution
>>> than that. The video does not scale unless I enter fullscreen.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>> Somewhere between five or fifteen seconds into the file (depending on
>>> the file), I'll get a message like this:
>>>
>>> "A:  13.1 V:  13.1 A-V:  0.014 ct:  0.121  62/ 62  8%  8%  0.8% 0 0
>>> Too many video packets in the buffer: (184 in 8500986 bytes).
>>> Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec 
>>> failed?
>>> For AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option."
>>>
>>> and my sound'll cut out. It is occassionally accompanied by a header
>>> informing me that my system may be too slow to play the file (it's not;
>>> it's an Athlon 64 3200+ w/ 1GB RAM in dual channel).  The video
>>> continues to play at full res and without noticeable problems. 
>>> Sometimes
>>> if I seek through it sound will come back at certain parts. This does
>>> not happen every time and does not happen if I don't seek.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>> This is occurring within a 32-bit chroot on an AMD64 installation. 
>>> Other
>>> HD Windows Media files play fine in it. It happens with both the binary
>>> provided by the testing repository at debian-multimedia.org and the CVS
>>> version I compiled and tried directly before sending this.
>>>
>>> The files are:
>>> callofduty3_trailer-highdef.wmv from
>>> http://www.fileplanet.com/163225/160000/fileinfo/Call-of-Duty-3-E3-2006-Trailer-%5BHigh-Res%5D 
>>>
>>> 169_biahh_om_mul_050706_hd.wmv at
>>> http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/brothersinarms3/media.html:  Brothers
>>> In Arms Hell's Highway Official Movie 1; subscriber only HD video.
>>> brothersarms3_ot_mul_050106_hd.wmv at
>>> http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/brothersinarms3/media.html: Brothers
>>> In Arms Hell's Highway Official Trailer 1; subscriber only HD video.
>>> Maybe it has something to do with World War II. :p
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> I am having the same "Too many video packets in the buffer" problem 
> with a 480p HD wmv file from NASA Scanning for help, I have tried -ni, 
> -nocache, -cache 32768, etc and it is no better.
>
> Here is the link if you want to take a look.
> http://anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net/anon.nasa-global/NASAHD/sts-116/STS-116_LaunchHD_480p.wmv 
>
>
> P.S. The HD here is stunning: 
> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/hd_index.html
> P.P.S. The 480p HD QT files play just fine.

oops, just noticed the QT icons point to mp4, not mov. However, there is 
still no problem playing them.