Mplayer on the ARMBook

Has anybody managed to get !MPlayer working on the ARMBook?

As far as I know, it‘s roughly equivalent to a Pi 3, hardware
wise, but the latest versions of mencoder and mplayer, that
are available for the Pi 3, do not work on the ARMBook.

Whenever I try to play a video clip with it, I just get a

Stack overflow in signal handler

error message.

Is this to do with the ARM v8 processor in the ARMBook, not
supported some assembler instructions that worked on previous
generations of ARM processor?

Jon, Leeds

Certain video formats need alignment exceptions turning off to play in MPlayer. e.g. mp4. Versions of MPlayer from before about mid-2013 will fail to run completely on ARMv8.
The latest version is here. (07-May-2018 build)

The top of log file should show the exact version number similar to this,

MPlayer SVN-r8152-8.2.0 © 2000-2019 MPlayer Team.

Certain video formats need alignment exceptions turning off to play in MPlayer. e.g. mp4.

Works on ARMX6 etc. …

Use AlignEx to set temporary off.

Use AlignEx to set temporary off.

We still have software being released that doesn’t work with align exceptions on?
If it thinks it is going to be doing rotated loads on ARMv7 or later…no. Just no.

We still have software being released that doesn’t work with align exceptions on?
If it thinks it is going to be doing rotated loads on ARMv7 or later…no. Just no.

Use ffplay from here. Works without.

Jon, Leeds

Can’t help with MPlayer but that means there are at least two ARMBooks in Leeds :)

Hi, you all. I‘m still getting

Stack overflow in signal handler

even with Alignment Exceptions off, and the latest
7th May 2018 versions of mencoder and mplayer.

Chris, if you‘re reading this, have you managed to
get any games working on your ARMBook?

The only one I can get working is !Gems.

All the rest either refuse to load, or just scramble
the screen display.

Regards, Jon, Leeds

Jon have you tried PatchSWP http://www.tellima.nl/riscos/, it worked for me on a pi 3B? Not sure about the ARMBOOK. Many thanks to Bryan Hogan for pointing this link out to me.

I’ve run !PatchSWP, with mplayer and mencoder, but it’s saying

No need to patch: compiled for ARM8

for both programs, so it looks like there‘s some difference between the ARMBook and the Pi3‘s version of ARMM8.

Isn’t it possible to just do some work on the C compiler, so that it can produce code which is compatible with ALL the versions of the ARM8?

Regards, Jon

Isn’t it possible to just do some work on the C compiler, so that it can produce code which is compatible with ALL the versions of the ARM8?

What is happening is that something went wrong. This can be a number of things, from an illegal instruction (if it was an ARMv8 difference), an invalid memory access due to bugs in MPlayer or broken input that isn’t trapped, a div-by-zero, or… When this thing goes wrong, a “signal handler” is invoked.
When this signal handler begins, it attempts to claim some stack space. And it is this that is failing.

So… how are you running MPlayer? If from a command line, try setting your Next slot to something large like 128MB. That should give MPlayer plenty of memory… (it needs it!)

I‘ve increased the memory allocated to Next from 640K to 40Mb in the Tasks window, but I‘m still getting

Stack Overflow in Signal Handler

every time I try to play a video with it.

Jon

Do you use the latest mplayer in the “package environment” with doubleclick or with your own commandline/obey?
Have you try your video with ffplay I linked? Can you write a bit more? FFprobe output? Have you a downloadable video that not works?
“Big Fat Bunny” from https://peach.blender.org/download/ (use a smaller resolution at first) works on all my RISC OS machines with mplayer.
My Next is configured to 4096K.

Dear Raik

I’ve got Mplayer in Resources.

I can’t get to my RISC OS computers at the moment, but all the videos I’m trying to play, play
fine on my RiscPC, with the old version of Mplayer I’ve got on that.

When I do Show in a task window, there‘s a system variable called

mplayer$heap

but there‘s no value set for it.

I wonder if it’s expecting that to be set to stderr?

Regards

Jon

Hi Jon,

I not have an ARMBook but for the others…

I have download and install mplayer from package.
Rename the old one inside and copy the latest to this place.
Have also install the latest SharedUnixLib…
Align ecxeptions off… for mp4.
No problems.

!MPlayer !Boot … set mplayer$heap "" is “default”.

I hope that helps.