Good Movie Playing App?

Hey everyone, been having fun in RISC OS land.. have been using it for two weeks straight. looking for a good MP4 playback app. I have DVDs that I own that I have ripped and would like to watch them on the PI. I tried Mplayer but only the first frame showed up. Any other suggestions, or would I be better off getting a Panda or Beagle Board?

Chris

There is not really a good movie playing app.
MPlayer and ffplay are playing MP4.
Best results are with PandaES. Pi is to slow.
You can also use !KinoAmp but it only play MPEG 1+2 and VOB.

Should point out that RISC OS cannot make use of the binary blobs available for Linux, and as such we lack support for hardware acceleration of video. The current MPlayer does the decoding entirely in software, and as such will struggle with anything much over 320×240.

I’d suggest KinoAmp and ripping them to mpeg 1/2. It works fine on a pandaboard.
If you’re looking at a new board you may want to consider an iMX from RComp.

I also use KinoAmp with MPEG 1/2. Most formats you can convert with ffmpeg. Ac3 sound failed at the moment but Christopher works on it.
I mean there is a VPN/Neon ffmpeg and mplayer aviable from Chris Gransden. But it is “Panda optimized”.

Doesn’t the new Raspberry Pi 2 support VPF/Neon? Shouldn’t that boost decoding significantly?

I also use KinoAmp with MPEG 1/2. Most formats you can convert with ffmpeg. Ac3 sound failed at the moment but Christopher works on it.

Beware that KinoAmp only support basic AC3. I have seen from the Transport Stream specs (used in Digital Broadcasting and BluRay) that there is an EAC3 (enhanced) codec. This one would need transcoding.

You can also use !KinoAmp but it only play MPEG 1+2 and VOB.

The latest version of KinoAmp can be used to play unprotected/deprotected DVDs by dragging the VIDEO_TS folder to its icon.
For protected DVDs, KinoAmp can negociate with a DVD drive to decrypt the info, so you select from KinoAmp’s menu the drive from which to play the DVD. Note that the drive must have the appropriate region set for this to work.

Edit: I don’t sure of the performance on the Pi1. A Pi3 can do DVD decoding and scaling to Full-HD to near normal FPS even without video overlays. A Pi4 can do the same for Full-HD streams. I can’t remember if Pi1 has either NEON instructions or video overlays which are 2 big performance boosters. If not you can expect some serious frame dropping.

I have seen from the Transport Stream specs (used in Digital Broadcasting and BluRay) that there is an EAC3 (enhanced) codec.

Aside from the ill-fated HD DVD, I’ve never seen EAC3 “in the wild”. It’s not a so-called “mandatory” format for Blu-ray and therefore any discs using the format will also offer the audio in a different format (usually DTS HD).

There’s a Windows tool called eac3to which can convert EAC3 audio to other formats. I don’t believe it’s open source and I’m pretty sure it depends on a Windows way of doing things anyway.

It’s not a so-called “mandatory” format for Blu-ray

If it does turn up on Blu-ray, it’s used as an extension to AC3, which is always present if EAC3 is in use, so one could use the AC3 stream and ignore the EAC3 part…

Transport Stream specs (used in Digital Broadcasting

Real life example – BBC 1 HD offers two streams, MP2 MPEG stereo, and ATSC A/52A (AC-3). The AC-3 is the primary audio, the MP2 is the narrative audio (taken from a TS dump of the Dr Who New Year special 2022/01/01).

The only other off-air recording that I have is from Horror Channel, and that doesn’t bear talking about. SD MPEG2 with a bitrate that is just pitiful.

If it does turn up on Blu-ray, it’s used as an extension to AC3, which is always present if EAC3 is in use, so one could use the AC3 stream and ignore the EAC3 part…

Interesting; I wasn’t aware of that. On HD DVD they lacked the AC3 “core”, probably as a space-saving measure because the spec mandated EAC3 support in all players.