[geeks] irixdivx / mplayer and AVIs

[Rob Fielding]

Hi,

I'm currently having a bit of a problem and i was wondering if anyone 
else out there had anywhere remotely near the hassle I'm getting trying 
to take AVI's from a camera (via linux box) and play them on my IRIX box.

The setup is :

USB camera into linux box, with libgphoto2 used to grab pics/avi's[3]. 
This all works fine.
SSI Octane can display all avi's fine using mplayer [1], however 
irixdivx cannot seem to display them, instead just displaying a 
pixelated fuz in the last 4 or 5 lines at the bottom of a blank window. 
Sound is present in some cases, see below.

The idea is :

To display the movies on the Octane because it has a bigger screen. It's 
also desirable to use IRIXDivx over MPlayer despite the fact I like 
mplayer alot, it's IRIX support has been up and down (see [1]) and the 
patches added (see[1]) require TRAMS to get the best out of it. As 
IRIXDivx has better SGI hardware support, it's more desirable to use 
when scaling up the movie - in my set-up.

Problem is getting IRIXDivx to play ball with the files I'm producing.  
According to Brandans site it supports plenty of codecs which should be 
trivial to produce from my mlayer set-up on linux. However, my 
experience in trying to turn the files [3] into anything I hope IRIXDivx 
likes - AVI header; somesort of DIVX/MPEG4 format - all end up with a 
predominantly  blank screen with pixelated fuz I described above in 
IRIXDivx, but play ok on IRIX/Mplayer. The mencoded files with an MPEG 
header produce picture, but no sound.

I've tried all sorts of  lavcodec options to encoded files alone with 
lame, pcm and straight copy for the audio. The real difference is 
setting either an AVI or MPEG header. IRIXDivx likes my MPEG file but 
not my AVI files. So I'm thinking endian problem ? Anyone got any clues ?

Best regards,

Rob



[1] mplayer
http://www.kanera.de/irix/MPlayer-0.90-rc3-mips4.tardist
also built recent pre 90 and released sources however mixed results as 
they don't contain the patches in the above tardist and also (aparently) 
sound is screwed on sgi
Timo: Have you submitted the patches used in the above tardist to the 
mplayer guys ?

[2] irixdiv
http://www.blackboxcentral.com/sgimonkey/index.html
Cheers, Brandan - you are doing great work - but how come you didn't 
just contribute to mplayer people ?
Gotach: IRIXDivx seems use the filename extension to help workout what 
codec to use when displaying movies.

[3] AVI from Cannon IXUS 400
AVI file MJPG  320x240  24bpp  15.00 fps with PCM sound 11024 Hz, 1 ch, 
8 bit