OpenDML AVI's support in XBMC / MPlayer

[Gally]

hi frodo, greatly appreciate your and your team-mates effort to get our xs to play divx xvid and all other formats! :)
here are some ideas, most of which come from the xbmp suggestion box but that my mates and i would greatly love to see introduced in this media center.

1.
i was wondering if you had thought about the opendml format, which was not supported in xbmp.
i and many folks over here have many movies that sometimes exceed the 2gib limit, and have them recorded on dvd (lotr2 is 4.4 gib http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/forums/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif )

2.
dvd reading.
this defenately brought up many issues in xbmp, even when i tried changing the dvd reader, is there any workaround to get things saulted out? many films don't play when on dvd, especially big ones...
i am aware of the 1gib limit so i tried splitting the file into various 999mb chunks and using the stackfile option, but delaysbetween the chunks are very big and noticeable so that didn't do... is there a workaround? (besides even playing them from hdd sometimes used to fail...)

3.
easily upgradeable codecs.
now i'm not really into this much but i'd find it very useful if xbmp could somehow rely on a folder containing the codec/s-ffdshow latest version (maybe acm i dunno).

i hope i expressed myself correctly making it possible for u to understand, my english is quite terrible right now!
i am a graphic designer, i'll maybe try figuring some xbmc logos for u lot, but i'd like to post some pencil-logo-skethces before i eventually render them in illustrator, where can i do this?

thanks again and keep it up!

[Frodo]

i was wondering if you had thought about the opendml format, which was not supported in xbmp

please ask mplayer to include it in their software. we're using mplayer @ the moment for (avi) decoding/demuxing so they should add it. the more ppl start complaining about this @ mplayer, the more chance we have..


dvd reading.

wasnt working pretty in xbmp.
i'll only add dvd reading to xbmc if its working good.
for now, mplayer cant play dvd's nicely so forget it.
however xine has full dvd support and we're thinking about porting xine for dvd playback

easily upgradeable codecs.
again we're using ffmpeg/mplayer for all codecs.
if those guys add a new codec, we'll support it. in fact i upoaded my patch against mplayer last night 2 cvs so you guys can build your own mplayer.dll when a new version comes out

frodo

[Gally]

ok, now i'm looking for somwhere on mplayer to post the request but there seems to be no forum to post in...
any suggestion where to ask?

[Gamester17]

ok, now i'm looking for somwhere on mplayer to post the request but there seems to be no forum to post in...
any suggestion where to ask?
i think they (mplayerhq.hu (http://www.mplayerhq.hu)) have/use mailing lists, note that you should/must sign up to it first

[Gally]

ok i posted the request, lets see the answer ... :)

[dontoro]

hi,

in my wish list there is the avi > 2gb (opendml) support for xbmc.

thanks to all xbmc developers for their great works!!

tia! bye.

:)

[Gamester17]

if you guys want to see full opendml avi support anytime soon you should realy push/lobby it to the mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) devs

[Gamester17]

fyi, patch for full opendml avi support (http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-dev-eng/2004-february/023952.html) implemented into cvs a couple of hours ago, thx frodo & tilmann bitterberg

[Gamester17]

fyi, the opendml support patch was removed from cvs on 18/02-2004 since bug in it broke playback of certain .avi movies (http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?act=st;f=3;t=1634) :(

maybe we could be so bold as to ask the dev who wrote the patch ("tilmann bitterberg" <transcode@tibit.org>) if he help us?
or maybe that would be too rude?, he didn't write the patch for xbmc but for mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu), and mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) hasn't implemeneted it yet

[mplayer-dev-eng] [patch] opendml avi2.0 read support * tilmann bitterberg
http://mplayerhq.hu/piperma....39.html (http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-dev-eng/2004-february/023939.html)
http://mplayerhq.hu/piperma....52.html (http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-dev-eng/2004-february/023952.html)
http://mplayerhq.hu/piperma....06.html (http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-dev-eng/2004-february/024006.html)
http://mplayerhq.hu/piperma....29.html (http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-dev-eng/2004-february/024029.html)

update: i think it would be best if a (official or unofficial) xbmc developer/programmer contacted tilmann about this patch and xbmc

[Gamester17]

update: pike found this comment on this site (link) (http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/video-zeug/avimux%20gui/en_about_opendml.html) which may prove interesting for mplayer/xbmc developers:microsoft directshow does only support some open-dml-files! it is no problem at all to create open-dml files that meet all specifications, but that do not play in directshow!

i think that i have found all additional conditions these files have to meet after a finit amount of experimenting and evaluating reports by users who struggled with such issues. now, users can profit from the smaller overhead of open-dml-files.

the reason for this taking that long is mainly that these additional conditions are not at all logical, and that i usually had to guess when looking for these conditions and errors.

open-dml-files use a different index format, compared to old avi files, which uses less overhead (33% less). nethertheless, it is allowed to add an old index ("legacy index") to make the first part of the file 100% compatible to the old avi format.
according to my experience, this does not make any sense as long as the created open-dml files are directshow-fiend
so that might be the case with the player patch too, only those opendml/avi's with or without the "legacy index" worked after the patch was applied, we now need to find out which and relay that information to the devbelopers of this patch, anyone up for that?, use avi-mux gui (http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/video-zeug/avimux%20gui/) to create test opendml avi's with an without "legacy index", and also old riff avi 1.0

[Gamester17]

update: i sent an e-mail to tilmann bitterberg and got an reply, he said that if we can get some opendml avi/avi clip samples together that did not work in the xbmc builds with his opendml patch in it (xbmc builds 07/02-2004 to 17/02-2004) then he will look at them to see if he can fix the bug/s with this. so please help out, test then share samples on your own web/ftp space and put the link/s as replied in this thread or pm me with those links or alternativly upload the sample here (link) (http://www.xboxmediaplayer.it/upload), we will then share those samples to tilmann.

[Gamester17]

might be the case with the player patch too, only those opendml/avi's with or without the "legacy index" worked after the patch was applied, we now need to find out which and relay that information to the devbelopers of this patch, anyone up for that?, use avi-mux gui (http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/video-zeug/avimux%20gui/) to create test opendml avi's with an without "legacy index", and also old riff avi 1.0
got reply from tilmann and he does not think the "legacy index" is the cause of the problem as patch detect and bypass it: here is how the mplayer patch behaves (pseudo code)

if has_odml_superindices
forget legacy index
try to read (and verify) superindex
if error_happend
forget all about superindex
goto read_legacy_index
endif
endif

so if there is a valid super index (not a cutoff from a file or
such) it uses this (and only this) index.

i read on the avimux page that it can mux subtitles into the avi
file. my odml parser is so generic, that it will read the
subtitle indices as well but mplayer probably ignores them
afterwards. i have never seen such a file, though.

>ps! do you have an xbox, if so is it chipped and do you use xbmc? ;-)

i do have an xbox but i only use it for playing games. its
unchipped/unmodded/whatever. boring, i know.

tilmann
still need non-working opendml avi/avi's samples that worked before 05/02-2003 but not with 07-17 feb 2004 builds.
ps! tilmann also said he has an xbox but no modchip, so if someone where to donate one to him... ...who knows http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/forums/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[God-Send]

i was wondering if there was anything you guys could do to support the playback of avi files over 2 gigs?


q: why can't xbmc read/play avi video files after 2gb or play/read a 2gb+ avi video file?
a: all avi files over 2gb in size are opendml avi's and xbmc don't fully support opendml.
ps! know that xbmc has also other problems with opendml avi's that are under 2gb in size,
(a couple such problems are that xbmc cannot ff/rw in opendml, and/or video distortions).
note! reason for this is that mplayer which xbmc is based upon do not yet support opendml

[Gamester17]

that's an old faq that i simply forgot to remove. xbmc/mplayer does now support opendml avi's, if latest cvs doesn't then it's a bug.