[vlc] Re: VLC 0.5.3-test2 for win32

[Gildas Bazin]

"GeoffP" <webmail-vl at rearden.com> wrote
>
> I haven't done a side-by-side comparison with the old version, but 
> this version does a pretty good job at playing back at HDTV 
> resolution(1920x1080). I had a little tearing before, but I haven't 
> noticed it with this version in initial tests.

There also is an MPEG video decoder that uses on libmpeg2 in this release. It would really be interesting to test it as it is better optimized than our own decoder (on the other hand, it doesn't yet implement a frame dropping algorithm so the perceived quality might actually be worse). I'm not sure how well it supports HDTV streams though. You can select it the preferences panel in the decoders section (Easier to access through the wxwindows interface), or using the command line with the "--codec libmpeg2"
option.

> Also, the de-interlacing (even though it
> seems to be simply discarding a field) works, and can be switched 
> on and off reliably.
>

Actually there are several deinterlacing methods available (in the preferences panel) but you might just be better off with the discard one as it is the less processor intensive.

> As a point of comparison, there is a commercial software HDTV 
> decoder product that was just released called FusionHD with a 
> proprietary decompressor. It is only able to do 960x520 resolution 
> (1/4 of full res) in real-time on the same system. So, you guys 
> should be pretty pleased to be doing 1920x1080 at close to real 
> time.
>

Neat :)

> My only major complaint is that there is still a break in the video 
> when switching to a new file in a playlist. The HD files are so 
> huge, it is helpful to break them up into pieces and put them into 
> a playlist (or better yet, have a mode where VLC plays successively 
> numbered files). Most of the commercial products (using hardware 
> MPEG decode) do this seamlessly and automatically.
>

Well this is due to the fact that as soon as the input access plugin has finished with a file, it closes all the demuxers, decoders, etc...

The only way to solve this problem would be to program a modified file access input plugin that would seemlessly switch to the next file in the playlist without closing anything. That also means vlc needs to have a way to know that the files are actually part of the same video and needs to use this access plugin (which could be done either by the user forcing this specific plugin or by using some kind of custom playlist files like modified m3u files with a special tag).

It shouldn't be hard to do, but somebody would need to find the time to work on this... maybe you are interested ? ;)

> Also, it would be great if VLC could be directed to playback the 
> video to a secondary monitor. In my setup a secondary display is 
> used for HDTV output, and the primary display is used PC 
> interaction. VLC plays back to whichever is the primary monitor on 
> the PC, so I have to move my toolbar and desktop icons to the 
> secondary display to get VLC to play there. Again, most of the
> commercial products have a way to play to a secondary monitor.
>

This shouldn't be hard to support either and I'll look into this, but I won't have anyway to test it.

>Looking good.
>

Thanks for your report :)

--
Gildas

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