Play MPEG2 files directly

ajb · 06-05-06, 07:01 AM

I’ve been using TCPMP on my x50v for a while now and I’m extremely happy with it. I was especially impressed that it was playing 960x540 xvid files almost without any glitch.

My point is however that we’ve come to a point where storage is so cheap that you can buy a 4GB or 8GB card at a reasonable cost and that we could dispense with the whole encoding process at least on occasion and just play MPEG2 straight.

I’m aware of the license implications but that hasn’t really stopped development before. I’d also happily pay for my license - Corecodec has started charging for CoreAVC on the desktop so they’re no stranger to selling software anymore.

Ideally I’d like to just rip my DVDs or transfer my recorded TV shows without any encoding to such a large card and just play the MPEG2 straight without any conversion. The maximum DVD data rate of 9MBit/s shouldn’t present a problem to the hardware. I’ve tried it once on a DVD and got an unusable 4-5 fps due to no hardware acceleration on ffmpeg. According to Intel the 2700G processor supports MPEG2 acceleration and in any case MPEG2 is less processor intensive than MPEG4. There were some announcements from Nero but that seems to have gone quiet again.

Have I missed something here or is there really nobody who’d like to do the same thing?

**ksong12** · 06-06-06, 05:38 PM

I would still encode, to fit more stuff.

ajb · 06-07-06, 06:21 AM

How much I can fit is less of an issue to me than how quickly I can fill it. Since I change my media files on an almost daily basis for my commute I’d like to just fill my card in the morning within 20 minutes or so and then run off. Most days I just don’t have the time to sit down and start an encoding process – even when automated it still requires more intervention than a straight copy or rip job.

axzilla · 06-07-06, 09:53 AM

I still think the bitrate is too high for a microdrive. A super fast cf card can barely read at 9Mbits/s plus the axims cf interface and internal buss have limited transfer rates.

ajb · 06-08-06, 08:47 AM

I've done some testing on the transfer rates with my SD card (2GB A-Data rated 150x). In my notebook card reader I get around 33 MBit/s - maybe more is possible elsewhere as I noticed some stalling in between but the card is surely capable of DVD movie rates.

Repeating the same exercise in the PDA however (I copied a 10 MB file from the card into My Documents) I got only around 6 MBit/s - that's only half the USB 1.1 speed. If that cannot be improved it's a real shame because every other part of the device is up to it except for the badly implemented internal bus controller. While a lot of DVDs have an average of around 6MBit/s they do peak at 9MBit/s so occasional stalling would be inevitable.

Any other ideas?

axzilla · 06-08-06, 10:16 AM

you can overclock the buss but it might become unreliable if clocked too fast