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> I've got the vob files split at 1gig a piece and when the next file is
> loaded
> there is a pause... the screen goes back to the gallery and then to the
> next file and carries on playing, is this normal?

I don't play files like that, so I've not seen this myself.

Why are you splitting the files at all? Both XFS and JFS have good
response time with huge files. I routinely deal with 8x 95 Gb backup
files on an XFS partition.

Try not splitting them and see how you go. Otherwise make sure that dma
is on for your hard drives - use hdparm -i /dev/hda as root to
check.

> I'm running myth on a Celeron 2.8ghz with 512meg ram so it should be good.
> I
> have set the machine up with cpu frequency scaling and watching a video
> it's at 700mHz, live tv it's at 1.05gHz, could this be it?

Doubt thats the problem. The machine should step up the instant more CPU
is required.


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On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:46, criggie@criggie.dyndns.org wrote:
> > I've got the vob files split at 1gig a piece and when the next file is
> > loaded
> > there is a pause... the screen goes back to the gallery and then to the
> > next file and carries on playing, is this normal?
>
> I don't play files like that, so I've not seen this myself.
>
Do you transcode? or what...

> Why are you splitting the files at all? Both XFS and JFS have good
> response time with huge files. I routinely deal with 8x 95 Gb backup
> files on an XFS partition.
>
> Try not splitting them and see how you go. Otherwise make sure that dma
> is on for your hard drives - use hdparm -i /dev/hda as root to
> check.
>
I use DVDDecrypter running on wine and the default is to split at 1gig plus I
rip on my main pc and transfer the files across my network to the mythtv box,
any large (full dvd vob's) files just die mid transfer so splitting seems a
good idea...
> > I'm running myth on a Celeron 2.8ghz with 512meg ram so it should be
> > good. I
> > have set the machine up with cpu frequency scaling and watching a video
> > it's at 700mHz, live tv it's at 1.05gHz, could this be it?
>
> Doubt thats the problem. The machine should step up the instant more CPU
> is required.
>
>
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--
Regards
Tim, Donna & Erin Gibson

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On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 20:47:23 +1300
"Tim, Donna & Erin Gibson" <tim_donna@slingshot.co.nz> wrote:

> On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:46, criggie@criggie.dyndns.org wrote:
> > > I've got the vob files split at 1gig a piece and when the next file is
> > > loaded
> > > there is a pause... the screen goes back to the gallery and then to the
> > > next file and carries on playing, is this normal?
> >
> > I don't play files like that, so I've not seen this myself.
> >
> Do you transcode? or what...
>
> > Why are you splitting the files at all? Both XFS and JFS have good
> > response time with huge files. I routinely deal with 8x 95 Gb backup
> > files on an XFS partition.
> >
> > Try not splitting them and see how you go. Otherwise make sure that dma
> > is on for your hard drives - use hdparm -i /dev/hda as root to
> > check.
> >
> I use DVDDecrypter running on wine and the default is to split at 1gig plus I
> rip on my main pc and transfer the files across my network to the mythtv box,
> any large (full dvd vob's) files just die mid transfer so splitting seems a
> good idea...

I suspect that the vobs are not "split" at all. DVD's are restricted to
1G file size, take a look at the video_ts directory on a dvd, none of
the files are over 1G. DVD player firmwares are not guaranteed to work
with anything over 1G, no matter that any decent OS can do so.

Therefore the vobs have probably been copied direct from the DVD to the
hard drive.

As for the pause, what are you using to play them? You can specify the
program to use in mythtv. xine is best for ful dvd rips as it deals
best with dvd menus, whereas mplayer will play only one title at a
time, without the full dvd menu experience.

Also in relation to pauses, I have noticed that

mplayer *

in a directory of media files will give a noticeable pause (as
described by you) between files, whereas

xine *

will not.

Frankly I avoid full dvd rips. They take up 4-8G and I rarely require
the "extras", which are often out takes that were left off the final
cut of the movies for a damned good reason. I prefer a DVD rip encoded
with XviD of 700M to 1.4G, and any decent extras can also be ripped
with a corresponding reduction in file size. If you work out mp4 format
and an h.264/aac codec combination then you can probably knock another
30-40% off file size[1]. Hard drive space is cheap, but theres no point
in wasting it. Those cross dressers in hollywood keep puitting out more
movies and tv programmes to fill it up, so oyu might as well be as
parsimonious with HD space as you can.


[1] people claim that h.264 will give the same quality at half the
bitrate or vastly superior quality at the same bitrate. Adding a grain
of salt I reckon a realistic target is 30-40% reduction in file size.
YMMV, particularly on fast action journeys :-)


> > > I'm running myth on a Celeron 2.8ghz with 512meg ram so it should be
> > > good. I
> > > have set the machine up with cpu frequency scaling and watching a video
> > > it's at 700mHz, live tv it's at 1.05gHz, could this be it?
> >
> > Doubt thats the problem. The machine should step up the instant more CPU
> > is required.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > mythtvnz mailing list
> > mythtvnz@lists.linuxnut.co.nz
> > http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz
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>
> --
> Regards
> Tim, Donna & Erin Gibson
>
> _______________________________________________
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> ...movies and tv programmes to fill it up, so oyu might as well be as
> parsimonious with HD space as you can.


Nick... after 2300 is too late for big words.

Just say "tight" :)


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On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 00:03:13 +1300 (NZDT)
criggie@criggie.dyndns.org wrote:

> > ...movies and tv programmes to fill it up, so oyu might as well be as
> > parsimonious with HD space as you can.
>
>
> Nick... after 2300 is too late for big words.
>
> Just say "tight" :)
>
>

yes, that would have been more thrifty too :-)


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On 2/8/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> If you work out mp4 format
> and an h.264/aac codec combination then you can probably knock another
> 30-40% off file size

Any idea what sort of spec you need to play DVD-resolution h.264
files? I can't play h.264 HD content on my desktop which is an Athlon
XP 2000+.

Steve

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On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 08:49:06 +1300
Steve Hodge wrote:

> On 2/8/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> > If you work out mp4 format
> > and an h.264/aac codec combination then you can probably knock another
> > 30-40% off file size
>
> Any idea what sort of spec you need to play DVD-resolution h.264
> files? I can't play h.264 HD content on my desktop which is an Athlon
> XP 2000+.
>
> Steve

Those are not the same thing of course, DVD resolution is certainly not
HD. I can play mp4 files at near DVD resolution on my athlon 1133
desktop and i'm pretty sure they will also play on my myth box (epia
m9000). They are not necessarily full dvd 720x576 resolution, but
probably about 600x400 or thereabouts. I don't have a lot of mp4/x264
files about.to experiment with.

I couldn't answer what is required to watch HD, but there will certainly
be people on the mythtv-user mailing list who will bombard you with
statistics :-)

Certainly the more complex the codec, the more computing power is
required to play it back. However with Moore's Law, the reducing cost of
storage space, and the increasing efficiency of codecs, we will soon
get to the point where your entire movie collection can be stored on a
flash keyring.

--
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>


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OK, thanks for all the replys...

I've only copied the main movie file to "backup" my DVD's our wee girls just
loves to watch again and again and again and.... well I'm sure you all
know...

The files are as per they were on the DVD and in
a /media/videos/dvd/moviename/files structure. No extra's and not shrunk in
any way. I use xine to play the files, might try mplayer since it's there...

Now an interesting thought, If I don't really need them as copied from the DVD
and can use a different codec which should I chose and how do I go about
this? I've not tried the myth rip dvd etc how does this work?

Regards
Tim


On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:13, Nick Rout wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 08:49:06 +1300
>
> Steve Hodge wrote:
> > On 2/8/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> > > If you work out mp4 format
> > > and an h.264/aac codec combination then you can probably knock another
> > > 30-40% off file size
> >
> > Any idea what sort of spec you need to play DVD-resolution h.264
> > files? I can't play h.264 HD content on my desktop which is an Athlon
> > XP 2000+.
> >
> > Steve
>
> Those are not the same thing of course, DVD resolution is certainly not
> HD. I can play mp4 files at near DVD resolution on my athlon 1133
> desktop and i'm pretty sure they will also play on my myth box (epia
> m9000). They are not necessarily full dvd 720x576 resolution, but
> probably about 600x400 or thereabouts. I don't have a lot of mp4/x264
> files about.to experiment with.
>
> I couldn't answer what is required to watch HD, but there will certainly
> be people on the mythtv-user mailing list who will bombard you with
> statistics :-)
>
> Certainly the more complex the codec, the more computing power is
> required to play it back. However with Moore's Law, the reducing cost of
> storage space, and the increasing efficiency of codecs, we will soon
> get to the point where your entire movie collection can be stored on a
> flash keyring.

--
Regards
Tim, Donna & Erin Gibson
ICQ - 2207616

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On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:13:04 +1300
Nick Rout wrote:

>
> On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 08:49:06 +1300
> Steve Hodge wrote:
>
> > On 2/8/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> > > If you work out mp4 format
> > > and an h.264/aac codec combination then you can probably knock another
> > > 30-40% off file size
> >
> > Any idea what sort of spec you need to play DVD-resolution h.264
> > files? I can't play h.264 HD content on my desktop which is an Athlon
> > XP 2000+.
> >
> > Steve
>

More on HD with h.264. I downloaded a movie trailer (Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (I have a 10 year old OK????)

mininova described it as "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Trailer 1 HD 720P"

midentify (from the mplayer suite) describes it as:

nick@sf ~/media/movies $ midentify PotCDMC.mov
ID_AUDIO_ID=0
ID_VIDEO_ID=1
ID_FILENAME="PotCDMC.mov"
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=avc1
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1280
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=532
ID_VIDEO_FPS=23.976
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=0.0000
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=faad
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=mp4a
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=160000
ID_AUDIO_RATE=44100
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_LENGTH=105

tcprobe describes it as:

nick@sf ~/media/movies $ tcprobe -i PotCDMC.mov
[tcprobe] Digital Video (NTSC)
[tcprobe] summary for PotCDMC.mov, (*) = not default, 0 = not detected
import frame size: -g 720x480 [720x576] (*)
aspect ratio: 4:3 (*)
frame rate: -f 29.970 [25.000] frc=4 (*)
no audio track: use "null" import module for audio

ffmpeg tells me:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2, from 'PotCDMC.mov':
Duration: 00:01:45.8, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 6290 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo

So there is some real inconsistency about how these various tools see
the file. Anyway, neither mplayer nor xine will play it on my Athlon
1133 with 512 MB RAM and nVidia card. I can kinda see what is going on,
and the sound is fine, but the hardware is clearly not fast enough to
decode that level of video. It jumps, freezes, blocks, basically
unwatchable except to get a general idea of what is going on. vlc
doesn't play the video at all, but I do need to update vlc from 0.82 to
0.84.


If anyone wants the file for comparison purposes, it is available via
bittorrent via mininova here:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/217282


--
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>


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>>On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 08:49:06 +1300
>>Steve Hodge wrote:
>>>Any idea what sort of spec you need to play DVD-resolution h.264
>>>files? I can't play h.264 HD content on my desktop which is an Athlon
>>>XP 2000+.

Sometime ago, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> More on HD with h.264. I downloaded a movie trailer (Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (I have a 10 year old OK????)
>
> If anyone wants the file for comparison purposes, it is available via
> bittorrent via mininova here:
>
> http://www.mininova.org/tor/217282

This used an average of ~55% load on my Athlon 64 3000+ with Xine
v0.99.4 (64 bit compiled)
It peaked at ~80% load though during the busy bits.
My 4 month old didn't like it much though...

cheers
H


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On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:19:49 +1300
Howard wrote:


> >
> > http://www.mininova.org/tor/217282
>
> This used an average of ~55% load on my Athlon 64 3000+ with Xine
> v0.99.4 (64 bit compiled)
> It peaked at ~80% load though during the busy bits.

OK, good stats thanks.

> My 4 month old didn't like it much though...
>
> cheers
> H
>

yeah its a bit scary :)
--
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>


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On 2/10/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> More on HD with h.264. I downloaded a movie trailer (Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (I have a 10 year old OK????)

This plays fine (with around 25% idle) with mplayer on my Sempron
2800+ (actually an overclocked 2400+). I can't play it with QT on my
Athlon XP 2000+ desktop, but I think QT is known to suck for h.264 on
Windows.

There's a bit of confusion about video formats though. It seems that
anything 1280 pixel wide and progressive is getting called 720p. E.g.
this clip is 1280x532x24fps - letterboxed 720p24. Actual 720p HDTV
content could be as high as 1280x720x60fps (true 720p60) though - 35%
more pixels at 2.5 times the frame rate. I don't think I can play that
if it's encoded with h.264!

I have an old 1080p24 Serenity trailer that I can't play with mplayer
- it drops about 80% of the frames.

The question remains though as to what sort of spec machine could play
DVD material that's been re-encoded with h.264 (i.e. 720x576x24 + DTS
or AC3 sound). That's only about a third the number of pixels of the
Pirates trailer so obviously my MythTV machine will be fine, but I
wonder how low the CPU speed can be.

Steve

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On Friday 10 February 2006 19:37, Steve Hodge wrote:
> On 2/10/06, Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz> wrote:
> > More on HD with h.264. I downloaded a movie trailer (Pirates of the
> > Caribbean 2 (I have a 10 year old OK????)
>
> This plays fine (with around 25% idle) with mplayer on my Sempron
> 2800+ (actually an overclocked 2400+). I can't play it with QT on my
> Athlon XP 2000+ desktop, but I think QT is known to suck for h.264 on
> Windows.
>
> There's a bit of confusion about video formats though. It seems that
> anything 1280 pixel wide and progressive is getting called 720p. E.g.
> this clip is 1280x532x24fps - letterboxed 720p24. Actual 720p HDTV
> content could be as high as 1280x720x60fps (true 720p60) though - 35%
> more pixels at 2.5 times the frame rate. I don't think I can play that
> if it's encoded with h.264!

Oh, interesting...

I tried playing it on my 2500+ and it played fine at just under 50% load. I
thought the reason must be that my display was sold as HDTV 720p (actually it
is 1360x768 according to X) and so the machine wasn't having to do any
scaling. However, it sounds from what you are saying like I was still doing
some scaling. That doesn't explain why my 2500 is under less load than your
2800 though...

I'm using a geforce4 440MX, standard debian built mplayer, etc. *shrug*

Corrin

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