Mozilla, MPlayer and WMF playback
 

Hi all

I think this is a hardware / settings problem:

When I run a streaming video on my home box, it streams WMFs just fine. When I do the same on my laptop, with the same connection, the playback is strange - it almost appears as though there is a combination of 2 versions of the same stream playing, which makes it very jerky. MPlayer does fine when it is running in standalone mode, playing DVDs etc.

I have not found much looking around the web, or in the manual at the mPlayer site.

Running the same SWare on both machines: Debian testing/unstable. Installed mplayer form the .deb at marillat.fr site, for both machines.
I was not sure whether hdparm is important in steaming, but this is the output, anyway:

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 3876/240/63, sectors = 58605120, start = 0

Any pointers will be much appreciated!

Steve

The laptop is hp pavilion xf328
S

My guess would be that the laptop probably has less memory and it is shared with the video and that is what is causing the problem. I could be wrong though.

I don't think so:

Linux version 2.4.20-xfs (root@Knoppix) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)) #1 SMP Mit M<E4>r 26 15:37:36 CET 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001eff0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000001eff0000 - 000000001effffc0 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000001effffc0 - 000000001f000000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fff80000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
495MB LOWMEM available.

.....

Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1500.090 MHz processor.

from the laptop. The other machine also has 512 MB, but is much slower, 900Mhz IIRC.

Thanks for the thought, though!

Steve

Hmm ... no one seems able to help here. I am going to ask this question in a slightly diferent way in the Software forum, see if that helps

Steve

this is stream from the net is it not? maybe you are just getting a slower connection? try downloading the entire stream and playing it back localy

mplayer http://bum.com/blah.wmf -dumpstream

mplayer stream.dump

I don't think it is the net, as there has been a consistent difference between the two machines over several weeks, using the same physical connection.

That said, it would be a good way to settle this, and find out how it would play the same video if downloaded.

My problem is how to get the video! Here is the code from the relevant page, which is at:

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/sp...wallacegromit/

<!-- SET UP FILM -->
<script language="JavaScript">
var id = "free_wallace";
var site = "af";
var film = new Object();
film.url = "/bin/content/video.jsp?id=free_wallace";
film.reqplayer = "wm=1&rp=1&";
film.winsize = new Array(635,488);
film.errorurl = "/af/error/streaming.html";
film.site = "af";
</script>


How do I go about downloading this movie to a local file? I have tried some variations of the page URL combined with the movie URL, but I guess the jsp bit is where the problem lies.

Thank you for the reply.
Steve

I assume it is the one on the left?
56k = http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/sp...ree_wmp_56.asx
100k = http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/sp...ee_wmp_100.asx
300k = http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/sp...ee_wmp_300.asx

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/sp...ee_wmp_300.asx

Try that as your URL:
mplayer http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/sp...ee_wmp_300.asx
-dumpstream
mplayer stream.dump

:)

Cool

DOh! Too busy trying to see if it worked to post... ;)

Cool

Thanx for the responses. When I try this:

mplayer http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/sp...ee_wmp_300.asx -dumpstream

I get:

..blahblahblah

Playing http://wm.atomfilms.speedera.net/wm....na_wmp_300.asf
Resolving wm.atomfilms.speedera.net ...
Connecting to server wm.atomfilms.speedera.net[208.184.139.124]:80 ...
Resolving wm.atomfilms.speedera.net ...
Connecting to server wm.atomfilms.speedera.net[208.184.139.124]:80 ...
Resolving wm.atomfilms.speedera.net ...
Connecting to server wm.atomfilms.speedera.net[208.184.139.124]:80 ...
Cache size set to 1024 KBytes
Connected to server: wm.atomfilms.speedera.net
Stream not seekable!
Ahhhh, stream_chunck size is too small: 4
Error while parsing chunk header
Core dumped ;)

Exiting... (End of file)

So my chunks are too small?
Any thoughts, oh great penguins ;)
(Would that make the helpful ones here EMPEROR penguins? :p)

Thanx!
Steve

BTW: How did you construct those URLs?
S

Try playing it through without dumpstream first, then again with dumpstream. It seems like it's part of the copy-protection possibly.

Cool

Thanx, Cool.

When I played it in an XTerm, it plays well without dumpstream, no shakes or judders. No sound, but that is another problem, I would imagine.

So why would it play OK in the Term, and not as a plugin?

Steve

Are you using the same browser versions and plugin versions?

mplayer -version

gives me

MPlayer 0.90rc5-3.2.3 (C) 2000-2003 Arpad Gereoffy (see DOCS)

How do I find the plugin version?

In the preferences menu of Mozilla I find the reference to application/x-mplayer2, but I am not sure how to go from there.

which mplayer2 doen't seem to help

Thanx
Steve

OK, I found this in my pluginreg.dat in my .mozilla directory

Video Player Plug-in for QuickTime and Windows Media Player streams using mplayer:$
mplayerplug-in v0.80 handles QuickTime Windows Media Player Plugin

So the plugin and the freestanding version are not the same. Should they be?

I use Debian, and the available versions are not the same, when I use apt-get (I have the latest version of the plugin)

Steve