Notices

I've been having major issues with mplayer freezing (on a 770 with IT2006)

The videos have been converted with Media Converter (I'm guessing XVid), and play fine in the built in player (at lower res), but as I said, mplayer hangs. The same videos play fine on my N73 via the DivX player application.

Any suggestions?

Please post a bugreport with more information (exact versions of your OS and mplayer), also a download link to the file which is causing problems is needed. If you run mplayer from xterm to play this file, mplayer will output a lot of information to the console, this information usually also helps.

sounds odd, as I've had no problems playing files on mplayer on 770. Do you have hacker edition?

I've found that I can't play large videos with mplayer on my 770 IT006 if I have virtual memory enabled. At least from my mmc, didn't try streaming.

desiv

Can you provide a bit more details? What does it mean "can't play"? Does it simply not start video playback, freezes at start, freezes in the middle of movie, reboots the device or whatever? Do small videos play better? Do the problems disappear with virtual memory disabled? Is the problem always reproducible/often reproducible/occurs rarely?

Well, using wifi for just anything (not only video streaming) causes troubles on my 770. The device becomes rather unstable, applications crash quite often or even reboot the device. So I can't guarantee anything when streaming video (or even local video playback with wifi connection established). I myself stopped using wifi long ago. But that does not necessarily imply that anybody would encounter the same problems, it can be a defect in my device as well...

Wow.. I'll break that up and answer them.
>Can you provide a bit more details?
Yes :-)

>What does it mean "can't play"? Does it simply not start video playback, freezes at start, freezes in the middle of movie, reboots the device or whatever?
Yes, it does all of the above. Sometimes I get a little bit (never more than 5 minutes) into the movie. Sometimes, I just get to the all black screen. If I wait long enough, it sometimes stutters some of the video before dying. Infrequently, I have been able to kill mplayer, but usually it locks up and either reboots, or I pull the battery.

>Do small videos play better?
Yes, although I have similar (same?? not sure) problems when I try to view small (music) videos with ukmp. I usually view those videos with the built in front end for mplayer. Let me disable VM and try ukmp. I never tried to launch the movie with ukmp.
(Removed VM, rebooting.. (I know you wanted a play by play.. :-) )
Seems to work better. The video stuttered when it started, but after about 15 seconds, seemed to play fine in ukmp.
(White-n-Nerdy Weird Al flv file downloaded from utube.)
(Reenabling VM , rebooting- Yes, I know I should have replayed it this way BEFORE I disabled VM.. I was distracted.. :-)
OK, definately worst. umkp launched mplayer but before it went full screen, I heard the start of the video and the main part of the screen (not the side or top) went black. It paused a bit before, but only for a second or two. It's been 40 seconds like that now. OK, 1 minute, now full screen, but no motion or sound. Just the opening frame.
....
over 30 seconds, no movement...
....
I'm thinking I'm locked up.. So, de(... all black screen now...)finately worse. I think it's trying to work, but (..weird colors in the top left 1.5"x1" of the screen..) just going really really slow.
(REBOOT - NOKIA screen - by itself, I didn't do it.)
(I'll play just with mplayer frontend when it comes back.)
Selected video, playing now smooth.
I suppose that the video issue could just be a umkp problem, or related to the amount of memory that ukmp takes up???
Video still playing fine...
(Other difference, ukmp plays the video in full screen. mplayer gives me a 1/4" black border on this video.. )
>Do the problems disappear with virtual memory disabled?
Yes, I was able to watch the whole movie without problems. This is a ripped DVD 2 hour 480Mb file converted with mediaconverter.

>Is the problem always reproducible/often reproducible/occurs rarely?
Yes, with the large movie, it's for sure everytime. With smaller videos, it's a bit trickier. It's not a question of does the 770 lockup/reboot, but rather is there more jerkiness/pausing, and that could be caused by other apps I have run/am running. I don't always reboot before playing small videos. I always rebooted before watching the movie to be safe since I was having problems.

How's that? :-)

desiv
I'm running ITOS2006 3.2006.49-2

Sounds a lot like it could indeed be related to memory. Python takes a big toll on memory print. Python + ukmp takes around 15 megs of RAM (more if you have lots of albums or videos). So, I would not use it without virtual memory. But OTOH, with 64 meg (or more) virtual memory, that should not be a problem anymore. Do you have virtual memory enabled?

That's the interesting part. I only have the problems with Virtual Memory enabled. (Only use the 64 meg option, which is the highest listed on the 770 control panel)

So, from my perspective, it feels like the player is having problems when it swaps out memory to MMC. This doesn't surprise me and when I saw the problem, the first thing I did (after a clean reboot and trying again) was to disable VM. I'm a server guy, and we are told fairly early that if/when you use VM, never put it on the same disks as your apps and data. Since the disk arms have to jump back and forth. (There's more to it than that, but.. :-) Now, I know there aren't disk arms here, however the concept is the same, especially with slower drive (MMC) access. :-)

Also, I haven't tried the new kernel with the faster MMC access. Perhaps that would alleviate this issue a bit??? (I have a Kingston 1Gb MMCMobile)

desiv

OK,
I seem to not have trouble anymore playing videos with ukmp and VM ON with my 770.
Haven't tried the large movie again.
The only change was that I upgraded my kernel with fanoush's (sp?) high speed mmc kernel.
Now, even with just 32 Mb VM, videos start quick and seem to play great!
Thanx,
desiv

Have to admit that after having first noticed the problem, I've stopped using the 770 for video

Guess I'm spoilt for choice on my commute - its either the PSP, video iPod, Nokia N73 or the 770 for video, and invariably its the PSP now .....