[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] Display framedropping state in the OSD

[Diego Biurrun]

D Richard Felker III writes:
 > On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 11:21:14PM -0300, Diego Biurrun wrote:
 > > I noticed that the "d" key toggles frame dropping, but gives no visual
 > > feedback on the OSD, unlike similar keys that toggle, e.g. subtitle
 > > visibility and similar stuff.  The attached patch fixes this and
 > > displays
 > > 
 > >   Framedropping: [on|hard|off]
 > > 
 > > on the OSD depending on whether framedrop, hardframedrop or no
 > > framedrop is currently enabled.
 > 
 > ROTFL!!! WTF do you think happens if the video is already playing too
 > slow, and the user hits "d" to turn on framedrop and all the sudden
 > osd appears? :) Yep, you guessed it! It gets even slower!

I don't think that OSD displaying has a measurable impact on
performance if you are running close to or at 100% processor load.
But this is just my uneducated guess.

On my humble Pentium MMX 233, when I play a movie the machine just
cannot handle pressing "d" freezes the video and OSD never gets
displayed (with or without my patch).  In other words, I'm having
other problems, the OSD does not seem to matter.  With a sample that
is somewhat close to the machine's limit, I can produce a stutter when
I switch from off to on.  I prefer that stutter over no feedback.
It's always possible to run with -osdlevel 0 if you are very worried
about performance.

 > In some ways the feature makes sense, yes....but it also could be
 > really counter-productive. Even worse would be when switching
 > framedrop back _off_, since then you can't drop frames to make up for
 > the slowdown of osd, so a/v will desync...

On the other hand, you could press d several times in a row because
you notice no effect, or you could accidentally switch to
hardframedrop mode or turn framedrop off, since the mode you are in is
always somewhat of a mystery if several config files are in use.

Then there is the issue of overall consistency.  The OSD provides
visual feedback for most other keypresses that are not immediately
noticeable (like mute and fullscreen).  Noticing that framedrop is on
(or which mode it is in) is not immediately obvious.  I don't think
the corner case you described warrant keeping this feature out.

Diego