[MPlayer-dev-eng] fixed-vo in VDPAU

[The Wanderer]

On 11/01/2009 12:50 PM, Dani Church wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 12:49, The Wanderer <wanderer at fastmail.fm> 
> wrote:
> 
>> Only sometimes. There are times when you might want this behavior -
>> for instance, what if only one of the files in your multi-file
>> sequence needed the panscan adjustments?. I for one would be
>> annoyed to have the option of getting this behavior taken away.
> 
> Personally, I'd think that if only one file in your sequence needed
> panscan adjustments, you wouldn't use fixed-vo.  Every time I've used
> the option, it's because I'm playing multiple files that are part of
> a single, contiguous movie. For example, DV camcorder captures that
> use multiple files, or possibly a long movie that has been split into
> 700 MB segments.
> 
> The documentation for fixed-vo says "only one window will be opened
> for all files."

I think this is a somewhat misleading description. As far as I
understand things, what it actually means is "the video-out method will
be initialized only once for the entire session, rather than going
through initialization and cleanup for every file". The primary
user-visible effect of this is that, while the window will visibly close
and reopen when using -nofixed-vo, that won't happen with -fixed-vo.

That doesn't mean that the VO settings don't change between files,
however; they kind of have to, if for instance you're playing files of
different resolutions.

> Is there a valid, concrete use-case example for using fixed-vo and
> not wanting to keep window settings?  I can't think of one, but I
> might be missing something.

What window settings are you thinking of, specifically?

Personally, I use -fixed-vo for two main reasons:

to avoid the reinitialization delay between files (which can be anywhere
between negligible and something over a second, though I admittedly
haven't seen the latter in quite some while), and

to avoid the brief flash back to the desktop in between files played in
fullscreen.

Counter to what Reimar said, I've seen a difference in user-visible
effect between -fixed-vo and -nofixed-vo ever since I've been using
MPlayer, and AFAIR that difference is pretty much summed up in those two
points. (Or it is now, anyway. There used to be some bugs which led to
more, and more serious, differences, but those seem to be fixed now.)

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.