[MPlayer-users] DivX on slow systems

[Sebastian Rosenkiewicz]

Hi.
I've just subscribed to this mailing list because I want to ask a few
questions.
First of all, I have K6 200MHz / 64MB RAM, S3 Virge/DX, running Debian
woody, kernel 2.4.10. Obviously, I'm unable to play DivX movies under M$
Windows at all. But now I tried this new mplayer for linux. I've noticed
that a DivX file even with high quality audio/video streams, runs pretty
well, but only with sound disabled. I know that you wrote in FAQ that such
a system is just too slow, but that's not true. My system can handle such
a video stream (mplayer running with -nosound) with some mp3 file played
through mpg123 with `mono' and `downsampling' options at once.
Unfortunetly I couldn't find downsampling option on mplayer (`-srate'
simply plays the stream slower), so I've tried to implement it. I've spend
a few hours on it today, but only managed to get a distorted ~11kHz audio
that sounds rather ugly (unlike mpg123 -4, witch sounds pretty good), but
the stream was synced and played smoothly. So here's my question: are you
going to implement downgrading quality options that could be useful for
slow systems ? I don't really like the idea of buying a new computer just
for DivX movies.

Two more things:

- Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like mplayer waits for an audio frame to
finnish playing, before further computation begins (a movie is played
slower with lower -srate). Why is that ? It's a waste of CPU time.

- On my system I didn't notice any problems when i disabled reset()ing
an audio device while seeking a stream. Maybe you should consider removing
it ? It just introduces `sparks' while rewinding.

Regards, Sebastian Rosenkiewicz
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