[MPlayer-users] Amazone wmv trailer stops playing sound

[Corey Hickey]

Corey Hickey wrote:
> Jerry Geis wrote:
>> mplayer is working great or most things.
>> however there is an amazone trailer at
>>
>> http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/d/6/ad6fc147-e95f-4ffd-a2e8-cbd09ca91b00/Amazon_720.exe
>>
>> That under linux the audio stops half way through.
>>
>> Is there something I am doing wrong? I am running "mplayer Amazon.wmv" 
>> and it starts out fine
>> then audio stops after a while.
> 
> Works fine for me.
> 
> You didn't include the text output of mplayer, but if you had I'm 
> guessing you might have seen what is wrong. I think your computer is too 
>   slow (or busy) to play that file quickly enough. The buffer for 
> undecoded video gets filled up by halfway through the movie and mplayer 
> quits handling sound so it doesn't have to keep storing video packets.

On second thought, the video buffer might not be getting filled; the 
audio might just reach the end of the file first while the video lags 
behind. In either case, in a clip like that there's no indication that 
A-V sync is off and it's easy not to notice mplayer telling you there's 
a problem.


On an unrelated note, it's interesting to see that the WMV encoder's 
ratecontrol code starves the video stream from about t=20s to t=24s. I'm 
a little surprised nobody noticed that before they made it one of their 
"showcase" clips. Or maybe nobody cared. I just checked the 1080p 
version -- same problem.

-Corey