[MPlayer-users] How to identify missing video-codec?

[Corey Hickey]

Ivan Kowalenko wrote:
>>>>> Playing a two and a half minute long trailer (Apple produced, H. 
>>>>> 264, 480p at 2.35:1), MPlayer produced a lot of "Error while  
>>>>> decoding frame!"
>>>> Do you have framedrop enabled in an mplayer config file somewhere?
>>> I enabled it in the command line. I've never had a wonderful  
>>> experience with H.264 on my laptop, in terms of decoding it, and  
>>> I'd never used MPlayer for H.264 playback, so I used it to be on  
>>> the safe side.  I guess if that's causing the problem, then  
>>> problem solved!
>> If you're having performance problems with h.264 decoding (it needs  
>> a hefty CPU compared to other formats),
> Well, I only have 1GHz to work with, and PPC isn't the best supported  
> platform. However, when I run the trailer with QuickTime, I have next  
> to no problems

QuickTime does frame dropping -- you may notice a bit of jerkiness if 
you look closely. In any case, as far as I know (somebody correct me if 
I'm wrong) libavcodec doesn't yet have enough PowerPC optimizations to 
run as well as QuickTime.... but Apple's decoder supports only a very 
limited part of h.264, as was discussed elsewhere in this thread.

By the way, please include a blank line between quoted text and your 
response. You did in the part immediately below, but not elsewhere.

>> try the skiploopfilter option. See the man page. For example:
>>
>> $ mplayer file.mov -lavdopts skiploopfilter=nonref
> 
> You know, I find it interesting that I make mention of something, and  
> all of a sudden, I'm receiving more help for a problem with something  
> I barely use than the person who started the thread ;)

Well, I help out when there's some good combination of:
- interesting
- easy to answer
- the problem is my fault


-Corey