[MPlayer-users] Trouble playing HD Windows Media

[Philip Walden]

Corey Hickey wrote:

> Jeff Cook wrote:
>
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>> I'm having problems playing a few high-definition Windows Media movies
>> with mplayer. First off, the video is not scaled to match my display;
>> I'm running 1024x768 at the moment and these files are higher resolution
>> than that. The video does not scale unless I enter fullscreen.
>
>
> I'm not sure why you would expect the video to be downscaled by 
> default; mplayer doesn't upscale unless you tell it to, either.
>
> Actually, there is a bug somewhere when playing the hd wmv files I've 
> seen -- the aspect ratio is wrong. Such files are not actually HD 
> resolution: they're 1440x1080 instead of 1920x1280 and need to be 
> upscaled horizontally or the aspect ratio is incorrect. I don't know 
> if it's an mplayer bug; I've been too lazy to investigate it, so 
> that's my fault. The workaround is to use '-aspect 1920:1080' to force 
> the scaling.
>
>> Somewhere between five or fifteen seconds into the file (depending on
>> the file), I'll get a message like this:
>>
>> "A:  13.1 V:  13.1 A-V:  0.014 ct:  0.121  62/ 62  8%  8%  0.8% 0 0
>> Too many video packets in the buffer: (184 in 8500986 bytes).
>> Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec failed?
>> For AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option."
>>
>> and my sound'll cut out. It is occassionally accompanied by a header
>> informing me that my system may be too slow to play the file (it's not;
>> it's an Athlon 64 3200+ w/ 1GB RAM in dual channel).  The video
>> continues to play at full res and without noticeable problems. Sometimes
>> if I seek through it sound will come back at certain parts. This does
>> not happen every time and does not happen if I don't seek.
>
>
> That does indeed sound like your system is too slow, but I agree that 
> an Athlon64 3200+ should be more than enough. We'll see.
>
>> This is occurring within a 32-bit chroot on an AMD64 installation. Other
>> HD Windows Media files play fine in it. It happens with both the binary
>> provided by the testing repository at debian-multimedia.org and the CVS
>> version I compiled and tried directly before sending this.
>>
>> The files are:
>> callofduty3_trailer-highdef.wmv from
>> http://www.fileplanet.com/163225/160000/fileinfo/Call-of-Duty-3-E3-2006-Trailer-%5BHigh-Res%5D 
>>
>> 169_biahh_om_mul_050706_hd.wmv at
>> http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/brothersinarms3/media.html:  Brothers
>> In Arms Hell's Highway Official Movie 1; subscriber only HD video.
>> brothersarms3_ot_mul_050106_hd.wmv at
>> http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/brothersinarms3/media.html: Brothers
>> In Arms Hell's Highway Official Trailer 1; subscriber only HD video.
>> Maybe it has something to do with World War II. :p
>
>
> Ick, I can't get to those files. Picking through a bunch of 
> subscriber-only webpages to download a file is beyond the attention 
> span of most of us. Please do one of these:
>
> 1. Upload the file to your anonymous http/ftp server if you have one.
> 2. Upload the file to ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming.
> 3. Try to find a publically available file that has the same problem.

I am having the same "Too many video packets in the buffer" problem with 
a 480p HD wmv file from NASA Scanning for help, I have tried -ni, 
-nocache, -cache 32768, etc and it is no better.

Here is the link if you want to take a look.
http://anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net/anon.nasa-global/NASAHD/sts-116/STS-116_LaunchHD_480p.wmv

P.S. The HD here is stunning: 
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/hd_index.html
P.P.S. The 480p HD QT files play just fine.