Latest OS tools (ffmpeg, mplayer, tsmuxer, ...) discussion

[mazey]

I haven't tested it yet because the windows build generates a false-positive with my AV program Avira, and since that's a popular AV program we can't include mplayer2 until that problem is resolved.
Unfortunately Avira don't seem very enthusiastic about fixing it.

you should use avg its alot better and also free.

[SubJunk]

I haven't tested it yet because the windows build generates a false-positive with my AV program Avira, and since that's a popular AV program we can't include mplayer2 until that problem is resolved.
Unfortunately Avira don't seem very enthusiastic about fixing it.

you should use avg its alot better and also free.

AVG is one of the worst products in terms of detection, scanning speed, false-positives, everything really. See page 9, while Avira has 97.5% detection rate (which still isn't great but it's ok) AVG is 3rd from the bottom at 91.4%. Not only is it not the best, but it is usually close to the worst. Make sure to look through the other comparatives on that website to see how consistently it fails.

In the tech industry the name "AVG" is a joke because it's also the abbreviation that can describe the product (average)

[mazey]

I haven't tested it yet because the windows build generates a false-positive with my AV program Avira, and since that's a popular AV program we can't include mplayer2 until that problem is resolved.
Unfortunately Avira don't seem very enthusiastic about fixing it.

you should use avg its alot better and also free.

AVG is one of the worst products in terms of detection, scanning speed, false-positives, everything really. See page 9, while Avira has 97.5% detection rate AVG is 3rd from the bottom at 91.4%. Not only is it not the best, but it is usually close to the worst. Make sure to look through the other comparatives on that website to see how consistently it fails.

i been using it for years and never had any problems with it or virus's though im very careful what i install, never tried avira but im happy with avg so prob never will. if avg wasnt around though avira would be my 2nd choice.

[marco275]

So Avira is ruining it for the rest of us just kidding.
With Avast i get no warning.

Looks like in an upcomming version of mplayer2 they will add mencoder functionality. So i think that looks promising.

3. Why was MEncoder removed? Some people were still using it.

The MEncoder codebase was in very bad shape. The code quality and architecture was bad in general, and there were lots of known bugs that caused failures or more or less subtly corrupt output in a variety of circumstances. Fixing it would have required a lot of effort, and nobody was working on it. MEncoder duplicated various parts of the playback functionality and did that badly; adding some encoding support on top of the player side is overall less work than fixing all the flaws in MEncoder (see next question).

Letting MEncoder stay around in its semi-broken state was less of an issue in MPlayer as it could mostly be ignored; changes in mplayer2 meant that keeping MEncoder compiling at all would have required active work, and this wasn't really worth it considering that MEncoder development was a dead end.

4. I was using MEncoder before. What can I do now?

There's a development branch which adds some encoding functionality to mplayer2. The functionality will likely be merged to the main repository before releasing version 2.1. You can see the current status here. This is not meant to be an exact duplicate of MEncoder functionality with bugs fixed, but it should be suitable for some of the same uses (and some things that were not possible with MEncoder).

Other alternatives are programs like libav/FFmpeg and format-specific muxing applications (typically a lot more reliable than MEncoder in cases where they can be used). And it's still possible to build MEncoder from the MPlayer tree if you really need some specific functionality which isn't available elsewhere.

Edit: Tried replacing mplayer file with mplayer2, didn't work, thumbnails and dvd.iso playback stopped working.

[ExSport]

New version of FFmpeg/Mplayer/MEncoder uploaded:
http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer-win32.php

[Raptor399]

In another thread I found the reason why the latest version of mencoder does not work on OSX. PMS calls mencoder with the argument "acodec=ac3". The result is distorted and skewed audio and a notice in the "debug.log":

Code: Select all

Encoder requires input not properly supported.Try using e.g. 'ac3_fixed' instead of 'ac3' as codec

I ran some tests and that indeed seems to be the solution, using "acodec=ac3_fixed" results in normal audio.
Well, at least it works for OSX. I'm not sure it would work on the other systems as well.

Does the same message occur on Windows and Linux?

[marco275]

Comment by project member subj...@gmail.com, Yesterday (33 hours ago)

That's definitely the goal soon, though right now it's being blocked by Avira which detects mplayer2-vo-lavc (the mplayer2 equivalent of MEncoder) as a virus.
*queue a flood of users on our forums blaming us for infecting their computer*

Why not show a warning message about this during the installation procedure and at the download link, so people can decide what they want to do from there.
I think most people who are on this forum are capable of making the decision what they want to do.
Waiting on some crappy antivirus programmers to fix there buggs stagnating the development of a great programm as PMS seems silly to me.

[Raptor399]

Actually, when you compare the number of commits and the interval at which the occur, I'm not sure which one to prefer.

MPlayer may be broken carry the weight of old crappy code with it, but it has an active developer community behind it committing often.
Mplayer2 may carry much promise, but I barely see any commits being done and only by one person.

From a layman point of view the latter seems worse; promise is nice, but doesn't solve the immediate problems with current PMS builds.

[SharkHunter]

If the only thing stopping from using mplayer2 is a anti-virus program I say that it is a no issue. Like marco275 says above give a warning or so.
But there might be other issues stopping mplayer2 (like raptor399 says). I for sure would at least like to try out an mplayer2 based version.Can we see a SB with perhaps? Or prepare the code for mplayer2 but tell the users to download it themself.

[chocolateboy]

Having played with it for (only) a few days, I would love to use MPlayer2 for PMS (and PMSEncoder), but...

If the only thing stopping from using mplayer2 is a anti-virus program I say that it is a no issue. Like marco275 says above give a warning or so.
But there might be other issues stopping mplayer2 (like raptor399 says).

That's not the only thing stopping us from immediately adopting the MPlayer2 uau-vo-lavc branch. This list isn't complete...

1. No Mac OS X build.
2. There is no way for MPlayer2 and MPlayer/MEncoder to peacefully coexist on all platforms.
3. Yes, as mentioned by Raptor399, as shiny as MPlayer2 is, it's still tumbleware compared to MPlayer.
4. Adding support for MPlayer2 to PMS will involve a) bundling/maintaining a statically-linked MPlayer2 binary (with divVerent's patches) on all platforms and b) adding another horrible (to write) GUI to allow users to customize the options/profiles that MPlayer2/divVerent has added/will add.

MPlayer2 (+ divVerent's branch) holds a lot of promise, but it's not a magic bullet or a drop-in replacement for MEncoder. Things that didn't work with MEncoder won't (necessarily) magically start to work with MPlayer2. And it's quite possible that some features that used to work with MEncoder won't work with/be supported by MPlayer2.