Video playback - reasonable sized works!

[Steve Seltzer]

Ian Stirling wrote:
> Ian Stirling wrote:
>> Using a copy of mplayer originally intended for the Zaurus, mentioned
>> by anrp on IRC.
>>
>> I played back a random video - which happened to be
>> VIDEO:  MPEG1  352x240  (aspect 1)  24.000 fps  1536.0 kbps (192.0
>> kbyte/s)
>>
>> It 'just worked'.
>>
>> Well - admittedly - top was enough load to make it start losing frames
>> - but without it it stayed in sync.
>> With 32kbps mp3 audio.
>>
> Other caveats - this was simply unstretched video, taking up around 1/4
> screen.
> the scaling was segfaulting in mlpayer.

The GTA02 is supposed to have the SMedia 3362 Graphics Accelerator which
according to http://www.smediatech.com/product3362.htm has built in
video acceleration and MPEG 4 decoding capabilities.  I'm assuming this
should allow for full VGA video playback, at least of MPEG 4 content.  I
would like to know the full capabilities of this chip though, as "MPEG
4" capabilities is rather vague.

The SMedia website is also really low on technical info, which leads me
to worry that we won't see a datasheet for this thing because they want
it to keep all their technical info secret.  There is a 2 page
"Datasheet" for the 3370 which says it can only do mpeg4 simple profile,
which means no b-frames!  http://www.smediatech.com/Glamo3370_DM.pdf

On a related note, I believe that the GP2X has a modified version of
mplayer which will use their MPEG4 decoder chip.  They were violating
the GPL, but I think they've finally released the mplayer source like
they're supposed to.  That may be worth a look in order for ideas about
integrating support for the SMedia chip into mplayer.

-Steve