DVD software

[Neill Miller]

On Thu, 1 Aug 2002 23:46:19 -0400
"Bill Fink" <billfink@mindspring.com> wrote:

> I don't think you will be able to do better than xine performance
> wise. All DVD software players have to do basically the same things
> and xine is already highly optimized.  A G3 400 is just rather
> marginal to watch DVDs.

Hello,

I wrote to Bill many months ago about having problems with Xine on my
Powerbook G3 400 (Pismo) - but I thought I'd say now (with regard to
this thread) that it's been running great for DVDs for a while now (at
1024x768, 16 bpp).  Xine has excellent performance on the machine - the
hard part was making sure the Xv extension was being used.  I later got
DRI working with XFree 4.2.0, but to be honest, I don't recall it
improving performance much.  Once Xv was working properly, the video was
smooth.

...but the sound was choppy and unbearable for a long time and I had to
patch xine to make it useable on my machine, but unfortunately it didn't
seem to work for many others.  I use OSS (compiled into kernel with
support for 100% soundblaster compatible cards) and as of Xine 0.9.6
I've been able to compile and get clean sound and video 'out of the box'
(i.e. without having to apply any kind of patch).  At that time a
working Xine (for me anyway) required a later kernel version for an OSS
related ioctl call, but I'm pretty sure that's standard these days with
a somewhat recent 2.4.18+ kernel.

The Xine FAQ at:
http://xine.sourceforge.net/xine_frame.php?page=FAQ_en
... has more information about Xv.

I'm currently running Xine 0.9.9, but don't hesitate to also compile an
older version like 0.9.6 and give it a try.  Anyway, I thought I'd
mention this because I may have painted a sad picture of what the G3 400
Powerbook is capable of to some people.  More importantly, Shawn - don't
give up...it's possible ;-)


Best regards,
-Neill.

-- 
http://www.thecodefactory.org/neillm