Quick Update
I’m working on getting a new release out the door, hopefully within the next day or two. The main focus is bug-fixes, but it will also include a highly desired feature: AC3 and DTS down-mixing. After the release, I will move to (finally) get synced up and checked in, and then work on getting Python working.
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Happy Thanksgiving Elan and everyone celebrating it! I make a toast to all the things done..."
Yayyyy! ac3 and dts down-mixing! I really need that for my Imac
Thanks a lot!
Yeah .. it would be great to have that …
i’m already looking forward .. , thanks elan for the hard work and listening to the people’s so much !!!
That’s brilliant news, I’d like to thank you and anyone else working on this for doing such a great job, I’ve used it since I first hacked my Xbox and I love being able to use it on my Mac, down-mixing is the one feature I’ve was hoping would come out soonest, glad to know it’s almost here.
awesome…now i will actually start using the program for HT…and ditch mediacentral, front row, sapphire, centerstage etc
great work people
I’m curious, just how exactly code wise will you achieve A52/DTS downmixing?
Inside FFmpeg in XBMC video and audio players, or via PortAudio, or other?
@Elan,
Any idea why XBMC doesn’t remember the aspect ratio setting in the System -> Video hardware settings page? It always defaults to “Letterbox” on starting up the app..
any news on custom keymap.xml mappable Apple Remote buttons by us users?
Once all of these code changes are synced back up with the linuxport, how close is the port to being on par with the xbox?
What are some of the major hurdles, if any, to reaching a stable milestone?
Matt: I think you will find what you’re after on this XBMC Linux port page: http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Linux_port_project
Keep up the great work I get happier when I get an RSS notification from your site than I do when it’s a new strong bad email.
And that’s really saying something.
Extremely nice if you get the AC3 working. Thanks alot. Will donate.
/niklas
Just curious; is anything being done (if possible) to speed up the decoding of 1080p-files? The reason I am asking is that I am contemplating buying a mac mini only to run XBMC and play videofiles on, but feel a bit unsure of whether it is a good idea if some videofiles cannot be played with acceptable quality?
Any chance you have fixed the black screen on exit bug with the Aeon skin?
Excellent news - been looking forward to the down-mixing being added! Been using osxbmc the MacBook for a while now and added it on my kitchen iMac at the weekend and it rocks. Totally confused the kids when the heard the “xbox sound” coming from the Mac
@Weavus,
Which bug are you referring to exactly? I get no black screen on exit with Aeon. Must be something in your config. Aeon works perfectly for me. Best skin around by far, IMO.
@cyanist
When I use the latest Aeon skin (9a) and shutdown XBMC I get a blackscreen rather than it going back to the desktop. A few other people have reported it too and someone submitted a pastie with the output of the log.
@Nisse I don’t think there is a great deal Elan can do to speed up 1080p files as he is dependant on work done by others on the actual decoding engine.
I would suggest that a 2.4ghz dual core processor would be a safe choice when it comes to software decoding of 1080p content. This means that the current Mini’s are more suited to 720p content but the top-end one will most likely play most 1080p content with a few dropped frames but will choke on higher bitrate encodings.
Its important to remember that every 1080p video is different. Different encoding settings and more importantly different bitrates can mean the difference between smooth and choppy video and there is no set standard that people follow.
This means that someone can say they run 1080p content fine on a 1.8ghz mini but if they are using low bitrate stuff with easy options its not going to be a good guideline if you want to playback mostly video encoded with higher bitrates. It would be nice if we could get a set of standard sample files that people could test out on different Mac’s and report back dropped frames etc so people can make a good choice of what to buy. I have a 3.6ghz Core Duo that just about plays this file h t t p ://rapidshare.com/files/82525583/killa.sampla.x264.mkv.htm but thats an extreme example of high bitrate 1080p content and it will make even the top of the range Mac Pro struggle.
It already been mentioned before; Elan could make the “skiploopfilter” switch for FFmpeg optional from GUI, that should enable all 2GHz Core 2 Duo Mac minis play practially all 1080p H.264 videos out there, however at the sacrifice of perceived visual quality and possible weird color artifact on the playback of some videos.
The “skiploopfilter” switch for FFmpeg disables the in-loop deblocking part of the decoding process, in-loop deblocking is a mandatory part of H.264 decoding and gives the videos that extra visual quality H.264 is known for, but some video decoders (like the CoreAVC codec/player) successfully uses this method to achieve faster decoding on slower processors without the users watching those videos noticing any huge issues, other than a slight sacrifice of perceived visual quality (the quality will still be better than a 720p video when displayed on a 1080p screen).
Again, if “skiploopfilter” could be made optional then most people would be happy using that on their Mac mini. MPlayer and VLC also have the optioon to disable “skiploopfilter” as they also uses FFmpeg.
I still feel if your going to the effort of running 1080p video you might as well watch it in the best possible visual quality and switching off methods which degrade the quality of the video are defeating the point. I don’t see why you would want to do that vs watching files at 720p unless you are totaly blinded by the fact that 1080 is a bigger number than 720 (which many people seem to be).
Sure if its optional then by all means add it as a setting thats off by default but not at the expense of spending time developing other parts of the port i.e. Python, remote support etc.
Cool man, thanx a lot for listening. Keep up the good work!!!
Like I said if you own a new TV/display that is capable of native 1080p resolution then a 1080p H.264 encoded video with “skiploopfilter” will most likely look better than a 720p H.264 encoded video on that display as the have to be upscaled.
There are also other reasons why people might want smooth playback of 1080p H.264 encoded videos on a 2Ghz Mac mini today, maybe a 720p video version that that specific movie or TV-show can not be found, or maybe they like to stay feature proof if they already own a 2Ghz Mac mini and plan to upgrade relatively soon leaving them to download those movies or TV-shows again if they want to enjoy 1080p.
Best though I think would be to see “skiploopfilter” as a temporary workaround, so whole FFmpeg might not be the fastest decoder today it is open source and being actively developed with good improvements every month that goes by, so quite possible in 6-months to a year from now FFmpeg will be just as fast as CoreAVC even without using this “skiploopfilter” workaround, and maybe someone have by then even figured out how to off-load some parts of the decoding process to the graphics processor (even just a 10% boost via the GPU togther with other FFmpeg optimizations could together make a huge difference for the majority of 1080p H.264 encoded video).
I for one though are putting my eggs in the basket that hopes Apple will release a new updated Mac mini in June or July this year. Faster CPU and better GPU is my long term plans, rumour and speculation is that the next Mac mini will be based on Intel Centrino 2 (Montevina) GM45 and have a Intel GMA X4500 GPU, but I will be happy if it just based upon the fourth-generation Centrino (Santa Rosa) GM965 platform with a Intel GMA X3100 GPU.
As “skiploopfilter” is just a switch for FFmpeg is should take almost no time to enable, only the GUI option for disabling it might add some development time but considering the gain I think that it will be well worth the small effort.
@Anonymous Coward: The perfect combination of 1’s and 0’s. (It’s a solution for DTS and AC3 only, to be frank. 13 channel OGG files need not apply.)
@jms_uk: Not sure, please post a bug to Trac and I’ll look into it.
@LaLocaChica: No Apple Remote updates in this release, sorry. I have some interesting ideas, but nothing written yet.
@Nisse (and others, mostly Cowards): I’ll look into adding skiploopfilter support.
@Weavus: Reproduced, not yet fixed.
Thanks to all for your support and kind words. To those who have donated, a salute with my beer mug!
[...] K. Stone wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptI’m working on getting a new release out the door, hopefully within the next day or two. The main focus is bug-fixes, but it will also include a highly desired feature: AC3 and DTS down-mixing. After the release, I will move to … [...]
One fantastic factor about this app that I don’t think I have read about anyone enjoying is that XBMC on a laptop buffers and streams even your 720p vids over Wifi beautifully! When I play vids on my cutting edge Mac Wifi network it still skips a bit on “normal” 700mb vids and skips a lot on 720p.
NO NEED FOR SETTING UP A “MEDIA SERVER” TO STREAM VIDS ON MY MINI NOW!
Even the PS3 in the house has been able to pick up some stuff over UPnp
Great Job! I couldn’t settle on one Media Center solution for the Mac until now! You can bet your coding ass I will be donating when this is done!
@Weavus,
Which option do you use to exit using the Aeon skin? I remember there being a few options such as “Power”, “Restart”, “Reboot”, etc. I had the most luck using “Reboot” (which I’ve since renamed “Shutdown”). It exits properly, not actually rebooting or restarting as you would think. On closer inspection, the command given by “Reboot” was in fact XBMC.ShutDown. You can find all of this in the file Homescrollers.xml in the /skin/Aeon/PAL/ folder. Customize at will, just remember to backup the original first. After a little investigation and experimenting I’ve gotten my Aeon skin tweaked just the way I like it now.
Playing with XBMC over the last little while has given me a new appreciation for the xml language. I can only imagine how the coders feel…
I also have to add that even though I’d never use it, I think the ‘-skiploopfilter’ option would be a great feature to add. It would at least give people the option and choice to use it if they had to. Even though a 720p stream without the filter would most likely look better, that might not always be an option.
Options are good. It makes life easier to live on the bleeding edge.
@cyantist: Funny you should mention that, because I’ve been experimenting with skiploopfilter, doing “skip_loop_filter = AVDISCARD_ALL”. I haven’t observed the slightest benefit from the “bird scene” in Planet Earth, so I’m a bit confused, but also a bit drunk.
If the “skiploopfilter” does not do anything to performance when you try to enable it then you must not really have enabled it, because inloop decoding is very CPU intense (so keep an eye on your CPU activity), as “skiploopfilter” skips the inloop deblocking process when decoding H.264 it make a significant difference.
You would also notice a visual quality difference when the skiploopfilter is enabled, that is worse quality.
However if you use lavdopts=skiploopfilter=bidir (in MPlayer) then only the deblocking of b-frames will be skipped which is a good compromise as you then will hardly notice any blocking artifacts or quality degradation. I suggest that you try it with MPlayer for OS X just test.
I assume this would translate to “skip_loop_filter = AVDISCARD_BIDIR” for FFmpeg?
@Elan, minor bug details for aspect ratio settings defect now submitted to the BugTrac
WOW thats really nice, now all I want is to be able to play .img and then i´m set!
@bisebusen: i am pretty sure i am able to do that already.. have some DVD (tv-show) images and they work as far as digital sound goes.. with mixdown they would even play at normal speed, with sound
@Elan,
I don’t know if this is of interest, but I’ve noticed that some 1080i MPEG2 content is not de-interlacing correctly on playback. I’ll try and get you a sample if possible, but thought I’d give you the heads up..
@jms_uk, in XBMC on the Xbox the de-interlace filters are disabled by default, you need to enable it manually from the OSD while playing the video. I understand the reason for this is that the auto-detection routine used in order to detect interlaced video is far from perfect which causes it to activate on many progressive videos as well which is not good at all as de-interlacing a video that is not interlace will make the quality of it really bad.
Maybe the de-interlace filter is disabled by default on OS X as well?
@Elan.. Thanks for that (and the latest release), I don’t have a massive amount of 1080i material but thought I’d mention it just in case