mp4 video playback

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:05 pm

Hi, i'm trying to play a mp4 video on ubuntu minimal 22.04 but both kplayer and c2play crash.
Which video player should i use?

Thanks.
Giacomo

Post by **odroid** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:11 pm

Check the actual video codec format in the mp4 container.
We tested H.264 and H.265(HEVC) codec only.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:47 pm

The codec is H264. I could send the video to you if you can test it.
Thanks.
G

Post by **odroid** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 6:01 pm

Try bbb_sunflower_2160p_30fps_normal.mp4 file in this link first.
http://ftp.vim.org/ftp/ftp/pub/graphics ... ovies/BBB/

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 6:48 pm

it doesn't work. initially it makes a small sound for 1s and then i get black screen.
G

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 6:56 pm

perhaps try launching mpv player from terminal, like so:
mpv filename.mp4

Then, if it crashes as well, at least we'll get some feedback in the terminal.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 7:27 pm

mvp doesn't work. you can see the error i get in the image attached.
Thanks.
G

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 7:34 pm

Oooh, because you don't have a desktop, just Ubuntu Minimal. My bad, I didn't read your post well enough.

I play videos on my Odroid M1 on Ubuntu Minimal using mpv.
Try creating a config file ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf and add these:

Code: Select all

profile=sw-fast
vo=drm,

That comma is intentional.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 7:48 pm

Now i get this error:

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 7:56 pm

okay then, clearly this doesn't work. Unfortunately I don't have C4 to test it on.

Perhaps it will work with a bit of Wayland?

Try installing cage (should be available on Ubuntu 22) and run:
cage mpv filename.mp4

Cage creates a Wayland desktop with nothing but a single program you wish to run on it.

Try this with a previously created config file and without it.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:10 pm

tried both the cases:

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:17 pm

Wow, that ubuntu image must be really minimal, probably some other necessary components are missing. Like KMS. But unfortunately I don't know how to add it.

I'm sure video playback will work on desktop version of ubuntu. If this is acceptable for your case I would try that instead.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:26 pm

I just need to loop a video on the screen at ubuntu startup, showing nothing else before.
Is it possible with ubuntu desktop?
Thanks

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:33 pm

Certainly this is possible, but I don't think I can guide you through this process, because I'd have to experiment myself.

I think that whatever your solution will be, Ubuntu Desktop will be a good start anyway. Try installing it and see if media playback even works.
Then you can switch to TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F2, for example) and try "cage" solution that we tested today.
If this works, I'm sure Ubuntu Desktop can be instructed to not load default desktop on startup and run cage instead.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:35 pm

Ok, i will try it and will let you know.
Thanks for now.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 12:10 am

hi, i've tried with ubuntu mate 20.04 and 22.04 but both are giving errors in apt upgrade and i'm not able to install kplayer or mvp or vlc. c2play crashes.
It seems too hard for a simple job like video playback. can someone help me? i'm thinking to re-sell the odroid board.

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:02 am

Sure, just show us the errors.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:01 am

Now i'm not able to apt update and upgrade:

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:28 am

Interesting. And what's in the file it is talking about?

Here's mine. Note it's Ubuntu 20 but shouldn't be that different.

And I wonder if your SD card isn't faulty or your method of flashing it somehow flawed.

mad_ady · Post by **mad_ady** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:44 am

trivettegiacomo wrote:Now i'm not able to apt update and upgrade:

Something similar happened to me a couple of days ago, after an interrupted update (remember, the system runs unattended upgrades periodically/after boot, so expect it to be busy after being just flashed). Anyway, in my case something decided to nuke some files in /etc/pam.d (added binary nulls at the end of text files), which caused password login/sudo to fail. ssh with keys still worked. I worked out which packages had files in /etc/pam.d (dpkg -S /etc/pam.d) and reinstalled them with config restore, and that solved the issue.

In your case I'd try to reflash, boot the system and let it be for 30 minutes. Then try to install desired packages.
Normally this shouldn't happen, but I guess we're "lucky"

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:16 pm

Ah yes, "unattended upgrades", the first thing I remove on a fresh Ubuntu

Post by **odroid** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 2:03 pm

Note that there is no way to playback 4K video on Desktop GUI (X11/DRM) since the Amlogic media hardware accelerator(VPU) supports only raw framebuffer.
It is the main reason why we added two media players into the minimal image only.

Anyway, we will try reproducing the issue and fining which updates broke the VPU functionality.
Give us a few days.

Post by **odroid** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:42 pm

I could reproduce the issue with ubuntu-22.04-4.9-minimal-odroid-c4-hc4-20220705.img.xz image.

Consider temporarily using a somewhat older OS image until we find and resolve the cause of the problem.
I've just freshly flashed ubuntu-20.04-4.9-minimal-odroid-c4-hc4-20220228.img.xz image on my C4.
c2play as well as kplayer could play well a 4K H.264 video file at least.
https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-c4/os_im ... l/20220228

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 9:02 pm

ok, i tried with the ubuntu minimal 20.04 and the kplayer works but the video playback isn't fluid. c2play returns an error: Segmentation fault.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 9:08 pm

Then trying apt full-upgrade i get this error:

Post by **mdrjr** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 5:17 am

Are you using a microsd?
Looks like several files of your Filesystem is being corrupted.
This is just one issue, the video playback one I'm looking into.

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 5:33 am

Yes, it's not the first time there is something wrong with filesystem, and concerning updates again. Either a broken SD (which would be a terrible luck) or what @mad_ady said, interrupted update.

When you reboot your computer, you don't just unplug it from the power supply, do you?

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 5:39 pm

Hi, i will try to change the flashing app. currently i'm using balena etcher, do you know another similar app? if it doesn't work i will try also to change the sd (but it seems strange that is broken, with the raspberry it works fine). Are you sure that the os images available on odroid wiki are ok?
I reboot the c4 from command line.

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 7:30 pm

Etcher is fine, and your reboot method is sound as well.
Some RasPis were known for killing SD cards in the past, so who knows..

I can't recall anyone with similar issues, so I would guess the OS images are OK.
Trying with another SD card is the most logical step for now.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Mon Oct 30, 2023 5:11 am

Hi, changing the sd worked for the corrupted files! Now I'm able to apt upgrade. Now is there a way to loop a video using kplayer or c2play? Thanks

rooted · Post by **rooted** » Mon Oct 30, 2023 10:37 am

trivettegiacomo wrote:Hi, changing the sd worked for the corrupted files! Now I'm able to apt upgrade. Now is there a way to loop a video using kplayer or c2play? Thanks

I've not tested this but it should work.

Just add it to a file (play.sh for example), make executable (chmod +x play.sh) adjust the path to the actual video file (the somefile.mp4 line), and run it (./play.sh).

Code: Select all

while true; do

if ps ax | grep -v grep | grep c2play > /dev/null
     then 
     sleep 1;

else
     for i in play;
     do
     c2play /home/user/somefile.mp4
     done
fi
done

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Mon Oct 30, 2023 9:33 pm

Hi, i tested it but doesn't work, it creates a loop without showing the video and isn't possible to stop the process

mad_ady · Post by **mad_ady** » Mon Oct 30, 2023 9:41 pm

Try the simpler version:

Code: Select all

while true; do
c2play /path/to/video.mp4
done

after making sure that c2play /path/to/video.mp4 works once.

rooted · Post by **rooted** » Tue Oct 31, 2023 2:30 am

You wanted it to loop

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Tue Oct 31, 2023 5:48 pm

Hi, it doesn't work because it shows the shell black screen printing some c2play starting lines between the video executions, so the video loop is not fluid

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:46 pm

Sounds like the easiest thing to do is to add "loop" option to c2play code, to assure fluent looping.
I assume mpv or kplayer will not work with HW acceleration?

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Nov 01, 2023 12:22 am

ok for c2play, but how can i do that? i tried also with kplayer but the result was the same

mctom · Post by **mctom** » Wed Nov 01, 2023 12:51 am

c2play has been written by @crashoverride, he may be able to help you, if you know C++.
Here's source code: https://github.com/OtherCrashOverride/c2play

if mpv works in normal playback, it has a looping feature. I don't think you've tried that on the new OS image.

mpv --loop=inf file_name.mp4

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Wed Nov 01, 2023 1:19 am

ok thanks, i will try to use mpv, i'm not able to edit the c2play source code.

Post by **mdrjr** » Wed Nov 01, 2023 6:55 am

with c2play you can try -l option for infinite loop

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Thu Nov 02, 2023 6:51 am

hi, c2play -l shows a black screen between the executions and the result is not fluid. I tried also with mpv but is really slow and the end of the execution it shows the warning in the image below

rooted · Post by **rooted** » Thu Nov 02, 2023 7:15 am

A black screen for how long?

Post by **odroid** » Thu Nov 02, 2023 10:32 am

Note that 'mpv' can't utilize the VPU hardware acceleration.

mad_ady · Post by **mad_ady** » Thu Nov 02, 2023 3:08 pm

Disclainer: I'm not a C programmer, haven't looked at the code, etc, but my naive attempt to implement gapless playback (which I don't think it's really possible) would be:
- when first opening the video file, after decoding the header, save some pointer pointing at the offset at the first video block in the file
- after finishing with the last video block, instead of closing the devices in use and reopening them cleanly, instead seek back to the offset of the first block and continue reading from there (and feeding data into the video decoder, etc).

In theory it's plausible it would work. In practice I expect issues from the audio-video synchronization timestamps which suddenly go backward and will probably confuse the decoder. Not sure if there's a way to adjust them, before feeding the data into the decoder. It might be a temporary solution, because at some point they would overflow and cause issues again.

I'm sure @crashoverride has a better explanation.

Edit - I have a workaround, if a frozen frame is acceptable, instead of black. So, when the video is about to close, do a screenshot of the framebuffer (there are tools to do it). Display this to /dev/fb1 - which is the overlay for the hardware mouse cursor - after extending it to cover the whole screen. When playback loops, after the first block has been decoded, make /dev/fb1 transparent, so the video shows below.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Thu Nov 02, 2023 6:11 pm

@rooted a black screen for 1 or 2 sec.

trivettegiacomo · Post by **trivettegiacomo** » Thu Nov 02, 2023 6:12 pm

rooted wrote: ↑
Thu Nov 02, 2023 7:15 am
A black screen for how long?

for 1 or 2 sec