Video mpg4 too big

[semar]

All,
I'm new in this forum and I'm quite new to PuppyLinux and Linux as well.

I'm running a Lucid Puppy from a CD.

Everything works so far, I can also watch .MPG4 video without problem, unless the video file is big, in this case the video starts to stutter, and the audio is no more in sync.

I think that the problem is with the PC, which has only 2Gb Ram. In fact, smaller .MPG4 files are reproduced without issues. That said, a workaround could be splitting a big video file in more smaller files. In this way I could watch a (big) video file when splitted in more smaller ones.

The question: is there any video editing software for Lucid Puppy I can use, in order to cut a video file into more chunks ?

If yes:
- where do I find it (link please)
- how should I install it (step by step description please)

Thanks in advance for your help,
Sergio.

[Doglover]

avidemux will do the job.

[Latitude]

Hi Semar,
2 GB of RAM is plenty for Puppy. Before you go splitting video files, you might find that the video plays better if you copy these files from the CD to the Hard Drive and then reboot from the CD:
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
lupu_XXXX.sfs

[Flash]

Also, semar, How big is this mpg4 file? Do you have any swap memory (swap partition or swap file) and are you playing the file as it downloads, or downloading it then playing it? If you're downloading it first, where are you downloading it to? (Somewhere on a hard disk drive? Somewhere in RAM, for instance /tmp?)

[p310don]

Of most importance is not the size of the file that you're trying to play, but the resolution and bit rate of the video.

Depending on your machine, it may simply not have the horsepower to play a full high definition video file without the jitters. You may be able to install drivers for GPU decoding to help with video playback too

[semar]

Thanks for the reply so far.

@Doglover,
I've downloaded avidemux but it is slow like a pig, and editing the video file is a nightmare.

@Latitude,
the video files are on the HD drive, which is the same that contains the .sfs file of LucidPuppy. It is mounted under /mnt/home and has enough free space.

What should I do with the files you posted ? (vmlinuz , initrd.gz, lupu_XXXX.sfs ) ?

@Flash,
the video file is ca. 6 Gb and resides on a local Hard Disk.

@p310don,
yes may be you're right, that's why I would try to split the video files in several chunks..

[mikeb]

Well thats the problem with video files at a higher resolution than your monitor and/or eyesight.... lag.

A am guessing Mplayer..... its default I believe is to try and play every frame and if you are running at 100% cpu that will gradually lag the video.
If you choose frame dropping in preferences that should prevent that happening.
Chopping up the film will simply reduce the symptoms not the cause.
Avidemux is dealing with huge overhead of such movies and you are trying to skip thorugh...you can set up video acceleration in preferences which may help a little...

otherwise its a case of hopefully having hardware decoding to handle such behemoths...in my humble world I just recode to something that my hardware is comfy with without loosing any significant visual quality.

mike

[mcewanw]

Increasing the Mplayer cache size might well fix the issue. In gnome-mplayer, that is under Preferences -> Mplayer.

For Mplayer, here is a good link and extract:

http://martin.ankerl.com/2006/06/10/pimp-my-mplayer/

Smooth Streaming

If your playback from webstreams, DVD or CD-ROM skips, you can try to increase the buffer size. Add these settings to your ~/.mplayer/config:

cache=8192
cache-min=4

Which means that you will have a buffer of 8MB, which should be large enough for most about all media. The second setting, cache-min=4 means that playback begins when 4% of the 8MB (~330kB) are already buffered. So your playback starts pretty early, but still builds up a large buffer while playing so that later download interruptions are not noticed.

where, in Puppy, ~/.mplayer/config generally means /root/.mplayer/config

You can always take out the cache-min=4 if you don't mind waiting for video to first start playing and the video plays better without the cache-min setting.

[p310don]

yes may be you're right, that's why I would try to split the video files in several chunks..

I think you'll find this won't work. Try it for yourself and let us know the results.

I'd recommend you'd get best results re-encoding the video to a lower resolution that works for your hardware. This can be done with programs such as ffconvert, ffmpeg, handbrake etc

What sort of hardware do you have?

[semar]

I'll definately try the gnome-player/mplayer mod/settings, thanks for the helpful instructions, really appreciated

About the hardware, well I don't have detailed infos at the moment, it is a quite old pc - at least 5 years old - "powered" by an AMD Athlon 64, MSI motherboard, 2GB Ram, SB Live! and GeForce videocard..

re-encoding the video to a lower resolution that works is also a good idea, I may give it a try, I'm only scared by the size of the file, I guess that in order to convert it completely would probably need quite a while

Sergio

[p310don]

Do you know what model geforce video card you have? You might be able to enable hardware decoding on it and then you'll be able to play almost anything

[semar]

not really, it must be an nvidia model, can't see at the moment. Is there any way to probe it in LucidPuppy and get the model type description ?

[p310don]

lspci in terminal

or

hardinfo in the menu should tell you also