AMV Playback at Conventions... thoughts

[Quu]

the speed of sound desync issue is one i already have had to deal with... you can't stagger the speakers in the room with different delays, because then people caught between speakers will hear a very odd distortion...

for AWA the best solution i have found is to sync the time for the 1/3 front center of the room... so people in the center will have perfect sync and the people at the very front will be getting the audio 0.6 frames early and the people at the rear of the room 0.8 seconds late... so nobody is more than a frame off... and were the majority of people sit... in the front 2/3 of the seats... get the best sync

[Mister Hatt]

0.8 seconds is more than one frame off… The noticeable desync happens at 0.1s, or 100ms, which is why 10fps is the minimum animation framerate.

[Quu]

sorry... i did not mean 0.8 seconds or 0.6 seconds... i mean 0.6 frames and 0.8 frames in a 30 fps video...

I was going from memory and not checking my notes

[DJ_Izumi]

For playback software, what about XBMC?

XBMC itself is a very versatile player built on most of the same libraries that CCCP uses, and it runs on multiple platforms. Ontop of that, it supports HTML remote command. So while XBMC is running full screen, you can be accessing it over a network, while maintaining your playlist, pausing, playing, whatever, without the audience seeing you mousing around on the projector?

[Mister Hatt]

Deeeeeerrrrrrrrr XBMC uses it's own libs for a lot of things and what it does have in common with CCCP is super out of date. Only HTPC software I know of that uses recent builds of anything is Enna and I suppose MMC, mostly because they rely on system libav/mplayer. All the others use the same decoders but way older versions, with their own custom demuxers, last I checked.

[DJ_Izumi]

Deeeeeerrrrrrrrr XBMC uses it's own libs for a lot of things and what it does have in common with CCCP is super out of date. Only HTPC software I know of that uses recent builds of anything is Enna and I suppose MMC, mostly because they rely on system libav/mplayer. All the others use the same decoders but way older versions, with their own custom demuxers, last I checked.

While XBMC is behind somewhat, the only arena where it's behind truely is 10bit h.264, which is available in the nightlies if I recall. Everything else you'd need for AMV playback is there.

It's just a suggestion, since it allows remote control via HTML interface and a few other means.

But I just use it for my HTPC. I barely touch the remote input, other than using my Windows Media IR remote.

[Mister Hatt]

It also can't read MKV properly, and has the most derp subtitle handling ever. I guess that kind of thing isn't an issue for AMVs much though, but for playback at a con you really want a proper queueing system rather than hacking software not designed for it into such a use. I've yet to see any problems with a good player rendering to a second display for any event I've staffed, while every other solution tried has been a mess.

[Quu]

I did consider XMBC for a very long time... as my original idea was two machines... one with XMBC and a second running a custom web UI i was going to script in python for XBMC (was going to be a cool reason to learn python)...

my problem with XBMC was when i tried to unify it into a single computer, with UI and playback on the same machine... i don't want the aidiance to see the XBMC interface, or any interface... they should see black and hear silence... or should see and hear a video...

that is why i transitioned to VLC with a custom skin and web interface... then into mplayer(2) with a custom wrapper app

i have decided to stick with just mplayer(2) and my conplayer for now... i don't have time to try out the libav+sdl solution before awa