←back to thread

1113 points Bluestein | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.211s | source
Show context
Agingcoder ◴[] No.41277899[source]
I didn’t know mplayer had been forked - this looks good to me. The primary reason why I used mplayer in the early 2000s was performance, both in terms of cpu and for lack of a better word ‘ smoothness ‘.

Basically all other players seemed to produce choppy videos ( including regular dvd players ) but mplayer didn’t ( and there was no motion interpolation). A friend of mine told me that mplayer was very accurate ( ie each frame lasted exactly the same duration), unlike most players on the market at the time and this explained the ‘smooth’ feeling.

Is this smoothness advantage still the case ? Would anyone know why it felt like that years ago ?

replies(3): >>41277955 #>>41278808 #>>41279401 #
1. Dylan16807 ◴[] No.41278808[source]
That can't be it. The circuit outputting video onto the wire triggers every 1/60th of a second, always the same duration.

There are situations where a player could time things so badly an entire frame has to be skipped, but that shouldn't happen often. And it should basically never happen on a regular DVD player. Any variations smaller than that disappear; whether a frame is ready 15ms before the deadline or 1ms before the deadline has no impact on the output.