[Qt-interest] Practical use of Phonon in Windows

[Constantin Makshin]

That's rather strange. I've tried a MPEG-2, a MPEG-4 v2 and three WMV (2  
of them had WMA audio and the last one was encoded by me using mencoder  
with MP3 audio) files and have had no problems. Could you provide one of  
your "broken" files for testing purposes?

P.S.: Please reply to the list next time.

On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:35:54 +0400, Mike Inman <mangocats at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's pretty much why I threw the "help" flag, because my phonon app  
> can play the example .wmv files, but not the ones I make, and Windows  
> Media Player can play both.
>
> In "Backend Capabilites Example" I am showing support for all kinds of  
> MIME types including audio/mp3 (not sure if that's valid when it's the  
> audio track in a video file), and video/mpg msvideo x-mpeg x-mpeg2a  
> x-ms-asf x-ms-asf-plugin x-ms-wm x-ms-wmv x-ms-wmx x-ms-wvx x-msvideo
>
> So, the question becomes, from all of ffmpeg's (or any other available  
> transcoder's) options, which of them can make something compatible with  
> something above?  Unfortunately, MIME x-ms-wmv isn't very rich in detail  
> about what the codec can really handle  
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/288102 .  A funny link comes up first on  
> a Google search for "MIME x-ms-wmv ffmpeg":  
> http://gallery.menalto.com/node/82699 x-ms-wmv gone from ffmpeg  
> supported mime types list
>
> If someone is really sharp about all this, I'm looking for good support  
> of "jump to time" in Phonon, like I get for the h.264/AAC video in  
> Phonon on OS-X.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Constantin Makshin wrote:
>> On Windows Phonon uses DirectShow, the same component used by Windows   
>> Media Player (AFAIK). So if you can play a media file with WMP, you  
>> should  be able to play it with Phonon.
>>
>> Are you sure that the Phonon backend is loading successfully? What  
>> does  "capabilities" example (in "examples\phonon\capabilites"  
>> directory) say  about available features?
>>
>> On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:04:55 +0400, Mike Inman <mangocats at gmail.com>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have developed a (very) little Phonon app based on the mediaplayer
>>> demo ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/funtype/ ) - well, started
>>> developing is more like it, but I have achieved satisfactory  
>>> performance
>>> working with h.264/AAC encoded .mp4 files under OS-X.  So, now I am
>>> trying to get something (virtually anything) working under Windows.
>>>
>>> My app ( and the mediaplayer demo, since my app is little more than a
>>> re-presentation of the mediaplayer controls ) can open the demo .wmv
>>> files distributed with Vista, but when I try to transcode to .wmv using
>>> ffmpeg, I cannot find a format that Phonon will open.  I have gotten
>>> Windows Media Player to open some transcoded files using this ffmpeg
>>> command for transcoding:
>>>
>>> ---------------------
>>>
>>> ffmpeg -i shr23.mp4 -b 1200 -vcodec wmv1 -acodec libmp3lame -ar 48000
>>> -ab 160k -y shr23a.wmv
>>>
>>> FFmpeg version r11872+debian_3:0.svn20080206-12ubuntu3.1, Copyright (c)
>>> 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
>>>   configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler
>>> --enable-x11grab --prefix=/usr --enable-libgsm --enable-libtheora
>>> --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --disable-strip --enable-libfaad
>>> --enable-libfaadbin --enable-liba52 --enable-liba52bin
>>> --enable-libdc1394 --disable-armv5te --disable-armv6 --disable-altivec
>>> --disable-vis --enable-shared --disable-static
>>>   libavutil version: 49.6.0
>>>   libavcodec version: 51.50.0
>>>   libavformat version: 52.7.0
>>>   libavdevice version: 52.0.0
>>>   built on Mar 13 2009 17:48:10, gcc: 4.3.2
>>>
>>> Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate:
>>> 48000.00 (48000/1) -> 29.97 (30000/1001)
>>> Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'shr23.mp4':
>>>   Duration: 00:03:01.2, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1142 kb/s
>>>     Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264, yuv420p, 706x480 [PAR 0:1 DAR 0:1],
>>> 29.97 tb(r)
>>>     Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: mpeg4aac, 48000 Hz, stereo
>>> Output #0, asf, to 'shr23a.wmv':
>>>     Stream #0.0(eng): Video: wmv1, yuv420p, 706x480 [PAR 0:1 DAR 0:1],
>>> q=2-31, 1 kb/s, 29.97 tb(c)
>>>     Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: libmp3lame, 48000 Hz, stereo, 160 kb/s
>>> Stream mapping:
>>>   Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
>>>   Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
>>> Press [q] to stop encoding
>>> frame= 5432 fps=126 q=31.0 Lsize=   20067kB time=181.2 bitrate=   
>>> 907.0kbits/s
>>> video:15843kB audio:3541kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 3.523715%
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>
>>> The resulting .wmv file opens and plays under Windows Media Player, but
>>> gives Phonon Mediaplayer "Unknown error (0xc00d07e2)" when I attempt to
>>> open it with the phonon app on the same machine.  Google searches
>>> indicate a problem in the audio encoding, but aren't helpful (to me, at
>>> least) in resolving the problem.  Similarly, the Phonon documentation I
>>> have encountered is mostly along the lines of "try it, if it opens,
>>> great, if not, you can see where it went wrong by doing X...." which is
>>> better than nothing, but still not helpful in indicating what actually
>>> works.
>>>
>>> So, I guess what I would really like would be some kind of list (even a
>>> very short one) of AV encoder types that are known to work with Phonon
>>> under a standard Windows XP/Vista installation - or, second best, clear
>>> instructions on how to beef-up the standard installation to handle some
>>> kind of video that I might be able to come up with via mencode/ffmpeg  
>>> or
>>> similar transcoders.
>>>
>>> I have also Googled some chatter about Phonon starting to graft onto  
>>> VLC
>>> as a backend - which sounds like a very good thing to me.  Is this  
>>> Linux
>>> only at the moment?  Is this scheduled for inclusion in Qt?
>>>
>>> Thanks for any insight.

-- 
Constantin "Dinosaur" Makshin