Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 19:23:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Ross Lippert <ripper@eskimo.com> To: keramida@FreeBSD.org Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Problem Report docs/31653 Message-ID: <200206150223.TAA24189@eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <20020615005312.GA21062@hades.hell.gr> (message from Giorgos Keramidas on Sat, 15 Jun 2002 03:53:12 %2B0300)
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Anything I don't reply to, assume is fixed.
>Since I am not sure what 're-encode' is supposed to mean, I would
>probably write this as:
> "The number of applications to encode, convert, and playback
> various..."
>: limited than the number of sound applications. For example as
>: of this writing, there is no good transcoding application in the
>What is a 'transcoding application'?
Two good and related questions. To convert is to go from one format
to another with possible changes due to compression loss, like going
from jpg to gif or going from wav to mp3. Aside from conversion of
video there is cropping, demuxing the A/V, muxing A/V, splitting and
joining streams. I've been trying to use re-encode for all these
functions. The use of 'transcode' as a verb is a hold-over from
before I settled on using re-encode.
> XFree86 3.X may work, but it has not been tested with the
> what is described in this chapter. If you find that something
> described here does not work with XFree86 3.X please let us
> know.
Well, from what I have read on the X site, Xvideo is just a brand
new 4.X feature, so it is guarranteed not to work. I'd rather phrase
that last sentence:
> If you find that something
> described here does with XFree86 3.X please let us
> know.
Really I'd rather we all switch to 4.X by default and not have to
worry about it anymore.
>: <para>Before you begin, you should know the model of the video
>: card you have and the chip it uses. While XFree86 supports a
>: wide variety of video cards, a much smaller number give good
>: playback performance. To obtain a list of extensions supported
> "While XFree86 supports a wide variety of video cards,
> very few of them give good..."
Well, I don't want to say 'very few', because that phrasing will
automatically become outdated. Just fewer might be best.
>: <para>Additionally, DVD-decoding will require write permission on
>: the DVD devices.</para>
> "Note that DVD decoding..." (or is it "playback" here?)
Technically, it is the decryption process. DeCSS needs to read
and write to the acd0 to work its magic. That's all I know. I have
changed it to decryption.
>: possibilities, what will really work is largely hardware
>: dependent. Each method described below will have varying
>"suffers from possibilities"? I am not a native speaker of English,
>and this might be an idiomatic expression that I have failed to learn,
>but I can't understand it.
I was trying to be cute, but I have replaced this with more clarity.
> ^[[:space:]]*</para>[[:space:]]*$
grep-ed and found none.
>one. I am only trying to get the best results possible out, therefore
>take all the comments above with a grain of salt or many grains of
>salt. Whatever makes you feel better.
Not put off at all. What get fixed now won't be a PR later.
Attached is the newer version.
-r
<!--
The FreeBSD Documentation Project
$FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/sound/chapter.sgml,v 1.31 2002/05/19 10:53:46 asmodai Exp $
-->
<chapter id="multimedia">
<chapterinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Ross</firstname>
<surname>Lippert</surname>
<contrib>Edited by </contrib>
</author>
<!-- This chapter is a cobbling together of the original sound
chapter, submitted by Moses Moore and others, with a chapter
of video written by Ross Luppert. The original sound chapter
is been modified to the extent that chapters and sections
have been re-arranged but the contents, remain the same. Thus
this author grouping is more like an editor grouping.
7 June 2002 -->
</authorgroup>
</chapterinfo>
<title>Multimedia</title>
<sect1 id="multimedia-synopsis">
<title>Synopsis</title>
<para>FreeBSD supports a wide variety of sound cards, allowing you
to enjoy high fidelity output from your computer. This includes
the ability to record and playback audio in the MPEG Audio Layer
3 (MP3), WAV, and Ogg Vorbis formats as well as many other
formats. The FreeBSD Ports Collection also contains
applications allowing you to edit your recorded audio, add sound
effects, and control attached MIDI devices.</para>
<para>With some willingness to experiment, FreeBSD can support
playback of video files and DVD's. The number of applications
to encode, convert, and playback various video media is more
limited than the number of sound applications. For example as
of this writing, there is no good re-encoding application in the
FreeBSD Ports Collection, which could be use to interconvert
between formats, as there is with <filename
role="package">audio/sox</filename>. However, the software
landscape in this area is changing rapidly.</para>
<para>This chapter will describe the necessary steps to configure
your sound card. The configuration and installation of XFree86
(<xref linkend="x11">) has already taken care of the
hardware issues for your video card, though there may be some
tweaks to apply for better playback.</para>
<para>After reading this chapter, you will know:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>How to configure your system so that your sound card is
recognized.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Methods to test that your card is working using
sample applications.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How to troubleshoot your sound setup.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How to playback and encode MP3s and other audio.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How video is supported by XFree86.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Some video player/encoder ports which give good results.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How to playback DVD's, <filename>.mpg</filename> and <filename>.avi</filename> files.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>How to rip CD and DVD information into files.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>Before reading this chapter, you should:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Know how to configure and install a new kernel (<xref
linkend="kernelconfig">).</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>For the video sections, it is assumed that XFree86 4.X
(<filename role='package'>x11/XFree86-4</filename>) has been
installed. XFree86 3.X may work, but it has not been tested
with the what is described in this chapter. If you find that
something described here does work with XFree86 3.X please
let us know.</para>
<warning>
<para>Trying to mount an audio CD
or a video DVD with the <command>mount</command> command will
result in an error, at least, and a <emphasis>kernel
panic</emphasis>, at worst. These media have specialized
encodings which differ from the usual ISO-filesystem.</para>
</warning>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="sound-setup">
<sect1info>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Moses</firstname>
<surname>Moore</surname>
<contrib>Contributed by </contrib>
<!-- 20 November 2000 -->
</author>
</authorgroup>
</sect1info>
<title>Setting Up The Sound Card</title>
<sect2 id="sound-device">
<title>Locating the Correct Device</title>
<indexterm><primary>PCI</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>ISA</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>sound cards</primary></indexterm>
<para>Before you begin, you should know the model of the card you
have, the chip it uses, and whether it is a PCI or ISA card.
FreeBSD supports a wide variety of both PCI and ISA cards. If
you do not see your card in the following list, check the
&man.pcm.4; manual page. This is not a complete list; however,
it does list some of the most common cards.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Crystal 4237, 4236, 4232, 4231</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Yamaha OPL-SAx</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>OPTi931</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Ensoniq AudioPCI 1370/1371</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>ESS Solo-1/1E</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>NeoMagic 256AV/ZX</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Sound Blaster Pro, 16, 32, AWE64, AWE128, Live</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Creative ViBRA16</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Advanced Asound 100, 110, and Logic ALS120</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>ES 1868, 1869, 1879, 1888</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Gravis UltraSound</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Aureal Vortex 1 or 2</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<indexterm>
<primary>kernel</primary>
<secondary>configuration</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para>To use your sound device, you will need to load the proper
device driver. This may be accomplished in one of two ways.
The easiest way is to simply load a kernel module for your sound
card with &man.kldload.8;. Alternatively, you may statically
compile in support for your sound card in your kernel. The
sections below provide the information you need to add support
for your hardware in this manner. For more information about
recompiling your kernel, please see <xref
linkend="kernelconfig">.</para>
<sect3>
<title>Creative, Advance, and ESS Sound Cards</title>
<para>If you have one of the above cards, you will need to
add:</para>
<programlisting>device pcm</programlisting>
<para>to your kernel configuration file. If you have a PnP ISA
card, you will also need to add:</para>
<programlisting>device sbc</programlisting>
<para>For a non-PnP ISA card, add:</para>
<programlisting>device pcm
device sbc0 at isa? port 0x220 irq 5 drq 1 flags 0x15</programlisting>
<para>to your kernel configuration file. The settings shown
above are the defaults. You may need to change the IRQ or the
other settings to match your card. See the &man.sbc.4; manual
page for more information.</para>
<note>
<para>The Sound Blaster Live is not supported under FreeBSD 4.0
without a patch, which this section will not cover. It is
recommended that you update to the latest -STABLE before
trying to use this card.</para>
</note>
</sect3>
<sect3>
<title>Gravis UltraSound Cards</title>
<para>For a PnP ISA card, you will need to add:</para>
<programlisting>device pcm
device gusc</programlisting>
<para>to your kernel configuration file. If you have a non-PnP
ISA card, you will need to add:</para>
<programlisting>device pcm
device gus0 at isa? port 0x220 irq 5 drq 1 flags 0x13</programlisting>
<para>to your kernel configuration file. You may need to change
the IRQ or the other settings to match your card. See the
&man.gusc.4; manual page for more information.</para>
</sect3>
<sect3>
<title>Crystal Sound Cards</title>
<para>For Crystal cards, you will need to add:</para>
<programlisting>device pcm
device csa</programlisting>
<para>to your kernel configuration file.</para>
</sect3>
<sect3>
<title>Generic Support</title>
<para>For PnP ISA or PCI cards, you will need to add:</para>
<programlisting>device pcm</programlisting>
<para>to your kernel configuration file. If you have a non-PnP
ISA sound card that does not have a bridge driver, you will
need to add:</para>
<programlisting>device pcm0 at isa? irq 10 drq 1 flags 0x0</programlisting>
<para>to your kernel configuration file. You may need to change
the IRQ or the other settings to match your card.</para>
</sect3>
<sect3>
<title>Onboard Sound</title>
<para>Some systems with built-in motherboard sound devices may
require the following option in your kernel
configuration:</para>
<programlisting>options PNPBIOS</programlisting>
</sect3>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="sound-devicenodes">
<title>Creating and Testing the Device Nodes</title>
<indexterm><primary>device nodes</primary></indexterm>
<para>After you reboot, log in and run <command>dmesg | grep
pcm</command> as shown below:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; dmesg | grep pcm
pcm0: <SB16 DSP 4.11> on sbc0</screen>
<para>The output from your system may look different. If no
<devicename>pcm</devicename> devices show up, something went
wrong earlier. If that happens, go through your kernel
configuration file again and make sure you chose the correct
device. Consult the troubleshooting section for additional
options.</para>
<para>If the previous command returned
<devicename>pcm0</devicename>, you will have to run the
following as <username>root</username>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; cd /dev
&prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV snd0</screen>
<para>If the command returned <devicename>pcm1</devicename>,
follow the same steps as shown above, replacing
<devicename>snd0</devicename> with
<devicename>snd1</devicename>.</para>
<note>
<para>The above commands will <emphasis>not</emphasis> create a
<devicename>/dev/snd</devicename> device!</para>
</note>
<para><command>MAKEDEV</command> will create a group of device
nodes, including:</para>
<informaltable frame="none">
<tgroup cols="2">
<thead>
<row>
<entry>Device</entry>
<entry>Description</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/audio</devicename></entry>
<entry>SPARC-compatible audio device</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/dsp</devicename></entry>
<entry>Digitized voice device</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/dspW</devicename></entry>
<entry>Like <devicename>/dev/dsp</devicename>, but 16 bits
per sample</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/midi</devicename></entry>
<entry>Raw midi access device</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/mixer</devicename></entry>
<entry>Control port mixer device</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/music</devicename></entry>
<entry>Level 2 sequencer interface</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/sequencer</devicename></entry>
<entry>Sequencer device</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><devicename>/dev/pss</devicename></entry>
<entry>Programmable device interface</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</informaltable>
<para>If all goes well, you should now have a functioning sound
card. If your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive is properly coupled to
your soundcard, you can put a CD in the drive and play it
with &man.cdcontrol.1;.</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; cdcontrol -f /dev/acd0c play 1</screen>
<para>Various applications, such as <filename
role="package">audio/workman</filename> offer a better
interface. You may want to install an application such as
<filename role="package">audio/mpg123</filename> to listen to
audio files.</para>
<sect3>
<title>Common Problems</title>
<informaltable>
<tgroup cols="2">
<thead>
<row>
<entry>Error</entry>
<entry>Solution</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<indexterm><primary>device node</primary></indexterm>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry><errorname>unsupported subdevice XX</errorname></entry>
<entry><para>One or more of the device nodes was not created
correctly. Repeat the steps above.</para></entry>
</row>
<indexterm><primary>I/O port</primary></indexterm>
<row>
<entry><errorname>sb_dspwr(XX) timed out</errorname></entry>
<entry><para>The I/O port is not set correctly.</para></entry>
</row>
<indexterm><primary>IRQ</primary></indexterm>
<row>
<entry><errorname>bad irq XX</errorname></entry>
<entry><para>The IRQ is set incorrectly. Make sure that
the set IRQ and the sound IRQ are the same.</para></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><errorname>xxx: gus pcm not attached, out of
memory</errorname></entry>
<entry><para>There is not enough available memory to use
the device.</para></entry>
</row>
<indexterm><primary>DSP</primary></indexterm>
<row>
<entry><errorname>xxx: can't open /dev/dsp!</errorname></entry>
<entry><para>Check with <command>fstat | grep dsp</command>
if another application is holding the device open.
Noteworthy troublemakers are esound and KDE's sound
support.</para></entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</informaltable>
</sect3>
</sect2>
<sect1 id="sound-mp3">
<sect1info>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Chern</firstname>
<surname>Lee</surname>
<contrib>Contributed by </contrib>
</author>
</authorgroup>
<!-- 11 Sept 2001 -->
</sect1info>
<title>MP3 Audio</title>
<para>MP3 (MPEG Layer 3 Audio) accomplishes near CD-quality sound,
leaving no reason to let your FreeBSD workstation fall short of
its offerings.</para>
<sect2 id="mp3-players">
<title>MP3 Players</title>
<para>By far, the most popular XFree86 MP3 player is
<application>XMMS</application> (X Multimedia System).
<application>Winamp</application>
skins can be used with <application>XMMS</application> since the
GUI is almost identical to that of Nullsoft's
<application>Winamp</application>.
<application>XMMS</application> also has native plug-in
support.</para>
<para><application>XMMS</application> can be installed from the
<filename role="package">audio/xmms</filename> port or package.</para>
<para><application>XMMS'</application> interface is intuitive,
with a playlist, graphic equalizer, and more. Those familiar
with <application>Winamp</application> will find
<application>XMMS</application> simple to use.</para>
<para>The <filename role="package">audio/mpg123</filename> port is an alternative,
command-line MP3 player.</para>
<para><application>mpg123</application> can be run by specifying
the sound device and the MP3 file on the command line, as
shown below:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; mpg123 -a <replaceable>/dev/dsp1.0</replaceable> Foobar-GreatestHits.mp3
High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2 and 3.
Version 0.59r (1999/Jun/15). Written and copyrights by Michael Hipp.
Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more!
THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Playing MPEG stream from BT - Foobar-GreastHits.mp3 ...
MPEG 1.0 layer III, 128 kbit/s, 44100 Hz joint-stereo
</screen>
<para><literal>/dev/dsp1.0</literal> should be replaced with the
<devicename>dsp</devicename> device entry on your system.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="rip-cd">
<title>Ripping CD Audio Tracks</title>
<para>Before encoding a CD or CD track to MP3, the audio data on
the CD must be ripped onto the hard drive. This is done by
copying the raw CDDA (CD Digital Audio) data to WAV
files.</para>
<para>The <command>cdda2wav</command> tool, which is a part of
the <filename role="package">sysutils/cdrtools</filename>
suite, is used for ripping audio information from CDs and the
information associated with them.</para>
<para>With the audio CD in the drive, the following command can
be issued (as <username>root</username>) to rip an entire CD
into individual (per track) WAV files:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; cdda2wav -D <replaceable>0,1,0</replaceable> -B</screen>
<para><application>cdda2wav</application> will support
ATAPI (IDE) CDROM drives. To rip from an IDE drive, specify
the device name in place of the SCSI unit numbers. For
example, to rip track 7 from an IDE drive:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; cdda2wav -D <replaceable>/dev/acd0a</replaceable> -t 7</screen>
<para>The <option>-D <replaceable>0,1,0</replaceable></option>
indicates the SCSI device <devicename>0,1,0</devicename>,
which corresponds to the output of <command>cdrecord
-scanbus</command>.</para>
<para>To rip individual tracks, make use of the
<option>-t</option> option as shown:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; cdda2wav -D <replaceable>0,1,0</replaceable> -t 7</screen>
<para>This example rips track seven of the audio CDROM. To rip
a range of tracks, for example, track one to seven, specify a
range:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; cdda2wav -D <replaceable>0,1,0</replaceable> -t 1+7</screen>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="mp3-encoding">
<title>Encoding MP3s</title>
<para>Nowadays, the mp3 encoder of choice is
<application>lame</application>.
<application>Lame</application> can be found at
<filename role="package">audio/lame</filename> in the ports tree.</para>
<para>Using the ripped WAV files, the following command will
convert <filename>audio01.wav</filename> to
<filename>audio01.mp3</filename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; lame -h -b <replaceable>128</replaceable> \
--tt "<replaceable>Foo Song Title</replaceable>" \
--ta "<replaceable>FooBar Artist</replaceable>" \
--tl "<replaceable>FooBar Album</replaceable>" \
--ty "<replaceable>2001</replaceable>" \
--tc "<replaceable>Ripped and encoded by Foo</replaceable>" \
--tg "<replaceable>Genre</replaceable>" \
<replaceable>audio01.wav audio01.mp3</replaceable></screen>
<para>128 kbits seems to be the standard MP3 bitrate in use.
Many enjoy the higher quality 160, or 192. The higher the
bitrate, the more disk space the resulting MP3 will
consume--but the quality will be higher. The
<option>-h</option> option turns on the <quote>higher quality
but a little slower</quote> mode. The options beginning with
<option>--t</option> indicate ID3 tags, which usually contain
song information, to be embedded within the MP3 file.
Additional encoding options can be found by consulting the
lame man page.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="mp3-decoding">
<title>Decoding MP3s</title>
<para>In order to burn an audio CD from MP3s, they must be
converted to a non-compressed WAV format. Both
<application>XMMS</application> and
<application>mpg123</application> support the output of MP3 to
an uncompressed file format.</para>
<para>Writing to Disk in <application>XMMS</application>:</para>
<procedure>
<step>
<para>Launch <application>XMMS</application>.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Right-click on the window to bring up the
<application>XMMS</application> menu.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Select <literal>Preference</literal> under
<literal>Options</literal>.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Change the Output Plugin to <quote>Disk Writer
Plugin</quote>.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Press <literal>Configure</literal>.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Enter (or choose browse) a directory to write the
uncompressed files to.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Load the MP3 file into <application>XMMS</application>
as usual, with volume at 100% and EQ settings turned
off.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Press <literal>Play</literal> —
<application>XMMS</application> will appear as if it is
playing the MP3, but no music will be heard. It is
actually playing the MP3 to a file.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Be sure to set the default Output Plugin back to what
it was before in order to listen to MP3s again.</para>
</step>
</procedure>
<para>Writing to stdout in <application>mpg123</application>:</para>
<procedure>
<step>
<para>Run mpg123 -s <replaceable>audio01.mp3</replaceable>
> audio01.pcm</para>
</step>
</procedure>
<para><application>XMMS</application> writes a file in the WAV
format, while <application>mpg123</application> converts the
MP3 into raw PCM audio data. Both of these formats can be
used with <application>cdrecord</application> or
<application>burncd</application> to create audio
CDROMs.</para>
<para>Read <xref linkend="creating-cds"> for more information on using a
CD burner in FreeBSD.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="video-playback">
<sect1info>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Ross</firstname>
<surname>Lippert</surname>
<contrib>Contributed by </contrib>
</author>
</authorgroup>
<!-- 5 June 2002 -->
</sect1info>
<title>Video Playback</title>
<para>Video playback is a very new and rapidly developing application
area. Be patient. Not everything is going to work as smoothly as
it did with sound.</para>
<para>Before you begin, you should know the model of the video
card you have and the chip it uses. While XFree86 supports a
wide variety of video cards, fewer give good playback
performance. To obtain a list of extensions supported by the
X-server using your card use the command &man.xdpyinfo.1; while
X11 is running.</para>
<para>It is a good idea to have a short MPEG file which can be
treated as a test file for evaluating various players and
options. Since some DVD players will look for DVD media in
<filename>/dev/dvd</filename> by default, or have this device
name hardcoded in them, you might find it useful to make
symbolic links to the proper devices:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; ln -sf /dev/acd0c /dev/dvd
&prompt.root; ln -sf /dev/racd0c /dev/rdvd</screen>
<para>On FreeBSD-5.X, which uses <filename>devfs</filename> there
is a slightly different set of recommended links:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; ln -sf /dev/acd0c /dev/dvd
&prompt.root; ln -sf /dev/acd0c /dev/rdvd</screen>
<para>Additionally, DVD decryption requires write permission on
the DVD devices.</para>
<para>Some of the ports discussed rely on the following kernel
options to build correctly. Before attempting to build, add
these options to the kernel and reboot:</para>
<programlisting>option CPU_ENABLE_SSE
option USER_LDT</programlisting>
<para>To enhance the shared memory X11 interface, it is
recommended that the values of some &man.sysctl.8; variables
should be increased:</para>
<programlisting>kern.ipc.shmmax=67108864
kern.ipc.shmall=32768</programlisting>
<sect2 id="video-interface">
<title>Determining Video capabilities</title>
<indexterm><primary>Xvideo</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>SDL</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>DGA</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>kernel configuration</primary>
<secondary>options CPU_ENABLE_SSE</secondary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>kernel configuration</primary>
<secondary>options USER_LDT</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para>There are several ways to display video under X11
suffers from a multitude of
possibilities, what will really work is largely hardware
dependent. Each method described below will have varying
quality across different hardware. Secondly, the rendering of
video in X11 is a topic receiving a lot of attention lately, and
with each version of XFree86 there may be significant
improvement.</para>
<para>A list of common video interfaces:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>X11: normal X11 output using shared memory</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>XVideo: an extension to the X11
interface which supports video in any X11 drawable.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>SDL: the Simple Directmedia Layer</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>DGA: the Direct Graphics Access</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>SVGAlib: low level console graphics layer</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<sect3 id="video-interface-xvideo">
<title>XVideo</title>
<para>XFree86 4.X has an extension called
<emphasis>XVideo</emphasis> (aka Xvideo, aka Xv, aka xv) which
allows video to be directly displayed in drawable objects
through a special acceleration. This extension provides very
good quality playback even on low-end machines (for example my
PIII 400Mhz laptop). Unfortunately, the list of cards in which
this feature is supported <quote>out of the box</quote> is
currently:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>3DFX Voodoo 3</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Intel i810 and i815</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>some S3 chips (such as Savage/IX and Savage/MX)</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>If your card is not one of these, do not be disappointed yet.
XFree86 4.X adds new xv capabilities with each release
<footnote>
<para>A popular familiar graphics card with generally very good
XFree86 performance, nVidia, has yet to release the specifications
on their XVideo support to the XFree86 team. It may be some time
before XFree86 fully support XVideo for these cards.</para>
</footnote>.
To check whether the extension is running,
use <command>xvinfo</command>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; xvinfo</screen>
<para>XVideo is supported for your card if the result looks like:</para>
<screen>X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
Adaptor #0: "Savage Streams Engine"
number of ports: 1
port base: 43
operations supported: PutImage
supported visuals:
depth 16, visualID 0x22
depth 16, visualID 0x23
number of attributes: 5
"XV_COLORKEY" (range 0 to 16777215)
client settable attribute
client gettable attribute (current value is 2110)
"XV_BRIGHTNESS" (range -128 to 127)
client settable attribute
client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
"XV_CONTRAST" (range 0 to 255)
client settable attribute
client gettable attribute (current value is 128)
"XV_SATURATION" (range 0 to 255)
client settable attribute
client gettable attribute (current value is 128)
"XV_HUE" (range -180 to 180)
client settable attribute
client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
maximum XvImage size: 1024 x 1024
Number of image formats: 7
id: 0x32595559 (YUY2)
guid: 59555932-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
bits per pixel: 16
number of planes: 1
type: YUV (packed)
id: 0x32315659 (YV12)
guid: 59563132-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
bits per pixel: 12
number of planes: 3
type: YUV (planar)
id: 0x30323449 (I420)
guid: 49343230-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
bits per pixel: 12
number of planes: 3
type: YUV (planar)
id: 0x36315652 (RV16)
guid: 52563135-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
bits per pixel: 16
number of planes: 1
type: RGB (packed)
depth: 0
red, green, blue masks: 0x1f, 0x3e0, 0x7c00
id: 0x35315652 (RV15)
guid: 52563136-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
bits per pixel: 16
number of planes: 1
type: RGB (packed)
depth: 0
red, green, blue masks: 0x1f, 0x7e0, 0xf800
id: 0x31313259 (Y211)
guid: 59323131-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
bits per pixel: 6
number of planes: 3
type: YUV (packed)
id: 0x0
guid: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
bits per pixel: 0
number of planes: 0
type: RGB (packed)
depth: 1
red, green, blue masks: 0x0, 0x0, 0x0</screen>
<para>Also note that the formats listed (YUV2, YUV12, etc) are not
present with every implementation of Xvideo and their absense may
hinder some players.</para>
<para>If the result looks like:</para>
<screen>X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
no adaptors present</screen>
<para>Then XVideo is probably not supported for your card.</para>
<para>If XVideo is not supported for your card, this only means
that it will be more difficult for your display to meet the
computational demands of rendering video. Depending on your
video card and processor, though, you might still be able to
have a satisfying experience. You probably should read about
ways of improving performance in the advanced reading <xref
linkend="video-further-reading">.</para>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="video-interface-SDL">
<title>Simple Directmedia Layer</title>
<para>The Simple Directmedia Layer, SDL, was intended to be a
porting layers between Microsoft Windows, BeOS, and Unix,
allowing cross-platform applications to be developed which made
efficient use of sound and graphics. The SDL layer provides a
low-level abstraction to the hardware which can sometimes be
more efficient than the X11 interface.</para>
<para>The SDL can be found at <filename role="package">devel/sdl12</filename></para>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="video-interface-DGA">
<title>Direct Graphics Access</title>
<para>Direct Graphics Access is an XFree86 extension which allows
a program to bypass the X-server and directly alter the
framebuffer. Because it relies on a low level memory mapping to
effect this sharing, programs using it must must be run as
<username>root</username></para>
<para>The DGA extension can be tested and benchmarked by
&man.dga.1;. When <command>dga</command> is running, it
changes the colors of the display whenever a key is pressed. To
quit, use <keycap>q</keycap>.</para>
</sect3>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="video-ports">
<title>Ports and Packages Dealing with Video</title>
<indexterm><primary>video ports</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>video packages</primary></indexterm>
<para>This section discusses the software available from the
FreeBSD Ports Collection which can be used for video playback.
Video playback is a very active area of software development,
and the capabilities of various applications are bound to
diverge somewhat from the descriptions given here.</para>
<para>Firstly, it is important to know that most of the video
applications which run of FreeBSD were developed as Linux
applications, originating in the past year. For this reason,
they are both, very experimental and also riddled with
Linux-isms which might prevent them from working at full
efficiency on FreeBSD.</para>
<para>By <quote>experimental</quote>, I mean that you can expect
re-encoders, players, and DVD decrypters to have some major
bugs, or interoperability problems with other programs. Here is
a short list of the sort of things I mean:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>An application cannot playback a file which another
application produced.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>An application cannot playback a file which the
application itself produced.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The same application on two different machines,
rebuilt on each machine for that machine, plays back the same
file differently</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A seemingly trivial filter like rescaling of the image
size results in very bad artifacts from a buggy rescaling
routine.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Application always dumping core.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Documentation is not installed with the port and can be
found either on the web or under
<filename><replaceable>PORTPATH</replaceable>/work/
</filename>.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>By <quote>Linux-isms</quote>, I mean that there are some
issues resulting from the way some standard libraries are
implemented in the Linux distributions, or some features of the
Linux kernel which have been assumed by the authors of the
applications, because that is where the authors are primarily
developing. These issues may not be noticed and worked around
by the port maintainers which can lead to some problems like
these:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>The use of <filename>/proc/cpuinfo</filename> to detect
processor characteristics.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A misuse of threads which causes a program to hang upon
completion instead of truly terminating.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Software not yet in the FreeBSD Ports Collection
which is commonly used in conjunction with the application.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>So far, these application developers have been cooperative with
port maintainers to minimize the work-arounds needed for
port-ing.</para>
<sect3 id="video-mplayer">
<title>MPlayer</title>
<para>MPlayer is a recently developed and rapidly developing
video player. The goals of the MPlayer team are speed and
flexibility on Linux and other Unices. The project was
started when the team founder got fed up with bad playback
performance on then available players. Some would say that
interface has been sacrificed for streamlined design, but once
you get used to the command line options and the key-stroke
controls, it works very well.</para>
<sect4 id="video-mplayer-building">
<title>Building MPlayer</title>
<indexterm><primary>mplayer</primary>
<secondary>making</secondary></indexterm>
<para>MPlayer resides in <filename
role="package">graphics/mplayer</filename>. MPlayer
performs a variety of hardware checks during the build
process, resulting in a binary which will not be portable
from one system to another. Thus it is important to build
it from ports and not to use a binary package.
Additionally, a number of options can be specified in the
<command>make</command> which echo at the start of the
build.</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/graphics/mplayer
&prompt.root; make
You can enable additional compilation optimizations
by defining WITH_OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS
You can enable GTK GUI by defining WITH_GUI.
You can enable DVD support by defining WITH_DVD.
You can enable SVGALIB support by defining WITH_SVGALIB.
You can enable VORBIS sound support by defining WITH_VORBIS.
You can enable XAnim DLL support by defining WITH_XANIM.
</screen>
<para>If you have <filename
role="package">x11-toolkits/gtk12</filename> installed, then
you might as well enable the GUI. Otherwise, it is not
worth the effort. If you intend to play (possibly CSS
encoded) DVD's with MPlayer you must enable the DVD support
option here <footnote><para>Unauthorized DVD playback is a
serious criminal act in some countries. Check local laws
before enabling this option.</para> </footnote>. Some
reasonable options are:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; make WITH_DVD=yes WITH_SVGALIB=yes</screen>
<para>As of this writing, the MPlayer port will build its HTML
documentation and one executable,
<command>mplayer</command>. It can also be made to build an
encoder, <command>mencoder</command>, which is a tool for
re-encoding video. A modification to the
<filename>Makefile</filename> can enable it. It may be
enabled by default in subsequent versions of the port.</para>
<para>The HTML documentation to MPlayer is very informative.
If the reader finds the information on video hardware and
interfaces in the chapter lacking, the MPlayer documentation
is a very thorough alternative. You should definitely take
the time to read the documentation of
<application>MPlayer</application>, if you are looking for
information about video support in UNIX.</para>
</sect4>
<sect4 id="video-mplayer-using">
<title>Using mplayer</title>
<indexterm><primary>mplayer</primary>
<secondary>use</secondary></indexterm>
<para>Any user of mplayer must set up a
<filename>.mplayer</filename> subdirectory directory of her
home directory. To create this necessary subdirectory,
you can do the following:</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; cd /usr/ports/graphics/mplayer
&prompt.user; make install-user</screen>
<para>The command options for <command>mplayer</command> are
listed in the manual page. For even more detail there is HTML
documentation. In this section, we will give some of the
common use cases.</para>
<para>To play from file, such as
<filename>testfile.avi</filename> through one of the various
video interfaces set the <option>-vo</option>:
<screen>&prompt.user; mplayer -vo xv testfile.avi</screen>
<screen>&prompt.user; mplayer -vo sdl testfile.avi</screen>
<screen>&prompt.user; mplayer -vo x11 testfile.avi</screen>
<screen>&prompt.root; mplayer -vo dga testfile.avi</screen>
<screen>&prompt.root; mplayer -vo 'sdl:dga' testfile.avi</screen>
<para>It is worth trying all of these options, as their relative
performance depends on many factors and will vary significantly
with hardware.</para>
<para>To play from a DVD, replace the
<filename>testfile.avi</filename> with <option>-dvd <N>
<replaceable>DEVICE</replaceable></option> where <N> is
the title number to play and
<filename><replaceable>DEVICE</replaceable></filename> is the
device file for the DVD-ROM. For example, to play title 3
from <filename>/dev/dvd</filename>:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; mplayer -vo dga -dvd 2 /dev/dvd</screen>
<para>To stop, pause, advance and so on, consult the
keybindings, which are output by running <command>mplayer
-h</command> or read the manual page.</para>
<para>Additional important options for playback are:
<option>-fs -zoom</option> which engages the fullscreen mode
and <option>-framedrop</option> which helps performance.</para>
<para>In order for the mplayer command line to not become too
large, the user can create a file
<filename>.mplayer/config</filename> and set default options
there:</para>
<programlisting>vo=xv
fs=yes
zoom=yes</programlisting>
<para>Finally, <command>mplayer</command> can be used to rip a
DVD title into a .vob file. To dump out title 2 from a DVD:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile out.vob -dvd 2 /dev/dvd</screen>
<para>The output file, <filename>out.vob</filename>, will be
MPEG and can be manipulated by the other packages described
in this section.</para>
</sect4>
<sect4 id="video-mencoder">
<title>mencoder</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>mencoder</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>If you opt to install <command>mencoder</command> when
you build, be forewarned that it is still quite
experimental.</para>
<para>To use <command>mencoder</command> it is a good idea to
familiarize yourself with the options from the HTML
documentation. There is a manual page, but it is not very
useful without the HTML. There are innummerable ways to
improve quality, lower bitrate, and change formats, and some
of these tricks may make the difference between good
or bad performance. Here are a couple of examples to get
you going. First a simple copy:</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; mencoder input.avi -oac copy -ovc copy -o output.avi</screen>
<para>It is easy to find examples where the output is
unplayable even by <command>mplayer</command>. Thus, if you
just want to rip to a file, stick to the <option>-dumpfile</option>
in <command>mplayer</command>.</para>
<para>To convert <filename>input.avi</filename> to the MPEG4
codec with MPEG3 audio encoding (<filename role="package">audio/lame</filename> is required):</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; mencoder input.avi -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=192 \
-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq -o output.avi</screen>
<para>This has produced output playable by <command>mplayer</command>
and <command>Xine</command>.</para>
<para><filename>input.avi</filename> can be replaced with
<option>-dvd 1 /dev/dvd</option> and run as
<username>root</username> to re-encode a DVD title
directly. Since you are likely to be dissatisfied with
your results the first time around, it is recommended you
dump the title to a file and work on the file.</para>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="video-xine">
<title>Xine</title>
<para>Xine is a project of wide scope aiming not only at being an
all in one video solution, but also in producing a reusable base
library and a modular executable which can be extended with
plugins. It comes both as a package and as a port, <filename
role="package">graphics/xine</filename>.</para>
<para>The good news is that the above is pretty much true. Xine
is still very rough around the edges, but it is clearly off to a
good start. In practice, Xine requires either a fast CPU with a
fast video card, or support for the XVideo extension. The GUI is
usable, but a bit clumsy.</para>
<para>As of this writing, there is no input module shipped with
Xine which will play CSS encoded DVD's. There are third party
builds which do have modules for this built in them, but none
of these are in the FreeBSD Ports Collection.</para>
<para>Compared to MPlayer, Xine does more for the user, but at the
same time, takes some of the more fine-grained control away from
the user. Xine also may perform much worse on the non-XVideo
interfaces and has very few good alternatives to it. The Xine
FAQ highly recommends that you have a video card which supports
it.</para>
<para>Xine can be started by itself:</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; xine</screen>
<para>The menus can then be used to open a file, or it can be
started to play a file immediately without the GUI
with the command:</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; xine -g -p mymovie.avi</screen>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="video-ports-transcode">
<title>Transcode</title>
<para>Transcode is not a player, but a suite of tools for
re-encoding <filename>.avi</filename> and <filename>.mpg</filename> files. With Transcode, one has the
ability to merge video files, repair broken files, using command
line tools with <filename>stdin/stdout</filename> stream
interfaces.</para>
<para>Like MPlayer, Transcode is very experimental software which
must be build from the port <filename
role="package">graphics/transcode</filename>. Using a great
many options to the <command>make</command> command. I
recommend:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; make WITH_LIBMPEG2=yes</screen>
<para>If you plan to install <filename
role="package">graphics/avifile</filename>, then add the
<literal>WITH_AVIFILE</literal> option to your
<command>make</command> command line, as shown here:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; make WITH_AVIFILE=yes WITH_LIBMPEG2=yes</screen>
<para>Here are two examples of <command>transcode</command> for
video conversion which produce rescaled output. The first
encodes the output to an openDIVX AVI file, while the second
encodes to the much more portable MPEG format.</para>
<screen>&prompt.user; transcode -i input.vob -x vob -V -Z 320x240 \
-y opendivx -N 0x55 -o output.avi</screen>
<screen>&prompt.user; transcode -i input.vob -x vob -V -Z 320x240 \
-y mpeg -N 0x55 -o output.tmp
tcmplex -o output.mpg -i output.tmp.m1v -p output.tmp.mpa -m 1</screen>
<para>There is a manual page for <command>transcode</command>, but for the
various <command>tc*</command> utilities which are also installed, there
is only a curt <option>-h</option> output.</para>
<para>In comparison, <command>transcode</command> runs
significantly slower than <command>mencoder</command>, but it
has a better chance of producing a more widely playable file. I
can play <command>transcode</command> MPEGs on older copies of
Windows Media Player and Apple's Quicktime, for example.</para>
</sect3>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="video-further-reading">
<title>Further Reading</title>
<para>I have no doubt that within a year, much that is in this
chapter will be out of date. Video will probably be much less
problematic to get working well and a port will be in the
collection which turns a FreeBSD system into a DVD-playing, PVR,
and virtual A/V studio. Until that day arrives, those who
want to get the very most out of FreeBSD's A/V capabilities will
have to cobble together knowledge from several FAQs and tutorials
and use a few different applications.</para>
<para>This section exists to give the reader some links to learn
more in case this chapter was just helpful enough.</para>
<para>The
<ulink url="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/">;
MPlayer documentation</ulink> is very technically informative.
These documents should probably be consulted by anyone wishing
to obtain a high level of expertise with Unix video. The
MPlayer mailing list is hostile to anyone who has not bothered
to read the documentation, so if you plan on making bug reports
to them, RTFM.</para>
<para>The
<ulink url="http://dvd.sourceforge.net/xine-howto/en_GB/html/howto.html">;
Xine HOWTO</ulink> contains a chapter on performance improvement
which is general to all players.</para>
<para>Finally, there are some other promising applications which
the reader may try:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para><ulink
url="http://avifile.sourceforge.net/">AVIFile</ulink>; which
is also a port <filename
role='package'>graphics/avifile</filename>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/">Ogle</ulink>;
which is also a port <filename
role='package'>graphics/ogle</filename>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><ulink url="http://xtheater.sourceforge.net/">XTheater</ulink></para>;
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect2>
</sect1>
</chapter>
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