Dreamcast Media Center

This forum is for discussion pertaining to homebrew and indie software for the Dreamcast, such as homebrew games, emulators/interpreters, and other homebrew software/applications. Porting requests and developmental ideas are not to be made here; you can make those here. If you need any help burning discs for homebrew software, this is the place to ask as well.
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DaMadFiddler
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by DaMadFiddler »

Again: love the interface, and it's great to see the way this project is maturing. Sent you a PM with some semi-related thoughts.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by PH3NOM »

So, small bump on this project.

With some recent progress on the XviD decoder, I have decided to upload the current build of XviD-DC.

The sample application will decode a "sample.avi" located in the root of the cd-rom.

Code: Select all

XviD-DC (C) Josh PH3NOM Pearson 2010-2013 08 May 2013

This is a demo build, that will load a "sample.avi" in the root of the cd.

During playback, use the d-pad to change Display Aspect Ratio
Use the left and right triggers to decrease / increase volume

Video Codec:
-Mpeg 4 (DivX/XviD)

Audio Codec:
-AC3 ( 5.1ch surround sound supported )
-MP3
-MP2

Media Container:
-AVI

-Limitations: The DC's SH4 CPU can decode XviD ~320x240 pixels @ 1.5 Mbps / 24fps
Get the main binary here:
xvid-dc-050813-1st_read.rar
(426.11 KiB) Downloaded 209 times
Get the Source Code here:
XviD-DC-050813.rar
(2.41 MiB) Downloaded 230 times
Please give feedback of results. If there is enough interest, I will updated DCMC with this video decode routine.

Image

I have uploaded a sample cdi, to burn to disk. The clip is from the copyrighted film "The Avengers".
xvid-dc-sample.part1.rar
(3 MiB) Downloaded 226 times
(see post below for parts 3-4)
Last edited by PH3NOM on Wed May 08, 2013 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by PH3NOM »

xvid-dc-sample.part2.rar
(3 MiB) Downloaded 211 times
xvid-dc-sample.part3.rar
(3 MiB) Downloaded 234 times
xvid-dc-sample.part4.rar
(2.65 MiB) Downloaded 183 times
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by Anthony817 »

Wow man, this looks great. Keep up all the great work! This would be amazing to use with the Dreamcast optical drive that is in development.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by Christuserloeser »

This is great! but what we would really need for homebrew projects would be a player that can handle 640x480, which codec or which audio format doesn't matter. So if there's a way to get DC to play uncompressed video and audio at 640x480 than that would be a real killer app used in many future commercial releases or homebrew compilations. Sturmwind's intro runs at 320x240 and looks pretty out of place because of that. It uses OneThirty8's player btw.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by PH3NOM »

Christuserloeser wrote:This is great! but what we would really need for homebrew projects would be a player that can handle 640x480, which codec or which audio format doesn't matter. So if there's a way to get DC to play uncompressed video and audio at 640x480 than that would be a real killer app used in many future commercial releases or homebrew compilations. Sturmwind's intro runs at 320x240 and looks pretty out of place because of that. It uses OneThirty8's player btw.
Thanks for the interest, check out DreamRoQ for GameFMV.
http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewto ... 0#p1029707
And if Surmwind uses MPEG, by law they need to include the source code because 138's player is GPL'd.
Uncompressed video is not possible due to the lack of an interface that is fast enough? (cd and sd is much too slow to stream uncompressed video. maybe bba? how fast is the bba adapter compared? idk.. )

At any rate, my most recent decoder is quite different than the one 138 hacked together.

In light of the recent advancements, I have built a new front-end.
The code is completely re-written from the initial release of DCMC.
I have written everything, from the low-level render code (gl), to the file directory manipulation, to the code that renders the fonts ( not based on kos biosfont or anything else )

Thanks to XMBC "Confluence" Skin for GUI Textures
Image

The GUI is based on Thumbnails
Image

Folders are displayed with a default Thumbnail, unless one is provided by user
Image

SD card is supported, although maximum bit-rate is 656kpbs
Image
Last edited by PH3NOM on Tue Jun 04, 2013 8:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by Christuserloeser »

Very impressive! but I think I preferred the old file browser personally (or maybe it's just the mood I am in right now, dunno), maybe you could make the old browser available as an option ?

Sturmwind indeed includes the source code for 138's player. Might upload it soon-ish.

And thanks for the link to that DreamRoQ thread! Must have missed that at release!
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by DaMadFiddler »

PH3NOM wrote:
Christuserloeser wrote:This is great! but what we would really need for homebrew projects would be a player that can handle 640x480, which codec or which audio format doesn't matter. So if there's a way to get DC to play uncompressed video and audio at 640x480 than that would be a real killer app used in many future commercial releases or homebrew compilations. Sturmwind's intro runs at 320x240 and looks pretty out of place because of that. It uses OneThirty8's player btw.
Thanks for the interest, check out DreamRoQ for GameFMV.
http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewto ... 0#p1029707
And if Surmwind uses MPEG, by law they need to include the source code because 138's player is GPL'd.
Uncompressed video is not possible due to the lack of an interface that is fast enough? (cd and sd is much too slow to stream uncompressed video. maybe bba? how fast is the bba adapter compared? idk.. )

At any rate, my most recent decoder is quite different than the one 138 hacked together.

In light of the recent advancements, I have built a new front-end.
The code is completely re-written from the initial release of DCMC.
I have written everything, from the low-level render code (gl), to the file directory manipulation, to the code that renders the fonts ( not based on kos biosfont or anything else )

Thanks to XMBC "Confluence" Skin for GUI Textures
Image

The GUI is based on Thumbnails
Image

Folders are displayed with a default Thumbnail, unless one is provided by user
Image

SD card is supported, although maximum bit-rate is 656kpbs
Image
All the images are showing up as broken links.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by Christuserloeser »

PH3NOM wrote:[Uncompressed video is not possible due to the lack of an interface that is fast enough? (cd and sd is much too slow to stream uncompressed video.)
What about uncompressed audio ? I imagine that should free some CPU cycles.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by OneThirty8 »

Christuserloeser wrote:This is great! but what we would really need for homebrew projects would be a player that can handle 640x480, which codec or which audio format doesn't matter. So if there's a way to get DC to play uncompressed video and audio at 640x480 than that would be a real killer app used in many future commercial releases or homebrew compilations. Sturmwind's intro runs at 320x240 and looks pretty out of place because of that. It uses OneThirty8's player btw.
Have you tried 320x480 or 352x480? Some of the videos I used to test my player used a similar resolution and they looked a lot better than 320x240 videos. I don't remember if they player will play those back full speed or not, but it might be worth testing a short clip.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by PH3NOM »

DaMadFiddler wrote:All the images are showing up as broken links.
Looks like the site I used to frequent some time ago, Underground Gamer, is now shut down due to legal problems.
Lately I have only used the site to host images, but looks like that is no longer an option.

Screens now uploaded to tinypic and post has been updated.
Christuserloeser wrote:
PH3NOM wrote:[Uncompressed video is not possible due to the lack of an interface that is fast enough? (cd and sd is much too slow to stream uncompressed video.)
What about uncompressed audio ? I imagine that should free some CPU cycles.
First off, the video container used will need to support uncompressed audio.

That could work from the CD, but I honestly dont think the SD is fast enough to stream CD quality .wav audio.

Also, a big problem with that is uncompressed audio at CD quality will consume most of the input bandwidth, leaving little bit-rate left for the video. This means the audio will need to be something like 22kHz Mono to reach something acceptable like 352kbps.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by Christuserloeser »

OneThirty8 wrote:Have you tried 320x480 or 352x480? Some of the videos I used to test my player used a similar resolution and they looked a lot better than 320x240 videos. I don't remember if they player will play those back full speed or not, but it might be worth testing a short clip.
Yeah, I now do remember that this resolution was recommended for high res stuff.

What about 512x480 or 512x512 ? I heard this was some kind of magic number for the PVR ?

PH3NOM wrote:That could work from the CD, but I honestly dont think the SD is fast enough to stream CD quality .wav audio.

Also, a big problem with that is uncompressed audio at CD quality will consume most of the input bandwidth, leaving little bit-rate left for the video. This means the audio will need to be something like 22kHz Mono to reach something acceptable like 352kbps.
22khz is unacceptable but 24khz actually sounds quite nice, surprisingly. Uncompressed audio at 24khz stereo should beat any low quality MP3 file and sound similar to high bitrate MP3.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by OneThirty8 »

Christuserloeser wrote:
OneThirty8 wrote:Have you tried 320x480 or 352x480? Some of the videos I used to test my player used a similar resolution and they looked a lot better than 320x240 videos. I don't remember if they player will play those back full speed or not, but it might be worth testing a short clip.
Yeah, I now do remember that this resolution was recommended for high res stuff.

What about 512x480 or 512x512 ? I heard this was some kind of magic number for the PVR ?
It's worth trying but I have a feeling that something so large won't play back at a very high framerate with my player. The SVCD samples I tested when I was developing it didn't play back very fast.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by Christuserloeser »

It also needs to be properly supported by the player itself, i.e. using a certain PVR feature I'd imagine. Wonder where I have read about it ? Was it GypPlay's or BoobPlay's readme ?
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by PH3NOM »

Christuserloeser wrote:
OneThirty8 wrote:Have you tried 320x480 or 352x480? Some of the videos I used to test my player used a similar resolution and they looked a lot better than 320x240 videos. I don't remember if they player will play those back full speed or not, but it might be worth testing a short clip.
Yeah, I now do remember that this resolution was recommended for high res stuff.

What about 512x480 or 512x512 ? I heard this was some kind of magic number for the PVR ?
Well, its not magical really; the PVR only supports textures with dimensions that are powers of two.
So if you have a 352x240 pixel image, you need to use a texture of 512x256 on the PVR.

For a video decoder, the PVR is not the limitation, it is the SH4 CPU. The only thing the PVR could do to help is yuv->uyvy accelerated color conversion, but unfortunately, we have not been able to get that working.
viewtopic.php?f=29&t=101263

Anyway, got bored yesterday and decided to upload a video of the current build of DCMC to youtube.
Hopefully I should be able to release something soon...

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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by kevro »

When is this current version going up at your website, https://sites.google.com/site/dreamcastmediacenter/?
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

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kevro wrote:When is this current version going up at your website, https://sites.google.com/site/dreamcastmediacenter/?
Sorry my friend, I have little time to dedicate to the project.

The latest version is released here:
viewtopic.php?f=72&t=102594

Unfortunately, there seems to be very little interest in DCMC. As such, I have decided to cease work on the project.
Unfortunately I made some changes in the released code that broke the video player, but before that release I was using DCMC to watch videos all last summer, lol.
It was a good learning experience for me, and I am proud of what I accomplished.

Thank you for your interest!
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by tekkaman1 »

I think there might be many people here interested in this. Maybe you can work little by little. I hope you reconsider taking this again.
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by PH3NOM »

Thank you for the interest!

I have not looked at this project since I posted the last release.

I wont promise anything, but is there anything specific you would like to see changed from the last release I posted?
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Re: Dreamcast Media Center

Post by Dark Hayabusa »

PH3NOM wrote:Thank you for the interest!

I have not looked at this project since I posted the last release.

I wont promise anything, but is there anything specific you would like to see changed from the last release I posted?
Hello and first of all thank you for this great work ! I was behind a good media player Dreamcast for several years but so news of that I was forgetting this.
Not if these Dreamshell aware of the operating system created by Swat. the thing is that now supports IDE and SATA HDD and this greatly improves the speed Transmit data which would help the Dreamcast video playback .
I would also like to implement this in Dreamshell ( specifically for the interface and been creating for it) from which I can send you a sample if you are interested .
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