FAQ file for Cineroma Movie Player (the player formally known as Bob) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Q. I can't get my MPEG files to run ? A. Cineroma does support MPEG files. However its compatibility isn't perfect. If you have a file that doesn't work let me know. -- Q. Why the long gap between updates ? (and why no release after all this time) A. I work for a living. My RISC OS work is a hobby and as such I spend as much of my free time as I want to on it. My real work pays for my food, clothes, etc... so takes a massive priority, if I am busy or stressed with that my RISC OS work will go untouched. In the case of Cineroma its not exactly as if people have offered any real help so you are lucky that you get the development that I actually do (and believe me a media player is not a small project). I want Cineroma to be decently structured not just turn into a mish-mash of ideas. So instead of throwing bits and bobs together in a rush and praying it works it is a nice extensible system. This has the advantage of when solidified of being trivial to add new stuff to. From a different audio or video renderer to new codecs/formats, OSD, whatever... Also since its my project and a hobby one at that if I get distracted by an area of it - from adding obscure codecs to support for bits of hardware thats purely my perogative. Basically be glad that I'm still interested in it ;-) -- Q. Will Cineroma run on an Iyonix ? A. Yes. -- Q. Does Cineroma use any features of the Iyonix ? A. Indeed it does. It supports hardware overlays with the GeForce 2 (which means free scaling - with filtering - and free format conversion). Also there is some XScale specific code to speed parts up. In the future hopefully more usage of the hardware will be taken - I'm testing out some interesting stuff atm. If the Iyonix had a non-nVidia gfx card much more could be done (as more info is out there) -- Q. Does Cineroma use any features of the Omega ? A. No. As no specs have been provided about the vaunted hardware iDCT I cannot use it. It will just run as though it is on a RiscPC. -- Q. Does Cineroma use any features of the ViewFinder ? A. No. Not as yet... I am interested in investigating this area though as the ATi feature set looks like it would yield a decent performance increase. Will depend on number of people interested though. -- Q. How can I get movie ... to run faster ? A. Apart from getting a faster machine... if you disble sound (soundon = 0 in the config file) you should get a bit more speed. This will vary depending on file format and the codecs involved. However it will always provide an increase. Try enabling caching and also running the movie from the RAM drive. Playing from CD will be slow due to PIO access rather than DMA - also not having async file reading reallly hurts performance. -- Q. Why does file xxxx not work ? A. If you open up the !Cineroma app and open the stdout text file with your favourite text file you should find out why. If the codec is unsupported it will say what the 4CC is, if it is an unknown format it will also say. If the format and codecs are supported but nothing is displayed there will probably be a log of errors in the stdout file. You should drum up a bug report and send it to me along with the stdout file and if at all possible the movie (although please ask before sending large movies through email!) -- Q. Will codec ... ever be supported ? A. The simple answer is maybe. The bulk of the codecs not supported by Cineroma are closed source and the only way they can be included is if : 1. money is paid to the owning company - even when offered hard cash some companies have been known to refuse 2. wait and hope that Linux hackers manage to create GPL equivalents like the SVQ1 codec 3. try and decode the codecs - not very easy... 4. try and tap into the codecs available for PocketPCs like Linux users tap into Windows DLLs... also not easy... If the codec is already under the GPL (or whatever) then it will be a matter of time... -- Q. Can't Cineroma just use Windows codecs like Linux based players ? A. Errr... no. With Linux the codecs are only supported on x86 based machines. It's really not worth considering, in theory some sort of software emulation could be used but the speed would make it pretty much pointless and never worth the enormous effort involved. -- Q. Why is the Cineroma app so boring... ? I want it to play movies in a window! A. The app that you get that interfaces with the Cineroma library is very very crude. It is there to show how the player is progressing. It now has OSD/seek/viz and most common features, the main UI work is next big task. -- Q. I ran the !Cineroma app but no icon was loaded onto the iconbar ? A. This is because there is no active task running. Double clicking the app just associates the file with the movie types enabling you to double click on them and trigger the mighty player. -- Q. Why can't I play PSX movies from CD ? A. Since we can't read XA streams from CDs using the available CDFS drivers it isn't possible. I feel that it is out of the scope of Cineroma for me to set about implementing a new driver. Hopefully one day someone will sort something out. -- Q. Cineroma doesn't set up the filetypes for ASFs, RoQs,... what should I do ? A. Cineroma does it's own file checking so you can happily set all your movie files to AVI (FB2) and double click on them. You can manually edit your MimeMap file under RISC OS 4 :-) -- Q. Can I help with development of Cineroma ? A. Now this is a rare question... ATM I'm not really needing external help as I am trying to solidify the core of the program. However if you have ideas for formats to support and have source or info on them feel free to send it along and you will get credit. Once the app is out publically... the source will be avilable and then to a certain extent you can do what you will. -- Q. When will Cineroma be available ? A. An equivalent question to how long is a piece of string... Sadly my free time seems to get less with each project I do at work. Admittedly I am a self confessed workaholic, but without workaholics the games industry would be much smaller. Hopefully it won't be long. -- Q. What is a 4CC (or FourCC) ? A. It is a 4 Character Code - eg. IV32 -> Intel Video 3.2, or MP42 -> Microsoft MPEG 4 version 2 -- Q. Why isn't question ... in the FAQ ? A. Coz I didn't think of it :-) If you can think of one let me know and I might just add it in. --