How to watch fansubs with your mac.

[thr]

For all the people who still use my MPlayer OSX SAC build from the first page of this thread: I'd strongly suggest to compile your own version from the current SVN sources. 10 months is a very long time. Unfortunately, as I don't own a Mac right now, I can't provide a new build.

For something less troublesome you could try the Perian Quicktime Component (a new Beta version has been released recently):

http://perian.org/

[killmoms]

Ugh. I probably should, but I really don't want to have to install XCode and learn about all the dependency crap and whatnot... Fucking programmers and their stupid bullshit. >_>

[Aegelward]

i can't see anything about a new beta on the perian site.. unless you mean 0.5?

[Mr VacBob]

Well, if it was good enough for everyone to use, we wouldn't be calling it a beta.

[iamtetsuo]

Originally Posted by thr

For all the people who still use my MPlayer OSX SAC build from the first page of this thread: I'd strongly suggest to compile your own version from the current SVN sources. 10 months is a very long time. Unfortunately, as I don't own a Mac right now, I can't provide a new build.

For something less troublesome you could try the Perian Quicktime Component (a new Beta version has been released recently):

http://perian.org/

Or just use Andiyar's build.

[killmoms]

Originally Posted by iamtetsuo

Or just use Andiyar's build.

Except that Andiyar's build has piss-poor performance (on Romeo x Juliet H.264 from umai, for instance), whereas MPlayer OS X SAC is fine. What gives? Why can no one make a version of this damn app that just works. >_>

[andiyar]

@ killmoms

There's quite a simple reason that my build has 'piss-poor' performance on your machine - it's a PowerPC only build, as is stated in the installer, and in this thread. You're running it through emulation on your machine, and though your machine is fast, it isn't quite fast enough to run high profile, high resolution h.264 files through an emulated media player.

As for compiling by yourself, it isn't hard - really, it's not. There are very simple, detailed instructions posted in this thread that aren't difficult to follow through - once you've installed the dev tools, all you need to do is download two or three things via Terminal, and then configure/make the app. To do that? You install Xcode, open Terminal, and copy/paste the instructions from this thread. That easy.

Oh, and the new Perian build should be out soon I hope... it's looking mighty nifty, from my playing around with it. Very nice indeed, guys


-Andiyar

[killmoms]

Originally Posted by andiyar

@ killmoms

There's quite a simple reason that my build has 'piss-poor' performance on your machine - it's a PowerPC only build, as is stated in the installer, and in this thread. You're running it through emulation on your machine, and though your machine is fast, it isn't quite fast enough to run high profile, high resolution h.264 files through an emulated media player.

As for compiling by yourself, it isn't hard - really, it's not. There are very simple, detailed instructions posted in this thread that aren't difficult to follow through - once you've installed the dev tools, all you need to do is download two or three things via Terminal, and then configure/make the app. To do that? You install Xcode, open Terminal, and copy/paste the instructions from this thread. That easy.

Oh, and the new Perian build should be out soon I hope... it's looking mighty nifty, from my playing around with it. Very nice indeed, guys


-Andiyar

It would be nice if it didn't advertise itself as a "Universal" application on my system once installed, then. Also, I don't consider 640 x 352 "high resolution."

And while it may not be particularly hard to compile MPlayer, I have an extremely low threshold for bullshit—which, frankly, all this rigamarole is. I'm not a coder, I detest it, I shouldn't have to install XCode (waste of space, since I don't need it for ANYTHING besides this) and go through a bunch of crap just to play these files without headaches.

[andiyar]

Originally Posted by killmoms

It would be nice if it didn't advertise itself as a "Universal" application on my system once installed, then.

From this thread:

Originally Posted by andiyar

Note all, that this is a PPC build - not an Intel build. thr already posted an Intel build in this thread, which will hopefully work for the Intel Mac users amongst us.

From my installer:

Welcome to the installer for MPlayer OSX Custom. This custom version of MPlayer has been compiled in order to provide SSA/ASS subtitle support, primarily intended for use in watching soft-subbed anime MKV or MP4 files, on PowerPC-based Altivec-equipped Macintosh systems (G4 or G5 based computers only). This build requires X11.

It is kinda plainly stated, no?. Also, I have no control over what the app claims to be, whether Universal or not, as I'm downloading the sources from the MPlayer Project and compiling them, I'm not coding it myself. I've never bothered checking what it registers as, as I'd both a) made it clear what it was meant for, and b) don't yet use an Intel mac at all, apart from borrowing a friend's Macbook Pro once to see how my compile worked in Rosetta - which was, for XviD/DivX files,

Also, I don't consider 640 x 352 "high resolution."

Pardon my presumption. The point still stands though - you're trying to decode a highly intensive media file in an application that is having to convert instructions on the fly. It's not going to work very well. For XviD / DivX, sure, it'll probably be okay since they're not that processor intensive (any more). But for something like x264, you really shouldn't try it via emulation. Virtualization, sure, but not emulation.

And while it may not be particularly hard to compile MPlayer, I have an extremely low threshold for bullshit—which, frankly, all this rigamarole is. I'm not a coder, I detest it, I shouldn't have to install XCode (waste of space, since I don't need it for ANYTHING besides this) and go through a bunch of crap just to play these files without headaches.

I'm not a coder - I know HTML & some CSS, but I'm not a programmer. I couldn't have compiled MPlayer without thr's superb instructions - specialities in molecular biology and english literature/creative writing aren't exactly primers for a c++ coder. I have managed though, as have quite a few other people here, and indeed elsewhere (google for MacOSX Mplayer compile if you wish). Realistically, if it's that important - where there's a will, there's a way, as they say. Otherwise, well, there's always VLC and the official MPlayer builds.

Oh, and finally... the hostility's a bit much, my friend. I'd like to think that I'm providing a community service here. I have compiled and made available an app that I am serving from my own personal webspace, for the community to use for free. It has eaten up over ten gigabytes of web traffic in the past few months with close to a thousand unique downloads - this kind of activity costs real money. I've even updated my build fairly frequently, simply because I felt the community would benefit, and am planning to update it again in the not too distant future, once I get a decent and working SVN build running again. I'm sorry that it's not working for you, I truly am. But I don't know that railing about it is the best way to get it working.

Best wishes,


-Andiyar

[thr]

Originally Posted by killmoms

It would be nice if it didn't advertise itself as a "Universal" application on my system once installed, then.

This is because the GUI is a Universal Binary. Look inside the application package and you'll find that the mplayer binary itself is PowerPC-only (or in the case of my build Intel-only).

[killmoms]

Originally Posted by andiyar

Oh, and finally... the hostility's a bit much, my friend. I'd like to think that I'm providing a community service here. I have compiled and made available an app that I am serving from my own personal webspace, for the community to use for free. It has eaten up over ten gigabytes of web traffic in the past few months with close to a thousand unique downloads - this kind of activity costs real money. I've even updated my build fairly frequently, simply because I felt the community would benefit, and am planning to update it again in the not too distant future, once I get a decent and working SVN build running again. I'm sorry that it's not working for you, I truly am. But I don't know that railing about it is the best way to get it working.

I'm not angry at you Andiyar. I'm glad you made a build, and I'm glad thr made one as well. I'm more angry at the general open-source attitude that I see about MPlayer from its devs and the community at large, which seems to be "if you can't build it, fuck you." I'm also annoyed at fansub groups that feel their fansub styling is SO important that they'd prefer to distribute files that only work easily and reliably on ONE platform. There's no real advantage besides a TINY increase in encoding efficiency, which seems offset to me in terms of the difficulty some folks have trying to play them and the fact that their scripts can be ripped out by anyone. I've never understood the motivation for soft-subs on fansubs.

Also, thr, why is it that your MPlayer OS X SAC build seems to be choking on XviD-encoded MKVs? It doesn't crash MPlayer, but the video doesn't display (I can hear the audio). Any ideas?

[Nonezumi]

Originally Posted by killmoms

I'm not angry at you Andiyar. I'm glad you made a build, and I'm glad thr made one as well. I'm more angry at the general open-source attitude that I see about MPlayer from its devs and the community at large, which seems to be "if you can't build it, fuck you." I'm also annoyed at fansub groups that feel their fansub styling is SO important that they'd prefer to distribute files that only work easily and reliably on ONE platform. There's no real advantage besides a TINY increase in encoding efficiency, which seems offset to me in terms of the difficulty some folks have trying to play them and the fact that their scripts can be ripped out by anyone. I've never understood the motivation for soft-subs on fansubs.

Also, thr, why is it that your MPlayer OS X SAC build seems to be choking on XviD-encoded MKVs? It doesn't crash MPlayer, but the video doesn't display (I can hear the audio). Any ideas?

Thr's build seemed to handle XVid fine for me... Then again, I had installed the Mplayer Codec Pack from this location before I'd even tried that build. Perhaps that had something to do with it?

As for SoftSubs? It's a case of progress. There are very good reasons for using Matrotska containers, both in terms of quality and speed of turnaround;

* You don't have to re-encode the raw file to superimpose the subtitles (which, if the raw is already compressed means that the quality of the file would be reduced). You simply drop a subtitle package and any fonts used into the MKV container.

* By not having to re-encode, the time taken to quality check the subtitles is reduced. Problems with the subtitling? Just send the new subtitle file and not update the whole movie.

* Adding more than one language becomes a case of adding an additional subtitle file into the container

* Native speakers don't have to put up with subtitles they have no use for!

Admittedly, the issue with Softsubs looking attrocious in most software is irritating, but it'll improve over time, and in the short-term it's worth persevering to get the software working!

[killmoms]

Originally Posted by Nonezumi

Thr's build seemed to handle XVid fine for me... Then again, I had installed the Mplayer Codec Pack from this location before I'd even tried that build. Perhaps that had something to do with it?

Don't think so—I installed that along with MPlayer 1.0rc1 from the same location before I found out about thr's build. It plays DivX/XviD AVIs fine, just not the XviD MKVs as distributed by umai for Romeo x Juliet. Strange, right?

[thr]

Originally Posted by killmoms

Also, thr, why is it that your MPlayer OS X SAC build seems to be choking on XviD-encoded MKVs? It doesn't crash MPlayer, but the video doesn't display (I can hear the audio). Any ideas?

Honestly, I have no idea. I'm not a programmer either. As I said, 10 months is a long time. It's most likely fixed in the current sources.

And yes, the MPlayer philosophy of "Compile or Die" pretty much sucks. Its Linux roots can be seen quite clearly -- which isn't meant as an offense. But the Linux way isn't the Mac OS X way. You shouldn't really have to jump through hoops.

By the way (for those of you making their own builds): for building a truly standalone MPlayer, one would have to copy all libraries that MPlayer uses and which are not part of Mac OS X into the application package itself, then adjust all references in the mplayer binary with install_name_tool, so that the binary uses the libraries in the application package. Library references of a binary can be viewed with otool. Well, at least this worked for my 10 months old build. It was mostly accomplished through the time-tested method of trial and error.

[killmoms]

Originally Posted by thr

Honestly, I have no idea. I'm not a programmer either. As I said, 10 months is a long time. It's most likely fixed in the current sources.

And yes, the MPlayer philosophy of "Compile or Die" pretty much sucks. Its Linux roots can be seen quite clearly -- which isn't meant as an offense. But the Linux way isn't the Mac OS X way. You shouldn't really have to jump through hoops.

By the way (for those of you making their own builds): for building a truly standalone MPlayer, one would have to copy all libraries that MPlayer uses and which are not part of Mac OS X into the application package itself, then adjust all references in the mplayer binary with install_name_tool, so that the binary uses the libraries in the application package. Library references of a binary can be viewed with otool. Well, at least this worked for my 10 months old build. It was mostly accomplished through the time-tested method of trial and error.

Any particular reason why you haven't made a publicly-available build in that intervening 10 months, thr? Just curious. Clearly you've already got the knowledge it takes to make a good Intel build. I've got crap-tons of bandwidth to spare on my web space, and I'm annoyed enough with the current state of MPlayer on OS X that I'd be willing to work with you to learn how to roll a good Intel build of MPlayer and provide it to the community. People shouldn't have to go through this just to watch some anime. I'm having some trouble finding your compiling advice... is it in this thread, or another one?

[Nonezumi]

Originally Posted by killmoms

Don't think so—I installed that along with MPlayer 1.0rc1 from the same location before I found out about thr's build. It plays DivX/XviD AVIs fine, just not the XviD MKVs as distributed by umai for Romeo x Juliet. Strange, right?

Unless there is something strange about that MKV itself. Having not got that file down, I can't really comment. Perhaps I will and see how it goes.

Originally Posted by killmoms

Any particular reason why you haven't made a publicly-available build in that intervening 10 months, thr? Just curious. Clearly you've already got the knowledge it takes to make a good Intel build. I've got crap-tons of bandwidth to spare on my web space, and I'm annoyed enough with the current state of MPlayer on OS X that I'd be willing to work with you to learn how to roll a good Intel build of MPlayer and provide it to the community. People shouldn't have to go through this just to watch some anime. I'm having some trouble finding your compiling advice... is it in this thread, or another one?

The post is on the 3rd page of this list, and the instructions are hidden under a Spoilers tag. Just so you know, the location the files are copied into are slightly different in the Applications package, due to the fact it is now distributed as a Universal Binary rather than PPC/Intel-Specific.

If you can't find the post I'm on about, it's here...

http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost...2&postcount=45

[iamtetsuo]

OK the first post has been updated to reflect the problems everyone is having. It has been suggested that Intel mac people compile their own version of Mplayer. A note has been added that Andiyar's version is for PPC Macs only. A note about the Perian QT component has been added to the bottom of the first post as well (with sufficient warning about it's beta state).

[iamtetsuo]

thr I didn't recognize you without your avatar! :P

[thr]

Originally Posted by killmoms

Any particular reason why you haven't made a publicly-available build in that intervening 10 months, thr? Just curious.

I personally don't own a Mac. The one I created my build on wasn't mine. It went to China along with its owner in late August. And I don't plan on buying one before Leopard is released.

[thr]

Regarding Universal Binaries: theoretically it should be possible to create a Universal binary from a PowerPC and an Intel build. There's a tool called lipo which can combine the binaries for each architecture, resulting in a Universal Binary.

This would have to be done for the mplayer binary and every library that is built in the compilation process. So, if someone provided an Intel build along with all libraries from MacPorts and someone did the same for PowerPC, and if both builds were set up, configured and compiled the same way, a Universal Binary should be in reach.