gc-forever - Gamecube/Wii Forums

Obviously you'd have to put in a controller, I didn't mean soldering one directly to the other
people are lazy that's why nobody but you and a few others made the ide exi that and they didn't care enough try since the gc died many moons ago.
Same reason the dvd emulator v1.1 still hasn't taken off the ground.
Crazy Nation USB ATA Interface Schematics and Firmware been out ages but nobody cared enough to actually build one to test themselves.

Using:
Pal unchipped Cube
SD Media Launcher
Homemade SD adapter
SD 2gb
SD Load A+B
Mplayer CE

I have been playing movie files great, mp3's work.
Just a problem how do I use a playlist or is it not supported?
Anyone else tried?

When pressing A button aka play on the playlist file, in open playlist browsing. noting happens at all
When browsing open file playlist files are not shown.
I have tried a few different playlist filetypes.

Just a guess: Maybe in your playlist are absolute paths like "C:\Music\Band\title.mp3". Mplayer CE can't use this paths, cause it doesnt know your computers drive structure. File positions have to be relative path names.
Try open your m3u or pls playlist in a text editor (e.g. notepad) and see if that is the cause.

Ok but what Drive does the gamecube read as SDslotB? I tried sdb/music(Swiss says) and cardb/music(mplayer says)
or is it just like C,D, E?

As I said in my last post, you have to use relative path names.

Let's say your directory structure looks like this: Then your some.m3u would look like this: Additional information:
mind the "/" slashes

If you want to store your playlists in their own subdirectory, let's say PLAYLISTS, then you have to use "..". Then your some.m3u would look like this:

I have noticed that the r646 build of MPlayer CE has inverted left right audio channels. I think this could be fixed easily.

kevstah2004 wrote: people are lazy that's why nobody but you and a few others made the ide exi that and they didn't care enough try since the gc died many moons ago.

Thats only partly true. I am lazy but hey the Cube still lives on! I play my Gamecube games far more often then I play anything for the Wii.

DSman59 wrote:I have noticed that the r646 build of MPlayer CE has inverted left right audio channels. I think this could be fixed easily.

Append this to your configuration:
af-add=channels=2:2:0:1:1:0

Also, grab r658.

Extrems wrote:

DSman59 wrote:I have noticed that the r646 build of MPlayer CE has inverted left right audio channels. I think this could be fixed easily.

Append this to your configuration:
af-add=channels=2:2:0:1:1:0

Also, grab r658.

Thanks, that works!
I have another problem. When I press Start to reset GameCube and save my screen settings on r658, the changes aren't saved to my configuration and I have to repeat them every time. r646 didn't have this problem. I want to have correct aspect ratios on a widescreen monitor.

monitoraspect=16/9

For future reference:
http://mplayer-ce.googlecode.com/svn/tr ... yer.1.html

he I just wanted to ask how the development is going on. would be great to find network support in a future release.

Yeah, also would be great if it would play all kind mp4 and not only the ´´light´´ ones. Sometimes if difficult to guess if a mp4 or avi will be played and in my case that I don´t own a pc is pretty annoying downloading a movie or anime and at the end it shows you a black screen or an error message. Keep working hard guys and amuse us with the next release.

julius wrote:Yeah, also would be great if it would play all kind mp4 and not only the ´´light´´ ones. Sometimes if difficult to guess if a mp4 or avi will be played and in my case that I don´t own a pc is pretty annoying downloading a movie or anime and at the end it shows you a black screen or an error message. Keep working hard guys and amuse us with the next release.

The gamecube only has enought processing power to play the 'light' ones. So I don't think it's possible to improve that a lot.


Network support would be awesome though, I'm experimenting a bit with the BBA & networking, so I might be able to implement that feature myself some day.

Edit: Oops, double post.

I'll make it initialize on-demand and pray it works good enough or something.

julius wrote:Yeah, also would be great if it would play all kind mp4 and not only the ´´light´´ ones. Sometimes if difficult to guess if a mp4 or avi will be played and in my case that I don´t own a pc is pretty annoying downloading a movie or anime and at the end it shows you a black screen or an error message. Keep working hard guys and amuse us with the next release.

There's only so much I can do with 24 MB of MRAM.

I'm also concerned by the size of the next GameCube build, my local Wii build ballooned by one megabyte when 9/10-bit H.264 decoding got added in Libav.

Ok, ok, I admit I was a little tough because since I do not have programming knowledge, I am only based on results and I do not see the background, so the only role I can play for now is to be a tester and I have had time enough to experiment. For example, besides the problem with light mp4, I have seen that .avi, .flv and .wmv plays pretty well, but some avi that have no sound does not play and the fact that avi format takes more space wich is a problem for people with small sd cards; 3gp plays videos without sound and dpg3 plays sound without video, and so on. These are only a few things that I have seen, I hope they can be useful to improve the homebrew.
Keep working hard guys.

Hi I wanted to share some Gamecube handbrake presets I cooked up ,that at one time, I had great success with viewing on the gc specific mplayer ce.

The First is average quality, reasonable encode time...

Just copy this info into a text editor and rename the file Gamecube.plist:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
<dict>
<key>AudioList</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>AudioBitrate</key>
<string>192</string>
<key>AudioEncoder</key>
<string>ac3</string>
<key>AudioEncoderActual</key>
<string>ac3</string>
<key>AudioMixdown</key>
<string>Stereo</string>
<key>AudioSamplerate</key>
<string>Same as source</string>
<key>AudioTrack</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>AudioTrackDRCSlider</key>
<real>0</real>
<key>AudioTrackDescription</key>
<string>No Audio</string>
</dict>
</array>
<key>ChapterMarkers</key>
<false />
<key>Default</key>
<false />
<key>FileFormat</key>
<string>MKV file</string>
<key>Folder</key>
<false />
<key>Mp4HttpOptimize</key>
<false />
<key>Mp4LargeFile</key>
<false />
<key>Mp4iPodCompatible</key>
<false />
<key>PictureAutoCrop</key>
<true />
<key>PictureBottomCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureDeblock</key>
<integer>4</integer>
<key>PictureDecomb</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureDecombCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureDecombDeinterlace</key>
<true />
<key>PictureDeinterlace</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureDeinterlaceCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureDenoise</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureDenoiseCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureDetelecine</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureDetelecineCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureHeight</key>
<integer>480</integer>
<key>PictureKeepRatio</key>
<true />
<key>PictureLeftCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureLooseCrop</key>
<false />
<key>PictureModulus</key>
<string>16</string>
<key>PicturePAR</key>
<string>0</string>
<key>PicturePARHeight</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>PicturePARWidth</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>PictureRightCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureTopCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureWidth</key>
<integer>640</integer>
<key>PresetBuildNumber</key>
<integer>2011020501</integer>
<key>PresetDescription</key>
<string></string>
<key>PresetName</key>
<string>Gamecube</string>
<key>SubtitleList</key>
<array>
</array>
<key>Type</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>UsesPictureFilters</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>UsesPictureSettings</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>VideoAvgBitrate</key>
<integer>2500</integer>
<key>VideoEncoder</key>
<string>H.264 (x264)</string>
<key>VideoFramerate</key>
<string>Same as source</string>
<key>VideoFramerateMode</key>
<string>cfr</string>
<key>VideoGrayScale</key>
<false />
<key>VideoQualitySlider</key>
<real>24</real>
<key>VideoQualityType</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>VideoTargetSize</key>
<integer>700</integer>
<key>VideoTurboTwoPass</key>
<false />
<key>VideoTwoPass</key>
<false />
<key>x264Option</key>
<string>vbv-maxrate=530:vbv-bufsize=800:weightb=0:bframes=1:partitions=none:weightp=0:no-dct-decimate=1:direct=none</string>
</dict>
</array>
</plist>


The Last is High Quality slow encode time.

Just copy and paste this into a text editor and rename it Gamecube(slow).plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
<dict>
<key>AudioList</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>AudioBitrate</key>
<string>192</string>
<key>AudioEncoder</key>
<string>ac3</string>
<key>AudioEncoderActual</key>
<string>ac3</string>
<key>AudioMixdown</key>
<string>Stereo</string>
<key>AudioSamplerate</key>
<string>Same as source</string>
<key>AudioTrack</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>AudioTrackDRCSlider</key>
<real>1.8300000000000001</real>
<key>AudioTrackDescription</key>
<string>No Audio</string>
</dict>
</array>
<key>ChapterMarkers</key>
<false />
<key>Default</key>
<false />
<key>FileFormat</key>
<string>MKV file</string>
<key>Folder</key>
<false />
<key>Mp4HttpOptimize</key>
<false />
<key>Mp4LargeFile</key>
<false />
<key>Mp4iPodCompatible</key>
<false />
<key>PictureAutoCrop</key>
<true />
<key>PictureBottomCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureDeblock</key>
<integer>4</integer>
<key>PictureDecomb</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>PictureDecombCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureDecombDeinterlace</key>
<true />
<key>PictureDeinterlace</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureDeinterlaceCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureDenoise</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>PictureDenoiseCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureDetelecine</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>PictureDetelecineCustom</key>
<string></string>
<key>PictureHeight</key>
<integer>480</integer>
<key>PictureKeepRatio</key>
<true />
<key>PictureLeftCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureLooseCrop</key>
<false />
<key>PictureModulus</key>
<string>16</string>
<key>PicturePAR</key>
<string>0</string>
<key>PicturePARHeight</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>PicturePARWidth</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>PictureRightCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureTopCrop</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>PictureWidth</key>
<integer>640</integer>
<key>PresetBuildNumber</key>
<integer>2011020901</integer>
<key>PresetDescription</key>
<string></string>
<key>PresetName</key>
<string>Gamecube (slow)</string>
<key>SubtitleList</key>
<array>
</array>
<key>Type</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>UsesPictureFilters</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>UsesPictureSettings</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>VideoAvgBitrate</key>
<integer>2500</integer>
<key>VideoEncoder</key>
<string>H.264 (x264)</string>
<key>VideoFramerate</key>
<string>Same as source</string>
<key>VideoFramerateMode</key>
<string>vfr</string>
<key>VideoGrayScale</key>
<false />
<key>VideoQualitySlider</key>
<real>24</real>
<key>VideoQualityType</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>VideoTargetSize</key>
<integer>700</integer>
<key>VideoTurboTwoPass</key>
<false />
<key>VideoTwoPass</key>
<false />
<key>x264Option</key>
<string>weightb=0:bframes=1:partitions=none:weightp=0:no-dct-decimate=1:direct=none:me=umh:subme=9:merange=24:trellis=2</string>
</dict>
</array>
</plist>

Once the documents have been created fire up Handbrake and import these presets. I don't have the time to refine the recipe any more but would love to hear any advice the community has to offer! Remember these worked for me but your mileage may vary...

Interesting. Actually the way I use to avoid incompatibilities due to lack of memory on gamecube is just converting or downloading videos in .flv, but I'll try your recipe with the next problematic video I get. Thanks man.

Your welcome, I found h264 with ac3 2 channel audio in an MKV container to be the right combination for me. Of course the resolution is limited to 640x480, at most. I realize there is room for improvement, for example I was thinking about experimenting with other less processor intensive audio codecs... But anyway I hope it provides some other talented individual with interest in this subject a decent starting point.

Cool.. how does h264 go on the SD Gecko on intense scenes? (HBO Intro or Big Bang Theory intro for example)

Jweeber wrote: Of course the resolution is limited to 640x480, at most.

i wonder if this was my issue when i tried a conversion a few months back...
thanks, ill have to try this again and get some Iron Maiden videos playing on the GC

Well my viewing habits during my experimentation with the gamecube mplayer were mostly episodes of Young Justice, the occasional episode of House, the feature film Due Date (played like a Dream btw) and the All Star Superman movie. The intro to House would stutter a bit, and one of my early encodes of All Star Superman flat out choked with a kernel dump message along the lines of 0000000x0 memory something, something (I don't really recall exactly) and various episodes of Young Justice would freeze for a bit but the cube would usually power through. Again there is room for improvement but I feel the h264 is the best value byte for byte. There are many quality switches that may be turned on or off that will increase or decrease processor load.

As my cube is currently out on loan to a co-worker who uses it to pacify her children after school with the emulators currently still being developed by the community from this very website (hours of joy and happiness you folks provide to people who don't even know this place exists, THANK YOU) I am not able to fire the ol' cube up to refresh my memory or retest old encodes.

My suggestions for problematic videos with high motion sequences (anime anyone?) would be to first disable CABAC (simply uncheck the box in the Handbrake GUI) and eliminate the 1 B frames I threw in the HQ preset and use a MAIN or Baseline Profile- Uncheck "8x8 Transform." I'm still on the fence as to whether a variable frame rate is a positive or negative to the decoding process, its enabled because it appeared to cause less stutter... I was probably a little over zealous with the quality tweaks for h264 as I wanted to see what the old cube could do. I believe the success I have achieved with this codec is largely in part to CRF option or Constant Rate Factor. When enabled, h264 encodes the video at a flat rate, No large spikes in bitrate for high detail/motion scenes for the cube to choke on. Set at a reasonable value it provides a nice steady stream of managable bitrate for the cube to digest.

@ emu_kidid- "how does h264 go on the SD Gecko on intense scenes?" Y'know this question made me realize I had never factored in the i/o capability of the SD cards I was using... D'oh!

Just for the sake of transparency, this is the way I ran GC Mplayer CE: I would use the infamous Datel SD Media launcher to execute the dol file from a 32 mb SD card in slot A and store all multimedia files on a 8 GB micro sd + adapter in slot B. FYI- I found the earlier revisions of GC Mplayer to yield greater success for me... I'm sure the project has made great improvements, but for me I was happy with the 1st or 2nd release featured on the Google code page.

Just a question... will it support (EDIT: mini-DVD) in the future? (the GC version). Streaming through SD is great, but through an optical disc it would be smoother, right? And it would perhaps allow it to play bigger/higher resolution files. Right?

The GC DVD Drive can't play normal size DVDs.

I wasn't talking about regular DVD's, maybe I said it wrong, I was talking about playing video files using an optical disc (mini-DVD) instead of the source being the SD Card, 'cause it would be easier to play bigger files (HD files for example, don't know).