FreePlayer 1.0 README NOTES
===========================
Starbuck <starbuck@labdv.com>
http://www.labdv.com/freeplayer
Starbuck's FreePlayer 1.0 is a simple, complete and powerful audio/video player based
on the MPlayer project. FreePlayer is gratis (free of charge) and its code is open-source.
FreePlayer runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms:
- play audio and video files (Xvid/DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, MPEG-2, FLV, MP4,
WMV, AC-3, AAC, DTS, MP3...),
- play DVD and Bluray discs, ISOs and folders,
- play files from the network, using the HTTP, FTP, MMS or RTSP/RTP protocol,
- play external subtitle files,
- browse the internet to play audio and video media (Youtube, Dailymotion,
Music Addict, CBS News, Fox News, Lego City ...),
- save network medias to local disk.
FreePlayer is a GUI frontend for MPlayer and MPlayer2, FreePlayer aims at being
a frontend for other player backends, like VLC/libVLC and ffplay.
Not just a MPlayer GUI, FreePlayer includes a full-featured video web browser and it
can save audio and video network streams to your local filesystem. You navigates the
video web browser à la Chromium and it detects embedded video or audio streams and
load them into the player like any local file. You may want to avoid low Internet
connection issues or archive the network media, then Startbuck's FreePlayer rips the
network media to your local file system.
FreePlayer is based on new-born Starbuck's C++ Library including Console, Media,
MediaPlayer, Process and Widget classes. Starbuck's C++ Library project aims at
being the framework (based on Digia Qt) for upcoming software products edited by
labDV.com team.
March 26th, 2013: Windows/Mac OS X release 1.0.1.0
--------------------------------------------------
FreePlayer 1.0.1.0 release is full-featured and compiles on Windows and Mac OS X
platforms.
New features:
- DVD menus with navigation and audio/subtitle control
- Added support for non-western subtitles;
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew
- Subtitle font style (font color, font size, bold, shadow, bottom margin)
- Deinterlacing video (switchable on-the-fly option)
- Option to turn on DVD/VOBsub antialiasing (-spuaa 4 -spugauss 0.5)
- H.264 MPlayer double-speed bug workaround
- MPlayer 'Could not find matching colorspace' workround
- Set up to 8 threads for decoding MPEG-1/2 and H.264
- New console menu to hide idle processes and improve navigation
- New menu to restore all default settings
- New menu to associate audio/video/playlist file extensions to FreePlayer
(every extension can be selected/unseleted and be restored to previous
application associated with)
User interface:
- Replaced source navigation bar with source navigation in 'Media' menu
- Undefined source navigation bar code (not working for Mac OS X)
Fixes:
- Ignore ID_LENGTH for TitleSet sources (buggy for some Bluray title)
- Corrected resize height on load media
- Corrected aspect ratio when playback if wrong or missing when loading
- Corrected fullscreen display on multi-monitor system
Build:
- Windows and Mac OS X (Qt 4.8.4)
- Added Qt 5.0.0.0 port
- Qt 5 build for Windows fails with QProcess I/O (unstable)
- Qt 5 build for Mac OS X fails with OpenGL for MPlayer 'corevideo' protocol
Recommendations:
- set -framedrop option if audio/video not synchro (slow CPU or deinterlacing Bluray)
- unselect 'Prevent MPlayer colorspace issue' in preferences
- choose '-vo gl' for Windows running on VMware virtual machine
- use 'arialuni.ttf' font for non-Western encoded subtitles (Arabic, Chinese, Greek,
Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Persan (Farsi), Russian (Cyrillic), Thai, Vietnamese)
Issues:
- drag'n'drop stops working on Mac after going to full screen mode
- deinterlacing may de-sync audio/video with Bluray (CPU power issue)
- resolution scaler resizes as 4:3 on Windows with DVD menu navigation
- loading more than 2 subtitle files and changing code page may require to re-select current subtitle
Known limitations:
- aspect ratio menu for DVD menu navigation is not activated on Mac OS X (vo driver issue)
- resolution scaler for DVD menu navigation is not activated on Mac OS X
- video web browser is not activated on Mac OS X (useless because no 64-bit
Flash plugin available for Mac OS X)
- MPlayer2 brew binary for Mac OS X can't be compiled with libbluray support
- builds only on Windows and Mac OS X
