#14 a52: error at resampling

[Bijan Soleymani]

I converted some itunes movies with AAC audio. On playback in mplayer, every once in a while a couple of times per movie I get the following error: "a52: error at resampling". This is not that big a deal on the computer, but on any hardware DVD player this will cause the player to lockup and it will need to be powered off and on to start playing the movie again.

[Sven Berkvens-Matthijsse]

Which versions of mplayer and ffmpeg are you using?

[Bijan Soleymani]

I'm using the versions which come with Ubuntu 8.04. The following versions:
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (Family: 6, Model: 23, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.

FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libogg --enable-libgsm --enable-dc1394 --disable-debug --enable-shared --prefix=/usr
libavutil version: 1d.49.3.0
libavcodec version: 1d.51.38.0
libavformat version: 1d.51.10.0
built on Mar 16 2009 21:16:26, gcc: 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu3)
ffmpeg SVN-rUNKNOWN
libavutil 3212032
libavcodec 3352064
libavformat 3344896

And the command line I'm using is:
movie-to-dvd -a 16:9 -m ntsc -M shaun_of_the_dead.m4v

[Sven Berkvens-Matthijsse]

The version of ffmpeg is quite old (obviously, since Ubuntu Hardy has been out for quite some time). Would it be possible for you to try and install a newer version, for example the ffmpeg version used in Intrepid (8.10)? It might simply be possible to download the package from launchpad.net or directly from archive.ubuntu.com.

The problem is the ffmpeg encoder: it is apparently producing illegal a52 bitstreams, otherwise mplayer wouldn't be complaining about it, and the DVD player wouldn't lock up (this is, of course, a bug in the DVD player, but not one that you can fix). Upgrading the ffmpeg version will probably fix the problem.

If you are unable to install .deb packages from other Ubuntu versions, you might consider downloading the source package for ffmpeg, and compiling the package on your own system from the source.

[Bijan Soleymani]

Thanks! I installed mplayer and ffmpeg from SVN and that fixed the problem.