Homebrew WiiMC chokes on youtube mp4s

[masterz87]

Why is this happening? I heard that WiiMC/MplayerCE is able to play mp4s so long as they're not that complex. The youtube mp4s are 1 ref frame, cavlc, etc. etc. and I know that netflix made an app for the wii, so I don't know why it'd be dying on the 640x480/480p youtube videos.

 

[duffmmann]

why don't you just use the official youtube app for the Wii? The youtube functionality on WiiMC has always had issues. It served its purpose for a while, but eventually the free official youtube app for the Wii made it pretty much unnecessary.

 

[masterz87]

why don't you just use the official youtube app for the Wii? The youtube functionality on WiiMC has always had issues. It served its purpose for a while, but eventually the free official youtube app for the Wii made it pretty much unnecessary.

I downloaded the files already and it's because I like to DL the files and then watch them, rather than dealing with the inane buffering from google.

 

[duffmmann]

I downloaded the files already and it's because I like to DL the files and then watch them, rather than dealing with the inane buffering from google.

oh, so you're just talking about the files, not so much about using the in-app youtube player. In that case, .mp4s have always worked on WiiMC, but have also always stuttered and lagged. If you really wanna watch any .mp4s in WiiMC, try and find a .mp4 to .avi converter and load and play the .avi that has worked for me in the past when I've had troubling formats that didn't play properly in WiiMC.

 

[masterz87]

oh, so you're just talking about the files, not so much about using the in-app youtube player. In that case, .mp4s have always worked on WiiMC, but have also always stuttered and lagged. If you really wanna watch any .mp4s in WiiMC, try and find a .mp4 to .avi converter and load and play the .avi that has worked for me in the past when I've had troubling formats that didn't play properly in WiiMC.

That's odd as I would've though that the 1 reference frame at 640x480 would be fine, also MplayerCE has an mp4 as it's background "image", and I knew that the wii couldn't handle the more complex MP4 files on its cpu without some carefully written hand-optimized assembly.

 

[duffmmann]

That's odd as I would've though that the 1 reference frame at 640x480 would be fine, also MplayerCE has an mp4 as it's background "image", and I knew that the wii couldn't handle the more complex MP4 files on its cpu without some carefully written hand-optimized assembly.

Exactly, I'm sure if someone really took the time to tinker with the code of WiiMC, they'd figure out much better .mp4 compatibility for the system. But that's just not the case yet, and likely never will be. But really there are ways around it. Like I said, use a converter and if you can, moving forward, just look for .avi and other formats you know that the Wii has no issue playing video from.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Standard MP4 using H264 (AVC) codec kills WiiMC, and that is what youtube uses.
Try using MPEG4 ASP embedded into an MP4 container, AVI or whatever you like.
There is an old discussion somewhere in the internet between the developers of MplayerCE and famous x264 developer Dark Shikari over the possibility of making H264 work at appropriate speeds in a Wii.
The conclusion was that due to the lack of strong vector operation in the Wii CPU, it was not possible.

 

[SuperrSonic]

The YouTube app uses webm 360p as maximum res but videos are scaled to "fit" 672x456, this means that videos are at incorrect aspect ratios. in both modes.

WiiMC does work well with h.264 on certain setups, encoding to 640x360(16:9) and 512x384(4:3) will always work, even with high compression. Or you can do what Netflix does, 512x384 with a 4:3 PAR will get you a higher quality 16:9 video, I've never tried this so I can't guarantee it would work in WiiMC, I have a 4:3 TV so I always go for 640x360.

The Netflix app generally looks really good but videos are always 512x384 max and unlike YouTube this one scales correctly.

 

[masterz87]

The YouTube app uses webm 360p as maximum res but videos are scaled to "fit" 672x456, this means that videos are at incorrect aspect ratios. in both modes.

WiiMC does work well with h.264 on certain setups, encoding to 640x360(16:9) and 512x384(4:3) will always work, even with high compression. Or you can do what Netflix does, 512x384 with a 4:3 PAR will get you a higher quality 16:9 video, I've never tried this so I can't guarantee it would work in WiiMC, I have a 4:3 TV so I always go for 640x360.

The Netflix app generally looks really good but videos are always 512x384 max and unlike YouTube this one scales correctly.

Well that's the thing, it is just chocking non-stop it's the "480p" one which in reality is 640x360 for 16:9 or 480x360p if it's 4:3 and I don't know why they're all dying non-stop. I start playing a mp4 file, and then BAM! the thing chokes up and starts freezing. The files are the standard "medium" quality preset from youtube and I'm pretty sure that they are made to run on potatoes. I guess I could try to start downloading the webm versions of the files but I am still surprised that it's choking on it. I can't imagine that the 640/480 by 360 vp8 encodes are any less cpu-intensive than h.264 profile that google uses as it seems like vp8/9 is based upon how they encode stuff.

Edit: OK so I tried the 480x360p webm of a video and tried to seek a bit ahead as what happens other times and what do you know the thing basically just crashes. So that's not working either. So I don't know what's going on with the thing. The SD card that I am using is the one that came with my dsi as I have no use for something so insanely small(1GiB) but to hold basic apps for the wii it's fine. The USB drive is one I've used for a few years now that is slow(as it's getting up there in age) but is more than enough to handle reading back a video that only takes up ~700Kb/s on avg from youtube it generally gives me ~4-5MB/s writes and 2x that in reads so it's not good for much but I put the youtube files onto it and it has worked fine on my 360, and ps3 only the wii does it act weird and spazz out with the files.

I watched a dvd via wiimc but that was on my USB3 drive so I don't know why they're both spazzing out for.

I don't know what else it could be, as I just checked the memory card and reading the files from it, and it's still handling ~10MB/s which is the about class10 writes on the other hand I don't know but I'm sure that it's much lower and I still don't get why it just keeeps locking up on me.

I did just have an insanely odd one, during fceugx I had it pasued and then my wii just froze(it wouldn't respond to the reset button apparently) but the eject button still functioned, and the power button's hard reset was still working. I don't know what's going on with it as I've only done usb2.0 ios/the cios for usb loader on it and nothing else. I have a full nand backup of the console before I did anything but I still don't get how that freeze happened.

 

[SuperrSonic]

Is your hdd formatted as FAT32 and is it always connected?

WiiMC only needs a clean IOS58 to work, and may be unstable with NTFS.

 

[TecXero]

Actually, WiiMC handles MP4s just fine, just need to make sure they're not h.264 encoded. After a lot of trial and error, this is what I use under Handbrake:

Video Codec: MPEG-4 (6QP)
Video Resolution: up to 848x480
Audio: AAC 256kbs Stereo

It's not perfect, but for Wii playback it's fine. If you want higher quality without any playback issues, I'd recommend a PS3, 360, PS4, or Wii U.

Yeah, h.264 can work with some fine tuning, but I don't really see the need for that level of compression for a local network. Then again, I have a 1TB HDD dedicated to my media.

 

[SuperrSonic]

Why use 848? I mean there's no definite setting for the perfect encodes for WiiMC but WiiMC only uses 640x480, you're actually adding strain to the CPU by making it bigger than the framebuffer because of downscaling, and you're wasting space but I know you don't care about that.

H.264 won't even work properly in 640x480 with the basic baseline profile, like you said you need to fine tune it.

With handbrake I use h.264 with 640x360 or 512x384 for 4:3 videos, any other setting I use depends on the source. I usually keep the audio untouched unless it's from a DVD and takes too much space. With those low resolutions you can take advantage of high quality and decent compression without worrying about it going out of sync.

If you absolutely must use 640x480 then xvid will run perfectly, even 1280x720(WiiMC's max allowed size) videos will play smoothly.

 

[TecXero]

Why use 848? I mean there's no definite setting for the perfect encodes for WiiMC but WiiMC only uses 640x480, you're actually adding strain to the CPU by making it bigger than the framebuffer because of downscaling, and you're wasting space but I know you don't care about that.

H.264 won't even work properly in 640x480 with the basic baseline profile, like you said you need to fine tune it.

With handbrake I use h.264 with 640x360 or 512x384 for 4:3 videos, any other setting I use depends on the source. I usually keep the audio untouched unless it's from a DVD and takes too much space. With those low resolutions you can take advantage of high quality and decent compression without worrying about it going out of sync.

If you absolutely must use 640x480 then xvid will run perfectly, even 1280x720(WiiMC's max allowed size) videos will play smoothly.

So that way they'd take full advantage of the vertical resolution while still being rendered at the proper aspect ratio if I ever watched them on my laptop, without having to bother with the options. Then again, I have little knowledge on how WiiMC renders video beyond the Wii's Anamorphic limitation. It's also an old setup that I was using back when my Wii was my main multimedia device.

 

[SuperrSonic]

In that case I would just keep the original file for the PC and the specific one for WiiMC, but I can see how it would be a bother for most users.

 

[TecXero]

In that case I would just keep the original file for the PC and the specific one for WiiMC, but I can see how it would be a bother for most users.

You're right. Anyone that cares for visual quality probably should use multiple files (or shouldn't be using the Wii in the first place). I didn't use it often enough to care that much. The only thing I use WiiMC for anymore is music streaming. There aren't many devices as flexible as WiiMC for music.