Odds and ends: Faster Mplayer & RS-120 Tweaking
It’s been an up and down week. Here’s a quick post:
Faster, Multi-core Mplayer
By default, Mplayer will only ever decode videos on one CPU core; This I found out when trying SMPlayer again and noticing the option to set the number of decode threads. After some searching around, it seems, adding “-lavdopts fast:threads=2” to your Gnome-Mplayer/MPlayer options and replacing 2 with the number of cores you’d like to use, enables H.264 multi-thread rendering, spreading the task across your processors.
For me, this has meant being able to watch 720p Youtube, by way of Gecko-Mediaplayer and the Youtube without Flash Auto greasemonkey script, without even occasional jittering.
The end result: Even demanding game trailers run smoothly.
Tweaking RF Headphones
In my review of the Sennheiser RS-120s, I recommended using the computer sound card to do the majority of amplifying in order to reduce the low-end static you sometimes hear (Stupid supernovas.).
However, I suspect causes a rather serious knock-on effect where music that is goes from normal volume to loud quickly or, is very bassy, looses a lot of definition and will fluctuate in volume. A good way I’ve found to test it is by listening to this piece of music: MGS3 – The Sorrow, as the first really heavy bass hit will often cause the headphones to cut out entirely.
While music that will make them cut out completely is rare, the more noticeable effect is that when you get a much louder sound coming in over quieter sounds, the quieter sounds get pushed down and made even quieter.
I’m working on a solution to this, unsure if it’s the batteries, transmitter or receiver causing it..
