Play video files

[michl270]

Dear all,

as I am having tons of videos recorded with my GoPro, I am wondering if there might be a possibility to include also video files (mp4) into the picframe project.

Best regards,
Michael

[paddywwoof]

Hi, It would be nice to be able to show video but I think it would be tricky (or just very slow) to do it using OpenGL. However on the Pi 4 it might be possible to use GLX for the fading window in front of a omxplayer or vlc video window. On Pi 2 or 3 I have struggled to get the opengles rendering and video rendering to work a the same time.

I suppose the alternative would be to have "sharp" switching for videos (though there's a possibility of a gap with a black screen!) as the still image showing app stops and the video showing app starts.

[jgodfrey]

I wonder about performing the transition on a single frame from the video. That way, you'd still only need to transition between still images but you'd be using content relevant to the video. That said, I'm not sure what it'd take to grab the transitional frame...

[paddywwoof]

Yes that might be a good way to do it. ffmpeg is in raspberry pi OS so that could extract the first frame and save it in /dev/shm/temp_frame.jpg

[helgeerbe]

I just tested it with my little side project. In my electron overlay I added a page <video src="./background.mp4" muted autoplay loop> </video>, which works pretty well.
That means chromium renders the video as an overlay on PictureFrame. But it seems a bit slow on my PI3. CPU load is about 3, that is fine. No matter what the movie size is. I started with full HD/25 fps and at the end I used a clip with 320 pixels and 15 fps.

I don't know, if a pi4 would have a better performance. pi3 does not use the gpu for rendering.

But it's fun. You have quite a Harry Potter effect.

[sapnho]

Hi Helge, could you post a video?

[helgeerbe]

link This is a short testvideo with time code. At the edged you see, that PictureFrame is blending in a new image in the background.

Testfile: FPS_test_1080p23.976_L4.1.mkv

Not that impressive, but I hope you get a performance impression.

[helgeerbe]

Video is about 19 sec. But if you follow the counter I count 14 sec. So its a little bit slow

[junglebells]

I'd also love the ability to play video clips on RPi.
I understand there is a command line media player for RPi: OMXPlayer. Could this be utilized?

[michl270]

Dear All,
I am just wondering if there is any progress regarding my idea/request to also include video files. Would be so great to have that ability :)
Thanks and best regards,
Michael

[fakorte]

Video would be fantastic