Random Access MPEG player

last modified Tue Oct 22 13:24:30
  • About the player
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    • About the Random Access MPEG player

     GUI view

    The Random Access (RA) MPEG player allows you to jump to arbitrary frames in a long MPEG file. The first time an MPEG file is viewed with the RA player, a header file is generated and saved in a file with extension ``.head''. e.g. If you view the file ``myMPEG.mpg'' the header file will be called ``myMPEG.mpg.head''. If the header file is already present, it will be used.

    The interface for the RA player is similar to mpeg_play except there are some new buttons and a slider bar. You can use the slider to jump to any image frame in the sequence. You can also type in a frame number into the frame number counter box to jump to an exact frame.

    The buttons perform the following functions

    << Fast backwards

    < Play backwards (slow)

    stop; Stop

    > Play

    >> Fast forwards

    |< Rewind to start

    >| Jump to end

    <| step back a frame

    |> step forward a frame

    loop Toggle loop mode

    Multiple clicking on the fast forward/ backward button will increase the speed of fast play. With the loop button on (down) the player will rewind to the start when the last frame is reached. Note that the fast forward/ backward functions only play the key frames (I-frames).

    Downloading the RA mpeg player

    The RA player is available in binary form for sun4 and irix5 operating systems. In both cases dynamic and static versions are supplied. The dynamic version uses run time dynamic linking and requires motif and other libraries. The static version is much larger but does not require any run-time system libraries to be present. If in doubt, try the dynamic binary first and if this fails use the static version. The complete source is also available and includes a random access mpeg library for building other applications. written by Adam Baumberg 1996