Techflash: Basic video playback guide

2026-10-14T06:32:09Z

Basic video playback guide

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The [[Wii]] is capable of playing back video under [[Wii-Linux]] reasonably well if you prepare it properly. The [[GameCube]] does not have the CPU horsepower, spare RAM, nor I/O bandwidth, to playback any form of video.

== Formats ==
* '''MPEG-1''': Works well
* '''MPEG-2''': Works well (recommended format)
* '''H.264''': Works only for very low-FPS (~16FPS at best) content
* '''Others''': Untested

== Considerations ==
* Runtime rescaling is far too taxing; you must rescale video content to exactly match the target framebuffer resolution ahead of playback
* Video is streamed from disk; if your storage medium is too slow it will become a bottleneck
* Audio seems to be unusually taxing and causes stuttering in the video stream, with warnings like <code>[aist#0:1/mp2 @ 0x5a2250] Resumed reading at pts 32.592 with rate 1.050 after a lag of 0.489s</code> appearing in the logs
* The Wii cannot output HD video, so don't expect stunning quality out of it

== Optimal commands ==
* For converting your content to the optimal format (MPEG-2) at the target resolution (640x448) at decent quality: <code>ffmpeg -i <input file> -c:v mpeg2video -b:v 1400k -maxrate 2500k -bufsize 2000k -qmax 40 -g 15 -bf 2 -vf "scale=640:448:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,pad=640:448:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2:black" -c:a mp2 -b:a 128k <output>.mpg`</code> (replace <code><input file></code> with your input filename and <code><output></code> with your output filename)
* For playback (run under a VT, not Xorg): <code>ffmpeg -re -i <file>.mpg -pix_fmt rgb565be -f fbdev /dev/fb0</code> (replace <code><file></code> with your filename)
** To add audio playback (although it will probably make your video stutter), add <code>-f alsa default</code> to the end

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Techflash: Basic video playback guide