[Gusar]

Originally Posted by Inc

I remember when I just added --enable-largefiles to my ./configure line when compiling mencoder (even under MinGW) mencoder resulted encodings with filesizes bigger than 2GB played back properly. Ok, these where mpeg2 encodes, but it really seems that largefiles enabling could be the cure (imho).
EDIT: I also remember of an direct avi (xvid/mp3)mencoder encode I did which resulted in 3GB - no problems.

This got me interested, so I did a MinGW compile of mplayer with --enable-largefiles and did some tests. First I created two files with a little over 2GB with mencoder, one with odml and one without. MPlayer can play both files but can't seek in them (not even with -forceidx) and I'm not sure if it would play the file to the end. Media Player Classic can play the no-odml file normally and crashes on the odml file.

Then I again created two files (one odml and one no-odml) but this time with over 4GB size. MPlayer behaves the same as before. MPC again crashes on the odml file, but on the no-odml file, it only plays a few seconds.

So the limit where MinGW starts to fail is 4GB and --enable-largefiles doesn't have any effect. There's also other interesting stuff, like, when filesize goes over 2GB mencoder starts showing negative projected filesize and negative bitrate.
This is the mencoder output wint MinGW:

ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at 1023MB.  19min 6460mb  A-V:0.064 [22609:127]
ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at 2047MB.  15min 6388mb  A-V:0.064 [23155:128]
ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at -1024MB. 11min -2098mb  A-V:0.064 [-7609:128]
ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at 0MB.em:   8min   0mb  A-V:0.064 [-131:128]

Then I did the same tests with a cygwin compile. No problems with the odml files, they play perfectly. The no-odml 4GB file, MPC just plays the first seconds, mplayer creates an index with -forceidx then plays the file ok.
Mencoder output with cygwin:

ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at 1023MB.  19min 6460mb  A-V:0.064 [22609:127]
ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at 2047MB.  15min 6388mb  A-V:0.064 [23155:128]
ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at 3071MB.  11min 6295mb  A-V:0.064 [22302:128]
ODML: Starting new RIFF chunk at 4095MB.   8min 6281mb  A-V:0.064 [22167:128]

Bottom line: cygwin mplayer/mencoder with odml and everything is perfect.

For anyone interested, get the compiles here: mingw, cygwin

Two notes about the cygwin version: a) it looks for the mplayer config files in c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.mplayer (it will create the folder if it doesn't exist) b) I had problems with xvid and x264 so this version doesn't support them. If there's interest in a fully working cygwin compile I might dig into the problem.