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guettli
Asked: 2018-11-19 22:40:59 +0800 CST

Choppy video under Ubuntu but not Windows

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This video is not playing smoothly with totem or VLC under Ubuntu:

http://thomas-guettler.de/tmp/20181011_113036-0.MP4

It works with Windows.

What I mean with "is not playing smoothly" is:

  • I see it, but it looks like there are only four frames. The playing jumps.
  • On Windows it is smooth. You see the car in the background drive along.

Version: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS

Is there a way to get it working like it should???

===> vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 1.1.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_1
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.1 (libva 2.1.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile - 2.1.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264StereoHigh         : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc

Background: This is just an example. All videos created by my Lumix camera don't play well under Ubuntu :-(

video vlc totem

4 Answers

  1. I can play the video in Firefox and VLC (both installed on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS inside VirtualBox).

    So it seems that you have not installed some codecs. Install them with:

    sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-addons

    and try again :)

    Note: for integrated Intel hardware acceleration is provided by i965-va-driver package; for Nvidia it is provided by libvdpau_nvidia.so library (installed with proprietary driver). You can check status of your VA with vainfo command.

    Remarks: on physically installed Ubuntu MATE 16.04.5 LTS the video is played flawlessly only on Haswell i7 (using Intel® HD Graphics 4600). Mobile Ivy Bridge with Intel® HD Graphics 4000 plays video with jumps (in vlc, mplayer, totem, kaffeine, mpv, parole).
    If the video is really 4K, then it may be too hard for old graphics :)

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  2. Best Answer

    This is an H.264 30FPS high-resolution video and to play it smoothly you need hardware acceleration, and as it plays smoothly under Windows and not under Ubuntu, (I'm assuming this is on the same machine) this leads me to believe you have installed the correct video drivers under Windows but not under Ubuntu.

    So this has nothing to do with Ubuntu or the video itself, but with the video drivers under Ubuntu...

    If it plays well on a fast new Windows machine and doesn't play well on an old clunker that has Ubuntu installed, just transcode the video to a lower resolution and frame rate and the old clunker will be able to play it smoothly as well:

    ffmpeg -i 20181011_113036-0.MP4 -c:v libx264 -strict -2 -r 25 -s 1110x832 -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 256K 20181011_113036-1.MP4

    Note: On my machine running Ubuntu, 20181011_113036-0.MP4 plays smoothly out of the box...

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  3. 18.04 with Gnome Desktop on an old Sandy Bridge processor's Integrated Graphics would be very slow simply moving around windows and resizing them. Try the Unity Desktop instead:

    For even greater speed and possibly stability try Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity Desktop:

    • 1

  4. Xubuntu 18.10 amd 64; 2GB RAM; 3rd generation Intel i3 3120m

    On Firefox:- Doesn't simply play. Browser doesn't hang either, it's just shows the video thumbnail. Maybe because of low server speed or maybe Firefox can't handle, not sure.

    On MPV with SMPlayer frontend:- Plays smoothly, probably without frame-drop (as it isn't allowed in SMPlayer settings). Though it looks a bit strange on my 720p display. Especially the railings of the gate.

    I'm a newcomer in Ubuntu but I've installed these stuff after installing it-

    ubuntu-restricted-extras ffmpeg libavfilter-extra i965-va-driver-shaders va-driver-all beignet-opencl-icd

    However you probably can't install the beignet-opencl-icd as Open CL isn't officially supported on 2nd generation (Sandybridge) processors.

    Hardware decoding is enabled in SMPlayer (video output driver and hardware decoder is set to vaapi, no. of threads for decoding is set to 4)

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