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Huckle
Asked: 2012-01-11 17:32:49 +0800 CST

1080p choppy on two different GPUs, what else could it be?

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I'm building a HTPC with this ASRock E350M1/USB3 motherboard. The onboard ATI Radeon HD 6310 graphics had a hard time swallowing a 1080p x264 mkv (~10 GB) so I popped in a discrete Nvidia GT 240 (1024MB). Oddly enough, that also wouldn't play it properly.

Both cards had the associated vendor drivers installed and active, I have tried x264 and raw blu-ray to no avail. I know the GT 240 is capable of playing 1080p movies, so what is the hangup?

Choppy refers to getting about one frame every few seconds, but I also see this from time to time: http://ptpimg.me/8yt8ev.png

Output from running vlc from the command line on a untouched Blu-ray (m2ts) rip.

me@GAMMA ~ $ vlc
VLC media player 1.1.9 The Luggage (revision exported)
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_ADDRESS")
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_BUS_TYPE")
[0x8d41914] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")
Warning: call to srand(1326832540)
Warning: call to rand()
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")

(process:2617): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
    Using the fallback 'C' locale.
Warning: call to rand()
Warning: call to rand()
Warning: call to rand()
Warning: call to rand()
libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 0
libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 0
libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 3, expected 0) for PID 256
libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 3, expected 0) for PID 256
[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error: signal 17 overriden (0x3b114c0)
[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error:  /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4(?)[(nil)]
[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error: signal 17 overriden (0x3b114c0)
[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error:  /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4(?)[(nil)]

Output from vlc -vvv on the same file: Here

OK, so we got the GT 240 working by using VD-PAU which is a magical thing that tells software like nplayer to use the GPU to do the work instead of the CPU. Problem is that VD-PAU is essentially Nvidia only and the built in graphics are ATI based. 

(in ~/.mplayer/config)
vo=vdpau,xv
vc=ffh264vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau

I've done some digging and it seems VA-API and XVBA are the ATI equivalents. The question now is how do I get these to work in natty (preferentially with something like xbmc)

So far, with just the onboard Radeon HD 6310 graphics I've done this:

sudo apt-get install xvba-va-driver libva-glx1 vainfo
mplayer -vo xv -framedrop -ao sdl /path/to/000000.m2ts

and it is certainly getting close. Still too many dropped frames to be considered watchable however.

xorg

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Can you confirm if hardware assisted decoding is actually being used at all?

    The output from mplayer and vlc (if run in a console) would help confirm or deny this if you could add it to your original question.

    Try this in ~/.mplayer/config to turn it on:

    vo=vdpau,xv
vc=ffh264vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau
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  2. Try to install SmPlayer and go to options, preferences, then on general tab, on output controlers, select gl(fast). Then on performance tab, on decoding threads, select to 8. I did that for my ATI HD 5470 that was playing very bad and got fixed. Tell-me something about how it performs.

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