xv mkv playback issues

Mplayer, vaapi and codecs in Linux Mint
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vega
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Dec 25, 2010 10:34 pm

xv mkv playback issues

Post by vega »

Hey there,

having some questions according playback of mkv movies.

First of all, my fit-pc2i currently works with ubuntu lucid because i had some installation problems with linux mint (sry admins but this seems to be the correct subforum for my issues).

So of what issues i'm talking about? Tried to install linux mint, first problem occured was in booting process ... couldn't load image correctly, was asked to manually boot something ... ok after tinkering a bit around i saw the mint desktop ...

So lucid (and yes, isadora too because it wraps lucid up) seems to have problems when loading the partition table. Everytime it hangs and doesn't continue until i kill the installation.

Well, the solution came with the alternate cd ... i had to download the one of lucid (didn't find one of isadora, or linux mint in general?!).

Basically there should be no difference between isadora and lucid. With my new lucid installation i followed the installation guide of this officially supported version (http://www.fit-pc2.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=2026).

It didn't work directly. Had to edit the xorg.conf respective the 4. post in the installation guide. Switched off visual effects and installed fit-pc kernel, uninstalled generic kernel and so on ...

Ok, after this long installation procedure i tried to start a mkv movie with my mplayer (default selected xv video output). After only 2 seconds it starts to "stutter" really hard and i have to close it.
This video has a x264 codec (x264 package is installed), nearly 9 Mbps bitrate and a resolution of 1920 x 816. CPU has a load of ~ 80 - 90% ...

Also when i start movies with a significant lower bitrate (~ 700 mb for a 1,5 hour avi movie, sry don't know the bitrate) it runs not very clearly and the CPU has a load of ~ 40%.

Does anyone has an idea what is wrong?
Btw. sry for my bad english knowledge, hope you can understand it ...

~vega

Denis
Posts: 301
Joined: Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:24 pm

Re: xv mkv playback issues

Post by Denis »

Hi vega,
Mplayer with vaapi acceleration features supports the following codecs.

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* MPEG-2
* MPEG-4 ASP (DivX)
* H.263 (MPEG-4 short-video header variant)
* MPEG-4 AVC (H.264)
* Windows Media Video 9 (WMV3)
* Windows Media Video 9 Advanced (VC-1 Advanced profile)
Caveats:
* Non accelerated decoding is currently not supported with the vaapi renderer.
* OSD support is broken.
Running VA API enabled MPlayer from command line:

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fit@mint-fitpc2:/$ mplayer -vo vaapi -va vaapi /path/to/the/video/file
Running VA API enabled MPlayer from GUI:

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Ensure you have VAAPI option selected under Preferences->Video and under Preferences->Codecs & demuxer too.
Do not play heavy videos with regular xv output!
Compulab's Linux support

vega
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Dec 25, 2010 10:34 pm

Re: xv mkv playback issues

Post by vega »

Hi Denis,

thank you for your answer.

I switched video output to vaapi, codecs and demuxer has already been set to vaapi.

The mkv still has problems. It runs in an acceptable speed (sometimes faster, sometimes slower) but the screen gets continuously pixeled really strange ... in other mkv movies the screen is sliced somehow (looks like the frame consists of 2 or more pieces).

Maybe the chipset isn't strong enough to handle this bitrates?

When video output is set to vaapi the mplayer isn't able anymore to play the avi movie (maybe codec problems).

Any idea about the described frame problems?

There is a reproducable error message of mplayer:

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[vo_vaapi] vaAssociateSubpicture(): the requested function is not implemented
~vega

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