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Mint Linux 10

Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 6:59 pm
by Kyo_O
Hello all,

I have a device (see my signature for details) since 09/2010 and i tried a lot of solutions before i found one getting "almost acceptable" for a mediaplayer configuration so i thought it might be usefull to share my experience.
In waiting for new opensource video drivers that might be released in the coming months, here is the quick step-by-step installation instructions which brought the better results in my case:

- Install Mint 10 (should work with Maverick as well i suppose)
- Install all updates and reboot
- Run "wget dl.dropbox.com/u/1338581/emgd/emgd-maverick.sh && sh ./emgd-maverick.sh"
- Download and install manually libva1, libva-dev, libva-x11-1, vainfo, mplayer and gnome-mplayer from http://ppa.launchpad.net/gma500/emgd/ubuntu/pool/main/
- Replace /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with this one: http://pastebin.com/JvFXKb2e
- Replace /etc/default/grub with this one: http://pastebin.com/NPMUVcJi and run update-grub2
- Add "export GMA500_WORKAROUND=yes" to /etc/bash.bashrc
- If you want you can modify /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and replace the line "default-sample-channels = 2" with "default-sample-channels = 6"
- Add line "/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog" to /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11
- Reboot
- Désactivate all visual effects in gnome appearence preferences (set to none) if there's some
- Install Smplayer if you want. Follow this link to fix crashes with VAAPI: http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/2009/12 ... vaapi.html
- For running mplayer in command line, here some examples of some available parameters:

mplayer -vo vaapi -va vaapi -ao alsa:device=spdif -fs -cache 32000 -framedrop -stop-xscreensaver file.mkv
mplayer -vo xv -ao pulse -cache 32000 -stop-xscreensaver file.avi


- At last, if some artefacts occurs during playback, try to add "-vfm codec_name" as parameter of mplayer (ex: -vfm xvid)

Like that, i can play every SD and HD videos with Mplayer without any crash or artefact, choosing the video output between "xv" and "vaapi"

Still annoying problems (for me) are:

- When using smplayer, some videos still crash mplayer thus needing to reboot completely the device to get working again
- AC3 SPDIF passthru doesn't work with pulseaudio (bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/pulseaudio/+bug/520157, possible workaround here: http://colin.guthr.ie/2010/12/bobby-dig ... -surround/)
- XBMC or enna doesn't work at all (due to dramaticaly poor gtkperfs with emgd i suppose?), even tried compilation from sources and special settings found in forums that could help working better :(
- VAAPI in VLC doesn't work properly

N.B: I didn't tried the new PSB drivers which support xv playback, i know it has better 2D performances too but in my case PSB caused X to crash each time my TV went off/on, too bad :(