Im having some problems getting ac3 passthru to work. Im using fbxine with directfb, which works well, for both video and audio in PCM mode, but frequent crashes occur with trying to use Dolby Digital. I have set the xine plugin to "Dolby On"
audio.output.speaker_arrangement:Pass Through
It works sometimes, other times it crashes. No errors in logs, except a lot of "Ring Buffer Overflows".. fbxine just exits with no errors. Vdr itself doesnt crash, just fbxine crashes out or thinks the stream ended?
vdr 1.3.38 Xine CVS
I recently got xine up and running on an AMD 2600+ and all seemed to be working fine, I am wanting to do High Definition and it was coming close to maxing out the cpu and just wasn't perfect on the HDTV channels. So I decided to swap it out with one of my other systems. I changed it out for a 64 Bit 3500+. I didn't compile my kernel in 64 bit mode, but otherwise as far as I can tell, set everything back up the same as it was before. All works, but my CPU usage is much higher just on normal channels and on High Definition it really isn't that high but I get jerky picture quality on any High Def Channel and I didn't have that on the slower system. My cpu on the slower system would run bout 5-10% with Xine, and hit 80-90% on HDTV and that high the pic quality just wasn't the best it could be but it was smooth. On the faster pc, I average bout 17-20+% on regular channels, which seems very high compared to the other, and on HDTV I am only running bout 60% but I am sure that is cuz of the jerkyness and it just not being smooth.
My question is, is there anything I missed maybe? I just ran default settings on the old system and tried on the new and running into this, I haven't tried messing with deinterlacers or anything like that, mainly cuz I don't know enough about them. The only thing I can think of is the chipsets. The old system ran a Nivida 2 chipset and the new system runs a Via K8t800Pro VT8237 chipset. Is there something I should do differntly? Any suggestion are gladly welcomed.
Also trying to get the onboard SPDIF to work, haven't tried installing Mplayer yet to test it, but can't for the life of me make it work via Xine, even with the Pass Through set etc, hopefully missing something on that too.
Thanks for any suggestions.
On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:46:57 -0600 Chad Flynt hoochster@sofnet.com wrote:
Were you using the same graphics card on the older system too?
-- Niko Mikkilä
Niko Mikkila wrote:
Indeed, I just swapped motherboards/cpus/memory. Everything else stayed the same. That is what blows my mind, I will admit I screwed up and decided to build fresh which I should have first just redone the kernel but that has never been an issue before hehe. So just wondering if I am missing some magic ingredient. It makes no sense that the much faster pc is using much more load than the slower pc, and I didn't get stutters or anything on the HD channels on the old pc, you could just tell it needed a little more power to even things out, but other than that the video was very smooth. As where now on HDTV it is real jerky. I did solve my audio issues with the help of a friend and google, so all I got left is the cpu load problem. Would like to learn more about scaling the video but I am not concerned with that till I make the rest work hehe!
I have tried going back to the old DirectFB/DFB++ src I was using on the old pc, I have used the old Xine-Lib/UI from the old pc, all same results. I have installed all my codecs etc back on to see if that made a difference but don't think it utilizes any of that unless I use like Xineplayer or something. So only thing left is the motherboard chipset, that maybe I have to patch the kernel or something for VIA dunno. But willing to try any suggestions. One other notable mention, one of the dependencies for Xine-UI and also DirectFB is XLIBS-DEV. That package is now deprecated due to Xorg. So I wasn't able to install it. I run Debian, so I just forced Xine and DirectFB to be built without it, maybe I should look at the ./configure and see if there is something I should disable instead of doing that? But would that have any significance if I am not using X at all? And can anyone give me any good reasons why I would want X installed and run VDR/Xine through it instead of a Frame Buffer being as this is a dedicated TV System? I just don't want to install it if it isn't going to gain me any advantages but if it will run better, give more scaling/deinterlacer options etc then by all means I have the power to run it. Just didn't see the need and figured it would use up more resources than it was worth.
Thanks again for any assistance.
On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 08:19:34 -0600 Chad Flynt hoochster@sofnet.com wrote:
If you have a custom built kernel, or it is just old, you could be missing proper AGP support for your new board. I would first build a new kernel or use a recent one from Debian unstable. I also recommend changing to the AMD64 Debian port, because it will gain you additional 10-20% performance in most programs (think 4000+ against 3500+). Just make sure all the programs you use are available as 64-bit versions, so that you don't need to set up a 32-bit chroot environment, which can be a bit painful in Debian.
X.org has the advantage of XvMC for NVidia drivers, and also better support in various video programs, which you might want to run in parallel with VDR and Xine. AFAIK recent versions of Xine work better on X.org than DirectFB, but I might be wrong here. I'm also not sure if the tvtime deinterlacing algorithms work with full framerate (50fps for PAL or 60fps for NTSC) in DirectFB either, so X.org may be better suited for advanced post-processing.
-- Niko Mikkilä
Niko Mikkila wrote:
Thank you much for your reply, I did do a vanilla 2.6.16-rc1 kernel and as far as I know selected all the proper agp stuff for my board but ya know I can easily make a mistake, only reason I didn't do 64bit kernel etc is cuz didn't know if all of VDR and plugins etc were fully supported in 64 bit, haven't really kept up with it since I wasn't running VDR with it! :) But I will give it a go! And as far as X goes, if I can find a good Video Conferencing product for X I would LOVE to combine that with VDR or if had to be run in a diff window for the purpose, that is how my parents see their grandkids, and one of the only reasons I still have a Winblows box still around! But I would guess running X would definately give me an advantage to finding such a thing. Will check it out, running Matrox G550 but do have some NVIDIA cards around have some friends that keep bugging me about XVMC just haven't gotten around to it due to refusing to install X! :) But will try. Thanks again for all the tips, will report back any of my findings.
On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:08:21 -0600 Chad Flynt hoochster@sofnet.com wrote:
Actually I have a _very_ similar situation with Matrox G450 and an Athlon64 2800+ on Via K8T800 Pro chipset. I use X.org, but the G450 seems to be awfully slow and I can't even display 720p properly. I always thought the problem was that the card just wasn't fast enough (I didn't really test HDTV on my earlier system), but your experience on a slower system shows that there must be something else going on. I use a completely 64-bit system and I have set the Matrox X drivers to use AGP 4x, but that doesn't help much. Even mga_vid with MPlayer causes about as high CPU usage as Xv output. This seems like some sort of hardware incompatibility, or otherwise bad AGP support for the Via K8T800 - Matrox Gxxx combination. I've been troubled by this for some time, so please tell if you find any solution :)
-- Niko Mikkilä
Niko Mikkila wrote:
Will do, glad to hear you run the same type of chipset, might be hitting you up on any problems I face on the 64bit setup. Never ran VDR on 64bit yet, hope you don't mind. I assume you are doing DVI out to your TV for the HDTV part of it. Cuz I never see my projector truly say 720p or whatnot when I tune to a HD Channel, just looks better. Or is that something I have to tell xine to do? Anyways, I started the 64 bit install during lunch will finish it up when I get home this evening. Thanks again for all your help, looking forward to making it work. I did put my NVIDIA 5200 in to attempt the XVMC but due to you having issues with your Matrox, I will throw it in there too and see what happens between the two.
On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:41:26 -0600 Chad Flynt hoochster@sofnet.com wrote:
Not at all. I've had no problems with VDR or any of the few plugins I use. I even run Dxr3 as a secondary output to a TV in another room. 64 bits is not a problem as long as you can compile the stuff yourself.
I assume you are doing DVI out to your TV for the HDTV part of it.
Well, I can't actually receive any HDTV broadcasts yet, but I've tested a few files freely available on the net. Apples HD trailers are pretty good for testing as long as you keep in mind that they are H.264 so decoding them is pretty slow anyway and XvMC doesn't help with that. MPEG-2 clips are harder to find, but you probably don't have that problem. As a display I use a 21" CRT monitor and an XGA projector connected with plain VGA.
Cuz I never see my projector truly say 720p or whatnot when I tune to a HD Channel, just looks better.
If you haven't set up a 1280x720 resolution for framebuffer, you won't get it. Instead Xine will resize to 720x576 or whatever you use normally. It will look better because the source is very high quality compared to SDTV broadcasts.
At least Matrox G450 doesn't even support 1280x720 video overlays, so I just crop to 1024x720 (with the actual screen resolution being 1024x768). So far I've only tested HDTV with MPlayer, but cropping might be possible with Xine too. With GeForce FX 5200 you won't have this problem, so don't worry. Just set up a 720p resolution for X.org and run Xine :)
[...]
Oh, there is one problem with 64-bit Xine that I now recalled. In 64-bit mode the MMX and SSE acceleration features are partly disabled, apparently because the 64-bit support in Xine has not been finished properly. This also disables Greedy2Frame, GreedyH and TomsMoComp tvtime deinterlacing filters, so that you can't do any good-quality deinterlacing at all. I brought this up on the xine-devel mailing list a while ago, but the main Xine developers are busy outside the project, and people haven't really demanded a fix yet. I'm using a fully patched Xine with Greedy2Frame without problems myself, but it is not easy to get working from scratch. I can put the patches and the patched sources on my homepage when I find enough free time between work and studies. Maybe next weekend.
-- Niko Mikkilä
Niko Mikkila wrote:
That would be great, well my projector only goes up to 1024x768 so will see where we go, I run my Xbox 360 in component to it and it does all the hdtv modes and shows up that way on the PJ, so just didn't know if I would truly see the PJ go into that mode. So curious if possible on this cheaper pj. Well will be hopefully getting things started tonight, but yes when time permits, and believe me I know all about the time, I have 3 little girls and a teenager, and work full time and try and maintain a VDR website lmao so I know all about time lol, please do let me know of any patches etc I might need.
Thanks again.
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Chad Flynt -
Dave -
Niko Mikkila