7 random questions

[FireMail]

hi there,

i finally got my new hybrid, installed it and configured some stuff. while playing around, testing everything, i made a list of questions - hopefully you can answer them

1) MKV Files: xine is playing the mkv files, but it stops working if a file is bigger than 9gb. so i have to rename it to m2ts that mplayer handles it. is that a known bug in xine? personally i would want xine to stream those videos, since mplayer cant pause the movie
2) updating lmce: what update mechanisms are available? i found out that in the webadmin there is a link called "force update" (More --> Advanced Options --> Force Upgrade Now) - can this be pressed without destroying the whole system? "force" sounds so hard, i am afraid to destroy it There is another link i found: sqlcvs update. Whats that for?
3) RAM: i have 2x2GB ram installed, but since its a 32bit kubuntu it just recognizes 2,3GB - am i able to change that somehow?
4) iTunes: is the lmce audio library possible to play music that was bought via iTunes?
5) Audio playing: is there anything like a visualization, as we know it from windows media player, for the audio? i personally like that stuff and its better than having pictures/flickr in the background
6) 100% cpu: while playing 1080p movies (between 6 to 25GB per file), one core gets stressed by mplayer / xine to 100%. is this normal? can i somehow lay some calculations on the GPU?
7) i dont know how to explain that exactly - i hope you will understand ... when playing videos on my philips aurea (40'', full hd) it looks like parts of the screen are later updated than others. the best example is a flying camera over some mountains (braveheart intro e.g.) - the lower part is running smooth, the top quarter is updated later so you see the delay (looks like lagging). if you dont understand it i can try recording the screen and post the video here.


thanks for answering my questions

[purps]

7. Are you using UI2 with masking or alpha blending? Masking, although not quite as sexy as alpha blending, does stop a lot of tearing issues.

[FireMail]

7. Are you using UI2 with masking or alpha blending? Masking, although not quite as sexy as alpha blending, does stop a lot of tearing issues.

the skin is "basic" with alpha blended UI plus opengl effects. i thought, since its a very good graphic card, this shouldnt matter at all, since when the movie is played, the UI wont get rendered.

[purps]

There's a choice of...

1. UI1
2. UI2 with masking, and
3. UI2 with alpha blending.

Which one have you selected?

[FireMail]

There's a choice of...

1. UI1
2. UI2 with masking, and
3. UI2 with alpha blending.

Which one have you selected?

you mean in the initial setup screen? i just saw "high-end" which is UI2 with alpha blending
but as i stated before, the graphiccard is high end, the cpu is a quadcore plus while the movie is shown there shouldnt be any rendering done.

[purps]

To begin with, try UI2 with masking and see if it sorts the problem. Go into advanced and choose the video/audio setup option - the machine will reboot, and let you go through those selections again.

Having the best CPU and graphics card isn't everything I'm afraid - I have an old pentium and AGP nvidia card in my shed which I am running with UI2 and alpha blending, and it works fine.

[jimbodude]

2) updating lmce: what update mechanisms are available? i found out that in the webadmin there is a link called "force update" (More --> Advanced Options --> Force Upgrade Now) - can this be pressed without destroying the whole system? "force" sounds so hard, i am afraid to destroy it There is another link i found: sqlcvs update. Whats that for?

I don't believe the "Force Upgrade" does anything at the moment.  sqlCVS is not for you to play with unless you know what you're doing, or are told to by someone.  This updates the configuration database.  It happens automatically when updates come in.  The current update strategy is described on the beta page, I believe -  "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get upgrade"

3) RAM: i have 2x2GB ram installed, but since its a 32bit kubuntu it just recognizes 2,3GB - am i able to change that somehow?

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/40205

4) iTunes: is the lmce audio library possible to play music that was bought via iTunes?

Probably not, that stuff is full of DRM, but I can't say I've tried it.

5) Audio playing: is there anything like a visualization, as we know it from windows media player, for the audio? i personally like that stuff and its better than having pictures/flickr in the background

Not currently.

6) 100% cpu: while playing 1080p movies (between 6 to 25GB per file), one core gets stressed by mplayer / xine to 100%. is this normal? can i somehow lay some calculations on the GPU?

search the forums and wiki for vadpau

7) i dont know how to explain that exactly - i hope you will understand ... when playing videos on my philips aurea (40'', full hd) it looks like parts of the screen are later updated than others. the best example is a flying camera over some mountains (braveheart intro e.g.) - the lower part is running smooth, the top quarter is updated later so you see the delay (looks like lagging). if you dont understand it i can try recording the screen and post the video here.

Re-run AVWizard ( http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/AVWizard ) and select "medium" (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/AVWizard_Step_by_Step#Select_Graphical_User_Interface)

Based on #7 and #6, it sounds like you don't have that good of a graphics card... See the FAQ ( http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/FAQ ) section on graphics card selection.

[FireMail]

thanks a lot for all those answers. i will do research on vadpau and the downgrading to medium on thursday since i am in vienna tomorrow doing business.

the graphic card is a Zotac GT240 512 DDR3, PCI-Express, Dual Link DVI, PN 288-2n130-010ZT

thought thats a good one - the hybrid is brand new :-/

[jimbodude]

Just because it's a "good card" doesn't necessarily mean that it's well supported in Linux.  Google that card and "linux" or "linux support" - I saw a few outstanding issues in my quick look.  You'll have to do some research to see where the issues lie.

[LegoGT]

7) i dont know how to explain that exactly - i hope you will understand ... when playing videos on my philips aurea (40'', full hd) it looks like parts of the screen are later updated than others. the best example is a flying camera over some mountains (braveheart intro e.g.) - the lower part is running smooth, the top quarter is updated later so you see the delay (looks like lagging). if you dont understand it i can try recording the screen and post the video here.

The NVIDIA driver for Linux seems to be the culprit. You can search for "tearing" (the "Z" like shape between the current frame and the previous one) and find that it's a well known issue. If you test with a clean Ubuntu install you can still make out the tearing during fast motion. Using a UI1 or UI2 without alpha blending helps the situation but the fundamental problem is still there. There are ways to cover it up but the vertical sync doesn't seem to work at all in Linux. You can blame NVIDIA's driver implementation for that. 

[FireMail]

i will try to use the "basic" mode instead of the "high-end", lets see if it works better then.

so what do you think? switching the graphiccard to a different modell?

[FireMail]

i got rid of this tearing effect.

first i tried using different drivers - no effect.
using envy to configure the drivers - didnt work.

I switched down to the "static images" mode - tearing gone.
Upgraded to "medium effects" - tearing gone.

so its indeed the high-end mode that makes the tearing. I try to add vdpau to xine and mplayer and then retry using high-end mode. maybe the VDPAU reduces the CPU load so that high-end works without tearing

[FireMail]

i tried setting the hardware acceleration mode to vdpau - but it wont work:

dcerouter_1008040:/home/firemail/vdpinfo# ps aux | grep mplayer
root      5325 29.6  2.2 134112 63292 pts/17   SLl+ 12:30   0:06 mplayer -slave -idle -msglevel all=4 -noborder -fixed-vo -fs -vo xv,x11 -vf screenshot -ao alsa:device=plug=dmix -ac a52, -lavdopts fast:threads=2 /usr/pluto/share/black.mpeg

so its still using xv,x11 instead of vdpau, eventhou my mplayer tells me it supports vdpau

dcerouter_1008040:/home/firemail# mplayer -vo help
MPlayer UNKNOWN-4.3.2 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
Available video output drivers:
        xmga    Matrox G200/G4x0/G550 overlay in X11 window (using /dev/mga_vid)
        mga     Matrox G200/G4x0/G550 overlay (/dev/mga_vid)
        tdfxfb  3Dfx Banshee/Voodoo3/Voodoo5
        3dfx    3dfx (/dev/3dfx)
        vdpau   VDPAU with X11
        xv      X11/Xv
        x11     X11 ( XImage/Shm )
        xover   General X11 driver for overlay capable video output drivers
        gl      X11 (OpenGL)
        gl2     X11 (OpenGL) - multiple textures version
        matrixview      MatrixView (OpenGL)
        dga     DGA ( Direct Graphic Access V2.0 )
        sdl     SDL YUV/RGB/BGR renderer (SDL v1.1.7+ only!)
        ggi     General Graphics Interface (GGI) output
        fbdev   Framebuffer Device
        fbdev2  Framebuffer Device
        svga    SVGAlib
        aa      AAlib
        caca    libcaca
        dxr3    DXR3/H+ video out
        v4l2    V4L2 MPEG Video Decoder Output
        directfb        Direct Framebuffer Device
        dfbmga  DirectFB / Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550
        xvidix  X11 (VIDIX)
        cvidix  console VIDIX
        null    Null video output
        xvmc    XVideo Motion Compensation
        mpegpes MPEG-PES to DVB card
        yuv4mpeg        yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools
        png     PNG file
        jpeg    JPEG file
        gif89a  animated GIF output
        tga     Targa output
        pnm     PPM/PGM/PGMYUV file
        md5sum  md5sum of each frame

i found this thread:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=9286.0
posted on the 09.12.2009 saying that there is still a patch pending, the wiki from 06.12.2009 says that its included
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/LinuxMCE-0810_beta

so whats the truth now? does this setting work or is it unsupported at the moment?

[FireMail]

4th post in a row - sorry about that

i was able to configure the VDPAU support for xine by using the configuration screen provided by xine itself.
no tearing, perfect graphic quality, playing a 720p movie without lagging, 10-20% usage of the cpu.

thats how i wanted it

how can i do that with mplayer? using the same method by opening mplayer, configuring it, closing it, playing movie in LMCE doesnt work since its calling with the start parameters -vo "xv, x11"

[LegoGT]

4th post in a row - sorry about that

i was able to configure the VDPAU support for xine by using the configuration screen provided by xine itself.
no tearing, perfect graphic quality, playing a 720p movie without lagging, 10-20% usage of the cpu.

thats how i wanted it

how can i do that with mplayer? using the same method by opening mplayer, configuring it, closing it, playing movie in LinuxMCE doesnt work since its calling with the start parameters -vo "xv, x11"

That sounds encouraging. I haven't touched that issue in a while and just decided to "live with it" while I worked on other projects. I'll take a stab at it this weekend and see if I can get things working with the required patches and command line switches. I know some other people have been working on it, too, so there might already be a LinuxMCE workaround out there.

You should also search for threads about the NVIDIA Ion chipsets (Zotac and Acer AspireRevo, in particular) and VDPAU in MythTV for good references.

There's also a good (and long) thread from the Ubuntu forums that might help: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1037625