VDPAU and MKV in 810?

[skeptic]

Am I correct in believing that with the right hardware VDPAU is supported in 810, and additionally mkv files play without the green garbage/blocks? 

I'm unhappy to report that it looks like my external USB (old one, not new one), may be corrupted to the point of no return.  750G drive, around 600G of data, and 2 days of fsck and still going strong.  At one point it was fixed enough that LMCE automounted it (ugh, fsck was still running), so I have removed it as a device to avoid that.  In any event, if it is as corrupted as it appears, I'm looking at re-ripping/converting over 300 DVDs that were on that drive.  Ugh.

However, in looking for a bright spot, if VDPAU and mkv are both working out of the box in 810 I will probably rip/convert them to VDPAU compatible H.264 mkv files.  If not, I may just bite the bullet, buy more disk, and rip the full DVDs as ISOs.  I just hate using more than double the space and being forced to navigate the DVD menus for no perceptible difference in quality.

[totallymaxed]

Am I correct in believing that with the right hardware VDPAU is supported in 810, and additionally mkv files play without the green garbage/blocks? 

I'm unhappy to report that it looks like my external USB (old one, not new one), may be corrupted to the point of no return.  750G drive, around 600G of data, and 2 days of fsck and still going strong.  At one point it was fixed enough that LinuxMCE automounted it (ugh, fsck was still running), so I have removed it as a device to avoid that.  In any event, if it is as corrupted as it appears, I'm looking at re-ripping/converting over 300 DVDs that were on that drive.  Ugh.

However, in looking for a bright spot, if VDPAU and mkv are both working out of the box in 810 I will probably rip/convert them to VDPAU compatible H.264 mkv files.  If not, I may just bite the bullet, buy more disk, and rip the full DVDs as ISOs.  I just hate using more than double the space and being forced to navigate the DVD menus for no perceptible difference in quality.

We are testing nVidia 180.60 & alsa-1.0.20 together with MythTV 0.21 (with VDPAU support from http://www.avenard.org/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html) successfully on both 0710 & 0810. None of this works 'out of the box' however and currently we have not explored extending VDPAU support to playback of video in the Orbiter using xinelib (but the Avenard repos contains patched libs etc for this....so it looks achievable). I expect some or all of this support will be in an 0810 beta in the near future.

We are running  Orbiter/MythTV at 1080i smoothly on various Ion based hardware including Revo's with 1Gig of RAM.

All the best

Andrew

[skeptic]

I'm not worried about 710 or early 810 alpha/beta, and I guess whether it works out of the box or requires some fiddling isn't huge either.  So it sounds promising for VDPAU. 

How about mkv files?  I tried searching the forums, and found a few posts with people saying they look forward to mkv files working in 810, but I haven't found any posts saying the problem was found/fixed/tested in 810.  A number of people assuming they will play right, but I didn't find anything saying that they have been tested to work correctly.

[totallymaxed]

I'm not worried about 710 or early 810 alpha/beta, and I guess whether it works out of the box or requires some fiddling isn't huge either.  So it sounds promising for VDPAU. 

How about mkv files?  I tried searching the forums, and found a few posts with people saying they look forward to mkv files working in 810, but I haven't found any posts saying the problem was found/fixed/tested in 810.  A number of people assuming they will play right, but I didn't find anything saying that they have been tested to work correctly.

Well as far as I know 720p mkv encapsulated h.264 will play now if you have a reasonably fast processor and an 8000 or above seris nVidia card. We have not tested playback of 1080p mkv h.264 encoded files at all but we have successfully watched many hours of BBC HD Live & recorded programming transmitted at 1080i inside MythTV with VDPAU support enabled...this plays perfectly.

All the best

Andrew

[skeptic]

I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding my question, or if I'm misunderstanding your answer.  In the past when I've tried to play H.264/mkv files, they play at full speed, sound is fine, picture is good...  Except green blocks/blobs growing from the side of the screen.  Not a resolution issue (480p vs 720p vs 1080i/p) or performance issue (fps or vid/sound sync), it's an apparent bug somewhere in 710 that corrupts the video with green blobs.

[totallymaxed]

I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding my question, or if I'm misunderstanding your answer.  In the past when I've tried to play H.264/mkv files, they play at full speed, sound is fine, picture is good...  Except green blocks/blobs growing from the side of the screen.  Not a resolution issue (480p vs 720p vs 1080i/p) or performance issue (fps or vid/sound sync), it's an apparent bug somewhere in 710 that corrupts the video with green blobs.

Oh...you didn't mention the old 'Green blob' problem ;-)

This is essentially a bug in the version of xine that is used in 0710 and it seems to only affect h.264 encoded mkv's (but weirdly not all of them). If you have an example of an mkv that exhibits the 'green blob' problem for you I will gladly test it here - send me (or better point me at) a 20-30 sec clip.

All the best

Andrew

[skeptic]

Heh heh, if you look at my first post, first sentence, I ask about the green blobs.  

Anyway, I grabbed a DVD I had laying around and using handbrake I ripped the shortest title, about 14 seconds.  This video has TWO issues in lmce.  First, it has the green garbage growing from the left side of the screen.  Second, it plays for a second or two then hangs for about 45 seconds, then plays the rest of the video.  Tried it a few times, same pause every time.  Plays fine in mplayer/vlc under windoze.

edit:  forgot to link to the vid!  heh heh..

http://www.webhouse.cc:8000/mkvtest3.mkv

[totallymaxed]

Heh heh, if you look at my first post, first sentence, I ask about the green blobs.  

Anyway, I grabbed a DVD I had laying around and using handbrake I ripped the shortest title, about 14 seconds.  This video has TWO issues in lmce.  First, it has the green garbage growing from the left side of the screen.  Second, it plays for a second or two then hangs for about 45 seconds, then plays the rest of the video.  Tried it a few times, same pause every time.  Plays fine in mplayer/vlc under windoze.

edit:  forgot to link to the vid!  heh heh..

http://www.webhouse.cc:8000/mkvtest3.mkv

The attached file plays fine inside the 0810 Orbiter and inside the MythTV frontend with VDPAU enabled...no artifacts or green blobs at all.

Andrew

[krys]

Andrew,
How did you play a mkv file inside mythTV? From the kde desktop or is there some other way?
-Krys

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,
How did you play a mkv file inside mythTV? From the kde desktop or is there some other way?
-Krys

We added the Videos plugin to MythTV and pointed that plugin at the directory where the mkv had been copied to. This file played fine in both the MythFrontend and the standard 0810 Orbiter/xinelib config.

All the best

Andrew

[skeptic]

Andrew,
How did you play a mkv file inside mythTV? From the kde desktop or is there some other way?
-Krys

We added the Videos plugin to MythTV and pointed that plugin at the directory where the mkv had been copied to. This file played fine in both the MythFrontend and the standard 0810 Orbiter/xinelib config.

All the best

Andrew

Great news!!!!  Thanks for testing it!


edit: fixed

[merkur2k]

Are people using this on any non-ion platforms? I tried it on my Asus M3N78-EM board (nvidia 8300 gpu) and it worked, but had a horrible framerate (like less than 10 fps). Any ideas what could cause that?

[colinjones]

Are people using this on any non-ion platforms? I tried it on my Asus M3N78-EM board (nvidia 8300 gpu) and it worked, but had a horrible framerate (like less than 10 fps). Any ideas what could cause that?

Did you look into the capabilities of your specific 8300 chipset? "Some" 8xxx are not supported for VDPAU but its a little non-specific as to exactly which ones, but it certainly sounds like yours is dropping back to software emulation....

[totallymaxed]

Are people using this on any non-ion platforms? I tried it on my Asus M3N78-EM board (nvidia 8300 gpu) and it worked, but had a horrible framerate (like less than 10 fps). Any ideas what could cause that?

We have tested it on nVidia 9400GT cards and on ASUS P5N7A-VM with its onboard nVidia 9300 GPU...we have not tested it on any sub 9000 series GPU's yet but nVidia say they should work ok and from what i read the user experience bares this out.

It does not sound to me like you had successfully installed vdpau or possibly had not enabled it correctly in whatever application was being used to playback the video content in your tests.

All the best

Andrew

[Viking]

We are testing nVidia 180.60 & alsa-1.0.20 together with MythTV 0.21 (with VDPAU support from http://www.avenard.org/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html) successfully on both 0710 & 0810. None of this works 'out of the box' however and currently we have not explored extending VDPAU support to playback of video in the Orbiter using xinelib (but the Avenard repos contains patched libs etc for this....so it looks achievable). I expect some or all of this support will be in an 0810 beta in the near future.

Not near my Test core at the moment. Can someone (Andrew) confirm that this is the way to get going with VDPAU ?

I assume the process of updating is :

first on Core , then on MD do this


1. add avenard repository to /etc/apt/sources.list
2. apt-get update
3. dpkg -l | grep myth
4. apt-get install <packages from previous list>    # meaning the packages already installed should be updated
4.a. update nvidia using the 180.60 packages from avenard
4.b. maybe update alsa to 1.0.20
5. maybe reboot
6. run myth setup and add a profile like describved below "quick FAQ" here
7. maybe reboot

We are running  Orbiter/MythTV at 1080i smoothly on various Ion based hardware including Revo's with 1Gig of RAM.

So the Revo does not need more RAM than 1GB as MD ? That would be great

Gretings
Viking