Full Screen Video Playback

[Jabb3r]

I'm using a hp Pavillion 8044ea laptop and I got things to work pretty well, aiglx seems ok. Secondlife runs ok (when I don't use compiz) etc

But 1 problem I cannot fathom is why my video's seem to lag so much when pld fullscreen. They play super smooth normally, but as the size gets bigger they get more and more laggy. Is this a known problem with a known fix?

I've tried running video's fullscreen on fluxbox to take out any kde/compizness and get same results no matter what I do when videos run full screen. mplayer -zoom -fs /path/to/avi resulted in the worst playback I've suffered so far.

It's the only thing that stops this from being my number 1 system for everything.

Any ideas guys?

Laptop specs:

512Mb
3.4GHz P4 with ht (yeh it's useless I know. It's also the version that eats power like a contender @ a hot dog eating contest)
ATI X600


Thanks

[chickpea]

what different video players have you tried?

VLC
kaffeine
(mplayer you mentioned)
totem

You said that 3D games are working well. Have you tried doing a glxgears to get your FPS?

Your specs are obviously not earthshattering, especially that RAM figure. If I were you, I would run mplayer open up a terminal and run "top" and see where your resources are. If you are running at ~98% of RAM then I think that might answer it . . . you need more. Although my intuition is that this RAM figure should be enough to play video without any lagginess. I betcha there is an issue with your video driver or xorg.conf or something like that. Do a search on these forums and the gentoo forums and see what problems other people are having with that same video card. Do an lspci to see what is the exact card info to get a better idea what card that is, also google is your friend.

[Jabb3r]

Hi M8, we meet again, hehe

So far I've tried and got pretty much same resulots on

vlc
xine
kaffine
mplayer (worst)

I aint done a glxgears test. I'll do that now and post results. I have been googlin. I seen some similar probs, but the fixes I've tried to no avail. I can say that when I had xp on there video playback was more than fine fullscreen so I don't thionk it's an amount of ram issue although I could do with more anyway.

I think the xorg is the most likely culprit from your suggestions, but i've not a clue what I have to do with it.

I'll see if I can find anythin.

[Jabb3r]

Heres the glxgears output

glxgears
16696 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3339.008 FPS
15826 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3165.044 FPS
16113 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3222.497 FPS
16124 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3224.787 FPS
16123 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3224.438 FPS
16153 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3230.410 FPS
15936 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3187.067 FPS
16142 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3228.383 FPS
16209 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3241.664 FPS
16237 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3247.262 FPS
jabb3r@localhost ~ $

I don't understand the results tbh. Not an FPS figure I've experienced before.

I tried switching the output of vlc to X11 instead of openGL. It improved it marginally, but the problems are still very evident.

[chickpea]

We meet again . . .

Well, your FPS don't seem to be an issue, you are getting good ouput, nothing spectacular, but decent.

If you have eix installed (and you should try it out if you don't it's a great little search app for portage)

post the output of eix -v ati-drivers

[Fitzcarraldo]

Not sure if it will help, but if you're using the ATI fglrx driver then there are instructions on improving full-screen video under AIGLX in the following thread:

Setup an ATI card with the new FGLRX drivers for Compiz-Fusion - Compiz Community Forums

[Jabb3r]

Cheers guys. I'll post the eix output in a bit (yes it's a quality app and I'll read the compiz link.

Thanks muchly.

[Jabb3r]

Ok guys well I aint been to grand theese last few days so aint been on net etc, but I'm back now so heres the command output as promised.

eix -v ati-drivers
* x11-apps/ati-drivers-extra
Available versions: 8.27.10 8.32.5 (~)8.33.6 {qt3}
Best versions/slot: (~)8.33.6
Homepage: http://www.ati.com
Description: Ati precompiled drivers extra application
License: ATI GPL-2 QPL-1.0

* x11-drivers/ati-drivers
Available versions: 8.27.10-r1 (~)8.28.8 8.32.5 (~)8.33.6 (~)8.33.6-r1 (~)8.34.8 8.35.5 (~)8.36.5 (~)8.37.6 (~)8.37.6-r1 8.39.4 8.40.4 [M](~)8.42.3 (~)8.42.3-r10[1] (~)8.433 (~)8.433-r10[1] (~)8.443.1[1] (~)8.443.1-r1 (~)8.452 (~)8.452-r10[1] (~)8.455-r10[1] (~)8.455.2 (~)8.455.2-r1 (~)8.455.2-r10[1] 8.471.3 (~)8.471.3-r10[1] (~)8.471.3-r11[1] (~)8.476 (~)8.476-r10[1] {acpi debug distribution doc kernel_linux multilib opengl qt3}
Installed versions: Version: 8.476-r10[1]
Date: 12:32:04 PM 05/10/2008
USE: acpi distribution kernel_linux -debug
Best versions/slot: (~)8.476-r10[1]
Homepage: http://www.ati.com
Description: Ati precompiled drivers for recent chipsets
License: AMD GPL-2 QPL-1.0 as-is

[1] "sabayon" /usr/portage/local/layman/sabayon

Found 2 matches.


I'll get onto tryin a few xorg things rom that link now.

Will post results.

Edit: The first reccomendations broke my xserver

Under Section "ServerLayout":
Option "AIGLX" "on"

and

Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "on" #->This one IS absolutely NEEDED! It shouldn't be missed!

so I didn't get any further lol

[Fitzcarraldo]

I feel for you, as ATI has been one of my banes under SL. What version of xorg-server and xorg-x11 have you got installed? The following may be of help, but caveat 'emptor':

viewtopic.php?f=53&t=12650&start=20#p77179

[Jabb3r]

Sorry. Not been with it agai. Thanks for the info m8. I'm glad that it seems to be a known prob and not just an isolated thing on mine.

xorg-server = 1.4.0.90-r3
xorg-x11 = 7.3
ati-drivers = 8.476-r10