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VDPAU issues / VDPAU not working

2K views 12 replies 6 participants last post by  waterhead 
#1 ·
Hi - i have an older PC, 2.8 P4 w GeForce 6600. I can watch 720p no problem with the default configuration, however i'd like to watch 1080i/p content.

ive been trying to figure out ho to offload processing to the various cards in the system, and use the hyperthreading in the P4, but no luck yet.


Ive been trying this: mplayer dvb://channel -ao dsl -vo vdpau

and getting this: [vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1


ive insalled the xswat drivers for nvidia-current, and libvdpau1 is installed.


im still a bit of a linux beginner. Any help s appreciated.
 
#7 ·
Your 2.8 GHz P4 can decode MPEG-2 in software without breaking a sweat, so hardware MPEG-2 decoders won't help. You want an h.264 decoder. The only options in Linux I know of are VDPAU with nVidia cards (well supported), VA-API with some ATI/AMD and Intel chipsets (less well supported), the Broadcom CrystalHD decoder (less well supported), and of course, software.
 
#8 ·
would you think there is something wrong or just underpowered hardware?:

Some reports say my CPU is 2800 MHz, others 3.2 Ghz (ill try to find which say which)

video is slow and or choppy when trying to play 1900x1080 MPEG-2 TS from my capture card (ATI HDTV Wonder) in full screen mode

video is good when playing x.256 720p mkv files, or 1280x720 MPEG-2 TS from the capture card full screen, or playing the 1080 content in a window sized down

My GeForce 6600 does not support VDPAU apparently. i will look into the ATI (less supported) hardware accell. thanks.
 
#9 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by bowser17 /forum/post/21866346


would you think there is something wrong or just underpowered hardware?:

Some reports say my CPU is 2800 MHz, others 3.2 Ghz (ill try to find which say which)

video is slow and or choppy when trying to play 1900x1080 MPEG-2 TS from my capture card (ATI HDTV Wonder) in full screen mode

video is good when playing x.256 720p mkv files, or 1280x720 MPEG-2 TS from the capture card full screen, or playing the 1080 content in a window sized down

My GeForce 6600 does not support VDPAU apparently. i will look into the ATI (less supported) hardware accell. thanks.

A Pentium 4 2.8 is too slow too decode 1080i/p video in software, I know it because I had one myself. Performance wise it's comparable to an Atom cpu.


With regards to your video card, the link menyioned earlier clearly says that your 6600 is not VDPAU capable (see the '-' next to it, as opposed to a letter?), so VDPAU is out of the question unless you upgrade your video card.


Frankly I would simply upgrade the whole PC, these days a P4 is a dinosaur, even Atoms provide comparable performance for a fraction of the power draw of a P4.
 
#10 ·
When watching 1080i content, try these command line parameters, they work well for me on slower machines (1.6 GHz dual core Atom):


mplayer -vf field -vo xv -lavdopts threads=2 filename.mpg


You can probably remove the "-lavdopts threads=2" since you have a single core.
 
#12 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead /forum/post/21868425


I used to watch HDTV on my P4 with older nVidia cards, no problem. I had to use XvMC (X Video Motion Compensation), which the older cards supported. Unfortunately, MythTV .25 will no longer support XvMC:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/XvMC


You may still be able to use it in mplayer.

Ok, I never tried mpeg2 1080i/p since I don't use that, what I tried was h.264. h.264 1080i/p most definitely doesn't work on a P4 2.8GHz.
 
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