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MythTV Adds Support For NVIDIA VDPAU

post #1 of 78
12/1/08 at 9:55am
Thread Starter 
Somewhat old news, I guess, but it deserves recognition here. It's in the mythtv trunk now, and you'll need the beta driver to use it.

The phoronix article --> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=Njg4Ng
Some folks already trying it in this nvidia thread --> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=123865
The beta driver needed --> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=123091

Not too sure how my 8500GT would handle it. Plus, that's my only "production" box, so I'm gonna hold off a bit.

Would like to know if anyone here tries it out.
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post #2 of 78
12/1/08 at 10:06am
Wow, nice. I'd enabled this when I compiled Myth yesterday, but didn't fully understand what it was.

Unfortunately though the 177 driver is the latest that jockey-kde is giving me. (need 180)
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post #3 of 78
12/1/08 at 12:15pm
CRIMINY, it looks like a winner!

Just installed the nVidia 180 beta driver and compiled my Myth to use vdpau, and now viewing my recordings only takes ~11% CPU! (3GHz dual-core E8400) And no frame drops. Wonderful. Was running ~45% with driver 177. This is viewing ATSC Mpeg2 and I haven't tested other video formats, but it does look good. Usually nVidia beta drivers are quite good so I'm confident. Will continue to test indefinitely.

The installer insists that you not be running X, and that you be in at least runlevel 3. Since there's no longer such a thing as inittab I had to do a regular reboot, , log in, stop kdm, and then run the installer. Before rebooting though, if you've installed any drivers using jockey-kde I recommend they be deinstalled first.
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post #4 of 78
12/1/08 at 12:22pm
MM, it looks like your card could benefit from this. Here are some of the 8500GT's relevant features:
Code:
NVIDIA® unified architecture with GigaThread™ technology
Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 support
16x full-screen anti-aliasing
True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting
NVIDIA Quantum Effects™ physics processing technology
NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD technology 1
HDCP Capable2
OpenGL® 2.0 support
It doesn't do mpeg2 or H.264 decoding, but hey a card that will is cheep.
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post #5 of 78
12/1/08 at 12:24pm
Thread Starter 
Cool, thanks, qs!
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post #6 of 78
12/1/08 at 2:28pm
Welp none of my motherboard GPUs will support it... so I guess this isn't a big deal for me

(not to mention that I'm still running 0.20!)
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post #7 of 78
12/1/08 at 2:52pm
Hey, get a P5N7A-VM. ~$115.

Need a nice chipset heatsink on that pecker tho.
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post #8 of 78
12/2/08 at 5:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by goofygrin View Post

Welp none of my motherboard GPUs will support it... so I guess this isn't a big deal for me

(not to mention that I'm still running 0.20!)


If I'm reading the Nvidia charts right, these 8400GS cards should support all the HD video accelerations (H264/VC1/MPEG2)-

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_hd.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_43029.html

http://3btech.net/reboxevnvge8.html

http://3btech.net/reboxmsinvge1.html

http://3btech.net/reboxspnvge8.html

All three are less than $49 shipped, and the last two are fanless- silent for media PC use.
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post #9 of 78
12/2/08 at 5:14am
If I recall correctly, on the Windows side, the Cyberlink filters (for example) ONLY offload video encoded in a certain way, housed in specific containers (an MKV with h264 for example isn't offloaded but a blueray evo file is). How is VDPAU doing in terms of codec/container support?

-Trouble
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post #10 of 78
12/2/08 at 5:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by quantumstate View Post

Hey, get a P5N7A-VM. ~$115.

Need a nice chipset heatsink on that pecker tho.

For an AMD alternative, this one looks good-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130165

The Nvidia PureVideo HD chart shows that the 8200 on up IGP's do H264/VC1 and MPEG2 HD decoding.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_hd.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_43029.html

Throw in a low cost X2 5000+ or higher and you're good to go on the cheap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103289

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103234
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post #11 of 78
12/2/08 at 6:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Troubleshooter View Post

If I recall correctly, on the Windows side, the Cyberlink filters (for example) ONLY offload video encoded in a certain way, housed in specific containers (an MKV with h264 for example isn't offloaded but a blueray evo file is). How is VDPAU doing in terms of codec/container support?

I'm probably the only one running it at this point. I'll try Dish H.264 transport stream and some other containers tonight, but don't have any Matroska. Of course ATSC mpeg2 transport-stream works great.

Damned cotton-pickin' audio problem...
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post #12 of 78
12/2/08 at 6:56am
Thread Starter 
Purevideo product comparison chart --> http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

"VC-1 support in NVIDIA's VDPAU implementation currently requires GeForce
9300 GS, GeForce 9200M GS, GeForce 9300M GS, or GeForce 9300M GS."

What content is published in vc-1? (not rhetorical -- I really want to know)

About codec/container, I know that both mythtv and the patched mplayer support offloading of h.264 in mkv (and from what I've read, myth does it better). Beyond that, I haven't seen anything.

Since it looks like my 8500GT supports everything across the board and it's easy enough to roll back, I'll take her for a spin after I find some content for benchmarking purposes.
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post #13 of 78
12/2/08 at 8:29am
Thread Starter 
I downloaded the transporter 3 trailer in 1080p h.264 mkv format from apple, played it with mplayer, and my cpu stayed below 40% the whole time. Is this normal, or have I been deceived about the format??? Granted, it looked like it could've played smoother.

Hmmm...testing 1080i livetv right now...

Well, I guess that's about right -- it peaks around 50% or so.

So, "before" is ~40-50% for typical HD stuff on my opteron 2.4 x2 w/ 2GB 400.

EDIT: gov_coder made me check again it's actually ~27% on cable 1080i (firewire) and I have the profile set on CPU++
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post #14 of 78
12/2/08 at 9:16am
I get about 15% cpu usage using XVMC on my athlon x2 5200 (2.6 ghz) watching ATSC 1080i with bob deinterlacing.

So probably not a big deal for me. My graphics card is an nvidia 7600 gt (not supported for purevideo).

Anyone know if xvmc works with nvidia onboard (4300) chipsets?
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post #15 of 78
12/2/08 at 10:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythmaster View Post

Purevideo product comparison chart --> http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

What content is published in vc-1? (not rhetorical -- I really want to know)


Many HD-DVD's (most?) and many BluRay discs, including the current Dark Knight BluRay release, use VC-1, though it can vary by region (Europe vs North American discs, etc). I assume it would be in the standard .evo container.
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post #16 of 78
12/2/08 at 12:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rgb View Post

Many HD-DVD's (most?) and many BluRay discs, including the current Dark Knight BluRay release, use VC-1, though it can vary by region (Europe vs North American discs, etc). I assume it would be in the standard .evo container.

Thanks, rgb.
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post #17 of 78
12/2/08 at 12:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by gov_coder View Post

I get about 15% cpu usage using XVMC on my athlon x2 5200 (2.6 ghz) watching ATSC 1080i with bob deinterlacing.

So probably not a big deal for me. My graphics card is an nvidia 7600 gt (not supported for purevideo).

Anyone know if xvmc works with nvidia onboard (4300) chipsets?

I've got older Nvidia chipset boards and XvMC works, but you get the grey OSD and stuttering (remember I'm in 0.20). I turn off XvMC since I like the color OSD and no stuttering.


RGB:
Thanks for trying to get me buy MORE hardware. That really isn't going to fly. My stuff is working and I'm not looking to upgrade any time soon I don't know about you, but it's nice when stuff "just works" and doesn't need constant tinkering and handholding.

I checked last week and my backend has > 180 days of uptime (I have monit monitoring the backend service and it's crashed a handful of times, but nothing requiring a reboot).

Take that Vista MCE!
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post #18 of 78
12/2/08 at 12:34pm
Thread Starter 
Hey, quantumstate:

Did you have to do anything out-of-the-ordinary to get myth to build? I'm getting some weird "WARNING! An unknown C++ compiler flag in: '-Wall'. Option(s) will be ignored." stuff and it's not finding freetype (I even built and installed freetype2 from cvs) when I run configure. I've never seen configure throw C++ warnings like that before. This is version 19213 from this morning...maybe I'll try an update.

What version are you running?
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post #19 of 78
12/2/08 at 1:02pm
Thread Starter 
der...I didn't have g++ installed

thanks...building now
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post #20 of 78
12/2/08 at 1:05pm
Np, nothing special, and I didn't notice warnings like that. I did however install lots of -dev files to try and enable as many config options as possible, mostly to do with OpenGL. Here are my notes:
Code:
svn co http://svn.mythtv.org/svn/trunk/ mythtv.svn
cd mythtv.svn/mythtv
patch -p0 < ../../r5000_r16.patch
apt-get build-dep mythtv
cd /usr/lib || ln -s libGL.so.1 libGL.so
./configure --help
./configure --enable-vdpau --enable-proc-opt
make -j 4
(To build MythTV on a multi-CPU machine (or with distcc), specify "-j numjobs".
Two concurrent jobs is recommended for a single CPU system.  Do not set the number of jobs too high)
(If distcc, and you had two other host machines (red, blue) participating, you would do something like: 
$ export DISTCC_HOSTS='localhost red blue'
$ make -j 6 CXX=distcc
make install
For configure I first tried this:
./configure --enable-vdpau --enable-proc-opt --enable-xvmc-opengl --enable-opengl-video --enable-opengl-vsync
... but got a real bad framerate, likely because something's wrong with my OpenGL hardware accel. So now I'm using:
./configure --enable-vdpau --enable-proc-opt
... and it runs like a dream.

Code:
$ mythbackend --version
Please include all output in bug reports.
MythTV Version   : 19183M
MythTV Branch    : trunk
Library API      : 0.22.20081116-1
Network Protocol : 42
QT Version       : 4.4.3
Options compiled in:
 linux release using_oss using_alsa using_arts using_jack using_backend using_directfb using_dvb using_firewire using_frontend using_hdhomerun using_hdpvr using_iptv using_ivtv using_r5000 using_joystick_menu using_lirc using_mheg using_qtwebkit using_v4l using_x11 using_xrandr using_xv using_xvmc using_xvmc_vld using_xvmcw using_bindings_perl using_bindings_python using_opengl using_ffmpeg_threads using_libavc_5_3 using_live using_mheg
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post #21 of 78
12/2/08 at 6:37pm
Thread Starter 
Man, this crappy video card doesn't even do xvmc, let alone vdpau! Myth compiled fine, btw...I've just been goofing around with this joke of a card. At least I can get GLsync. yay. So, yeah, same cpu% for me.

The only thing I've managed to accomplish is losing firewire stability, so I'll roll her back tomorrow.

I might have to treat myself to a good card for xmas (although it'll prolly end up in this quad)
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post #22 of 78
12/2/08 at 10:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rgb View Post

If I'm reading the Nvidia charts right, these 8400GS cards should support all the HD video accelerations (H264/VC1/MPEG2)-

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_hd.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_43029.html

http://3btech.net/reboxevnvge8.html

http://3btech.net/reboxmsinvge1.html

http://3btech.net/reboxspnvge8.html

All three are less than $49 shipped, and the last two are fanless- silent for media PC use.

Two of those cards are 256 MB. I believe there is issues with running with less that 512 MB
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post #23 of 78
12/6/08 at 7:50am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tradewinds View Post

Two of those cards are 256 MB. I believe there is issues with running with less that 512 MB

Actually, I think that's just with on-board video.

Also, from the announcement above:
Quote:


If other hardware vendors are interested, they are welcome to also
provide implementations of VDPAU. The VDPAU API was designed to allow
a vendor backend to be selected at run time.

I wonder how the intel video driver developers feel about this.
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post #24 of 78
12/6/08 at 7:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythmaster View Post

Actually, I think that's just with on-board video.

That's good then. I have a 256 MB 8600 GTS
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post #25 of 78
12/6/08 at 8:16am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tradewinds View Post

That's good then. I have a 256 MB 8600 GTS

I dunno...it doesn't work with my 8500GT and I think the 8600's have the same GPU. Then again, I didn't try it with the patched mplayer, so all I know is that mythtv didn't try to use it even though it was compiled in. It's definitely worth a shot.
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post #26 of 78
12/6/08 at 8:26am
Thread Starter 
As far as VDPAU in XMBC goes:
Quote:


The hardest part will be adding the OSD overlay to the video since we can't render the video to a GL texture. Without that, we'd be sacrificing the user experience that is XBMC (one of the biggest reasons we don't include mplayer as a player). If you're a coder, I'm sure we can get you in contact with the interested developers on the team to help out.

malloc from --> http://xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p...4&postcount=74
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post #27 of 78
12/6/08 at 4:29pm
Thread Starter 
ha-HA!

Merry xmas, me! I just ordered a 9300GS so I can be for seriously testing this out --> http://www.amazon.com/Nvidia-Geforce.../dp/B001JBIGCI

Giggity.
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post #28 of 78
12/7/08 at 5:54am
All Right!

But be aware that these run hot. I had to put a large chipset heatsink on my mobo with the 9300 IGP. You'll need active cooling, especially with HA.
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post #29 of 78
12/8/08 at 8:05am
Thread Starter 
Thanks, qs -- I'll keep an eye on it. I'm gonna put it in my quad-core box for testing first. My HTPC case is roomy and cool enough, I believe, so if everything seems stable enough, it should live comfortably there.

Also, I've noticed on the nvidia forums that someone with the same IGP as yours has reported that it doesn't (currently) support vc-1 offloading. Have you tried anything other than tv yet?
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post #30 of 78
12/9/08 at 3:58pm
Well I'm about to rebuild my FC8 box to an FC10 box and I will be trying this new driver out. I was hoping that MPlayer would have already released an actual incorporated patched version but alas not yet. I'll post here when I get things up and running. I don't expect to get to this much before the weekend though.
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