Arch Linux

Lockheed

Member

Registered: 2010-03-16

Posts: 1,521

Choppy hi-def video playback

I am using SMPlayer. Regular avi files work fine, but when playing 720p or higher quality videos (coded for example in matroska), I get this strange behaviour:
Movie plays just fine for, say, 40 seconds, then it jerks abor about 0.5 second. This happens every 40 or 60 seconds during playback and if I back the video a bit, it never occurs at the same point in the movie.
I remember having similar issue on Ubuntu few years back but I forgot how it was solved.

I have nvidia 8800 gpu, C2D 2.1Ghz and 4gb ram.

jeslinmx

Member

Registered: 2010-11-20

Posts: 120

Re: Choppy hi-def video playback

What drivers are you using for your Nvidia? Could you try playing a video on some other player? 720p youtube perhaps, to see if the problem is with the decoding or the player.

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Lenovo Y450 + Arch x86_64 dual boot with Windows 7 + Openbox standalone + Arch default kernel + Nouveau + yours truly = A lot of *****in' in the Arch Forums.

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Choppy hi-def video playback

With that card you can use vdpau. Otherwise, set the number of threads to 2. Another thing you can try is to increase the mplayer cache.

Lockheed

Member

Registered: 2010-03-16

Posts: 1,521

Re: Choppy hi-def video playback

With that card you can use vdpau.

Is there any howto on how to do it on Arch? I am finding only dated instructions for ubuntu.

EDIT:
So I installed mplayer-vdpau-svn and when I run mplayer with extra option "-vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau" then video is invisible but I can hear the sound.
If I use only "-vo vdpau" then video plays fine but the framerate is noticeably lower than running without any options.

EDIT2:
VLC plays the same movies flawlessly out of the box.

Last edited by Lockheed (2011-05-05 21:23:47)

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Choppy hi-def video playback

MPlayer comes with vdpau support by default, you don't need any special builds. As for how to use it, SMPlayer documentation is what you should be looking at. There's a checkbox for "hardware deccoding" or something, I think, I haven't actually used SMPlayer in a long time.

eDio

Member

From: Ukraine, Kyiv

Registered: 2008-12-02

Posts: 422

Re: Choppy hi-def video playback

-vc ffh264vdpau

I have 8600 GT, C2D E6550 (2.33)
Using this decoder leads to choppy playback of full hd h264 video. But if using plain xv playback is smooth, but CPU load is about 30% (60% load of one core).

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github.com/edio

Lockheed

Member

Registered: 2010-03-16

Posts: 1,521

Re: Choppy hi-def video playback

Well, what I actually have is Quadro NVS 140M (G84M) but this is based on 8500M GT.
So are you saying using vdpau on this card is a bad idea?

jlindgren

Member

Registered: 2011-02-27

Posts: 260

Re: Choppy hi-def video playback

Some other things you can try are (1) disable compositing (this can slow down video playback) and (2) disable vsync (some players have trouble keeping a smooth frame rate with it enabled).