nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

jwhendy · 2013-10-28 19:55:50

@NTia89:
just was going by the nouveau instructions:

Here are the steps to test it out under nouveau:
1. Extract firmware from the blob using extract_firmware.py and place it in /lib/firmware/nouveau.
2. Get a 3.11-rc4 or later kernel, or nouveau/master, compile, boot.
3. Make sure you have Mesa 9.2 or later. If you don't want to overwrite your system install, you'll need a libvdpau installed to the new prefix as well, otherwise the LD_LIBRARY_PATH won't cause the new vdpau backend driver to load, and there's no way to override the vdpau search path at runtime.
4. Run mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffmpeg12vdpau,ffh264vdpau, foo.mp4

What's the point of #2? I did it just to be safe. The firmwares from that AUR package simply automate what I did by hand. If you look at the PKGBUILD, it grabs the extract_firmware.py file from nouveau, downloads NVIDIA-version-*.run, executes it with `--extract-only`, creates /lib/nouveau/firmware, and copies in all the files.

I will say, the files were all either nv84* or nv96*, and my chip is an nv94... so I was kind of puzzled as to whether the requisite files were there.

Let me know if you get around to trying this. I'm losing my mind with nouveau. Either way, though, it doesn't solve my issue, unless the incompatibility with NVIDIA is counteracted by nouveau, but counteracted again by nouveau not being able to use HW acceleration. I still got crazy CPU usage running nouveau with noaccel=1.

@Jasa:

And yes, that is regarding accelerated video playback that no one of desktops should use to boot up.

So, just to be clear, the fact that I can only startx with nouveau.noaccel=1 in order not to get a pixelated crazy screen has nothing whatsoever to do with the hardware acceleration, dri, vdpau issues being discussed in this thread? Put another way, if none of this has to do with my issue... what would cause startx to fail with noaccel=0 (default settings)?

Last edited by jwhendy (2013-10-28 19:57:24)

davidm · 2014-01-01 19:44:13

Jasa wrote:

For me it did post about missing nouveau_drv_video.so, just link vdpau_drv_video.so to that in same folder. Not sure if that is clean method, does give some information however.
I'd suggest using AUR build also for firmware, but as there is change in by archive used to reduce download that might fail on x86_64, one needs to modify PKGBUILD x86 -> x86_64.
From packages in reposities only nouveau-dri might be one that needs recompile, even when it does do all other packages at same from sources.
https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit … kages/mesa (uncomment removal of /usr/lib/vdpau).
Also to actually build that package, LICENSE file can be downloaded from source files at package information page.
And yes, that is regarding accelerated video playback that no one of desktops should use to boot up. If trying from git reposities some desktops with composite enabled might be unable to boot up. That ticket is not about being able to use desktop or video players, only to force using video accelerated playback.

This seems to be the most authoritative thread on the subject in the forum.

So just to confirm to get my 8400 GS working with VDPAU acceleration on Nouveau I would have to manually compile at least one package and I can't simply install the firmware from the AUR?

Can anyone confirm that they have VDPAU actually working on nouveau with recent Arch kernels?

nTia89 · 2014-01-01 21:36:12

honestly I have no more tried to get it to work....

but if I run vdpauinfo tool, it detects something

I'm on a 9800GT without any "external" package such as firmware

davidm · 2014-01-01 22:47:14

nTia89 wrote:

honestly I have no more tried to get it to work....
but if I run vdpauinfo tool, it detects something
I'm on a 9800GT without any "external" package such as firmware

Thanks. I might give it a try and report back then. I've been wanting to move to Nouveau for philosophical reasons for a long time but on this P4 system it is a must to have vdpau capabilities in order to view HD movies.

Unless I miss something It appears I do not have to make any changes to https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit … kages/mesa after all ?

Last edited by davidm (2014-01-01 22:48:12)

Gusar · 2014-01-01 23:21:18

You don't need to do anything special regarding packages, mesa-10.0.1 already contains nouveau VDPAU support. But you might require firmware, which you can get by installing nouveau-fw from AUR.

davidm · 2014-01-01 23:31:34

Gusar wrote:

You don't need to do anything special regarding packages, mesa-10.0.1 already contains nouveau VDPAU support. But you might require firmware, which you can get by installing nouveau-fw from AUR.

Awesome. That's what the Nouveau Wiki seemed to imply as well. I'm giving it a shot right now. Will see how it goes shortly.

edit: corrected to reflect that I was using this and not the arch wiki http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoAcceleration/

Last edited by davidm (2014-01-02 01:35:52)

davidm · 2014-01-02 01:25:10

WOW. When it works it seems to work very very well. Unfortunately I'm getting very frequent lockups/freezes which require sysrq REISUB to reboot. It happens almost randomly and on average about every 5 minutes - from the KDE kickoff application launcher, while watching a HD movie, when pulling up Dolphin, etc. But other than the lookups I am very very impressed. It appears my issue is actually a nouveau problem and NOT directly a result of enabling VDPAU with nouveau as the freeze also happens with the nouveau-fw from the AUR uninstalled. So if it weren't for that it would probably work great. While working it was getting under 5% cpu use on a 720p HD movie on my pentium 4.

I'll see if I can tolerate it or find a better way to deal with it. Also if anyone has any suggestions for trying to improve stability while on nouveau or otherwise how to debug what is causing the lockups exactly please let me know. I need to research this further (probably on the nouveau site) to see where to go from here. I'd love to get this working on a tolerable level so I can stay on nouveau.

Video card:

VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA corporation [GEForce 8400 GS Rev. 2] (rev a1)

(It's a rare PCI model and not PCI-e or AGP)

Last edited by davidm (2014-01-02 01:27:45)

nTia89 · 2014-01-02 11:01:05

@davidm

perfect.....how do you test if VDPAU is working?
and what does the log say about freezes?

davidm · 2014-01-02 17:23:43

nTia89 wrote:

@davidm
perfect.....how do you test if VDPAU is working?
and what does the log say about freezes?

I had to switch back to the Nvidia driver for now since I didn't see an immediate solution. But if you choose vdpau under preferences -> video in smplayer it should work. Also you should notice the difference in cpu usage.

dmesg was showing various INVALID_CMD, DATA_ERROR, and INVALID_VALUE messages. Xorg.log didn't seem to have any hints. I have to research how to possibly get better logging data but so far by googling the errors and my hardware I haven't found much.

nTia89 · 2014-01-03 14:57:50

little update: I've installed the firmware which, in agreement with nouveau official wiki, allows me to use VP2 capabilities.....

the result is in a bunch of freezes......

posted here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 1#p1366641

now, I'd like to know if it is a common problem....what do you experience?

Arch Linux

#26 2013-10-28 19:55:50

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#27 2014-01-01 19:44:13

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#28 2014-01-01 21:36:12

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#29 2014-01-01 22:47:14

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#30 2014-01-01 23:21:18

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#31 2014-01-01 23:31:34

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#32 2014-01-02 01:25:10

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#33 2014-01-02 11:01:05

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#34 2014-01-02 17:23:43

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#35 2014-01-03 14:57:50

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

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