Arch Linux

Mayumu

Member

Registered: 2017-04-14

Posts: 4

[Solved] mkv videos heavily pixelated

Hello

After spending a weekend on getting everything working on Arch, this is the last thing I need to get it fully usable, been trying to figure it out for a few days already.
Basically, when playing mkv files I get huge pixelation issues.

Looks like this:
http://imgur.com/a/NjG1F

Here's a video I'm trying to run:
http://imgur.com/a/lJnbI

It happens on some videos less, on some videos it gets so crazy that the video hangs completely. I tried playing an avi and it worked flawlessly.

Running Arch on Asus 306UA - the GPU is Intel HD Graphics 520. Tried it with and without the xf86-video-intel driver. I'd prefer to stay with it, because I couldn't get the 1920x1080 resolution working otherwise. I use the i3wm if that's relevant. I'm sure these videos are not corrupted,  could run them on windows or other linux distros without any problems. Tried video players: VLC, mpv media player, mplayer media player. I did try the "TearFree" option as specified on the wiki page for intel graphics.

My xrandr:
xrandr --output HDMI1 --off --output VIRTUAL1 --off --output eDP1 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal

I'd appreciate any tips on how to tackle this.

Last edited by Mayumu (2017-04-16 19:34:39)

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: [Solved] mkv videos heavily pixelated

Did you install something to make use of hardware video acceleration? It might be broken. The different video players should have options to choose between software and hardware and you could use that to compare.

Mayumu

Member

Registered: 2017-04-14

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] mkv videos heavily pixelated

Did you install something to make use of hardware video acceleration? It might be broken. The different video players should have options to choose between software and hardware and you could use that to compare.

Uh, I don't think compton falls under that category? Other than that, no, I believe.
Not sure which options to fiddle with in video players but I'll try to play around.

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: [Solved] mkv videos heavily pixelated

Compton should not have any effect on pixelation, but try playing the files without it. I suspect that your hardware just isn't powerful enough to play 10-bit H264 videos. For reference, try playing some 8-bit H264 MKV.

Mayumu

Member

Registered: 2017-04-14

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] mkv videos heavily pixelated

Compton should not have any effect on pixelation, but try playing the files without it. I suspect that your hardware just isn't powerful enough to play 10-bit H264 videos. For reference, try playing some 8-bit H264 MKV.

Turning off compton doesn't help.
My hardware should be powerful enough, as I had Solus linux installed previously on it and it worked perfectly. Also it's a very recent laptop.

@edit
I fixed it!
What did the trick was installing the x264 package from the pacman repo.

@edit2
Uh, after rebooting, the pixelation is back...the only command I ran afterwards was 'poweroff', didn't change anything in player config either...

Last edited by Mayumu (2017-04-15 20:19:48)

Mayumu

Member

Registered: 2017-04-14

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] mkv videos heavily pixelated

Here's the output when running a video in VLC:

VLC media player 2.2.4 Weatherwax (revision 2.2.3-37-g888b7e89)
[0000000000644148] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[ass] Shaper: FriBidi 0.19.7 (SIMPLE) HarfBuzz-ng 1.4.5 (COMPLEX)
[ass] Using font provider fontconfig
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_va_gl.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_va_gl.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcda5720] left block unavailable for requested intra mode at 0 33
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcda5720] error while decoding MB 0 33, bytestream 11830
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd90b40] Reference 5 >= 5
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd90b40] error while decoding MB 76 27, bytestream 26588
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd90b40] Reference 4 >= 4
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd90b40] error while decoding MB 64 31, bytestream 14749
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd90b40] left block unavailable for requested intra mode at 0 9
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd90b40] error while decoding MB 0 9, bytestream 92847
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd793c0] left block unavailable for requested intra4x4 mode -1 at 0 27
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcd793c0] error while decoding MB 0 27, bytestream 33690
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcda5720] left block unavailable for requested intra4x4 mode -1 at 0 50
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcda5720] error while decoding MB 0 50, bytestream 32377
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcda5720] error while decoding MB 99 60, bytestream -5
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] error while decoding MB 19 27, bytestream -8
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] left block unavailable for requested intra4x4 mode -1 at 0 22
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] error while decoding MB 0 22, bytestream 59297
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] left block unavailable for requested intra mode at 0 13
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] error while decoding MB 0 13, bytestream 64599
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] cabac decode of qscale diff failed at 29 62
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] error while decoding MB 29 62, bytestream 3650
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] cabac decode of qscale diff failed at 37 17
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] error while decoding MB 37 17, bytestream 97232
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] Reference 4 >= 4
[h264 @ 0x7f60dcdace80] error while decoding MB 76 42, bytestream 33466

After that the errors just keep coming.

@edit
Okay it works, what I did:
sudo pacman -S libvdpau-va-gl
export VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl
Change in VLC -> settings -> codec -> hardware-accelerated decoding to VA-API video decoder via X11

Last edited by Mayumu (2017-04-16 19:34:08)