Arch Linux

initbox

Member

Registered: 2008-09-27

Posts: 172

MPlayer and DVB

Hey!

I have this problem with MPlayer and watching DVB.. The picture is fine for a random amount of time and then at some point the picture goes a little jittery and then like slow-mo and after that it's pure slow-mo and lots of frames get dropped. The problem seems to be MPlayer specific, since I could watch DVB on Kaffeine for any amount of time without problems... So I'm thinking it's just my MPlayer configs.

Anyway, the DVB-card I'm using is Terratec Cinergy C HD and the drivers are from http://jusst.de/hg/mantis

Another issue I have with the card is that I'm unable to watch HD channels (that are mpeg2-compressed), MPlayer refuses to tune in and Kaffeine's picture is damn jittery and glitches (even though I have a quadcore and an nvidia 8800GT) But, that's another "unrelated"(?) issue. I don't know if it's the drivers or something else...

MPlayer config:

#sound
ao="alsa"
mc=0.2 #soundsync
autosync=30
#picture
geometry="755x450+0+0"    #size, location
stop-xscreensaver=1
monitoraspect="16:9"
vo="xv"        #video driver
#misc
dr="1"        #direct rendering
zoom="1"    #aspect
vf="yadif=3"    #videofilter
#framedrop, testing
framedrop="1"
hardframedrop="0"

The same thing happens on Debian atleast, but MPlayer crashes instead of going perma-slow-mo so Arch > Debian

initbox

Member

Registered: 2008-09-27

Posts: 172

Re: MPlayer and DVB

Apparently, mplayer seems to work fine when you set
"cache=2048" (any amount is fine, but it will take longer to fill if it's huge)
"cache-min=50"

Still no luck with HD channels.

Anyhow, I figure this was just a problem with the audio/video going out of sync and then it failing to resync.

I've only been testing this for tonight so I'm not 100% sure yet but it seems to work.
Just posting this as a solution if somebody is having the same problems...

blahbla77

Member

Registered: 2008-12-18

Posts: 10

Re: MPlayer and DVB

Hi, I also bought this card but I am having troubles getting it to work at all.
So I am wondering what version of kernel and mantis you are running and if you have any pointers on how to get mantis installed.

initbox

Member

Registered: 2008-09-27

Posts: 172

Re: MPlayer and DVB

Hi, I also bought this card but I am having troubles getting it to work at all.
So I am wondering what version of kernel and mantis you are running and if you have any pointers on how to get mantis installed.

I have the normal Arch kernel.

Here's how you install the kernel module:

pacman -S mercurial
cd /tmp (or whatever folder)
hg clone http://jusst.de/hg/mantis/
cd mantis
make distclean
make
(as root, sudo, whatever) make install
modprobe mantis (OR reboot)

Then you need to generate a channel list and you of course need a viewing program.
On Arch it's not really a problem to install Kaffeine even if you don't use KDE. Kaffeine is amazing for DVB-viewing! Kaffeine has a GUI for getting your channel list and it's very easy to use. If you're feeling cool , you can also use Mplayer, but you need to generate a channel list by hand.

If you're going to generate a channel list by hand, install the package linuxtv-dvb-apps

scandvb /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-t/1-2 > ~/.mplayer/channels.conf
1. two letter country code
2. district

I think scandvb is for DVB-T (antenna) and scan is for DVB-C (cable).

Last edited by initbox (2008-12-19 13:23:29)

blahbla77

Member

Registered: 2008-12-18

Posts: 10

Re: MPlayer and DVB

I had some problems with it at first because I had the v4l stuff enabled in kernel, but when I disabled that and did the prosess over it worked great.

I'm installing this on a mythbackend server so no mplayer to view. however I did get to test it using commandline.
(http://www.turtlespond.net/scripts/saving_dvb-t.html)

that gave me video and sound. Havent gotten sound in mythfrontend yet though but thats another issue.

thanks for your help.