Arch Linux

*nixer

Member

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 56

Nvidia legacy drivers and Mplayer2

Hello.

I've encountered an issue with an older PC I've installed Arch to use as an 720p media player. For the last few months, I've used the very competent nouveau drivers with no problems as far as video playback. but... recently I thought I would try out the legacy nvidia drivers offered through the AUR to see if they would remove some other issues with the system.

- Files not appearing in Thunar unless moused over.
- Text not appearing in programs like Leafpad unless they were moused over.
- General lagginess when redrawing resized, minimized, or maximized windows.
- Browser flash video being a slideshow.
- Etc...

Once I installed the nvidia-96xx, and corresponding 1.12 xorg-server, the above issues were general better, or gone altogether. Heres the problem though...

Now my video playback is generally messed up.

Here's the terminal output of the first video sample being run with both the nouveau and nvidia drivers.

When I attempt to playback a 480p webm video file with the nvidia driver, I get a frozen screen where I can hear the audio but have no video playback present. It's like the screen maximized the mplayer window as usual, but I can still see any open windows and/or desktop behind it.

Nouveau Driver

# mplayer "TESTING [480p].webm"
MPlayer2 UNKNOWN (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
Cannot open file '/root/.mplayer/input.conf': No such file or directory
Failed to open /root/.mplayer/input.conf.
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick

Playing TESTING [480p].webm.
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_VP8), -vid 0
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_VORBIS), -aid 0, -alang und
[mkv] Will play video track 1.
Detected file format: Matroska
Load subtitles in .
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
[ass] auto-open
Selected video codec: On2 VP8 [libavcodec]
Selected audio codec: Vorbis [libavcodec]
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 0->352800)
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection refused
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VIDEO:  854x480  1000.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kB/s)
VO: [xv] 854x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12  [fs]
A:   1.4 V:   1.4 A-V:  0.001 ct:  0.011   0/  0 22%  7%  2.9% 0 0 

Exiting... (Quit)

Nvidia Drivers

# mplayer "TESTING [480p].webm"
MPlayer2 UNKNOWN (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
Cannot open file '/root/.mplayer/input.conf': No such file or directory
Failed to open /root/.mplayer/input.conf.
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick

Playing TESTING [480p].webm.
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_VP8), -vid 0
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_VORBIS), -aid 0, -alang und
[mkv] Will play video track 1.
Detected file format: Matroska
Load subtitles in .
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
[ass] auto-open
Selected video codec: On2 VP8 [libavcodec]
Selected audio codec: Vorbis [libavcodec]
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 0->352800)
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection refused
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VIDEO:  854x480  1000.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kB/s)
VO: [xv] 854x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12  [fs]
A:   4.5 V:   4.5 A-V:  0.001 ct:  0.010   0/  0 36% 10%  2.2% 0 0 

Exiting... (Quit)

Here is the terminal output of a second video sample being run with both drivers.

This video when run with the nvidia drivers keeps jerking back and forth like it's doing occasional mini split second rewinds before moving forward again, and also freezing.

Nouveau Driver

# mplayer "TESTING [720p].mp4"
MPlayer2 UNKNOWN (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
Cannot open file '/root/.mplayer/input.conf': No such file or directory
Failed to open /root/.mplayer/input.conf.
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick

Playing TESTING [720p].mp4.
Detected file format: QuickTime / MOV (libavformat)
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0, -alang und
Clip info:
 major_brand: mp42
 minor_version: 0
 compatible_brands: isommp42
 creation_time: 2011-09-22 01:50:03
Load subtitles in .
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
[ass] auto-open
Selected video codec: H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 [libavcodec]
Selected audio codec: AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) [libavcodec]
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 152.0 kbit/5.39% (ratio: 19004->352800)
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection refused
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VIDEO:  1280x720  24.000 fps  2910.2 kbps (363.8 kB/s)
VO: [xv] 1280x720 => 1280x720 Planar YV12  [fs]
Colorspace details not fully supported by selected vo.
A:   3.7 V:   3.7 A-V:  0.000 ct:  0.004   0/  0 40% 14%  2.3% 0 0 

Exiting... (Quit)

Nvidia Driver

# mplayer "TESTING [720p].mp4"
MPlayer2 UNKNOWN (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
Cannot open file '/root/.mplayer/input.conf': No such file or directory
Failed to open /root/.mplayer/input.conf.
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick

Playing TESTING [720p].mp4.
Detected file format: QuickTime / MOV (libavformat)
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0, -alang und
Clip info:
 major_brand: mp42
 minor_version: 0
 compatible_brands: isommp42
 creation_time: 2011-09-22 01:50:03
Load subtitles in .
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
[ass] auto-open
Selected video codec: H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 [libavcodec]
Selected audio codec: AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) [libavcodec]
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 152.0 kbit/5.39% (ratio: 19004->352800)
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection refused
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VIDEO:  1280x720  24.000 fps  2910.2 kbps (363.8 kB/s)
VO: [xv] 1280x720 => 1280x720 Planar YV12  [fs]
A:   5.3 V:   4.2 A-V:  1.056 ct:  0.000   0/  0 79% 10%  2.5% 50 0 


           ************************************************
           **** Your system is too SLOW to play this!  ****
           ************************************************

Possible reasons, problems, workarounds:
- Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver
  - Try -ao sdl or use the OSS emulation of ALSA.
  - Experiment with different values for -autosync, 30 is a good start.
- Slow video output
  - Try a different -vo driver (-vo help for a list) or try -framedrop!
- Slow CPU
  - Don't try to play a big DVD/DivX on a slow CPU! Try some of the lavdopts,
    e.g. -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all.
- Broken file
  - Try various combinations of -nobps -ni -forceidx -mc 0.
- Slow media (NFS/SMB mounts, DVD, VCD etc)
  - Try -cache 8192.
- Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file?
  - Try -nocache.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/video.html for tuning/speedup tips.
If none of this helps you, read DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html.

A:   6.6 V:   5.0 A-V:  1.570 ct:  0.000   0/  0 83% 10%  2.5% 69 0 

Exiting... (Quit)

Any ideas? This particular ancient PC's specs are -> Intel P4 2Ghz, Nvidia MX 4000 128 MB AGP, Samsung 2x256 MB RDRAM.

[EDIT]
Changing my sysctl virtual memory settings (swap, caching, etc.) fixed the openbox window lag, and web browser flash issues.

Last edited by *nixer (2013-03-18 16:13:54)

*nixer

Member

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 56

Re: Nvidia legacy drivers and Mplayer2

On the original problem, I found that I could use VLC with the Nvidia-96xx drivers, and x264 720p video playback works full-speed. But..., with VLC there is a screen tearing issue. While turning on vsync cripples this card, without vsync the Nouveau drivers + current gfx card work just fine.

I know this Geforce MX 4000 is an ancient AGP, but does anyone know if replacing it with a ATI 9550 256MB AGP card will do any good?

I found an additional 512MB of Samsung RDRAM for $5, and I know someone who is willing to sell me their ATI 9550 for $15 clean. But considering that ATI support in the past has been rather lacking (at least when I tried it), will this card improve anything?

Anyone here use a 9550 in Arch? It'd be nice to at least be able play some of the Humble Indie games I have like SuperMeatBoy, which wont load with the current setup do to lack of OpenGL support on the MX 4000 card. With the way most of these Indie games look, you'd expect them to work on 10+ year old systems, but they deliberately antiquate them by means of software.

I suppose I have a thing trying to run stuff on older hardware. I did just put together a mean 350mhz Pentium 2, 8mb agp, 256mb ram, 8gb hdd FreeDOS/TinyCoreLinux system.

Last edited by *nixer (2013-03-18 16:09:02)