Choppy video playback since a few days ago

keineeile · 2020-04-08 16:36:06

Hello everybody,

Since a few days ago whenever I try to play most videos (not all though) they are suddenly very choppy (audio sometimes continues just fine leading to audio/video becoming more and more out of sync), no matter if I use vlc, mplayer, mp4, qtav, you-name-it. Also many online videos are only played choppy. There are some that still play fine, mostly videos with a very small resolution, and also streaming services like hulu and Amazon Prime Video. It appears to be independent of the video format itself.

I tried to grep around the pacman log to see if anything related to this might have been updated since that started happening a few days ago, but can't find anything (I looked for ffmpeg, (h/x)264, libav, vlc, mplayer, codec, mp4). The only related update I found was an upgrade of libmp4v2 from 2.0.0 to 4.1.3 a few days ago, but downgrading that didn't change anything. I also tested my harddrives using smartmontools, but everything is healthy.

I also tried increasing the buffer, changing hardware acceleration mode, passing various command line flags - nothing seemed to have any effect...

If it helps, here's the output of mplayer playing an mp4 file:

MPlayer SVN-r38157 (C) 2000-2019 MPlayer Team
225 audio & 468 video codecs
do_connect: could not connect to socket
connect: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing ***********.mp4.
libavformat version 58.29.100 (external)
libavformat file format detected.
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x7fd15935c7c0]Protocol name not provided, cannot determine if input is local or a network protocol, buffers and access patterns cannot be configured optimally without knowing the protocol
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0, -alang eng
VIDEO:  [H264]  688x544  24bpp  25.000 fps  1184.6 kbps (144.6 kbyte/s)
Could not find a UTF-8 locale,
character keys beyond Latin-1 will not be handled.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
libavcodec version 58.54.100 (external)
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
Clip info:
 major_brand: isom
 minor_version: 512
 compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
 encoder: Lavf58.20.100
Load subtitles in ./
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
[aac @ 0x7fd1588efe60]Multiple frames in a packet.
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 100.0 kbit/3.26% (ratio: 12501->384000)
Selected audio codec: [ffaac] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio))
==========================================================================
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: No such file or directory
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
[aac @ 0x7fd1588efe60]channel element 0.0 is not allocated
Movie-Aspect is 1.27:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [vdpau] 688x544 => 692x544 Planar YV12 
A:  62.8 V:  57.2 A-V:  5.601 ct:  5.182   0/  0  9%  7%  0.5% 0 0

Anybody an idea of what I could try next? Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks,
keineeile

PS:
My system is a ThinkPad T460p with an Intel HD Graphics 530 (integrated graphics card). The system is fully up-to-date.

Edit: Just saw another thread about video issues where setting MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965 was suggested as possible fix (due to changes in OpenGL driver defaults). This, unfortunately, did also not solve anything for me...

Last edited by keineeile (2020-04-08 16:42:52)

V1del · 2020-04-08 17:24:49

Where did you add the MESA override variable?

keineeile · 2020-04-08 17:26:43

I ran

MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965 mplayer somevideofile.mp4

Lone_Wolf · 2020-04-09 12:37:01

VO: [vdpau] 688x544 => 692x544 Planar YV12

Intel cards are intended to work with VAAPI not vdpau .

post vainfo and pacman -Qs intel

keineeile · 2020-04-09 16:28:49

Intel cards are intended to work with VAAPI not vdpau .

Changing vlc from 'Automatic' to 'VA-API doesn't help (in fact it seems to be even more choppy than before). I installed mplayer-vaapi from the AUR and ran it with the flag '-vo vaapi' (by default it uses xv). However, the video remains just as choppy as before. Here's the output of mplayer-vaapi with vaapi video output specifically selected:

$ mplayer -vo vaapi somevideofile.mp4
MPlayer SVN-r36265-9.3.0 (C) 2000-2013 MPlayer Team
203 audio & 423 video codecs
do_connect: could not connect to socket
connect: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing somevideofile.mp4.
libavformat version 55.12.102 (internal)
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0, -alang eng
[lavf] stream 2: subtitle (mov_text), -sid 0, -slang eng
VIDEO:  [H264]  688x544  24bpp  25.000 fps  1184.6 kbps (144.6 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
 major_brand: isom
 minor_version: 512
 compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
 encoder: Lavf58.20.100
Load subtitles in ./
Could not find a UTF-8 locale, some keys will not be handled.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
libavcodec version 55.18.102 (internal)
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 100.0 kbit/3.26% (ratio: 12501->384000)
Selected audio codec: [ffaac] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio))
==========================================================================
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: No such file or directory
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=0.
[VD_FFMPEG] XVMC-accelerated MPEG-2.
Movie-Aspect is 1.27:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [vaapi] 688x544 => 692x544 H.264 VA-API Acceleration 
[VD_FFMPEG] XVMC-accelerated MPEG-2.
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=0.
[VD_FFMPEG] XVMC-accelerated MPEG-2.
[VD_FFMPEG] XVMC-accelerated MPEG-2.
Movie-Aspect is 1.27:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [vaapi] 688x544 => 692x544 H.264 VA-API Acceleration 
A: 107.6 V: 105.0 A-V:  2.601 ct:  1.196   0/  0  0%  1%  0.6% 0 0

post vainfo and pacman -Qs intel

$ vainfo 
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.7 (libva 2.6.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel iHD driver - 19.4.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointStats
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointEncPicture
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointFEI

and

$ pacman -Qs intel
local/intel-gmmlib 20.1.1-1
    Intel Graphics Memory Management Library
local/intel-media-driver 19.4.0.r-1
    Intel Media Driver for VAAPI — Broadwell+ iGPUs
local/intel-media-sdk 19.4.0-4
    API to access hardware-accelerated video on Intel Gen graphics hardware platforms
local/intel-tbb 2020.2-1
    High level abstract threading library
local/intel-ucode 20191115-3
    Microcode update files for Intel CPUs
local/iucode-tool 2.3.1-2
    Tool to manipulate Intel® IA-32/X86-64 microcode bundles
local/libmfx 19.4.0-4
    Intel Media SDK dispatcher library
local/libva-utils 2.6.0-1
    Intel VA-API Media Applications and Scripts for libva
local/xf86-video-intel 1:2.99.917+899+gf66d3954-1 (xorg-drivers)
    X.org Intel i810/i830/i915/945G/G965+ video drivers

Thanks!

Last edited by keineeile (2020-04-09 16:30:23)

Lone_Wolf · 2020-04-09 17:50:34

local/xf86-video-intel 1:2.99.917+899+gf66d3954-1 (xorg-drivers)
    X.org Intel i810/i830/i915/945G/G965+ video drivers

Try removing xf86-video-intel including any conf-files you created for it.
re-start X and it should autodetect you intel card and select the modesetting driver*.
Check if this improves performance .

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics for details

* when in doubt, post your xorg log .

keineeile · 2020-04-09 22:45:34

I removed xf86-video-intel, and there was also one conf file I had created at some point that I also removed - but it didn't help. Both vlc and mplayer are still as choppy as before.

I also tried to re-encode one of the video files to see if that might do something but that also didn't help, the video is still very choppy

Edit: Here is my xorg log file: https://pastebin.com/G389Y5xH

Last edited by keineeile (2020-04-09 22:51:20)

V1del · 2020-04-10 14:10:34

Try exporting the MESA variable in a more global place to ensure the entire stack runs on the old GL implementation like /etc/profile or so.

keineeile · 2020-04-10 20:56:48

Thanks, I just tried that: added 'export MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965' to /etc/profile, logged back in, and confirmed with 'env' that it is properly set.
However, playing the same video file now is even worse as before (at least it seems to be worse)

Last edited by keineeile (2020-04-11 01:37:06)

Arch Linux

#1 2020-04-08 16:36:06

Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#2 2020-04-08 17:24:49

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#3 2020-04-08 17:26:43

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#4 2020-04-09 12:37:01

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#5 2020-04-09 16:28:49

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#6 2020-04-09 17:50:34

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#7 2020-04-09 22:45:34

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#8 2020-04-10 14:10:34

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

#9 2020-04-10 20:56:48

Re: Choppy video playback since a few days ago

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