[SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

heidar · 2010-06-06 11:44:19

Hello friends,

I just installed Arch on my desktop. I'm using mplayer to play .mkv files which are x264 720p. When I do so I get a really annoying jerk in the image and sound every minute or so, sometimes more often and sometimes not as often. I have tried two different video files from two different sources and there's no difference. It also doesn't matter if it's full screen or not. My CPU usage is normally around 20% - 35% on the first core when I play video, so I doubt it's my CPU not being good enough.

Here's the mplayer output when I play a file:

MPlayer SVN-r31303-4.5.0 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
154 audio & 339 video codecs
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing videos/Movies/Star Trek 2009.mkv.
libavformat file format detected.
[matroska @ 0x2065230]Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (ac3), -aid 0
VIDEO:  [H264]  1280x528  0bpp  24.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Opening video filter: [hqdn3d]
Opening video filter: [pp=de]
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
[PP] Using external postprocessing filter, max q = 6.
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 640.0 kbit/41.67% (ratio: 80000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffac3] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg AC-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
[PP] Using external postprocessing filter, max q = 6.
Movie-Aspect is 2.42:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 1280x528 => 1280x528 Planar YV12  [zoom]
A: 698.5 V: 698.3 A-V:  0.173 ct: -0.422 14333/14333 17% 21%  2.0% 30 6 
Exiting... (Quit)

It also says ALSA only uses 2 channels, not sure if I can change that but I'd like it to use 4 or 6.

Here's my mplayer config but nothing in it seems to affect my problem

# Write your default config options here!

ao="alsa" #audio out
srate=48000
softvol=yes
softvol-max=250

vo="xv" #video out
zoom="1" #Allow sofware scaling if I use x11 for vo
aid="1" #audio channel
sid="0" #subtitle set

#Display
double="yes"    #double buffering(recommended for subtitles)
monitoraspect="16:9"                                                                    
framedrop="1"   # For slow machines
hardframedrop="0" #Make sure hard frame drop is off but can turn on easily now

#subtitle code
font=/usr/share/fonts/TTF/impact.ttf
ffactor="10" #black outline
sub-bg-alpha="0" #background color ala closed captions
sub-bg-color="0" #black to white
subfont-text-scale="3.7"        #truetype font scaling
subfont-blur="1" #Slight blur

#This sets the postprocessing into overdrive using all possible spare cpu cycles to make the movie look better
autoq=100
vf=pp=de,hqdn3d

subpos="90"     #By default subtitles are too low
subalign="2"

Thank you in advance!

Last edited by heidar (2010-06-06 15:27:11)

flamelab · 2010-06-06 11:49:23

What's your GPU ?

heidar · 2010-06-06 11:57:09

flamelab wrote:

What's your GPU ?

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] (rev a1)

flamelab · 2010-06-06 12:01:30

Use Smplayer and choose VDPAU in the video preferences. Make sure you have nvidia and nvidia-utils properly installed.

heidar · 2010-06-06 12:37:53

flamelab wrote:

Use Smplayer and choose VDPAU in the video preferences. Make sure you have nvidia and nvidia-utils properly installed.

Nvidia drivers are installed and the video performance is good.

I tried playing with mplayer -vo vdpau and with vdpau selected in the options for smplayer, it doesn't play the video at all when I do so.

wonder · 2010-06-06 12:41:53

because is not enough just to pass -vo vdpau. you need to pass -vc too

mplayer -vc help | grep vdpau

smplayer is doing that for you automatically

heidar · 2010-06-06 13:28:02

wonder wrote:

because is not enough just to pass -vo vdpau. you need to pass -vc too
mplayer -vc help | grep vdpau
smplayer is doing that for you automatically

Ah, I see. Well, when I selected vdpau as output in smplayer it didn't give me any video, so I don't know.

But with mplayer from command line it worked fine with an empty config file.

[heidar@wind /]$ mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau Star\ Trek\ 2009.mkv 
MPlayer SVN-r31303-4.5.0 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
154 audio & 339 video codecs
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing Star Trek 2009.mkv.
libavformat file format detected.
[matroska @ 0x3296de0]Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (ac3), -aid 0
VIDEO:  [H264]  1280x528  0bpp  24.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Forced video codec: ffh264vdpau
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264vdpau] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264 (VDPAU))
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 640.0 kbit/41.67% (ratio: 80000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffac3] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg AC-3)
==========================================================================
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=0.
Movie-Aspect is 2.42:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [vdpau] 1280x528 => 1280x528 H.264 VDPAU acceleration 
[VD_FFMPEG] XVMC-accelerated MPEG-2.
A:5614.6 V:5614.7 A-V: -0.080 ct: -0.577 18371/18371  0%  0%  1.1% 4 0 
Exiting... (Quit)

However, this doesn't make any difference at all. I the video still jerks every minute or so. I tried moving the video file to my system hard disk which is a WD raptor and it jerks a lot less but it's still annoying and not really a solution.

Any ideas?

Gusar · 2010-06-06 13:39:36

Just one idea - use cache. Put this in ~/.mplayer/config

cache=8192

heidar · 2010-06-06 14:18:05

Gusar wrote:

Just one idea - use cache. Put this in ~/.mplayer/config
cache=8192

Blimey! That seems to have fixed it. Does it allow mplayer to use more RAM for its cache or something like that?

Thanks a lot everyone!

kokoko3k · 2010-06-06 14:54:17

Yes, I was just to suggest increasing your cache.
You should mark the thread as solved

PS: i suggest you to have different cache profiles or use a gui which manages cache on different streams type.
Having 8MB cache on network uries may not be so good.

Last edited by kokoko3k (2010-06-06 14:56:01)

stqn · 2010-06-06 15:02:55

Same here with different hardware (Pentium-M 1.6 GHz, Radeon 9700 mobility with xf86-video-ati). Even though cpu load is only 60% or so, I've got an h264 MKV that exhibits the same behaviour (image _and_ sound stop from time to time) under SMPlayer. The movie is on an external USB hard drive.

"cache=8192" doesn't seem to solve the problem here. My solution has been to use VLC.

skottish · 2010-06-06 23:16:51

I know that this is marked solved, but with VDPAU you "shouldn't" be seeing any issues with video. I noticed in your Mplayer configuration file that you have some settings for post processing. I suggest that you use VDPAU's post processing instead of Mplayer's.

kokoko3k · 2010-06-07 13:48:52

He said his cpu usage is low, so video filtering should not be an issue.
That reminds me that vdpau isn't working on that setup because any "-vf" is sadly incompatible with it.

beroal · 2010-06-07 15:05:06

heidar wrote:

Gusar wrote:
Just one idea - use cache. Put this in ~/.mplayer/config
cache=8192
Blimey! That seems to have fixed it. Does it allow mplayer to use more RAM for its cache or something like that?

mplayer uses this cache when reading compressed video. If you experience changes after increasing cache than there is something unusual with a disk or file system where video is read from or that disk is under heavy load.
required_cache = disk_latency * compressed_video_bitrate = 0.05 s (for HDD) * 2 MB/s (for high-definition video) = 0.1 MB .

heidar · 2010-06-10 15:58:10

Yes, my CPU usage doesn't go up very much when I watch x264 videos. I also tried using a clean configuration file with mplayer's command line options telling it to use vdpau and there was no difference at all.

beroal wrote:

heidar wrote:
Gusar wrote:
Just one idea - use cache. Put this in ~/.mplayer/config
cache=8192
Blimey! That seems to have fixed it. Does it allow mplayer to use more RAM for its cache or something like that?
mplayer uses this cache when reading compressed video. If you experience changes after increasing cache than there is something unusual with a disk or file system where video is read from or that disk is under heavy load.
required_cache = disk_latency * compressed_video_bitrate = 0.05 s (for HDD) * 2 MB/s (for high-definition video) = 0.1 MB .

There were no processes running which should have increased disc usage by anything that isn't trivial.

(16:52) [heidar@wind] [~] $ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   7420 MB in  2.00 seconds = 3713.05 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  206 MB in  3.02 seconds =  68.16 MB/sec
(16:52) [heidar@wind] [~] $ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 Timing cached reads:   6462 MB in  2.00 seconds = 3233.13 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  208 MB in  3.02 seconds =  68.78 MB/sec

I got ext4 on the partitions. I cannot see why this would happen but cache=8192 seems indeed to have completely solved the problem.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-06-06 11:44:19

[SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#2 2010-06-06 11:49:23

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#3 2010-06-06 11:57:09

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#4 2010-06-06 12:01:30

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#5 2010-06-06 12:37:53

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#6 2010-06-06 12:41:53

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#7 2010-06-06 13:28:02

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#8 2010-06-06 13:39:36

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#9 2010-06-06 14:18:05

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#10 2010-06-06 14:54:17

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#11 2010-06-06 15:02:55

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#12 2010-06-06 23:16:51

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#13 2010-06-07 13:48:52

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#14 2010-06-07 15:05:06

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

#15 2010-06-10 15:58:10

Re: [SOLVED] mplayer & mkv (ffmpeh h.264) choppy

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