Video Playback VirtualBox issues

whackedspinach · 2010-10-26 23:31:35

I'm trying to edit some HDV video that I captured off my camcorder. Because I can't stand the linux video editors out there, I am trying to run Sony Vegas Pro 9 in a Windows 7 VirtualBox. I know I should be dual booting, but I don't want to uninstall Arch and reinstall Windows and Arch, etc. I just can't seem to get the video to play back smoothly. I just want to know if this is a software issue (something I might be able to fix) or if I just need more hardware.

Edit: I should point out that Sony Vegas doesn't seem to be the issue. The video stutters if using Windows Media Player as well. These are .m2t files captured using dvgrab from my Canon HV30. They play fine in Totem on Arch.

Specs:
4Gb of RAM (tried giving the guest OS 2 and 2.5 Gb, afraid to go over that)
128 Mb nVidia 9800GTX (gave guest all 128 Mb)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
I enabled 3D and 2D acceleration

Thanks for your help.

Last edited by whackedspinach (2010-10-26 23:47:32)

bendersteed · 2010-10-27 00:40:24

Well there is nothing you can really do as video playback in virtualbox doesn't support hardware acceleration. Maybe you should try some linux video editors or try a native installation of windows.

whackedspinach · 2010-10-27 02:46:55

Okay, I just tried playing an mp3 file back in windows media player, and the audio was still choppy and stuttering. So is this not a hardware acceleration problem? I asked a friend about it and he said I should recompile my kernel because of something to do with interrupts and timers. I should note that I have been using my usb headset for audio in VirtualBox since I can't seem to make the pulseaudio drivers work.

Darksoul71 · 2010-10-27 11:27:55

Virtualisation and high I/O do not play nicely together. At least if you are using a file-based virtual HDD on physical consumer HDDs.

You didn't mention if you used VBox as open-source or closed source version but the last time I tried the closed-source version on Ubuntu with a WinXP VM the multimedia results were, well, mixed. I was able to play UT99 in OpenGL up to 35 FPS in 800x600. I could play back DivX movies or DVD movies in PAL D1 (720x576) without hickups.

IMO VBox doesn't play nicely with multimedia. You might have better success with VMWare Workstation though. At least I have seen videos on youtube where someone was playing UT3 on a Debian host within a Windows VM very fluently.

Editing HD is really a demanding task even on a real hardware machine (playback, filtering, effects and so on). Substract the performance hit that virtualisation normally means, add missing acceleration for scaling / playing back videos and you are set.

I would choose the pragmatic approach, get another cheap HDD and install Windows in dual-boot.

BTW: It's really strange that you had choppy audio in your guest. Sounds to me that there are other issues in your system. After all it is better to avoid any unneccessary layer between your VM and hardware resources (better use ALSA directly instead of PulseAudio or SDL in between). I found VBox always a valuable virtualisation solution for older CPUs without VT / Pacifica. On newer machines I always prefer KVM.

Edit: I think this situation will stay like this until we get working PCIe passthrough for VMs. As soon as this is possible (VT-D / IOMMU capable system required) there is no need to dual boot anymore since you simply can put a dedicated graphic adapter for your guest into your system. This is already possible for certain systems as you can see from here: http://www.parallels.com/products/extreme/

Last edited by Darksoul71 (2010-10-27 11:45:24)

whackedspinach · 2010-10-27 21:28:43

I am using VBox closed source edition. I'm going to try to do what I can with a VM, since I think it should work. I'm currently setting up KVM. If that doesn't work I will move on to VMWare. I know my computer can handle HD editing, and that really isn't the problem since the audio was also choppy. Even if the video editing is an issue, I'm going to try to use GearShift to edit via proxy files.

I suppose I should prepare for a dual boot scenario though. I would like to know how to go about trying to install Win7 without removing Arch. Here is my hard drive setup:
/dev/sdb 32GB SSD
- /dev/sdb1 100MB /boot ext4
- /dev/sdb2 2GB swap
- /dev/sdb3 28GB / ext4
/dev/sdc 500GB HDD
- /dev/sdc1 500GB /home ext4
/dev/sda 1000GB HDD
- /dev/sda1 1000GB /home/old-data NTFS

I know Windows needs to overwrite the MBR. Should I try to move the Arch partition to /dev/sdc and then move it back after Windows is installed? Is there an easier way?

Darksoul71 · 2010-10-28 09:05:40

Windows normally overwrites the MBR of the "first" HDD. You could leave your system set up as currently, let Windows install the MBR to sdb (which is currently set as first boot device, right ?) and then restore the MBR afterwards. If I was in your place I would not care about Windows writing to my Linux hdd. I simply would:
1) Uplug sdb and sda
2) Make sdc the first SATA boot device (via BIOS)
3) Install Windows
4) Shutdown Pc
5) Replug sdb and sda
6) Make sdb boot device again
7) Add sda to the GRUB boot menu as described in the archwiki

The other option (compared to step 6+7) would be dumping the MBR of sdb and use the Windows bootloader to start your archsystem. It's not hard to do also.

IMO installing Windows is the simplest approach if you need maximum performance and compatibility. A typical OEM Vista 32 Professional costs something around 30€ (at least that is what I payed for at amazon) and a cheap HDD goes for 40€.

Just my 2 cents...

Last edited by Darksoul71 (2010-10-28 21:45:46)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-26 23:31:35

Video Playback VirtualBox issues

#2 2010-10-27 00:40:24

Re: Video Playback VirtualBox issues

#3 2010-10-27 02:46:55

Re: Video Playback VirtualBox issues

#4 2010-10-27 11:27:55

Re: Video Playback VirtualBox issues

#5 2010-10-27 21:28:43

Re: Video Playback VirtualBox issues

#6 2010-10-28 09:05:40

Re: Video Playback VirtualBox issues

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