[packman] [PM] MPlayer 1.0rc2_r29116-2.pm.2 (openSUSE 11.1/i586)

[Lee Matheson]

An update to this email thread.

... After some investigation, I came to the conclusion that the vdpau
errors I observed were hardware related, on that the old PC in which I
was testing (MSI KT3 ultra with athlon-1100 and 1GB RAM). 

Hence I moved the BFG nVidia GeForce 8400GS (512MB) PCI card to a
slightly less old (4+ years) athlon-2800 (on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe
motherboard w/2GB RAM).  I installed the proprietary 180.51 nvidia
driver.  Both PCs are running openSUSE-11.1 w/KDE-3.5.10. 
ffmpeg/libffmpeg0-0.5-0.pm.2 and MPlayer-1.0rc2-r29116-2.pm.2.

I see none of the corruption nor other graphic anomalous behaviour on
the athlon-2800 that I saw on the athlon-1100.

On the athlon-2800 vdpau with MPlayer works great at the resolutions I
have tested (highest test being the "I am Legend" video trailer from
here:   http;//www.h264info.com/clips.html where that video played back
superbly with only 7% to 8% cpu loading).  I can make the video full
screen and cpu load remains the same.  The monitor I am using is a
Samsung T260 25.5" set at @ 1920x1200 resolution, so when playing back
that file at full resolution, I think the test is a good illustration of
vdpau capability on an old PC with a good monitor.

I believe the previous problems I experienced on the athlon-1100 were
because either:

a.  its old 350 watt power supply was putting out SIGNIFICANTLY less
power (where graphic card manufacturer for the BFG nVidia GeForce 8400GS
PCI card recommended a 300 watt power supply minimum); or

b.  problem with interrupts (I should have, and did not, try different
PCI slots); or

c.  basic incompatibility between the old MSI KT3 Ultra with the BFG
nVidia GeForce 8400GS PCI card.

Apologies for any misleading posts earlier.  Again, vdpau with mplayer
is working very good. It has breathed some new life into this 4+ year old PC

Lee

Lee Matheson wrote:
> I forgot to mention that when I obtained the many VDPAU errors, the
> video would stop playing with a solid green screen in MPlayer , and
> audio would continue.  Surfing on the web (especially on the nVidia
> MPlayer page) I see may other users have reported this green
> screen/VDPAU error behaviour.
>
> With further testing, I also obtained the same VDPAU errors and green
> screen failures (anywhere from seconds to minutes into the video) with
> MPlayer and VDPAU when playing back a standard DVD compliant MPEG2 file
> (720x480, NTSC (29.97 fps), 2.845Mb/sec). Those failures are not too
> serious from a practical perspective, as those videos can be played
> without VDPAU on the same graphic card (albeit without VDPAU there is
> 75% CPU load as opposed to 5% CPU load with VDPAU).  But given DVD
> compliant MPEG2 format is quite common, this may affect more users
> attempting to use VDPAU.
>
> Again this testing is on an Athlon-1100 (1GB) with a BFG nVidia 8400GS
> (512MB) PCI card and MPlayer-1.0rc2_r29116-2.pm2 with the nVidia
> proprietary 180.44 graphic driver. 
>
> I also have the same MPlayer version running on two other (non VDPAU
> capable) PCs and it is still running great !  So well done in marrying
> the nominal with some experimental inside.
>
> I do appreciate your efforts in this VDPAU area, and I hope that both
> the nVidia and the ffmpeg/MPlayer developers are able to produce a
> stable solution.  When the High Definition videos play well on such an
> old PC (with only 5% of MPlayer CPU loading) its truly amazing,
> especially when PCs 3x to 10x faster have 75% MPlayer CPU loading and
> may or may not smoothly play the video.
>
> Many thanks for your packaging here.
>
> Lee
> aka oldcpu
>
> Lee Matheson wrote:
>   
>> I wanted to thank you for packaging mplayer and ffmpeg/libffmpeg to be
>> vdapu compatible. I believe vdpau offers the possibility of breathing
>> additional life into older computers when playing back High Defintion video.
>>
>> This email is a status up date of my testing of MPlayer and vdpau
>> earlier today.
>>
>> I tested the latest packged packman MPlayer-1.0rc2_r29116-2.pm2 earlier
>> today on a 9 year old PC (athlon-1100 (1GB RAM) with a new nVidia 8400GS
>> (512MB) PCI graphic card) running openSUSE-11.1 with KDE-3.5.10. This
>> old PC has a 1x/2x/4x AGP slot (no PCI-e bus). I removed the PCs nVidia
>> MX400 (64MB) AGP graphic card (which had been using the openGL driver
>> for nvidia) and replaced it with the nVidia 8400GS PCI card and then
>> installed the nvidia proprietary 180.44 graphic driver.
>>
>> With the nVidia 8400GS, and mplayer, and the Nvidia proprietary 180.44
>> graphic driver, this old PC was able to smoothly play back 2 of the
>> H.264 trailer videos from this web site that I tried:
>> http://www.h264info.com/clips.html
>>
>> The two videos were Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - 720p
>> Trailer, and Serenity - 720p “On HD DVD” Trailer. It had problems with a
>> 3rd video trailer: I Am Legend - 1080p Trailer (more on that later).
>>
>> For example, with MPlayer, playing Serenity on the 9-year old
>> athlon-1100 with the 8400GS and vdpau, the video played smoothly, and
>> the athlon-1100 CPU load of mplayer was only 4% to 5% load. Trying to
>> play without vdpau on that old PC results in the video freezing. Playing
>> the same Serenety video on a 5-year old athlon-2800 (2GB) with nVidia
>> FX5200 AGP (128MB RAM) and openSUSE-11.1/KDE-3.5.10 with MPlayer
>> resulted in 75% cpu being used by mplayer and 18% Xorg and the video
>> played jerkey with a massive audio/video desynch (ie not watchable
>> without vdpau capable card/software on the athlon-2800). Playing the
>> same Serenety video on an Intel Core2 Duo P8400 with Radeon HD3450
>> (openSUSE-11.1/KDE-3.5.10) with MPlayer resulted in 70% cpu from mplayer
>> and a smooth video playback.
>>
>> The downside to this was the nVida 8400GS 180.44 proprietary graphic
>> driver was very unstable on KDE-3.5.10 on the athlon-1100 doing regular
>> (non-multimedia related) functions. I was not able to get more than a
>> couple of hours operation with out the graphics failing and a reboot
>> being required. On KDE4 the proprietary was mostly non-functional with
>> only minute or two of operation before a freeze on KDE4. Hence the PC is
>> debatably not useful with this lack of stability, and hopefully nVidia
>> will continue to improve the stability of their driver.
>>
>> When using the VESA driver with the nVidia 8400 GS on this old
>> athlon-1100 PC, the PC is stable, but very slow (slower than the MX400
>> AGP card with the openGL driver).
>>
>> Its possible this new 8400GS graphic card is not completely compatible
>> with the old PCI bus on this athlon-1100, and in a week or two I hope to
>> try it out on the slightly newer (5 year old) athlon-2800 PC mentioned
>> above.
>>
>> On the web site noted, the I Am Legend - 1080p Trailer would run on
>> mplayer for about 10 seconds and then fail, with a series of errors,
>> such as:
>> [vdpau] failed VDPAU decoder rendering: An invalid handle value was provided
>> [vdapu] Error when calling vdp_video_mixer_render : An invalid handle
>> value was provided
>> [vdapu] Error when calling vdp_device_destroy : An invalid handle value
>> was provided
>> [vdapu] Error when calling vdp_presentation_queue_display : An invalid
>> handle value was provided
>> [vdapu] Error when calling
>> vdp_presentation_queue_block_until_surface_idle : An invalid handle
>> value was provided
>>
>> But given NONE of these videos could be played BEFORE the 8400GS card
>> using MPlayer with vdpau was installed, this is a big improvement.
>>
>> Thank you again for your efforts in this.
>>
>> Lee
>> aka oldcpu
>>
>>   
>>     
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