OpenGLOverlay vs. Xvideo. Which one is better?

[Zibi1981]

I wonder if someone could help me with an advice...
I have a Radeon X800Pro and my system is Mandriva 2008.0. Finally, after some struggle and with major help from this forum users, I managed to install AMD/ATI's drivers ver. 8.1 (AKA 8.45.4) on my new kernel

Linux Felipe 2.6.24-rt1 #3 PREEMPT Mon Jan 28 21:21:12 CET 2008 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3200+ GNU/Linux

System is working well now and I have direct rendering. The only problem I've noticed is when I'm watching movies on Kaffeine (ver. 0.8.6; xine-lib version 1.1.9.1) - the picture sometimes "jitters". It's generally not a problem when using SMPlayer (ver. 0.5.62; mplayer ver. 1.0-1.rc1.20plf2008.0-4.2.1). Now, I did some research and read man pages of website-stories (especially forum-stories ) and found out, that it might be the problem with the driver. I now know there are many types of overlays, which can make video playing smoother and produce more or less CPU-load, and the major two, AFAIK, are OpenGLOverlay and Xvideo. My question is: which one is better?

I forced my driver to use Xvideo at the moment by passing the argument

aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

and changing settings for both, SMPlayer and Kaffeine (xine), to xv driver. All seems to work well at the moment, but I'm wondering whether OpenGLO isn't better option. Anyone have some experience with this? Which one would you advice?

Thx in advance

[givemesugarr]

I wonder if someone could help me with an advice...
I have a Radeon X800Pro and my system is Mandriva 2008.0. Finally, after some struggle and with major help from this forum users, I managed to install AMD/ATI's drivers ver. 8.1 (AKA 8.45.4) on my new kernel

Linux Felipe 2.6.24-rt1 #3 PREEMPT Mon Jan 28 21:21:12 CET 2008 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3200+ GNU/Linux

System is working well now and I have direct rendering. The only problem I've noticed is when I'm watching movies on Kaffeine (ver. 0.8.6; xine-lib version 1.1.9.1) - the picture sometimes "jitters". It's generally not a problem when using SMPlayer (ver. 0.5.62; mplayer ver. 1.0-1.rc1.20plf2008.0-4.2.1). Now, I did some research and read man pages of website-stories (especially forum-stories ) and found out, that it might be the problem with the driver. I now know there are many types of overlays, which can make video playing smoother and produce more or less CPU-load, and the major two, AFAIK, are OpenGLOverlay and Xvideo. My question is: which one is better?

I forced my driver to use Xvideo at the moment by passing the argument

aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

and changing settings for both, SMPlayer and Kaffeine (xine), to xv driver. All seems to work well at the moment, but I'm wondering whether OpenGLO isn't better option. Anyone have some experience with this? Which one would you advice?

Thx in advance

with Xv overlay you'll be able to use either Xv or opengl with kaffeine. if you select instead opengl as overlay you would be able to use only opengl. if you don't select one, then Xv should be enabled by default. if you switch both to off in xorg.conf then you'll have both overlays off and maybe the board could be faster, but this is just ipotetical.
for your board the Xv should be the one to select.

[Zibi1981]

Thx for your reply givemesugarr

You're claiming that when I enable Xvideo, I'll be able to use both, OpenGL and Xv overlay, but I read that on ATI drivers one can't use them both. So it's kind of choice between one of them. Moreover, when I passed the argument mentioned above, this is what appeared in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "FSAAEnable" "on"
Option "FSAAScale" "4"
EndSection

So how is it really?

[givemesugarr]

Thx for your reply givemesugarr

You're claiming that when I enable Xvideo, I'll be able to use both, OpenGL and Xv overlay, but I read that on ATI drivers one can't use them both. So it's kind of choice between one of them. Moreover, when I passed the argument mentioned above, this is what appeared in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf



So how is it really?

well, for me opengl in xine and opengl programs work when oepngloverlay is off and xv on. of course they also work when i have opengloverlay to on, but in that case xv won't work.
the options there are the ones that enable xv and disable opengl. you cannot enable both of them together, but you can disable both of them.

[Melcar]

I can always use both rendering methods, regardless of what options I set in xorg.conf. One thing I have noticed though, is that using opengl takes nearly twice as much CPU usage than with Xv.

[domi]

I can always use both rendering methods, regardless of what options I set in xorg.conf. One thing I have noticed though, is that using opengl takes nearly twice as much CPU usage than with Xv.

Confirmed. And with Xv, video scaling is horrible (lots of blocks seen with 7.12, not yet checked with 8.01). On the other hand video scaling with opengl works fine (checked on 8.01 )

[Zibi1981]

well, for me opengl in xine and opengl programs work when oepngloverlay is off and xv on. of course they also work when i have opengloverlay to on, but in that case xv won't work.
the options there are the ones that enable xv and disable opengl. you cannot enable both of them together, but you can disable both of them.

On my system I enabled Xvideo using aticonfig command, and now I cannot use OpenGL overlay in both, Xine or MPlayer related applications.

I can always use both rendering methods, regardless of what options I set in xorg.conf. One thing I have noticed though, is that using opengl takes nearly twice as much CPU usage than with Xv.

Hmm, interesting. Have to check that on my system. Thanks for the info

Confirmed. And with Xv, video scaling is horrible (lots of blocks seen with 7.12, not yet checked with 8.01). On the other hand video scaling with opengl works fine (checked on 8.01 )

Well I'm using a 2.6.24-rt1 (preemptible) kernel with 8.1 drivers and haven't noticed any problem with scaling...

[givemesugarr]

On my system I enabled Xvideo using aticonfig command, and now I cannot use OpenGL overlay in both, Xine or MPlayer related applications.

well, i think it depends on the boards. some boards behave well with xv and don't disable opengl and others disable it, as it should be normal.
i was only telling of my experience on the x200m. on the hd2600xt the opengloverlay works in the same way while xv indeed disables opengl. but on that board xv is worse than opengl.

[Melcar]

I think it depends on the engine and player being used. While using Xine what I can use depends on what I set as on in xorg.conf; the same with VLC. If using Gstreamer I can use both regardless of what xorg.conf says; Mplayer also lets me use either Xv or opengl regardless of any parameter in xorg.

[Zibi1981]

Is there a benchmark or something, which could be used to compare these overlays?