Radeon UVD problems.

[Figueiredo]

I'm a fairly noob ubuntu user, but since xbmc xvba tree has been discontinued for saucy, I was left without an option for running HD content on xbmc on my brazos E-350 based machine.

I have recently installed kernel 3.13 RC2 and Oibaf's PPA and tried a few terminal commands mentioned on the previous comments to verify if UVD is functionning. Apparently it is, but I get a lot of stutering on HD videos both on xbmc 12.2 and vdpau acceleration on. Is there something I'm missing?

[Figueiredo]

Use a XBMC version newer than 12.2.
have you seen the guide on the xbmc forum?
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174854

Thank you very much for the hint. Completely forgot that xbmc required patches to use vdpau on radeon. Unfortunatly the xbmc version on the ppa recommended on that link is completly broken at this time. I guess I'll have to wait until it all settles down anyway... In the meantime, is there any media player that already works on radeon-vdpau?

[curaga]

In the meantime, is there any media player that already works on radeon-vdpau?

mplayer has always worked on it.

[Figueiredo]

mplayer has always worked on it.

This is what i get playing with mplayer from the terminal:

MPlayer svn r34540 (Ubuntu), built with gcc-4.7 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
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 example.mkv.
libavformat version 53.21.1 (external)
Mismatching header version 53.19.0
libavformat file format detected.
[matroska,webm @ 0x7f810fffe220]Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (ac3), -aid 0
VIDEO:  [H264]  1280x720  0bpp  23.976 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Load subtitles in ./
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
libavcodec version 53.35.0 (external)
Mismatching header version 53.32.2
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 384.0 kbit/25.00% (ratio: 48000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffac3] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg AC-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
Unsupported PixelFormat 61
Unsupported PixelFormat 53
Unsupported PixelFormat 81
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [vdpau] 1280x720 => 1280x720 Planar YV12 
A:   3.2 V:   2.5 A-V:  0.630 ct:  0.051   0/  0 76% 35%  1.4% 50 0 


           ************************************************
           **** Your system is too SLOW to play this!  ****
           ************************************************

Possible reasons, problems, workarounds:
- Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver
  - Try -ao sdl or use the OSS emulation of ALSA.
  - Experiment with different values for -autosync, 30 is a good start.
- Slow video output
  - Try a different -vo driver (-vo help for a list) or try -framedrop!
- Slow CPU
  - Don't try to play a big DVD/DivX on a slow CPU! Try some of the lavdopts,
    e.g. -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all.
- Broken file
  - Try various combinations of -nobps -ni -forceidx -mc 0.
- Slow media (NFS/SMB mounts, DVD, VCD etc)
  - Try -cache 8192.
- Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file?
  - Try -nocache.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/video.html for tuning/speedup tips.
If none of this helps you, read DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html.

A: 100.5 V:  77.0 A-V: 23.527 ct:  0.053   0/  0 99% 27%  2.7% 1795 0 

Too many video packets in the buffer: (568 in 33590667 bytes).
Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec failed?
For AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option.
A: 100.8 V:  83.1 A-V: 17.643 ct:  0.670   0/  0 99% 27%  2.5% 1795 0 

Exiting... (Quit)

So it seems there is a Mismatch between the libavformat version i have installed and what mplayer expects me to have. Is that it? Is there something i can do to sort this out or am I stuck to wainting bugs to be ironed out?

[gradinaruvasile]

Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)

You dont use vdpau decoding, only the presentation.
For mplayer to actually use vdpau decosing you have to specify both -vo vdpau AND -vc ffh264vdpau in this case (the codec name has to end with vdpau). You can append all vdpau supported codecs like this for auto selection (note that if -vc is specified mplayer will be forced to select ONLY from the specified list so playback will fail if the format is not supported):

mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau,ffodivxvdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau clipname

[asdfblah]

Thank you very much for the hint. Completely forgot that xbmc required patches to use vdpau on radeon. Unfortunatly the xbmc version on the ppa recommended on that link is completly broken at this time. I guess I'll have to wait until it all settles down anyway... In the meantime, is there any media player that already works on radeon-vdpau?

Did you install the "libg3dvl-mesa" package? Also, install vdpauinfo to check VDPAU..

[Figueiredo]

You dont use vdpau decoding, only the presentation.
For mplayer to actually use vdpau decosing you have to specify both -vo vdpau AND -vc ffh264vdpau in this case (the codec name has to end with vdpau). You can append all vdpau supported codecs like this for auto selection (note that if -vc is specified mplayer will be forced to select ONLY from the specified list so playback will fail if the format is not supported):

mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau,ffodivxvdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau clipname

Thank you so much!! This finally did it! frglx is definetly behing me now. I can't wait until xbmc is workin properly. Cheers!

[89c51]

With all the latest bits VDPAU on my 6850 seems to be working.

vlc
VLC media player 2.1.2 Rincewind (revision 2.1.2-0-ga4c4876)
[0x129b028] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[0x7f5284c0d018] avcodec decoder: Using G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0 for hardware decoding.

But out of curiocity. How much CPU usage do you get when playing this file -> http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests...mbps_birds.mkv

Top reports about 8-8.5%.

[gradinaruvasile]

Thank you so much!! This finally did it! frglx is definetly behing me now. I can't wait until xbmc is workin properly. Cheers!

For me it always worked. It was that vdpau interop issue, but after it was patched into mesa i had no issues with it (in fact i applied the patches manually until it went into mainline mesa). Note that i use it with my standard desktop, no tv or any special(ish) devices and i compiled mesa, kernel, xorg drivers manually from git.
Fglrx was done for me since the dpm code went into the kernel. There were some bumps initially (system freezes) but after those were cleared, radeon works perfectly well for me.
Add that it can run Source games perfectly (I occasionally play DoD Source, some other Source-based mods and now L4D2 - the latter from the Christmas giveaway), im a happy camper.

[Figueiredo]

Compiling from source is still too advanced for me, let alone apply patches manually. I don't even know how to install an app from a .tar.gz file... But luckly Frodo 12.3 has been released and it works fine.

Unfortunatly it has a bug wherein xbmc never actually closes, even though I press exit and get back to the desktop. I also can't force the app to close from the system monitor, so if I exit xbmc, I have to do a restart the system, but I digress. UVD is finally working fine, and for this system, thats all I need. DPM is still not as good as in frglx though, hope it is improved in the future...