black border

[asw20pilot]

I am having the same problem as bofh and limi. I have not tried bofh's file copy script. I also use Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid.

In addition, when the fglrx driver is running (with black borders) I get bad, intermittent tearing when watching 1080p video in MPlayer (using Xv).

I have been bragging to friends and colleagues that I built the perfect low power MythTV HTPC and home server using AMD's new chipset. But now I am finally having to face up to the fact that the ATI drivers are just not up to the task. Tonight I will give it one last try with the radeonhd driver instead. If that doesn't give me usable HD video, I will have to bite the bullet, admit that going with ATI for linux was a stupid mistake and buy a cheap NVidia card for this machine instead. There go my high expectations for a low power consumption machine.

One thing is for certain. After spending countless hours in frustration working to get these issues resolved, I will recommended to anyone who wants to build a MythTV box to stay far away from ATI. It is just not worth the trouble.

It seems that there are some people from AMD in these forums who are working seriously in order to bring the ATI drivers for Linux to a usable state. I appreciate your efforts and wish you all the best and I hope that some day ATI graphics will also be a competitor on the Linux market.

Best regards,
Mikkel

[mirak63]

As far as I remember, (since I gave up and play HD videos on windows XP now), the drivers radeon and radeonhd doesn't support Xv for hd4xxx.
So if you need a usable home center NOW, you better directly go buy a cheap nvidia card.

Not beeing able to play videos was the last thing I exepected when ATI claimed they provided HD4850 support when they came out. I don't need 3D on linux.

Now it's been SIX months I still can't watch a HD video without tearing.
So yes you should buy a 30€ nvidia card right now ...

[asw20pilot]

As far as I remember, (since I gave up and play HD videos on windows XP now), the drivers radeon and radeonhd doesn't support Xv for hd4xxx.

This page:

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd#head-7bf93523d93c69fef830a66f95e9804286c66946

says that XVideo support was added in a recent version of the radeonhd driver (version 1.2.2):

It surprised me too, because I assumed that the proprietary driver would be the only one supporting Xv. Anyway, that's why I am going to give it a try. And because I am terribly stubborn and unwilling to admit defeat when it comes to things like this

Oh, and my chip is the HD 3200 integrated chip on the 780G chipset.

Best regards,
Mikkel

[mirak63]

This page:

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd#head-7bf93523d93c69fef830a66f95e9804286c66946

says that XVideo support was added in a recent version of the radeonhd driver (version 1.2.2):

It surprised me too, because I assumed that the proprietary driver would be the only one supporting Xv. Anyway, that's why I am going to give it a try. And because I am terribly stubborn and unwilling to admit defeat when it comes to things like this

Oh, and my chip is the HD 3200 integrated chip on the 780G chipset.

Best regards,
Mikkel

yes but the fact it supports Xv doesn't mean it will have vertical sync, which is the problem that fglrx also have.

[xxiamdrewxx]

let me know

sounds good man let me know your results

[bridgman]

FYI we just released the initial accel code for using the 6xx/7xx 3D engine, including basic EXA and Xv support. It'll probably need a couple of weeks of bug fixing before it's ready for anything other than developers. The tear-free work done in radeon recently will need to be ported across to radeonhd as well before you get the results you are looking for, but the information and base code is out there now.

If you need 3D that will take a while longer, but it sounds like you're mostly interested in clean video playback right now ?

[mirak63]

FYI we just released the initial accel code for using the 6xx/7xx 3D engine, including basic EXA and Xv support. It'll probably need a couple of weeks of bug fixing before it's ready for anything other than developers. The tear-free work done in radeon recently will need to be ported across to radeonhd as well before you get the results you are looking for, but the information and base code is out there now.

If you need 3D that will take a while longer, but it sounds like you're mostly interested in clean video playback right now ?

tear free and supporting 24p yes
if it's not too hard to build radeonhd I could do some test by the way

[bridgman]

It wouldn't hurt to get familiar with building radeonhd and drm, although it'll probably be a week or so before it'll be worth doing any testing. Right now we know it doesn't work on 780 and there's something wrong with the colour space conversion

[asw20pilot]

Ok, now i have built and installed radeonhd from git. I followed this guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonHD

I can start X with the radeonhd driver ok (no black borders, whoohoo ).

I don't get any Xv at all, with or without tearing. There is an error in /var/log/Xorg.0.log about DRI version, and DRI being disabled. Maybe I also need to build DRI somehow?

Anyway, from what bridgman has been writing, it won't do much good yet in any case, so I am inclined to give up.

Also, this table:

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

says that "Faster video (textured Xv)" is "work in progress" for R700. I think my HD 3200 is in that group. That is according to this page:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-radeonhd/plain/README

Bridgman, you indicated that a solution might be quite close. I am at a crossroads here. Do I throw in the towel and get myself an NVidia card right now or do I tough it out for a little while longer? The WAF of my setup is declining rapidly every day I go on messing about with it.

You are right that 3D is not a top priority for me in this setup. Still, it feels quite silly that I have invested in what is supposed to be quite a capable graphics chipset but I am unable to use it.

I don't really care much if the driver is open source or not - I just think that working drivers should be freely available for those that purchase the hardware. If anyone knows of any inside channels to ATI decision makers, please convey my dissatisfaction.

Mikkel

[bridgman]

You also need to build and install the drm driver (from the 6xx-7xx branch of mesa/drm), as well as include the DRI option in your xorg.conf file. Those changes will get rid of the error messages about DRI and enable Xv.

There are two issues in the way of you actually testing and using the code :

1. There seem to be problems with drm on 780, maybe related to memory controller (IGPs have totally different memory controllers)

2. The Xv doesn't show a picture right now (something wrong with the way the colour space conversion shader was integrated, we believe) but you should see a playback window with (IIRC) a funny gradient-looking image.

The 780/HD3200 is more-or-less 7xx display/video blocks with a 6xx 3D engine (similar to the RV610), but I expect both 6xx and 7xx will come up at about the same time anyways.

I expect the sequence of events will be something like :

- make the drm work on 780
- figure out why Xv isn't working and fix it

... followed somewhat later by :

- port over the tear-free video code
- optimize the EXA 2D acceleration

We'll probably need to be heavily involved in the first two tasks, but anyone can work on the second two tasks now.