Canonical Publishes ATI Catalyst 8.10 Beta

[conholster]

Video tearing, yes.

xvinfo:

[conny@gomez ~]$ xvinfo
X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
no adaptors present

I wonder when the changelog will be available, dont think its very long...

For the record HD3850 pcie

[oyvind]

How about xv/textured video?
if you do a xvinfo does it show anything?
Does it tear when playing video with mplayer/xine/whatever? Or does it just work with the X11 driver?

Cheers.

Textured Video in Catalyst 8.10 works fine and is v-synced, but not in Compiz. Then you get your nice flickering mess. Didn't really expect a fix for this though, since AFAIK fglrx uses the standard X DRI architecture, which does not support things such as accelerated redirected rendering (aka DRI2). It would be nice if AMD could implement some sort of work-around just for Textured Video output, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Using the "Unredirect Fullscreen Windows" option in Compiz for now, which makes fullscreen XV-output OK. I'm on Ubuntu Hardy, btw.

[oyvind]

[...]

Haven't tested any video playing, but at least Flash video playback (tested on YouTube) seemed to be kinda choppy/slow/laggy. Funnily enough it actually seem to run smoother fullscreen, than in the normal size.

That might be the Compiz "Unredirect Fullscreen Windows" option in action. If fullscreen, your window updates aren't routed through compositing (unredirected), and thus the raw performance "unfortunately" improves . But hey, fancy 3D-effects aren't for free, sadly. They come at a performance cost for all things being composited. Whether noticeable or not depends heavily on the hardware in question. I have no trouble noticing a general loss of 2D performance with Compiz on my ATI X1400 mobile Radeon (128MB RAM) and Intel Core Duo 2GHz laptop (compared to a plain 2D desktop with Metacity).

[oyvind]

Haven't tested any video playing, but at least Flash video playback (tested on YouTube) seemed to be kinda choppy/slow/laggy. Funnily enough it actually seem to run smoother fullscreen, than in the normal size.

Oh, and if you haven't already, make sure you upgrade to the latest official Flash player 10 from Adobe. I find the performance increase in the latest Flash-releases to be rather nice.

[groo_pcd]

Textured Video in Catalyst 8.10 works fine and is v-synced, but not in Compiz. Then you get your nice flickering mess. Didn't really expect a fix for this though, since AFAIK fglrx uses the standard X DRI architecture, which does not support things such as accelerated redirected rendering (aka DRI2). It would be nice if AMD could implement some sort of work-around just for Textured Video output, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Using the "Unredirect Fullscreen Windows" option in Compiz for now, which makes fullscreen XV-output OK. I'm on Ubuntu Hardy, btw.

Not completely true for video, radeon (opensource) also uses the default DRI arch and is HAS xv/textured that DOES WORK with compiz and every other composited window manager) WITHOUT the flickering.

If i do a xvinfo with xf86-radeon-ati:

X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
Adaptor #0: "ATI Radeon Video Overlay"
number of ports: 1
port base: 57
operations supported:
(snip)
Adaptor #1: "Radeon Textured Video"
number of ports: 16
port base: 58
(snip)

I little diferent, dont you think?
Now, if dave airlie and friends can do that for the open source driver (video without flickering and video without flickering RENDERED by gpu (aka texturedvideo) why cant all mighty AMD which has 1 - the specs, 2 - the man power?

Anyway, just my 2 cents..

[oyvind]

No, the official Catalyst 8.10 is 8.54.2. Canonical is using 8.54.3.

I've just installed the official Catalyst 8.10 from http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/l...ux-radeon.html, and the AMD control panel reports driver version as 8.54.3.

[bash]

That might be the Compiz "Unredirect Fullscreen Windows" option in action. If fullscreen, your window updates aren't routed through compositing (unredirected), and thus the raw performance "unfortunately" improves . But hey, fancy 3D-effects aren't for free, sadly. They come at a performance cost for all things being composited. Whether noticeable or not depends heavily on the hardware in question. I have no trouble noticing a general loss of 2D performance with Compiz on my ATI X1400 mobile Radeon (128MB RAM) and Intel Core Duo 2GHz laptop (compared to a plain 2D desktop with Metacity).

Ah ok. So I actually get the benefit of GPU acceleration now when playing fullscreen videos. Already wondered why fullscreen flash got so much faster on my other test box when I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 alpha. At least with my hardware I don't notice a big impact with compositing enabled. Although I find Compiz to be more laggy on my ATI machine than on the other Nvidia one, even though the ATI card is brand new.

Oh, and if you haven't already, make sure you upgrade to the latest official Flash player 10 from Adobe. I find the performance increase in the latest Flash-releases to be rather nice.

Yea already using the Flash 10 final release.

[Fran]

I've installed xorg-server-1.5 and ati-drivers-8.10 in gentoo, but I get the same error as with 8.9 (undefined symbol miZeroLineScreenIndex). Oh, and I had to keep the patch for 2.6.27 kernels, otherwise it won't compile (does this driver fix ANYTHING? ).

Reverting now to xorg-server-1.4

[Yfrwlf]

I don't think it's "I've got the exclusive driver over here!". Ubuntu is the first of the major distros that all release new version within the next months. And all of them will be using XServer 1.5. For example if another distro would have been out end of October instead Ubuntu, they would have gotten the new "beta" driver.

And I'm just saying anyone should be able to get it is all. On a related note/rant, I'd also go a step further and *gasp* ask for easy installation of that driver as well as the new version of X, for those who want to upgrade, instead of waiting around for some distro to install it for them, but I guess that's asking for too much and it won't happen til distro package managers get over themselves and adopt compatibility with at least one standard common format. I know I know, I'm such a rebel for challenging the status quo. Dear lord he wants Linux to be easy, what a freak. ^^

[oyvind]

Not completely true for video, radeon (opensource) also uses the default DRI arch and is HAS xv/textured that DOES WORK with compiz and every other composited window manager) WITHOUT the flickering.

If i do a xvinfo with xf86-radeon-ati:

X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
Adaptor #0: "ATI Radeon Video Overlay"
number of ports: 1
port base: 57
operations supported:
(snip)
Adaptor #1: "Radeon Textured Video"
number of ports: 16
port base: 58
(snip)

I little diferent, dont you think?
Now, if dave airlie and friends can do that for the open source driver (video without flickering and video without flickering RENDERED by gpu (aka texturedvideo) why cant all mighty AMD which has 1 - the specs, 2 - the man power?

Anyway, just my 2 cents..

I agree, that's why I mentioned they should implement some sort of work-around for Textured Video, so that it does work in a composited environment. I would be satisified if they could just eliminate the flickering (through some hack or not, I don't care . What happens with the video window when using the open source driver in a composited environment, and you drag another window over it ? Do, for instance, the drop shadows render correctly onto the video ? If so, I would be really surprised .. But hey, AMD: eliminate the flickering, and I would be satisfied.

Oh, and just to be clear, have you tested both of these XVideo adaptors in a composited environment ? AFAIK, classic video overlay usually has dedicated video-hardware parts (older graphics cards) which works at a level above everything else (i.e. app/X just draws a certain color, and the GFX hardware scales and puts video images in the area covered by this color), while textured video uses, well 3D textures and the GPU .. I also have an older laptop with an Intel 915 graphics card in it, and this renders XVideo fine in a composited environment, using the Intel drivers. But rendering is not correct when the video window is partially covered by another window. Then you get artifacts/solid coloring where drop shadows should be, which proves that it is in fact a hack.