Ubuntu Gets Another ATI Catalyst Driver Handout

[Yfrwlf]

Yeeey ... this is the info i needed
Big thanks!

... finally *sigh*

Well at least they're going to make the Ubuntu 10.04 release date, just a pity they don't push new Xorg server support into their general Linux driver as soon as they get it.

Maybe it's also a shame Xorg doesn't have driver interface stability? =P Would be nice...Windows doesn't have this problem...or is Xorg still "immature"? =P

[bridgman]

Well at least they're going to make the Ubuntu 10.04 release date, just a pity they don't push new Xorg server support into their general Linux driver as soon as they get it.

That's what we do. We just don't push new features into the driver *after* it has already gone through final QA / bug fixing and take a chance on breaking things for the already supported versions. This support arrived after 10.3 locked down, which is why we're using an early version of 10.4 here.

I will ask about making this driver available as a separate download from the general driver (ie a hotfix), however.

[Yfrwlf]

That's what we do. We just don't push new features into the driver *after* it has already gone through final QA / bug fixing and take a chance on breaking things for the already supported versions. This support arrived after 10.3 locked down, which is why we're using an early version of 10.4 here.

I will ask about making this driver available as a separate download from the general driver (ie a hotfix), however.

That's what I meant, in whatever state it's in. I mean, I'm sure some Fedora users, for example, would be interested in testing this beta driver as Ubuntu users are of course. So, maybe I should have said "I wish they had a beta driver section on their site"? ^^ That would be neat, even better if there was some link to it from, or it was offered on, the same page as the latest stable version.

Maybe if there were concerns about users playing with buggy drivers there could simply be some warning that it was a beta driver and to expect bugs or something.

But regardless, as always I'm most interested in the open driver anyway.

Though on that note, for card tweaking, there has yet to be open source GUI support for that, but first things first.

[Kano]

So compared working and non working vaapi installs and found out that the position of /usr/lib/libAMDXvBA.cap must be hardcoded and not derived from the basename of libAMDXvBA.so.1. That leads to an an easy hotfix:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/fglrx/libAMDXvBA.cap /usr/lib

then vainfo works again. The driver is just too buggy for h264 to have real use for it, but packageing should be fixed of course. My script 100% works...

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/mplayer-vaapi-latest.txt

[ZedDB]

The driver is just too buggy for h264 to have real use for it

Yeah, it work ok for me though when the res of the h264 video is below ~720p. Otherwise the output is garbled.

[Kano]

The res does not matter. When you have got pure h264 L4.1 (usally all m2ts) or L4.0 (youtube used that) videos then those can be played, but with wrong colors. This problem will not be fixed in the 10-4 drivers as you see now. As that problem was first visable with 9-10 then you know now that 6 months is nothing for an fglrx bug. For Xserver 1.7 support it took basically the same time:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-announce/2009-October/001087.html

The driver can be patched (unofficially) to run with 2.6.33 kernel, but hey, 2.6.33 is only out since nearly 2 month, why should somebody test it?

If you want to play h264 L5.1 accellerated and use the latest xservers+kernels when released all you can do is buying another card.

Btw. the packageing is fixed now with

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/2:8.721-0ubuntu4

[ZedDB]

How do you check which version of h264 it is?
This should be a 4.1 video: http://iknowu.net/files/Andy.Barker.Sample.mkv
But i do not get wrong colors! It seems to work as it should. And even with the videos that i get garbled output on the colors are correct! However i do not know how the check the version of h264 on those...

[Kano]

Use mediainfo:

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/Download/Debian

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/Download/Ubuntu

Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 6 frames

It even shows all x264 encoding options on your testfile.

[kernelOfTruth]

there now should be an ebuild for 10.4pre in the portage-tree:

b.g.o: #310367

thanks guys !

[DivineGrace]

fglrx-driver_10-2+8.721 is now available from Debian's SVN experimental branch:

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-fglrx/fglrx-driver/#_fglrx-driver_

I'll try it on Squeeze and report back.