Mythbuntu

Mplayer doesn't play files from MythTV's videos section

Asked by Aaron Whitehouse

I have moved from an nVidia based set-up to a new HTPC based on the 780G chipset, with a RadeonHD 3200 card. I am currently using the xorg-xserver-video-ati driver as the fglrx driver causes me other issues (which I have asked about in a separate question).

The MythVideo plugin calls mplayer with:
mplayer -fs -zoom -quiet -vo xv %s

which I'm pretty sure worked fine on my nVidia setup. If I select these on my new setup, nothing happens. When I select them manually through mplayer, I get the error:
"Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device"

Is there a chance that my machine isn't doing Xv? That could explain the really high CPU use I have during playback. How can I tell? -ati supports Xv, doesn't it?

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Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse) said : 		#1

Note: the videos do play fine in VLC.

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Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse) said : 		#2

Also note that, when I play the file manually in mplayer, the sound works but the video doesn't and I get the video error. If I change the video to use X11 instead of Xv, the video works but I have to change the audio from PulseAudio to ALSA to get sound - then the sound and video are badly out of sync. "gl" acts the same way as "xv" (vo error, but sound works with PulseAudio).

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Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse) said : 		#3

After quite a bit of Googling, I think I have figured out what the issue may be. As far as I can tell, xserver-xorg-video-ati is just a wrapper for other drivers, in my case "radeon".

The radeon driver, does not seem to support acceleration for my RadeonHD 3200
http://www.x.org/wiki/radeon
R600/R700 class chips (Radeon HD 2300 – Radeon HD 4870):
2D: initial support, EXA acceleration in development (02/2009: r6xx-r7xx-support branch)
Video accel: in development, see above
3D: in development (kernel drm)

Which goes some way to explaining my terrible video performance and high CPU use since I switched to this machine.

It looks as though the radeonhd driver in Intrepid universe also lacks Xv.

Can somebody please confirm for me that this is correct and that I'm just going to have to use X11 instead of Xv until the next Ubuntu release?

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Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse) said : 		#4

I had a go at installing the official drivers from the ATi site and I was really impressed. I'll give details for anyone else who reads this page. You download a 75MB file. Then you run the installer and it figures out what Xorg, kernel etc you have and what you need. But here is the cool part: instead of just installing, you can get it to build packages for your distribution (i.e. "Ubuntu 8.10"):
./ati-restoffilename --buildpkg Ubuntu/8.10
(you can get a list from --listpkg)
Then you install those with Gdebi and you can manage them as with normal packages.
After installing, Xv obviously works, so mplayer works with Xv and the files play as they did before. I am really surprised that nv had Xv and the radeon driver didn't, but thankfully there seems to be heaps of progress there now that ATi has opened up.

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Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse) said : 		#5

Just for those following this as some kind of guide, you do have to change the "ati" in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to "fglrx" (I didn't have to change anything else) - otherwise X will not work and you'll have issues.