Ubuntu
virtualbox-ose package

Low Quality Video Performance with OS Guest Win 7

Asked by mmino

I am running Win 7 guest on Ubuntu 9.10 and experience a low frame rate when playing AVCHD video files from my camera in the Win 7 Media player. AVCHD utilizes MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (AVC) video compression codec (additional AVCHD format details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD).

I also get a video error message when I attempt to run the " Win7 DVD maker" application. I get a message saying the Video card installed on this computer does not meet the minimum system requirements for DVD maker.
I am certain the problem is not with my Video hardware.

I just purchased an EVGA 9500 GT graphics card with 1GB DDR2 video memory thinking the seperate video processor and memory would solve the performance issue.

The VBox setting will still only permit 128M of guest video memory?
I have the latest VBox version 3.1.4.

I think the problem is the VBox interface between the guess OS and Ubuntu.

Is there a way to change the VBox display settings so it can take advantage of the full Graphics cards Hardware capabilities?

Thanks
Michel

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Fernando Muñoz (fmunozs) said : 		#1

Michel,

There is some hardware enabled acceleration on VirtualBox. But first you must install the vbox guest additions on the Win7 vm.

http://blogs.sun.com/vbox/entry/virtualbox_installing_guest_additions

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mmino (mmino) said : 		#2

Hi Fernando, thanks for your suggestions.
I do have the guest_additions installed. I an running version 3.14
and the 2D and 3D acceleration is enabled.
My VBOX Display settings are as follows:
Display
Video Memory: 128 MB
3D Acceleration:Enabled
2D Video Acceleration:Enabled
Remote Display Server:Disabled

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George Standish (george-standish-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#3

mmino I'm affraid that's as good as VBox virtual graphics is going to get currently. There is no method to have VBox directly use your video card, only the "virtual" vbox driver.

VM's are not going to have the same video capabilities as natively installed applications I'm afraid. In fact, the 3D capabilities at all are both new and quite amazing (but certainly not up to 3D gaming or in your case displaying h.264 video).

If you need this to run in Win7 I'd recommend you dual-boot instead of trying to run in a VM.

Best of luck.

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mmino (mmino) said : 		#4

Thanks for your input George.
Not the answer I was looking for.
Hopefully there will be improvements coming in future releases of VBOX

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