[MPlayer-users] differences between xv and xvidix

[D Richard Felker III]

On Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 04:57:15PM +0100, Marcel Naziri wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> Hi,
> 
> is it normal that xv output is more cpu intensive than xvidix, although the 
> xv-extension supports hardware scaling? what are the differences for mplayer 
> while decoding? where comes the higher cpu-load?

The difference comes from the fact that xfree86 video drivers are very
poorly implemented (for example, some of them copy around and repack
yuv formats with slow C loops!!) and that mplayer doesn't have access
to video memory with xv, so at least one copy is required to get the
picture from the shared memory buffer between mplayer and the X server
to the video memory.

> so are there any options to speed up xv output?

You might be able to reduce the impact of this copy by using direct
rendering (-dr) with mplayer.

Rich