[MPlayer-users] System too slow.

[David C. Diemer]

Roger,

I have a Dell with 1600x1200 flat panel screen running at 16 million collors 
(24 bit depth) with an Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz. I too had the same problems 
with shaky video, high CPU utilization, slow response, etc. I had to play 
with mplayer startup at the shell prompt until I figured out which video 
mode was the best for my machine. After starting gmplayer, I made sure the 
following was set in the mplayer GUI (gui.conf):
   Video Tab
      Available drivers:
         xv/X11
      Enable double buffering
      Enable direct rendering
      Enable frame dropping (off)
      Enable HARD frame dropping (off)
   Misc Tab
      Enable postprocessing (off)
      Cache on
         8192
      Start in fullscreen (off)

I had problems at first with mplayer until I modified the 'mplayer.conf' and 
made sure the following settings were set for my configuration (some of 
these settings are default):
   vo = xv
   fs = no
   fsmode = 0
   vm = no
   bpp = 24
   double = yes
   monitoraspect = 4:3
   framedrop = no
   vfm = 5
   cache = 8192

The SDL and FB sections are commented out.

In order to be sure there was a match between mplayer and X11, I made sure 
the following modules were loaded in the XF86Config-4 file:
   load "dbe"     # double buffering
   load "dri"     # direct rendering
   load "extmod"  # miscellaneous X11 extsions including Video

In ~/mplayer/config, I have manually set the following:
   nortc = yes
   dr = yes
   idx = yes
   autosync = 32

To make sure the disk I/O subsystem wasn't a problem, I set the following 
options for 'hdparm' based on the values found for my hard drive (/dev/hda) 
by 'cat /proc/ide/hda/settings' (these have been put in a 
/etc/sysconfig/harddisks on the line EXTRA_PARMS:
   EXTRA_PARMS="-a64 -c3 -d1 -m16 -u1 -W1 -X69"

Then for my DVD/CD-RW (/dev/hdb) and 'cat /proc/ide/hdb/settings', I set the 
following (it's now done in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit at the exact same spot 
where DMA was turned off - I replaced the -d0 with what's below):
   -c3 -d1 -u1 -X69

These are the settings I found worked best for me and my installation but 
they might give you something to look at.

Another option is to start mplayer like this (graphic mode):
   gmplayer -ao null

This disables the audio to see if you can get the video problems resolved.


Dave

----Original Message Follows----
From: R.E.Wolff at BitWizard.nl (Rogier Wolff)
Reply-To: mplayer-users at mplayerhq.hu
To: mplayer-users at mplayerhq.hu
Subject: [MPlayer-users] System too slow.
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 09:36:59 +0100 (CET)

[Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]


Hi,

Mplayer reports that my system is too slow. I Have an XP2000+ based
system, whith a matrox G550 card. That ought to be enough.

Whenever I try to play a DVD, I see my X server soar to 50% CPU
usage. It has become a lot better since I got the DVD drive to
use DMA. But still there are a lot of dropped frames. This is
NOT related to which player I'm using. All of them cause the Xserver
to use lots of CPU and drop frames.

A similar machine (XP2000+, G550) plays DVDs at less than a couple
percent of CPU usage in the X server. Somehow there is something
wrong with my setup here. I copied over the XF86 Config file.
I added my mouse and dropped the screen resolution from 1280x1024
to 1024x768, and I'm currently using that config file.
I compared the server logfiles: Almost no differences except for
where the BIOS has placed the memory regions.

Has anybody seen this before? Is there something obviously wrong
with my setup?


This is what mplayer has to say about the video stuff:

Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 576 (preferred csp: Mpeg PES)
Couldn't find matching colorspace - retrying with -vop scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
Sorry, selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder v2.0
libmpeg2: Using MMXEXT for IDCT transform
libmpeg2: Using MMXEXT for motion compensation
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 576 (preferred csp: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x576 => 1024x576 Planar YV12  [fs]
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm:libmpeg2 (MPEG 1 or 2)


Please CC me on replies: I'm already on too many mailing lists.

Oh, and I have the mga_hal module installed for my X server. This
has has very little effect, except for annoying the hell out of my
TFT screen: it sometimes misses a scanline.

			Roger.


--
** R.E.Wolff at BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2600998 **
*-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --*
* The Worlds Ecosystem is a stable system. Stable systems may experience *
* excursions from the stable situation. We are currently in such an      *
* excursion: The stable situation does not include humans. ***************

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