[MPlayer-users] 2 different problems - flicker & speed (long)

[tdc]

Hi,
I've run into some problems with mplayer.
After upgrading kernel from 2.4.18 to 2.4.20 and in the same time 
upgrading mplayer from 'CVS-021209-12:18-3.0.4' to 
'CVS-030121-15:23-3.0.4' the video playback start to 'flash'. Sometimes 
(doesn't matter which file I run) there is something like empty frame 
displayed. When using '-vo xv' as output, the frame is usually black, 
but sometimes it's noisy and looks like it's displaying some memory 
garbage (ie. when there is static background and person is moving in the 
front, in the empty frame the background is black and contours of the 
moving person are filled with yellow / magenta / blue blocky noise). 
When using '-vo vesa:vidix' the 'empty' frame is in most cases yellow 
instead of black. First I thought it's some mplayer's fault, but when i 
tried old binary, these errors occured again. Now I think it can be the 
kernel.
The machine is PII/350 + 128MB RAM, ATI Mach64 AGP 8MB running XFree86 
4.2.0. Not a high-end machine, but before kernel + mplayer upgrade, it 
was able to play without these annoying empty frames. Sure, sometimes it 
was slow to play fast-moving scenes, but it displayed no such frames. 
Now it happens with any video-out mode (at least the only 'usable' ones 
for me: 'xv', 'vesa:vidix'); more often when the scene is difficult to 
decode. I've tested several combination of switches (nortc, softsleep, 
dr, noslices,.... as I suspect this to be some timing problem), on both 
versions of mplayer and I'm still unable to get it work the 'old' way. 
OTOH it looks the new mplayer now uses less average CPU when decoding: 
<50% total.

Second (and for me now more painful) problem is more generic. I obtained 
a 700 MHz Duron (my first AMD machine ever) to be used as player instead 
of the PII/350. There was some crappy nVidia card (TNT2 32MB AGP), which 
I've replaced it with the 8MB PCI Mach64 card (almost same as above, 
only this is PCI version as si don't have spare AGP one). What was my 
surprise the playback was waaaay to slow for such a machine. Even 
small-resolution divx movies were slow. My results are below. As you can 
see, the Duron machine needs almost twice time to decode the same thing 
and it eats whole CPU. Maybe there is something wrongly set in BIOS, or 
elsewhere, or maybe this is 'normal operation', but I have no idea (as 
I've said - my very first AMD ;-)). Switching to X and using binary 
nvidia drivers for -vo xv is not an option (on both 2.4.18 and 2.4.20 
kernels starting X with nvidia driver locks the machine.. and even if it 
should work - i'll not run X only to watch videos)

Does anybody know how to solve those things? If anything of this can be 
considered as a real bug, I'll write proper bugreport.

Thanks, Dave

PS: please cc: to me directly, i'm not signed in the list.

Test:
--------------------------------------------
Movie:
VIDEO:  [DIVX]  704x384  24bpp  25.00 fps  920.0 kbps (112.3 kbyte/s)
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 12000->192000 (96.0 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm:mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)

Machines:
- Duron 700TNT, 64K cache, cpu family:6, model:3, stepping:1, kernel 
2.4.20, gcc 3.0.4, TNT2 AGP 32MB, no system load
- Duron 700ATI - same machine, TNT32 changed to ATI 3D Rage Pro 215GP 
PCI 8MB, no system load
- PII/350 (Deschutes), 512K cache, cpu family:6, model:5, stepping:2, 
kernel 2.4.20, gcc 3.0.4, ATI 3D Rage Pro AGP 1X/2X 8MB, some system 
load (X, mysql, mozilla, ...)
- PII/300 (Mobile Pentium II), 256K cache, cpu family:6, model:6, 
stepping:10, kernel 2.4.18, gcc 3.0.4, ATI 3D Rage LT Pro AGP-133 4MB, 
no system load (notebook)

Command:
time mplayer -vo [vesa|vesa:vidix|xv] -frames 400 movie.avi (as root)

Duron 700TNT
-vo vesa,  mplayer: CVS-030116, MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx
29.45user 1.10system 0:30.67elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (5204major+145490minor)pagefaults 0swaps

Duron 700ATI
-vo vesa,  mplayer: CVS-030116, MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx
31.41user 1.12system 0:33.81elapsed 96%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (5204major+153219minor)pagefaults 0swaps

Duron 700ATI
-vo vesa:vidix,  mplayer: CVS-030116, MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx
29.76user 1.01system 0:30.86elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (5281major+145129minor)pagefaults 0swaps

PII/350
-vo vesa, mplayer: CVS-030121, MMX
8.60user 0.78system 0:17.49elapsed 53%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (2689major+4260minor)pagefaults 0swaps

PII/350
-vo vesa:vidix, mplayer: CVS-030121, MMX
7.42user 0.56system 0:17.25elapsed 46%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (2738major+4266minor)pagefaults 0swaps

PII/350
-vo xv, mplayer: CVS-030121, MMX
7.32user 0.63system 0:17.10elapsed 46%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (2831major+4245minor)pagefaults 0swaps

PII/300-notebook
-vo vesa:vidix, mplayer: CVS-021123, MMX
8.76user 0.39system 0:17.74elapsed 51%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (825major+3099minor)pagefaults 0swaps