[MPlayer-users] VDPAU performance with an Asus AT3N7A-I

[Uoti Urpala]

On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 22:52 +0100, Richard Hartmann wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I installed Debian sid on a box running on an Asus AT3N7A-I.
> mplayer has been compiled from git with threading & VDPAU.
> 
> low-def content plays fine over HDMI (though I have yet to figure out how
> to make sound work over HDMI), but 1080p gets choppy when a lot of
> detail is in the video. The on-board GFX chip has 256 MB of RAM.
> Various details are attached below.
> 
> 
> Under Fluxbox with KDM, I get the following results:
> 
> % mplayer -lavdopts threads=4 -fs -benchmark -nosound -frames 5000 test.mkv
> MPlayer git-8ee23f4-4.4.2 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team

> V: 208.5   0/  0 81% 43%  0.0% 0 0
> 
> BENCHMARKs: VC: 169.859s VO:  90.381s A:   0.000s Sys:   3.297s =  263.537s
> BENCHMARK%: VC: 64.4536% VO: 34.2953% A:  0.0000% Sys:  1.2511% = 100.0000%


> % mplayer -vo vdpau -fs -benchmark -nosound -frames 5000 test.mkv

> BENCHMARKs: VC: 563.075s VO:  41.946s A:   0.000s Sys:   2.015s =  607.036s
> BENCHMARK%: VC: 92.7582% VO:  6.9099% A:  0.0000% Sys:  0.3319% = 100.0000%


> % mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau -fs -benchmark -nosound -frames
> 5000 test.mkv

> BENCHMARKs: VC:  31.260s VO:  69.182s A:   0.000s Sys:   2.613s =  103.056s


> I am not really sure how to read the results as they seem to be fine, but

Well the first two ones don't really seem "fine" to me - the amount of
video played is 208 seconds but software decoding on your Atom takes
longer than that, IOW it's slower than realtime (and you can't really
expect smooth playback). So the expected result would be A-V sync loss
with video falling behind audio, or if you have enabled framedrop then
jerky video.

> the video playback is far from smooth. The playback with

>   -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau
> 
> is best, of course.
> 
> 
> Any and all help appreciated as this box is supposed to be my media
> PC.

Well it's kind of hard to say anything when the only information about
the problem is "far from smooth". Does the A-V value shown on the status
line stay at 0? Does the VDPAU benchmark result change if you use "-vo
vdpau:fps=-1"? (That disables explicit sync with monitor refresh and
dropping frames that can't be shown due to refresh rate limit; I think
it shouldn't affect the benchmark result here but if something weird is
going on then it could be worth seeing whether anything changes.)