[MPlayer-users] Jerky 1080p h264 playback

[Uoti Urpala]

On Sun, 2010-05-16 at 12:26 +0100, Muzer wrote:
> I'm trying to watch Avatar (a rip from the BD that I made myself with
> makemkv) with mplayer. I have added a load of options to try to improve
> the playback quality, as it was extremely jerky and stuttering before -
> now it's watchable, but still not perfect.
> 
> The command-line I use is:
> 
> mplayer title00.mkv -channels 6 -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau -lavdopts
> threads=3:skiploopfilter=all:fast

The lavdopts value makes little difference if you're using ffh264vdpau
instead of libavcodec software decoding.

Does "-demuxer lavf" make any difference (probably doesn't fix these
symptoms though)? Does the A-V sync value shown on the command line stay
near 0?

> I have disabled compositing in kwin - that makes a difference.
> 
> I have tried using xv instead of vdpau, and the quality is virtually the
> same, which raises the question of whether vdpau is actually doing its job.
> 
> The exact nature of the jerkiness is that it runs reasonably smoothly
> for about a second, then does a little freeze in the picture and jumps -
> all within about half a second. Sound remains smooth. This repeats. This
> is unnoticeable during most scenes, but really distracts you from the
> large, sweeping panoramic views.

This sounds somewhat similar to the symptoms described in
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=144495

In that case using the git repo with its better VDPAU support helped.
After that I've also added full support for VDPAU's frame queuing
functionality; using that could help with more cases of small jerkiness.

You can test it by building from source starting from
git://repo.or.cz/mplayer-build.git

> I am using mplayer from the Ubuntu Lucid repo - I will try the SVN if

There are also binary builds of the git code for various Ubuntu versions
at https://launchpad.net/~ripps818/+archive/coreavc (the repo is named
after coreavc patches but you don't have to use that functionality).


> I am using pure ALSA as my sound output, but with a custom plugin that
> downmixes 5.1 surround to 4.0 (for my 4.0 surround system). I am pretty
> sure there is no interference from pulseaudio anywhere along the line.

Testing with -nosound could confirm that.