Overclock.net banner
Cancel
Create thread New Forums

Need help taming VDPAU/SMplayer

Jump to Latest
1 - 20 of 21 Posts

Rookie1337

· Premium Member
Joined
·
8,572 Posts
Discussion starter · #1 ·
I've tried everything I could think of but SMplayer and VDPAU have been causing me a headache and I want to fix that. The problem is that any time I switch out from fullscreen (VDPAU) to something else it locks up my entire system (as in nothing and I mean nothing responds until a manual restart).

I can play a movie fine but I can't pause it for very long or drop out of fullscreen to access some menus. What settings in SMplayer or the nvidia system settings should I have/change? I'm quite certain my desktop with a x4 640 and GTX275 should be able to handle it fine but maybe I missed a setting.

Thanks in advance.
 
#2 ·
Have you tried swapping the driver SMplayer uses to decode video?
 
#4 ·
GL/GL2 are not the same as VDPAU. The GL outputs do only color conversion and stuff and no actual hardware decoding, so they're no replacements. I think GL2 is not actively being supported by the mplayer team anymore anyway. Out of those two, GL is the better option as it supports more GL extensions; only advantage of GL2 is supposedly lower CPU usage and no texture limit.

@OP: Have you tried switching video drivers?
 
Save
Reply Quote Rep+ Rep+
Discussion starter · #5 ·
When you say switching video drivers I suppose you're talking about going from the ones that buntu provides and trying to install some from nvidia's website right? I would do that but I'm hesitant since it seems like still a rather easy way for me (Murphy's Law Incarnate here) to break the whole install. I might do that if someone can say that they don't have any problems when they use the ones straight from nvidia in this scenario or I have nothing on the system (doing some backing up as it's that time).

In case this goes south is there another player that uses VDPAU besides SMplayer/Mplayer?
 
Discussion starter · #6 ·
So what the hell happened to mplayer in the last year that makes it impossible for it to work? Or is it VDPAU itself that's at fault? I just tried Kplayer with vdpau and it had even worse results. Should I bother with XBMC or is it just hopeless? How could my laptop do fine with weaker hardware and this desktop do worse? Are there certain settings I shouldn't have/use like "direct rendering" or "double buffering"?
 
#7 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by Rookie1337
View Post

So what the hell happened to mplayer in the last year that makes it impossible for it to work? Or is it VDPAU itself that's at fault? I just tried Kplayer with vdpau and it had even worse results. Should I bother with XBMC or is it just hopeless? How could my laptop do fine with weaker hardware and this desktop do worse? Are there certain settings I shouldn't have/use like "direct rendering" or "double buffering"?

Try this:

Go into SMplayer preferences, go to the Video tab, and change your output driver to X11. If that smooths out SMplayer, it's VDPAU. If not, it's SMplayer.
 
#10 ·
Greetz
I would jump in to help Rookie1337 anytime but this thread confuses me since I have never had any problems with smplayer but I have never used VDPAU. Maybe later I can reboot to my mongrel Studio Kubuntu and see. I installed nvidia proprietary and never bothered to figure how to fix Ubunutu's insistence that I reset every time I boot. It just doesn't take that long to fix and I don't use it often enough to be a priority. However, smplayer does run extremely smoothly in my mongrel Kubuntu no matter what I throw at it.

Hopefully some more info forthcoming tomorrow that may actually help
Image


PS my video card and cpu sux compared to Rookie's
 
Discussion starter · #11 ·
Update: Managed to sneak XBMC in since they don't have a "natty" release I just edited the repo to use the Maverick one. So far VDPAU has been without a hitch in it. I'm just wondering if it's because the quality is less (or am I just trying to tell myself that's why it's working)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by enorbet2;14165114
Greetz
I would jump in to help Rookie1337 anytime but this thread confuses me since I have never had any problems with smplayer but I have never used VDPAU. Maybe later I can reboot to my mongrel Studio Kubuntu and see. I installed nvidia proprietary and never bothered to figure how to fix Ubunutu's insistence that I reset every time I boot. It just doesn't take that long to fix and I don't use it often enough to be a priority. However, smplayer does run extremely smoothly in my mongrel Kubuntu no matter what I throw at it.

Hopefully some more info forthcoming tomorrow that may actually help
wink.gif


PS my video card and cpu sux compared to Rookie's
Click to expand...
See that's what really gets to me is that it seems SMplayer has gradually gotten worse with each new distribution release. In 10.10 I had a similar problem (on both my G50VT-X5 and my desktop) but it didn't happen all the time like it does now. I never really saw the point in getting Nvidia's drivers since I thought they were mainly for people interested in gaming compared to the buntu provided ones.

I've tried everything I could think of in the nvidia system settings; it didn't matter having full AA/AF forced or having both turned off (I habitually have AA/AF forced) the results in both Kplayer and SMplayer were complete lock ups when trying to skip forward or drop out of full screen. Then I tried increasing the caches and disabling subtitles (even forced). No change.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluescreen_Of_Death;14161993
Try this:

Go into SMplayer preferences, go to the Video tab, and change your output driver to X11. If that smooths out SMplayer, it's VDPAU. If not, it's SMplayer.
Click to expand...
Well, I did that and the only difference was (besides the loss of quality) that it doesn't lock up when skipping or changing from full screen. With VDPAU there was no stuttering in SMplayer but it just didn't like not playing a file all the way through after entering full screen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rothen;14163194
I think it is worth trying umplayer and gnome-mplayer. I haven't had any real problems with VDPAU, so I don't know how to fix your problem.
Click to expand...
I might look into those. Are they both Gnome dependent?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimi;14163236
Ubuntu comes with nouveau (open source drivers for nVidia cards) drivers. I was under the assumption that VDPAU was only for the proprietary nVidia drivers.
Click to expand...
Would make me wonder how I got it to play before in both 10.04 and 10.10 then since I've never installed the proprietary ones.

Thanks for the suggestion and input guys. Still I'm wondering, is it me or does XBMC seem to have less quality?
 
#12 ·
Sorry I only skimmed the thread so I may have missed some details but my question is do you need to use vdpau? I have used vdpau without issue before - I think it works well but mplayer plays just fine on the CPU too.

Try mplayer -vo xv [file]
 
Discussion starter · #13 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by evermooingcow
View Post

Sorry I only skimmed the thread so I may have missed some details but my question is do you need to use vdpau? I have used vdpau without issue before - I think it works well but mplayer plays just fine on the CPU too.

Try mplayer -vo xv [file]

Well since it's the best quality output I've got and available to use I don't see why not. Though I think I may have stumbled onto a part of the problem; my external drive that I've been using for the movie files seems to sleep much faster in Linux than in Windows and doesn't "rev" up when files are paused for long thus resulting in lock ups. Not sure what that has to do with the full system lock ups from changing in and out of full screen (paused or otherwise) but it's the same problem from a different scenario so I guess they're related. So at least in XBMC I can skip around and all I just can't pause for very long. LOL.
 
#14 ·
  • Rep+
Reactions: Rookie1337
Save
Reply Quote Rep+ Rep+
Discussion starter · #15 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by Melcar
View Post

Ubuntu tends to "neglect" some of it's packages, resulting in fairly out of date and buggy programs. Have you tried installing mplayer/smplayer from a ppa instead of the Ubuntu repos?

https://launchpad.net/~motumedia/+archive/mplayer-daily
https://launchpad.net/~nvidia-vdpau/+archive/ppa

I'd agree for the most part since Chromium is only on 12 "officially" but they have been more update than I remember Fedora being (though I figured that's because of the whole "stable" mantra of Fedora). I know nothing compares to getting a hold of devs who actually manage their own repos. On a side note it makes me wonder why that isn't the norm. But as of right now I have XBMC and after messing around a bit more I think it's to the point that I'm satisfied with the output quality. Thus, I'm just left with the weird "sleep/wake" issues with the external drive I have my movies on. Still confuses me though why VDPAU works without issues in XBMC yet causes all the other front ends/GUIs to lock up the system.
 
#16 ·
Oh, I forgot to post this! Go to debian!!! Get away from that icky *buntu thing you have over there. =P I bet you'll find Debian Testing/Unstable much nicer too!
 
Save
Reply Quote Rep+ Rep+
Discussion starter · #17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by mushroomboy;14177448
Oh, I forgot to post this! Go to debian!!! Get away from that icky *buntu thing you have over there. =P I bet you'll find Debian Testing/Unstable much nicer too!
Click to expand...
Not exactly helpful but I tried Debian before. I don't know if I was just expecting too much but I barely got around it before I managed to crash it into the ground.

Well, I'm just going to stick with XBMC until someone can come up with a solution to the VDPAU issue with all the other players. Thanks for the help guys.
 
#18 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by Rookie1337
View Post

Well since it's the best quality output I've got and available to use I don't see why not. Though I think I may have stumbled onto a part of the problem; my external drive that I've been using for the movie files seems to sleep much faster in Linux than in Windows and doesn't "rev" up when files are paused for long thus resulting in lock ups. Not sure what that has to do with the full system lock ups from changing in and out of full screen (paused or otherwise) but it's the same problem from a different scenario so I guess they're related. So at least in XBMC I can skip around and all I just can't pause for very long. LOL.

As far as I know there is no quality difference in output. The only difference is that vdpau will put the load on your GPU rather than your CPU.

You can try changing your spin down time with hdparm -S

Quote:


Set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar. A value of zero means "timeouts are disabled": the device will not automatically enter standby mode. Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, yielding timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes. Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, yielding timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours. A value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes. A value of 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout period between 8 and 12 hours, and the value 254 is reserved. 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds. Note that some older drives may have very different interpretations of these values.

 
Discussion starter · #19 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by evermooingcow
View Post

As far as I know there is no quality difference in output. The only difference is that vdpau will put the load on your GPU rather than your CPU.

You can try changing your spin down time with hdparm -S

I think there is a difference between VDPAU and X11. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to the difference between the two.
 
1 - 20 of 21 Posts
About this Discussion
20 Replies
8 Participants
Last post:
Rookie1337
Overclock.net
posts
28M
members
562K
Since
2004
The premier forum for overclocking experts and enthusiasts. Discuss hardware optimization, custom builds, benchmarking, cooling solutions, and pushing the boundaries of computing performance. From beginner guides to extreme overclocking, join our technical community to master system tuning.
Full Forum Listing
Explore Our Forums
Intel CPUs Hardware News NVIDIA PC Gaming Water Cooling