Mplayer-vaapi on Oneiric (Ubuntu 11.10) for AMD/ATI HowTo

Mplayer-vaapi is an official branch from the mplayer project team and can be checked out via subversion. VAAPI is an video output device for hardware accelerated HD content playback (VC1, H264). VLC, Mplayer and maybe one day Xine can make use of it.
I’ve bought a ATI/AMD Redeon HD 5450 graphics card on a budget (35€/40$) so I can test the newest development going on. Installing Ubuntu 11.10 Server (Kernel 3.0.0.4-14-server) with openbox as window manager, I’ve been able to make mplayer-vaapi work, but don’t ask me how long it took me. If you know what to do, it’s quite simple. Actually the only thing one has to know is, that the current libva1 (version 0.32) driver is broken. And the ATI/AMD’s fglrx driver version 8.88.7 makes mplayer crash after a while. These two simple facts took me a few evening to find out.
Continue reading “Mplayer-vaapi on Oneiric (Ubuntu 11.10) for AMD/ATI HowTo”

[HOWTO] Workaround for a broken AVCHD playback with VDPAU on Karmic

The release of Karmic Koala inspired me to upgrade to this new Ubuntu 9.10 version and also to install the latest My Media System (a light Media Center for Linux), wich is version 1.1.2 actually. All was fine, beside the playback of AVCHD footage from my Canon HF100 FullHD camcorder. I’ve noticed already some time ago, AVCHD footage doesn’t work with the ‘-fps 50‘ switch anymore. The solution for the problem, so I wrote, was to use ‘-correct-pts‘ instead. Continue reading “[HOWTO] Workaround for a broken AVCHD playback with VDPAU on Karmic”

XBMC on Karmic with VDPAU and VDR

If I read the title “XBMC on Karmic with VDPAU and VDR“, then I think not many people out there, beside the experts, understand what this is all about. It’s about a good looking Media Center for Linux, which can handle HD content from your camcorder or HDTV streams from cable or satellite. Read here about the available PPA repositories, the differences between them and how to set this whole thing up, without loosing the overview. Continue reading “XBMC on Karmic with VDPAU and VDR”

[HOWTO] HDTV with Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) using VDR, Xine or Xineliboutput

VDPAU was one of the big topics here on this blog for quite a while. Mplayer was well known to work together with VDPAU and Nvidia’s graphics cards >= 8xxx from almost the very beginning. But not Xine. The developers of Xine didn’t run mplayer’s approach, which was almost nothing else, but the code reuse of the code Nvidia itself published for their VDPAU driver.

Continue reading “[HOWTO] HDTV with Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) using VDR, Xine or Xineliboutput”

New Mplayer slows down AVCHD footage

I’ve built the latest mplayer trunk (r29664) in order being able to play back 3gp videos with sound. All was fine and my 3gp videos had sound after I’ve installed the appropriate libraries, built and compiled the current mplayer version.
But after a while I’ve noticed, that mplayer, no matter how I’ve invoked it (with or without my mplayer-vdpau wrapper script for My Media System), played back my AVCHD footage from my Canon HF100 in slow motion (e.g. half speed), and the sound of course wasn’t in sync either. Continue reading “New Mplayer slows down AVCHD footage”

VDPAU and Window Manager on Jaunty Jackalope – Ubuntu 9.04

Today I did it. I’ve upgraded my system from Intrepid Ibex(8.10) onto Jaunty Jackalope (9.04). My Ubuntu x86_64 installation offered me, as always, a couple of new packages for update, and as I wanted to update, a message box told me, I could do a whole system upgrade onto Jaunty Jackalope. So I did and it worked. I took a very long time (>1h), but I had no unpleasant surprises afterwards.
All special sources.conf entries in my apt-get config have been commented out, and I started from scratch using a new Ubuntu installation.
Continue reading “VDPAU and Window Manager on Jaunty Jackalope – Ubuntu 9.04”

VDPAU: stable 180.44 and 185.19 beta driver

There are two major highlights about the two last released Nvidia VDPAU drivers. The first one is, that the stable driver 180.44 fixed an ugly bug in the x86_64 branch, concerning the VC-1 playback. And the second even better news is, that the ugly resource problem seems to be fixed in the 185.19 beta driver. Even systems with on-board graphics adapters (shared graphics memory) seem to work now without any issues anymore.

Here are the the release news from the VDPAU point of view: Continue reading “VDPAU: stable 180.44 and 185.19 beta driver”

CoreAVC 1.9.5 released

I didn’t intend to write about CoreAVC anymore, since VDPAU from NVIDIA is doing its job more than excellently for me. Major parts of this Blog are actually about it. Nevertheless I’ve read through the changelog of the release of 1.9.5. And what must I see? They’ve fixed the Canon HF100 seeking issues. This is their changelog like they’ve posted in their forum. Continue reading “CoreAVC 1.9.5 released”

VDPAU: Nvidia 185.13 released

The release of Nvidia driver 185.13 was a bit confusing to me, because I couldn’t find any change log, which describes, what have changed, or added to the new release. Only after browsing and searching nvnews.com I’ve found the statement, that a bug with Compiz was fixed, and it’s now possible to use Nvidia VDPAU in conjunction with the Compiz Desktop without a significant CPU load (~50%), what is good news of course. Continue reading “VDPAU: Nvidia 185.13 released”