Can's get HD video to play smoothly on IBM R50 Laptop

xmrkite · 11-09-2009, 12:47 PM

Hello, i have this ibm R50 laptop with an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 32MB video card.

I can get some hd videos to play, but not most. Xorg consumes a lot of cpu when i try to play them, which is why i think this issue is fixable.

I'm trying to play over the air mpeg 2 video from my media center mythtv.

I can only play back PBS recordings, and even they use a lot of cpu up. ABC, CBS, NBC, etc don't work. The picture is very jittery.

Does anyone know how i might go about troubleshooting this? Does anyone with this laptop or video card have this issue?

-Thanks for any help you can provide.

rkski · 11-09-2009, 07:29 PM

Are you using the ATI proprietary driver for your card?
Then you might have a chance to see HD vids, or maybe your card is inadequate for smooth HD?

xmrkite · 11-09-2009, 09:06 PM

The xorg.conf file says Radeon as the driver. Is that the proprietary driver?

-Thanks

adamk75 · 11-10-2009, 08:24 AM

You cannot use the proprietary driver with that card. Unfortunately, that card is rather old and, depending on the CPU you are using, HD video playback may just be beyond the capabilities of your laptop. Do you know the speed of your CPU? What is the output of 'xvinfo'?

Adam

xmrkite · 11-10-2009, 10:45 AM

My cpu is a Pentium M 1.5ghz

Here's what i got for xvinfo:

Code:

X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
  Adaptor #0: "ATI Radeon Video Overlay"
    number of ports: 1
    port base: 57
    operations supported: PutImage 
    supported visuals:
      depth 24, visualID 0x21
      depth 24, visualID 0x22
    number of attributes: 22
      "XV_DEVICE_ID" (range 0 to -1)
              client gettable attribute (current value is 107)
      "XV_LOCATION_ID" (range 0 to -1)
              client gettable attribute (current value is 108)
      "XV_INSTANCE_ID" (range 0 to -1)
              client gettable attribute (current value is 109)
      "XV_DUMP_STATUS" (range 0 to 1)
              client settable attribute
      "XV_SET_DEFAULTS" (range 0 to 1)
              client settable attribute
      "XV_AUTOPAINT_COLORKEY" (range 0 to 1)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 1)
      "XV_COLORKEY" (range 0 to -1)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 30)
      "XV_DOUBLE_BUFFER" (range 0 to 1)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 1)
      "XV_OVERLAY_ALPHA" (range 0 to 255)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 255)
      "XV_GRAPHICS_ALPHA" (range 0 to 255)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 255)
      "XV_ALPHA_MODE" (range 0 to 1)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_BRIGHTNESS" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_CONTRAST" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_SATURATION" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_COLOR" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_HUE" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_RED_INTENSITY" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_GREEN_INTENSITY" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_BLUE_INTENSITY" (range -1000 to 1000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
      "XV_CRTC" (range -1 to 1)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 1)
      "XV_GAMMA" (range 100 to 10000)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 1000)
      "XV_COLORSPACE" (range 0 to 1)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 0)
    maximum XvImage size: 2048 x 2048
    Number of image formats: 8
      id: 0x41424752 (RGBA)
        guid: 52474241-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 32
        number of planes: 1
        type: RGB (packed)
        depth: 32
        red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff
      id: 0x54424752 (RGBT)
        guid: 52474254-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 16
        number of planes: 1
        type: RGB (packed)
        depth: 16
        red, green, blue masks: 0x7c00, 0x3e0, 0x1f
      id: 0x32424752 (RGB2)
        guid: 52474200-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 16
        number of planes: 1
        type: RGB (packed)
        depth: 16
        red, green, blue masks: 0xf800, 0x7e0, 0x1f
      id: 0x0
        guid: 52474200-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 24
        number of planes: 1
        type: RGB (packed)
        depth: 24
        red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff
      id: 0x32595559 (YUY2)
        guid: 59555932-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 16
        number of planes: 1
        type: YUV (packed)
      id: 0x59565955 (UYVY)
        guid: 55595659-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 16
        number of planes: 1
        type: YUV (packed)
      id: 0x32315659 (YV12)
        guid: 59563132-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 12
        number of planes: 3
        type: YUV (planar)
      id: 0x30323449 (I420)
        guid: 49343230-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 12
        number of planes: 3
        type: YUV (planar)
  Adaptor #1: "Radeon Textured Video"
    number of ports: 16
    port base: 58
    operations supported: PutImage 
    supported visuals:
      depth 24, visualID 0x21
    number of attributes: 1
      "XV_VSYNC" (range 0 to 1)
              client settable attribute
              client gettable attribute (current value is 1)
    maximum XvImage size: 2048 x 2048
    Number of image formats: 4
      id: 0x32595559 (YUY2)
        guid: 59555932-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 16
        number of planes: 1
        type: YUV (packed)
      id: 0x32315659 (YV12)
        guid: 59563132-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 12
        number of planes: 3
        type: YUV (planar)
      id: 0x30323449 (I420)
        guid: 49343230-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 12
        number of planes: 3
        type: YUV (planar)
      id: 0x59565955 (UYVY)
        guid: 55595659-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
        bits per pixel: 16
        number of planes: 1
        type: YUV (packed)

adamk75 · 11-10-2009, 10:54 AM

Well you have Xv support, and you are using the correct driver. I'm guessing that the HD video is just too much for your video card and CPU to handle, at least without really impacting the CPU usage.

Adam

xmrkite · 11-10-2009, 11:01 AM

That may be true, but why does xorg show high cpu usage when those videos are playing, about 25% of the cpu usage is xorg doing something and the video player doing the rest. So it seems like something is not setup properly, cause shouldn't xorg not be running such high during video playback if drivers and whatnot are configured properly?

If my video player was at like 95% then i'd understand. But it's at 75% or so and the video is very close to being decent to watch. You get half second spurts where the motion is normal, then 1-2 second pauses.

adamk75 · 11-10-2009, 11:05 AM

mplayer processes the video, Xorg displays it. It's not surprising that both would have moderate to high CPU usage.

EDIT: The only other thing I can recommend is checking if the video player you are using is using Xv or simply using a software rendering device. I don't know enough about MythTV to find this out, though. You could always check to see if you get the high CPU usage if you play back the video with 'mplayer -vo xv' from a terminal.

Adam

xmrkite · 11-10-2009, 03:27 PM

OK, that was exactly it!!!!!!

Video is sweet in mplayer now, and HD video in mythtv works much much better (not 100% perfectly, but totally watchable) since i changed the decoder from standard to xvmc. What's strange is that it's not 100% smooth on high action scenes, but the cpu no longer uses 100%, it's only getting used around 80% total. Oh well. I'm more than happy with it.

I owe you lunch for this one.

-Thanks a ton!!

adamk75 · 11-10-2009, 03:29 PM

Very cool. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that that CPU and GPU combination are capable of playing back HD video.