Hey guys,

Using Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) 32 bit

I noticed that when playing an MPG file or DVD video in Xine, during scenes with lots of movement and action, the playback starts to produce horizontal lines and then starts to skip frames or become choppy.

Some info about my setup is:

* Video Card is ATI 128Mn Radeon Mobility HD 3400 series
* 3gb RAM
* Xine video driver setting is set to xshm
* fglrx restricted driver package is installed
* Compiz is installed and active

I wondered if anybody seen this kind of problem and had any suggestions to where to start tweaking?

Regards,
Greenie

it is a 933 P-III 512 meg ram 128 meg "gamer" video card [nvidia chip] using VLC to play the movies. with the medibuntu add in. runs fine palys DVDs and AVI files no pixalation.

try swapping DVD drive then if that is not it try a different video card. test memory. pull other cards shut off periferals [you would be supprised what a bad mouse cord will do.]

Are you running compiz? Maybe I might try VLC.

I aint doing any of that, its a brand new notebook computer!

Check if DMA is enabled for your dvd drive. Most distros do this by default if your drives supports it.

To verify:

sudo hdparm -d /dev/dvd # Replace dvd with your actual dvd device ID.

using_dma = 0 (off)

This means DMA is off.

To enable:

sudo hdparm -d 1 /dev/dvd


If you still get jumps on fast scenes, try mplayer to play your dvds and videos. You can add the framedrop option to the command line. Examples

mplayer dvd://1 -framedrop
mplayer videofile.avi -framedrop

If this works, you can load the framedrop option automatically.

There is a hidden directory called .mplayer in your home folder. Edit or create a file called config and add this

framedrop=yes

You can add additional flages to this file. See the man page.

You can also use gmplayer and kmplayer. These are GUI front ends for mplayer.

I am puzzled, based on your your hardware, dvd and video files playback should run smoothly, unless your dvd has corrupted sectors or has scuff marks on certain areas on the disk.

http://linux-ata.org/faq.html
http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...modesUDMA.html

Couple of good resources on dma on drives someone gave me on another forum. I happen to have one of the odd chipsets and drives that do not work well with the new method and have to force dma on my drives.

Thanks guys, but how would the dma on dvd drive also cause an MPG file that is stored on the SATA hard disk to play choppy and cause horizontal lines through the picture when there is a lot of action and movement in the video?

I was thinking the problem was more likely to do with the video drivers or settings somewhere.

When I type: sudo hdparm -d /dev/dvd

I get:
What does that mean? How do I fix?

Is it because my HDD is a SATA type?

After playing around with all the cool Compiz features I turned the Compiz 3d desktop off because it interfered with video playback.

Did something similar on a M$ Vista box, turned off the 3-d "Aero" desktop because it interfered with 3d games and video playback.


YMMV

But I want compositing Desktop with a working multimedia solution.

It won't kill you to turn of Compiz for 5 minutes to see if this is even part of the problem.

Compiz may have nothing to to with your playback issues.

The easiest way to know for sure is to try it out.

I had already tried disabling compiz, and playback is a little better without Compiz running, especially for gstreamer-totem.

In fact, playback would probably be better if I did not use the ATI fglrx driver. However, I want to use the fglrx driver and Compiz, and all I am really wondering is if any body knows any little tweaks for xine or the xorg.conf file options that can improve things.

Sounds like you need to enable "deinterlacing" or change the deinterlacing settings....

Can't really advise on Xine because I don't currently use it anymore.

I like "The KMPlayer", SMPlayer and VLC. Xine would be next on the list but the others typically handle my video needs.

I used Xine back in my Knoppix days so I've got a general idea what you are talking about.

I'll edit in instructions on how to enable deinterlacing in Xine later.