Xine DVD playback with Gentoo
 

Firstoff, I apolgise for posting what may appear to be yet another DMA /DVD playback issue. But I think this is different, and with the thousands of posts on the subject, I'm finding it difficult to find an answer to the problem. (In an ideal world, I'd like to be using Mplayer, but I'm having all kinds of trouble getting it to work with the Gentoo ebuild. So I'm trying Xine for now)

Basically, the DVD plays smoothly and crisply, but incredibly slow. I know my hardware is capable enough, as it worked brilliantly with SUSE 9.2 (which I've now ditched). I use HDPARM to set DMA to on for both HD and DVD - output below:

HD:
dev/hda:

Model=HITACHI_DK23EB-40, FwRev=00K0A0A1, SerialNo=190929
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=4047/16/255, CurSects=16511760, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78140160
IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
AdvancedPM=yes: mode=0x80 (128) WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 3:

* signifies the current active mode

Timing cached reads: 1216 MB in 2.00 seconds = 606.88 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.06 seconds = 19.61 MB/sec

DVD:
dev/hdc:

Model=QSI CD-RW/DVD-ROM SBW-161, FwRev=SU03, SerialNo=
Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
(maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2
AdvancedPM=no
Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

* signifies the current active mode

Timing cached reads: 1172 MB in 2.00 seconds = 585.50 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 10 MB in 3.32 seconds = 3.01 MB/sec

Now I don't know if those values are ok, but as it shows, DMA is certainly on.

Does anyone know of anything I could be misssing - could it even be my X configuration?


Cheers, L

I had the same problem in RedHat 9 - I have a 3.0 gHz P4 with 512MB of RAM and a Winfast A350XT TDH graphics accellerator (based on the Nvidia FX5900 chip). I though DVD's would play like a charm, but they didn't - slow and skippy! I use MPlayer, but maybe this will work for you too:

1. Besides making sure your DVD drive uses DMA (and it is tunrned on) also pass hdparm the -c1 parameter, making sure that 32bit mode is on (maybe you've already done this?)

2. Get a neat little utility called XVattr (if you are using the XV output driver in XINE, this will apply. If not, I don't know what next...)

3. If you are using XV to playback under Xine (you have an option in MPlayer of selecting your playback device - start mplayer with mplayer -vo xv), call XVattr before calling MPlayer:

xvattr -a XV_DOUBLE_BUFFER -v 0

before trying to play DVD's.

4. This will turn off double buffering in the XV driver, which solved my choppyness problem and slow DVD playback. MPlayer now works perfectly for DVD playback under my RH9 install.

I suspect that somewhere in Xine (don't know it that well) you will have an option of choosing your output device. If you can, choose XV and try what I describe. If might solve your problem.