Xine question -- Dropped frames warning
 

Hi Everybody,

A question about Xine please. I tried playing a DVD recently (which I don't normally do, just really wanted to test it), and, while it played, it was very choppy and a warning from Xine displayed indicating that the dropped frame rate was too high. It suggested that my machine may be too slow (which I know is incorrect with AMD64 3400+, nVidia 5700LE 256MB graphics), or that my machine may be just overloaded.

The question is this: I do not have the nVidia drivers installed because I didn't think I would need them. Could this be the reason for the bad DVD play? If not, does anyone have any idea what may correct this?

Any help very much appreciated.

Bob

maybe you could try with the nvidia drivers?? if you don't like them, you can easily remove them from runlevel 3 with a:

Two issues: NVIDIA (really has influence) and DMA. Run xine-check for more info.

Output from xine-check:

Please be patient, this script may take a while to run...
[ good ] you're using Linux, doing specific tests
[ good ] looks like you have a /proc filesystem mounted.
[ good ] You seem to have a reasonable kernel version (2.4.31)
[ good ] intel compatible processor, checking MTRR support
[ good ] you have MTRR support and there are some ranges set.
[ good ] found the player at /usr/bin/xine
[ good ] /usr/bin/xine is in your PATH
[ good ] found /usr/bin/xine-config in your PATH
[ good ] plugin directory /usr/lib/xine/plugins/1.1.1 exists.
[ good ] found unknown plugin: xineplug_flac.so
[ good ] found input plugins
[ good ] found demux plugins
[ good ] found decoder plugins
[ good ] found video_out plugins
[ good ] found audio_out plugins
[ good ] skin directory /usr/share/xine/skins exists.
[ good ] found logo in /usr/share/xine/skins
[ good ] I even found some skins.
[ good ] /dev/cdrom points to /dev/hda
[ good ] /dev/dvd points to /dev/hda
[ good ] DMA is enabled for your DVD drive
[ good ] found xvinfo: X-Video Extension version 2.2
[ hint ] Your X server doesn't support YV12 overlays.
That means xine will have to do color space transformation and scaling
in software, which is quite CPU intensive. Maybe upgrading your
X server will help here.
If you have an ATI card, you'll find accelerated X servers on
http://www.linuxvideo.org/gatos/
press <enter> to continue...

[ hint ] Your X server doesn't support YV12 overlays.
That means xine will have to do color space transformation and scaling
in software, which is quite CPU intensive. Maybe upgrading your
X server will help here.
If you have an ATI card, you'll find accelerated X servers on
http://www.linuxvideo.org/gatos/
press <enter> to continue...

[ hint ] Your X server doesn't have any XVideo support...
XVideo is an X server extension introduced by XFree86 4.x. This
extension provides access to hardware accelerated color space
conversion and scaling, which gives a great performance boost.
If you have a fast (>1GHz) machine, you may be able to watch all
kinds of video, anyway. You will waste lots of CPU cycles, though...
press <enter> to continue...

Don't totally understand it all, but it doesn't look good.

Would nVidia help?

Bob

Nvidia will help mostly of these things. It's good for you that you have MTRR and DMA. I can't manage to get these working.

Last question (I promise). When I install the driver, does it automatically edit my xorg.conf file (driver is "vesa" now) or do I have to do it manually?

Bob

Newest drivers will edit automatically.

Thank you for your help.

Bob

of course the default is to NOT edit it automatically... on my box, all i have to do is change the driver from "nv" to "nvidia" in xorg.conf...

either way, make sure you make a backup of your current xorg.conf before the install just in case...

Nvidia will ask if to make the backup of xorg.conf

oh, okay... cool... just playing it safe... :)

UPDATE for everyone who answered to help...

Just installed the drivers, backed up as win32sux recommended, had to compile a kernel module (which the nVidia installer did for me), finished the install and restarted X. Perfect. Installed and running with a completed nVidia control center. Retried Xine and it obviously solved the dropped frame problem because it ran perfectly. Only surprise is that I still only have the resolution choice of a maximum of 1024X768. Not a problem (that is the choice I would have made anyway) but I thought it would give more choices as it does in Fedora Core 5.

Anyway, thank you all for your help.

Bob

It would give you much more with lower frame rate like 60Hz.