Will Nvidia driver help?

JanErik · Guru Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Posts: 488 Location: Finland

I get very bad framerate on DivX movies in xine.
Never had problems playing movies before, neither with xine on RedHat nor with Windows Media Player.
Especially bad in full screen mode.

Ive installed the standard Xfree86 4.1.2, using the "nv" driver, and I have a TNT2.

System load is about 1 when playing a DivX movie.

Another question... is it possible to compile the Nvidia driver into the kernel or will I have to use a modular kernel?

dreamer3 · Guru Joined: 24 Sep 2002 Posts: 553

I think you will need a modular kernerl (their not so bad). I've never read anywhere about compiling it in, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

I would definately give the nvidia official driver a try and see if it makes your problems go away...

helmers · Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2002 8:18 am Post subject:

You see, the nvidia-binary's main function is to give accelerated OpenGL. The "nv" driver supports the X-Video extension, which is all you need to play video.

You should try "mplayer", and be sure to use the "-vo xv"-option, as it is the fastest. What it sound like is Xine doing software scaling. Try in 1:1 scale, and see if it is any faster.

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Regards,
Helmers

JanErik · Guru Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Posts: 488 Location: Finland

I tried "disable software scaling", did not help...

JanErik · Guru Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Posts: 488 Location: Finland

OK, Ive solved the problem. First installed the Nvidia driver, didnt help.

Then I set the color depth to 16 (was 24) and enabled videoram (it was disabled in XF86config), dont know which of these caused the problem.
Maybe my machine is too slow to play movies in 24bit depth.

helmers · Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2002 10:40 am Post subject:

No, that shouldn't be a problem (unless it's very slow). I've got an K6-2 166 Mhz playing 320x240 DivX's. I doubt Gentoo is installed on anything much slower than that. But if you don't mind using 16-bit instead of 24, it is certainly performance to be gained from switching. It's just that most video is encoded at 24-bit depth, so it may not gain as much in movie playback speed as it does in X-free in general.

If you don't mind, I'd recommend trying mplayer, it was one of the first command line applications I liked. It's very fast and customizable.

Just "emerge mplayer", and use "mplayer -vo xv <name of file to play>", and it should give you fast fullscreen video.

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Regards,
Helmers