Freevo

[mr_smith]

Hey I got freevo working on rh9.0 and had everything working except for tv-out.

so i installed the newest nvidia driver for my geforce 4 mx 440, and now tv-out works great

problem is, now when i select a movie to play, instead of playing it within freevo in fullscreen mode, it knocks freevo back out into windowed mode and creates a mplayer window to play the movie in, you can see the taskbar and the edges of the window and everything. I tried this fix: http://freevo.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#head-22daa7e70230670b3d075e1c9b6a14ac0a747bee

but now when i play a movie the screen just goes black and all i can hear is audio and thats it.

not so good. anyone know how to fix this so mplayer plays the movie in full screen?

TIA

[bwkaz]

'f' is the mplayer key to switch to/from full screen mode. Not sure if that helps or not, though...

[mr_smith]

nah, freevo remaps all of the mplayer keys, z should make it full screen, but it has no effect once the movie starts. thanks though.

has anyone with a nvidia card tried setting up freevo, and run into something similar to this?

[bwkaz]

Oh, OK, I was thinking it might have done something strange like that.

No, I haven't ever used freevo. What's it do?

[mr_smith]

oh man, its really cool! im sure youve heard of tivo, where you can program a box to record tv shows, and use it to play them back kinda like a digital vcr, well freevo combines that (if you have a tv tuner card) with this:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/video/5e77/

so you can just smb mount your other computers (or servers) and play the divx/mpg/vcd/svcd/dvd's right off of your network on your tv, very cool. to do the latter all you need is a vid card with tv out, svid or composite

check it out

[Jon_e]

I wonder if your virtual desktop resolution is larger than the actual resolution you use.

For instance if your X setup can go 1024x768 but you run tv-out and freevo in 800x600, X will make a virtual resolution of 1024x768 so that the desktop can be scrolled. Maybe this is related to your problem?

My experience with freevo is that it works best with a separate specialized X setup, so that you can force X into a specific resolution. You can have several Screen sections in your XF86Config-4 and then chose between them when X is started.
I used to run Freevo like that in another VT, but after getting an Nvidia card my tv-out doesn't work at all, so I haven't tried if this works well with the nvidia drivers.


By the way I agree that Freevo is really cool. :)

[mr_smith]

ill have to take a look at that, right now ive got it hard set at

[800x600,800x600; 640x480,640x480] for both the normal x and the nvidia driver meta setup.

what vid card do you have? the tvout should work with the new driver from geforce2 up. mines a pci geforce4 mx 440 and it works fine (as far as the tv out goes)

after seeing this on thinkgeek:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/video/5e77/
i was like 'wow' really cool but is it worth 250$? bet i could do it with hardware laying around...... and hence the start of the project.

i think ill try hardcoding everything at 640x480 and see if that helps. logical idea anyway, since it worked fine before I installed the driver and now it doesnt.

thanks

has anyone else run into this specifically with a geforce card and freevo? TIA or has anyone else got a freevo working perfectly with tv out? if so what hardware/software/config are you using?

[Jon_e]

Originally posted by mr_smith
what vid card do you have? the tvout should work with the new driver from geforce2 up. mines a pci geforce4 mx 440 and it works fine (as far as the tv out goes)

It's an Asus board Geforce4 TI4200 based.

But there are several different types of tv-encoders used on these boards, mine is a phillips, and as far as I know some TV's can be harder to get working than others.
Right now I have to use an old driver to avoid crashing, and I'm pretty sure it is related to tv out. So I'm waiting for a new driver version.


Originally posted by mr_smith
i think ill try hardcoding everything at 640x480 and see if that helps. logical idea anyway, since it worked fine before I installed the driver and now it doesnt.

At least you'll find out if this is related to your problem.

[mr_smith]

ooooooh :)

yea i was trying to get a ati aiw working for the tv in portion of it, gave up on that after 3 weeks of dicking with it.

as far as just the tv out, i would think your board should have the same hardware for the svid our as mine does, in that case that new driver should work for you

those stupid phillips chips are redicioulous, thats what the radeon aiw cards had and i remember having trouble getting that working on everything. better off to get a vid card to do vid card stuff and one of the cheapy wintv haupaugge cards to do tv tuning, there cheap and fully supported under linux.

[Rawk]

Hi there,

Don't know if u sorted it, but if not I had the same fullscreen problem on my GF 4 440mx card, solution was to set up linux as 24bit rather than 16bit.

I noticed when Freevo started it complained that it couldn't get a 24bit or Truecolour display, so once I got it going at 24bpp all was fine.

Hope that helps.

[mr_smith]

hey thanks a bunch man, ill give that a go when i get home tonight. thanks!

[mr_smith]

man kick a$$!!!!!


Thanks for all the help guys, turned out to be the color depth setting in /etc/X11/XF86Config

just set the two depth entries to 24 (from 16) and it works great now! (not sure why the default the nvidia driver set up was only 16, kinda silly if you ask me considering its a Geforce4) but oh well

thanks again for the help.


----------------------------------------------------
dont mind this, just putting strings here so the forums search can find this if anyone runs into it

problem with movies being in a window rather than fullscreen running in freevo on redhat 9.0 with a inno3d geforce 4 mx 440 graphics card after installing the nvidia linux graphics drivers. problem was the depth setting was incorrectly set at 16. setting it to 24 in /etc/X11/XF86Config fixed the problem

[leibold]

Originally posted by mr_smith
not sure why the default the nvidia driver set up was only 16, kinda silly if you ask me considering its a Geforce4

16-bit color depth is optimal for 3D accelleration. 24-bit color depth (24 or 32 bpp) is best for truecolor images. As far as video applications are concerned it depends, some work better at 16 and others better at 24.

[Rawk]

No probs m8 :)

[mr_smith]

alrighty, new problem (issue) same setup.

so its working now, which is awesome, however

1) it looks like I have 'refresh lines' on my tv screen (like when someone tape records a monitor screen, you can see the lines moving up)

2) the color is a bit off, kinda dark, kinda reddish


3) everything in the freevo screen is way to small to see, but when i changed it to just 640x480 (just deleted the 800x600 refrences) all i got was a black screen where X should have been, I think a tv should be able to run 640x480 right? gotta do something, i cant even read the text right now


right now im using RCA out of my geforce 4 card and the vertRefresh is at 60 I think.

im thinking i should just trial-and-error the vertRefresh setting in /etc/X11/XF86Config until the refresh lines go away. good idea?


anyone know how to adjust the darkness? get rid of the reddish color?

would using a s-video cable make enough difference to warrant buying a 20$ s-video A-B box (I already have my DVD player going into my TV's s-vid port, so id need a select box to use that) and two more 5-10$ s-vid cables (1 from comp to a-b box, 1 from a-b box to tv)? would that fix any of these issues?

heres my XF86Config file if that helps, TIA guys

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# XFree86 4 configuration created by redhat-config-xfree86

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "DevInputMice" "AlwaysCore"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally
# no need to change the default.
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option "Xleds" "1 2 3"
# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option "XkbDisable"
# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# or:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"
# Or if you just want both to be control, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
#
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Microsoft"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# If the normal CorePointer mouse is not a USB mouse then
# this input device can be used in AlwaysCore mode to let you
# also use USB mice at the same time.
Identifier "DevInputMice"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

# Option "dpms"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Unknown monitor"
HorizSync 30.0 - 50.0
VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "Nvidia"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX440"
Option "TwinView" "true"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
Option "TVStandard" "NTSC"
Option "SecondMonitorVertSync" "30-50"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizRefresh" "60"
Option "ConnectedMonitors" "CRT,TV"
Option "MetaModes" "800x600,800x600; 640x480,640x480"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "On"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-50"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
Option "MetaModes" "800x600,800x600; 640x460,640x480"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "clone"
Option "ConnectedMonitors" "CRT, TV"
Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[leibold]

Dim picture and a scrolling refresh bar sound like you are overclocking your TV. You may want to try "Interlaced" video modes.

[mr_smith]

how would i do that? ;)

[leibold]

The easy way: Reduce the vertical refresh rate for the TV output with the "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" option so that the server automatically selects an interleaved mode.

If that doesn't work, explicitly add a modeline to be used (check the modelines topic for a link to the HOWTO).

Btw.: the XF86Config that you posted has HorizSync and VertRefresh mixed up.

[mr_smith]

Is there any reason I am running into just a black screen when running at 640x480? (the text is way to small to read on a tv at 800x600)

TIA

[mr_smith]

nver mind about the 800x600 stuff that all works fine i must have been doing something weird

btw it was the rca connection that made it look like ass

hooked up the s-vid and its beautiful even at 800x600, very readable

still have that pesky refresh line though, not so pronounced but there yet. not sure what you meant in the post on how to adjust that. did you mean lower the 60 to like 50 or something?

TIA

[mr_smith]

wow, well that didnt work, dropping it to 50 just made it freak out and i had to reboot.