horizontal lines when watching movies

[hopey]

I have tried with twinview setup and dual monitor setup and with several different mediaplayers (ogle, xine, mplayer etc) but I haven't been able to get rid of annoying horizontal lines during movie playback from tv. They usually appear when camera is moving in horizontal direction. I don't notice them when watching from monitor. I think that this problem is maybe related to a slow tv refresh rate (60Hz) or something. However I don't have similar problem with windows dual monitor setup. Any suggestions?
Wich settings I should try to tweak from xfree86 config file?

hopey

[mikeh2003]

Ah, the old "tearing" problem!

You are correct - this is caused by your X server refreshing at a different rate than your TV and the tearing is caused when your TV refreshes when your X server is in the middle of drawing a frame.

The refresh rates for a TV in your XF86Config should be

HorizSync 30-50
VertRefresh 60

Try setting your monitor rates to the same. You may have to reduce / change your resolution depending on your monitor. This should fix it (it did on my set up.)

[hopey]

I'll try that, thanks. I've also seen this problem many times before with different gpu:s and players in windows and in linux and never really couldn't figure it out.

I thought that if i setup my monitor and tv to use dual monitor setup rather than twinview, the problem would be solved but no. Ok I'll try to change my monitor setting according to my tv, thanks.

hopey

[yzf600]

I'm seing 2 horizontal lines that scroll up on my TV. One of the lines has some tearing on it and a few lines after it, but the other line has no tearing. Does this sound like the same problem you ?

Exactly do you set the monitor rate to the same rate as the tv-out? I want to try this to see if it solves my problem. I tried this but it didn't work:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor-tv"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "AOC A785"
HorizSync 30-50
VertRefresh 60
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "TwinViewTV"
VendorName "nvidia"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "TwinView"
Option "DMPS"
Option "IgnoreEDID" "0"
Option "UseEdidFreqs" "1"
Option "HWCursor" "0"
Option "NvAGP" "2"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-50"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
Option "MetaModes" "800x600, 800x600; 640x480, 640x480;"
Option "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "TwinViewTV"
Device "TwinViewTV"
Monitor "monitor-tv"
DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "TwinViewTV"
Screen "TwinViewTV"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

My monitor is still running at a higher refresh rate. The XFee86.x.log file has this:

(II) NVIDIA(0): monitor-tv: Using hsync range of 30.00-85.00 kHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): monitor-tv: Using vrefresh range of 50.00-130.00 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Clock range: 12.00 to 350.00 MHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "512x384" (bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan)
.
.
.
.
(**) NVIDIA(0): Validated modes for Display Device 0:
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "800x600": 56.3 MHz, 53.7 kHz, 85.1 Hz
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "640x480": 36.0 MHz, 43.3 kHz, 85.0 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): monitor-tv: Using hsync range of 30.00-50.00 kHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): monitor-tv: Using vrefresh value of 60.00 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Clock range: 12.00 to 350.00 MHz
.
.
.
.
(**) NVIDIA(0): Validated modes for Display Device 1:
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "800x600": 40.0 MHz, 37.9 kHz, 60.3 Hz
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "640x480": 25.2 MHz, 31.5 kHz, 60.0 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 800 x 600



Do I need to specify a mode line or something to get the monitor to match the TV refresh rates?

Thanks.

[hopey]

I don't know if this is a same problem but I tried to set the monitor refresh to same as my tv without luck.

In windows my monitor is set to multiple monitor mode, because I got the same line effect than in linux in twinwiev mode, and my monitor refresh is 100hz and tv 60hz. In windows I don't get those lines.

I'm running out of ideas. Maybe I'll just boot to windows and wait for next drivers/XFree86 version and hope that something happens...

Can't say that I haven't seen this happening before in these 6 years I've been using linux. Hardware support still sux.

hopey

[clockworks]

i have the exact same problem, except i'm using seperate x screens instead of twinview. here is my monitor section for my tv in my XF86Config:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "tv"
HorizSync 30-50
VertRefresh 60
EndSection

i was told on the mplayer mailing list that to solve the problem, i needed "a video output device with vsync support". does nvidia do that?

ahhh, if i could find a solution to this problem, my life would be perfect....=/

i really dislike having to boot to windows just to play a silly movie...

if anyone has any input on this, please post...

thanks,
-- christopher

[cbreaker]

Unfortunately, there's not a hell of a lot we can do about this.

The problem as described above is the video frames not being in sync with the refresh on the TV/Monitor. This can be overcome by using some sort of "Vertical Syncing" - the video board will only update the screen when the monitor or TV is ready to draw the entire frame.

Anything in X that supports the "Xv" extention is capable of this, when using Double Buffering. Unfortunately, it seems as though Double Buffering with Xv with the nVidia drivers doesn't seem to work well enough to remove all tearing effects.

Not much we can do except hope the next version works better.

I love linux, but when it comes to stuff like Video output, video input, and other types of multimedia, it's severely lacking in any sort of standards. Xv is just one of many many little "mini standards" that everyone has to try to follow. It's the pitts.

[clockworks]

i actually got in contact with someone from nvidia and they diagnosed the problem for me perfectly.

the problem is (in my case anyways) that the first xscreen always gets the video overlay. so if i start up my crt on xscreen 0.0 and tv on 0.1, then my crt gets the video overlay and there is no tearing when playing video on it. if i start my up my crt on xscreen 0.1 and tv on 0.0, then the tv gets the video overlay and there is no tearing when i play video on it. try it out.........

its kinda a pain in the butt to have kde startup on xscreen 0.1 though...=/

the nvidia rep said he'll try to get a new feature implemented in the next linux release that allows you to chose which screen gets the video overlay...

-- christopher

[cbreaker]

I also talked to one and he said that selecting overscan modes will be possible to set with some TV encoders!

I look forward to the next release of the drivers. Although many people bitch and moan over how they aren't open source, the drivers are still fairly new and I am confident they will address the issues that we all have.

The reason they aren't open source is because they have technologies licensed from other companies, and opening them would be a violation of some NDA's.

ps. Did you get KDE/KDM running on 0.1? If so how?

[clockworks]

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "tv"
Screen 0 "tv"
Screen 1 "monitor" rightOf "tv"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia_monitor"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia_tv"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
EndSection

etc, etc...hope that helps.

-- christopher

[cbreaker]

Yea that's pretty much what I have now but KDM will show up on display 0.0.

I'd rather not login on my television.

[clockworks]

that weird, when i use those settings, if i open up a konsole (on my crt) and type echo $DISPLAY, it says 0.1

-- christopher

[cbreaker]

How do you start X? Using "startx" or "startkde" or do you have an X display manager (like GDM or KDM) come up with a login box?

[clockworks]

startx, but my Xclients has one line:
startkde

i vaguely remember that i used to export DISPLAY=0.1 befor startkde, but i don't do that anymore. i search a couple files for setting the DISPLAY, but i didn't find anything.

Originally posted by cbreaker
How do you start X? Using "startx" or "startkde" or do you have an X display manager (like GDM or KDM) come up with a login box?

[cbreaker]

I see. I don't use startx/startkde, I use KDM and login from X. I prefer it this way, and it's easier to login with NT account via winbind.

Well, I'm sure there's some way to make KDM show up on a screen other then 0.0. I'll have to start poking around.

Once logged in or once you run startkde, KDE supports two non-xinerama screens as a psuedo extended desktop. It runs the panel on both screens and you can put desktop icons on both screens. You can move the mouse between screens, and with KDE you can drag icons around, but you can't drag a window or application across the screens.

You don't have to export display before running kde because it runs panels and desktops on both screens. I do believe this is fairly new in behavior for KDE, perhaps a 3.x feature.

Personally, I don't like Twinview or Xinerama much at all. I don't see what could possibly be good about having a window split up between two monitors. The only GOOD thing is being able to move an application to the other screen without restarting it (and this IS a good thing, but it's not enough to tolerate split windows all the time.)

[thejpster]

Just swapping over Screen 0 and Screen 1 in the Device section seemed to swap the video overlay functionality without affecting my X screens.

CRT is still :0.0 and KDE/KDM display on :0.0 where they should. I --display all my videos on :0.1. xvinfo says


X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
Adaptor #0: "NV05 Video Blitter"
...
screen #1
Adaptor #0: "NV17 Video Overlay"
...


Now there's no tearing on my TV and I can still log in without squinting ;)