How to tell if you are using XvMC?

[djdropit]

I'm using the 7050PV chipset (on an abit ANM2-HD motherboard) with the latest nVidia driver, and I'm running mythTV on ubuntu (7.10 gutsy), and I have standard XvMC enabled in mythfrontend.

My question is this, how can I really be sure that my MPEG2 decoding is occurring in hardware (i.e. the drivers are using the 7050PV to the fullest extent)?

I have a dual core AMD and I'm dynamically throttling the frequency using cpufrequtils, but I don't see any difference in the active cpu frequency when I am decoding MPEG2 streams compared to when I'm not.

Any suggestions?

DropIt

[pigeon]

This might be more of a MythTV question, but anyway...

Try running mythfrontend at a terminal, then you will see messages like this when it is using XvMC:

2007-11-06 07:33:02.934 AFD: Opened codec 0x8ed9760, id(MPEG2VIDEO_XVMC) type(Video)
2007-11-06 07:33:02.935 AFD: Opened codec 0x8efa320, id(MP2) type(Audio)
2007-11-06 07:33:02.938 Opening ALSA audio device 'default'.
2007-11-06 07:33:03.240 VideoOutputXv: XvMCTex: Init failed
2007-11-06 07:33:03.240 VideoOutputXv: XvMC Adaptor Name: 'NV17 Video Texture'
X Error: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes) 8
  Major opcode:  140
  Minor opcode:  14
  Resource id:  0x273
2007-11-06 07:33:03.251 VideoOutputXv: Ack! Disabling ChromaKey OSD
			We can't use ChromaKey OSD if chromakeying is not supported!
2007-11-06 07:33:03.255 VideoOutputXv: XvMC Adaptor Name: 'NV17 Video Texture'
2007-11-06 07:33:03.540 TV: Changing from None to WatchingPreRecorded
2007-11-06 07:33:03.541 Realtime priority would require SUID as root.
Unable to launch application
XvMC: picture structure FRAME

For me, despite some of the warnings and errors above, it is playing using XvMC.

Note that XvMC (for most cards for now) only works with MPEG-2 video. See http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/XvMC for more info.