GT430 + 260.19.21 + VDPAU = artifacts

[Stephen Warren]

Originally Posted by Xeno22

The issue: There are white pixels appearing on very dark areas while playing H264 content with mplayer(from SVN) with VDPAU or XV. ...
It sometimes appears after reboot, and sometimes it does not.
Sometimes it is worse with VDPAU sometimes with XV. No clue why.

Any problem that appears in both Xv and VDPAU is most likely unrelated to the driver; the two driver code-bases are entirely separate. Perhaps an incorrectly encoded file, a corrupted file, or a HW issue?

[Xeno22]

Originally Posted by Stephen Warren

Any problem that appears in both Xv and VDPAU is most likely unrelated to the driver; the two driver code-bases are entirely separate. Perhaps an incorrectly encoded file, a corrupted file, or a HW issue?

I'm not sure if it was also with XV, but I thought so (was very late and I felt like braindead ).
But nevertheless, why would it be unlikely to be a driver issue? XV and VDPAU are HW accelerated, right? If some algorithm or timing is wrong, it could miscalculate the pixelvalues and probably set the alpha values wrong because of overflows?!
Since I have no clue about the Nvidia driver and the HW acceleration via VDPAU/XV I can just guess. If this also happens with XV, and the code bases are seperate, what could affect both? Just timings of memory/GPU/bus? Some filters/videomixers in the GPU?

I wonder why it only happens on bigger dark areas like shadows. But maybe it also happens on bright areas. Since the underlying window is white, it would not be visible.
I need to check that, but at the moment I reverted to 256.53 to see if this issue still appears.
But of course it could be an HW issue. If it is, there should be a workaround. As far as I understand, mostly the ION has this issue?!

File should be ok, was playing fine with X11 video output. Also my Laptop plays it correctly.

I'm also not able to check it, since I do not have the hardware at the moment, could take some time.

[dougdeep]

Originally Posted by Xeno22

I'm not sure if it was also with XV, but I thought so (was very late and I felt like braindead ).
But nevertheless, why would it be unlikely to be a driver issue? XV and VDPAU are HW accelerated, right? If some algorithm or timing is wrong, it could miscalculate the pixelvalues and probably set the alpha values wrong because of overflows?!
Since I have no clue about the Nvidia driver and the HW acceleration via VDPAU/XV I can just guess. If this also happens with XV, and the code bases are seperate, what could affect both? Just timings of memory/GPU/bus? Some filters/videomixers in the GPU?

I wonder why it only happens on bigger dark areas like shadows. But maybe it also happens on bright areas. Since the underlying window is white, it would not be visible.
I need to check that, but at the moment I reverted to 256.53 to see if this issue still appears.
But of course it could be an HW issue. If it is, there should be a workaround. As far as I understand, mostly the ION has this issue?!

File should be ok, was playing fine with X11 video output. Also my Laptop plays it correctly.

I'm also not able to check it, since I do not have the hardware at the moment, could take some time.

My problem looks identical to your screengrabs, where dark areas take on an almost transparent color, allowing random, bright junk to show through. It doesn't just happen on video, I can see it in some areas of the mythtv menu and the xbmc menus. The video artifacts do not always appear, they seem to happen after a period of time. Once they do begin, tearing becomes a problem on my 720p stations. Restarting X is enough to resolve the problem for a while.

It's happening on two systems, both with g210 video cards using DVI. I rolled back to 256, and my problems are gone. I doubt it's a HW issue.

[jafar]

I've been seeing exactly this issue with VDPAU for months: about a day and a half after reboot, white or colored sparkles appear to "shine though" black regions, and/or artifacts, always with tearing. Can happen in myth or mplayer.

Here's a clue I stumbled upon by accident: once, when this issue occurred after the normal day and a half, I noticed that I could see the video over my VNC session, which I believe has always been invisible to VNC servers when using VDPAU. I was using x11vnc to serve and Remmina to view.

EDIT: I'm on a Geforce 210.

[Licaon]

in beta 270.18/270.26 too?

[jafar]

Originally Posted by Licaon

in beta 270.18/270.26 too?

No, actually, I haven't tried that. I'll install it.

[Cinquero]

Had that problem, too. Latest Ubuntu release. nvidia-260.19.06, 2.6.35-27-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 21 17:40:44 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

current xine-lib 1.2 compiled from mercurial repo (today) with xine-ui 0.99.6 and xvdr plugin 1.0.5 against xineliboutput 1.0.5 on server.

Problem was: kill xine vdpau playback without proper xine shutdown and xine displays the problem upon next playback (seems also to be valid for x11). Problem goes away with xorg crash/restart.

Solution: enable composite extension in xorg.conf. For some reason I had disabled it.

[Blammo]

Originally Posted by Stephen Warren

Any problem that appears in both Xv and VDPAU is most likely unrelated to the driver; the two driver code-bases are entirely separate. Perhaps an incorrectly encoded file, a corrupted file, or a HW issue?

It does NOT happen for me with XV accell, only with VDPAU. In MythTV it's a matter of switching playback profiles, so it's easy to go back and forth between working/broken.

on the off-chance it was an OS/Driver issue, I reformatted/re-installed and the problem still continued. On a case-by-case basis (resolution, encoder type etc) I can tune VDPAUBUFFERSIZE to mostly make the problem go away, but what works for one playback type doesn't work for another.


2.6.35.11-83.fc14.i686
NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 260.19.36 Tue Jan 18 17:10:40 PST 2011

[Bastien59]

Originally Posted by jafar

I've been seeing exactly this issue with VDPAU for months: about a day and a half after reboot, white or colored sparkles appear to "shine though" black regions, and/or artifacts, always with tearing. Can happen in myth or mplayer.

Here's a clue I stumbled upon by accident: once, when this issue occurred after the normal day and a half, I noticed that I could see the video over my VNC session, which I believe has always been invisible to VNC servers when using VDPAU. I was using x11vnc to serve and Remmina to view.

EDIT: I'm on a Geforce 210.

Same geforce card, same problem here with 260.44. I recently switch to 270.26. I'll look further if there still are artefacts.

edit : composite is off in xorg.conf to prevent tearing.

[Blammo]

Any traction on this issue?

[Licaon]

Originally Posted by Blammo

Any traction on this issue?

tried the latest stable 270.41.06 too?