Hardware acceleration for Linux?

[harishv]

Hi,

I just wanted to know if there is any work going on around "PureVideo Decoder" in the Linux world? I ran a MPEG-2 HD clip on my system and it consumed as much as 60% CPU (using mplayer).

With the trial version of PureVideo on WinXP the same clip averages just around 8.5%.

System Info (Polywell)
---------------------
SuSe Linux 10.1
GEForce 6150/SB 430
Content : MPEG-2 HD, 720 60p

Thanks
HV

[Lithorus]

If you are just running an mpeg-2 clip you should try with xvmc.

[harishv]

Thanks for the response. Could you please let me know where I can find this? Also, is it available in source form or is it just binary?

[mooninite]

XvMC is a type of video interface. It is built-in to the nVidia driver, but your configuration may vary to get it working properly.

[Robster]

Since you're using MPlayer, you'd want to add the "-vo xvmc" switch to the MPlayer command line. As you haven't supplied any details on how you're launching mplayer etc, I can't give any more details than that. Browse the web, I'm sure you'll find what you're after. http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_MPlayer is a nice, brief introduction.

Ask back here if you can't find what you need, and give us details about your system, Linux distro, how you're launching MPlayer etc.

[zbiggy]

xine also uses XvMC.

xine -V xvmc

but if you watch DVDs there is no subtitles.
Download and install XvMC wrapper: libXvMCW library from http://sourceforge.net/projects/unichrome/ to have menu and subtitles displayed.
after recompiling xine-lib you can use it:
xine -V xxmc

Of course you do not have to use these parameters. They can be configured as default video device in Video configuration tab of xine.

However the video quality is not so high as in purevideo decoder because full purevideo is not supported in Linux. Only hardware acceleration of MPEG-2 works.

[ubikdood]

Also, if using XvMC with mplayer don't forget adding the switch -vc ffmpeg12mc to the commandline.

If watching HDTV streams (720p or 1080i), you can also try different xvmc suboptions (xvmc:queue, xvmc:sleep, etc.). The suboption "queue" creates an array of surfaces for the card to process, which can be helpful is some situations. The suboption "sleep" is a saner way of waiting for the card to finish rendering (those very large HDTV frames) without eating lots of cpu.

Of course, your mileage may vary...

[harishv]

Thanks for all of your replies. I did read up the NVIDIA site & looked up the doc specifically for SuSe (http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-...er-HOWTO.html). It said the best way to update the driver is to use YAST. But the options mentioned there don't exactly match up with the ones on my system.

To begin with, I tried adding the new server :
YaST -> Software -> installation Source -> Add

Protocol: FTP
Server Name: : download.nvidia.com
Directory on Server: novell

But, not sure what should be user name & password. Did not work with the account I created. I am checking with NVIDIA support as well.

Just for kicks, I did try mplayer -vo xvmc, but it came back with an error saying it could not open the video out device.

How do I check what version of the driver is installed? I did not see anything when I did lsmod, so I guess its part of the kernel?

Sorry to bug you all, but thanks again.

[netllama]

download.nvidia.com is an anonymous FTP server.

[ubikdood]

Originally Posted by harishv

Just for kicks, I did try mplayer -vo xvmc, but it came back with an error saying it could not open the video out device.

How do I check what version of the driver is installed? I did not see anything when I did lsmod, so I guess its part of the kernel?

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version

The nvidia driver is not part of the kernel. It must be downloaded and installed.

[pe1chl]

Originally Posted by harishv

Just for kicks, I did try mplayer -vo xvmc, but it came back with an error saying it could not open the video out device.

This probably means that mplayer was not compiled with xvmc support.
You have to do this AFTER you install the driver, as unfortunately a library distributed with the driver is linked to mplayer.

After you unpack the mplayer source, you need to do:
./configure --enable-xvmc
(maybe you want to --enable other things as well)

then make and make install it.

I am interested in your results, I am not that happy about the xvmc stuff myself. in SD it results in poor video (because no processing like de-interlacing is being done) and in HD I have performance problems that seem to be related to interrupt sharing or bus bandwidth problems.

[cdrw]

if this is suse 10.1 then run as a root:
#/usr/bin/tiny-nvidia-installer
the above script will check your nvidia config and upgrade driver if necessary.

Yast will not accept any other format than rpm, so you can't add nvidia server to Yast