MPlayer, Freevo, and video sync (SOLVED)
Posts: 188
I finally went through and cleaned out my PC, reloading MEPIS 6.0 in place of 6.0b4. Looks great, runs great. One problem: MPlayer is a RESOURCE HOG now. My Freevo installation is practically useless because MPlayer uses so much of the processor while watching TV through my Hauppauge PVR150 MCE (i2c / ivtv) card that the remote barely responds. Even something as simple as changing the volume via the remote seems to go unnoticed by the system. Furthermore, after a random amount of time, the system "hicks" and then audio and video lose sync presumably due to such high processor load. Keep in mind that ivtv cards send an MPEG stream to the viewing application rather than seperate audio and video streams.
The major changes I've applied to the system are:
Installed:
nvidia-glx
kernel-image_2.6.15-26-686 and kernel stuff to match version
ivtv-modules-source-0.7.x
freevo_1.5.3 and supporting software
Upgraded:
mplayer-nogui and supporting libraries
Still trying to figure this one out. Any help will be appreciated.
EDIT: I'll be wiping the system and reloading everything from scratch. I figure it will be better to see how it all works from a fresh install and begin diagnosing from there. I'm suspecting MPlayer's software scaler is goofy because audio plays back just fine while video is slow and clunky at times.
2nd EDIT: Since I have a 1.8GHz P4, processor overhead is always at a premium. Part of the problem was that the nVidia GLX driver went goofy on the first install. I've since wiped out the system and did a complete fresh install. I found that the DEFAULT behaviour of MPlayer when viewing video from an IVTV card is to use the x11 or xv video output option. With this set up, MPlayer drags and drags, losing sync frequently. Upgrading to the nvidia-glx driver makes better use of the GPU which smooths playback
Hmmm...
Posts: 188
Thinking of using a bare-bones Gentoo install???
Michael
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"Reality? Oh, yeah. That has nothing to do with me."
yes
Posts: 4864
but i'll use something other then tvm for the gui.
that was the first experiment.
i needed it all going for the Tour de France so put Mepis on for a quick solution.
Just hope the failing RAM in the old machine lasts a couple of weeks.
Freevo
Posts: 4864
I have my freevo box playing through xine-gui.
But sometimes i still have something hogging resources, and when i checked with top 'python' was using all the memory. that suggests it was one of the freevo scripts.
i've nearly got all the bits for a new tv box and as there is no urgency to get this running i think i'll be running something very lean underneath rather than a full mepis install.