dvd playback is jumping :)

What's up Lee,
It sounds to me that you have a problem with codecs. You should install the latest DVD codecs available for Linux. At the moment they are not available online becuase they were shut down by GPL Police because of source code issues. However I did make a copy of them and have a copy so if you temporarily give me your email address in the format of user[at]domain[dot]com I will be more than happy to email you the codecs. And as for games click on the link I provide below. I'm about to add Quake 4 to the list of HOWTO's below...
Gaming on MEPIS!
Also check out my quick-start userguide below that I wrote. It contains useful information for setup and recommended programs.

Later,
SAM

Also what player are you attempting to use for the DVD playback?

well i've just noticed that when i've got xmms playing that the scrolling text does the same thing and it looks to do it at the same rate that dvd playback stutters.now if i play them next to each other the text stops at the same time that the dvd playback does, now it does it on Kaffiene, VLC media player and also Xine but that stutters and farts all over the place, now big things i can usually cope with but this gives me a headache, lol and now when i hold the left arrow down the scrolling cursor does the same, "WEIRD"
my mail is
[edit]
now blank

Find out what dev your dvd drive is on (e.g. /dev/hdc) and set it to read ahead a little and/or enable DMA for your drive with this command as root, then try playing a DVD

hdparm -c1 -d1 -a8 -u1 -k /dev/hdc

When you shut down, the system will return to it's previous state. If it plays well with the tweak, you can make a more permanent change by editing grub, but let us know first.

Also, what type of video adapter does your system have, and are you running the best driver for it?

Mike P

--------------------
Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

Hi Lee
I've just installed Unreal Tournament 2003, which has a native to Linux installer script on the 3rd cd. I'm happily fragging with a slightly better FPS than under Windoze.

Check out Sam's ( SAG47 ) new user guide and game thread, the guide is cool and informative and there is a lot of games that with the right howto you can get working.

Ditch that Dozey OS asap mate. It was the best thing I've done in years. It's worth sacrificing the odd game to be FREE of constraints with a stable OS and quick update times and no virii unless its a windows one you can pass on ( still check ).

Cheers
Jacko

World Community Grid. Join the World Wide Ownage team

Hey Jack,
You ever successfully get WCG cruncher to work on MEPIS? I'm interested in using it/joining yer team. I don't have Windows so that's not an option.
SAM

Hi Sam
Yes mate I am successfully runing Boinc ( Berkeley Open Infrastructure For Network Computing ) You can download it with synaptic, just search for Boinc and it'll install the GUI and Client with a gui manager or cli set of commands. I just start the gui every day and crunch about 4 work units a day. The world community grid link is behind the wcg cruncher graphic bar. The programs I'm currently crunching for are Fight Aids at Home, Help Defeat Cancer and human proteome folding phase 2. The world Community Grid now has about 225,000 members worldwide crunching data for scientists to use for human genome projects and fighting cancer by analysing tissue microarrays (TMA) for them at an astonishing rate. FightAIDS@Home project runs a software program called AutoDock developed in Prof. Olson's laboratory at the The Scripps Research Institute. AutoDock is a suite of tools that predicts how small molecules, such as drug candidates, might bind or "dock" to a receptor of known 3D structure or Ligand, this can help prevent Hiv becoming full blown Aids.

I'm only running Mepis 6.0, don't do Windows so everything has been running fine. .

The Boinc platform also allows you to run seti @ home the search for extra terrestial life and several other projects all at the same time.

Once boinc is installed you need to get an account at the WCG and then join a team if you wish. My team link is behind the Join the world wide ownage team tinyurl in my signature.Click there and it will take you straight there.

After all that waffle I would love to have you as a fellow WCG cruncher Sam and even more so to join my team that would be ace mate.

If you need any info ( or anyone else wants to know more about crunching for some pretty worthwhile causes ) then I'll give you all the help I can, even my email addy if you wish, to help get you there.

Just some quick stats abut how much the WCGrid has done to date.

Totals:
Members 225,897
Devices 425,030
Run Time (y:d:h:m:s) 59,329:292:00:32:50
Points Generated 14,459,212,290
Results Returned 56,085,936
Averages:
Run Time Per Calendar Day (y:d:h:m:s) 78:288:19:13:11
Run Time Per Result (y:d:h:m:s) 0:000:09:16:00
Points Per Hour of Run Time 27.82067
Points Per Calendar Day 19,202,141.15538
Points Per Result 257.80460
Results Per Calendar Day 74,483.31474

Yes thats 59,000 years worth of data crunched so far. Join us with pleasure Sam, anything you need to know just ask. Thanks for showing some interest also.

Cheers Jacko.

p.s
If any of you hard working moderators wishes to move this somewhere or to it's own thread please feel free to do so . Thx guys, you know we appreciate you.

Edit Would any Moderator care to let me know if it's ok with the forum rules to put a message for Sam ( sag47 ) out in the general topic for joining the WCG and my team. Cheers all.

Jacko

World Community Grid. Join the World Wide Ownage team

Hi guyz !!! i'am a bit newbie on linux platform .. iread the others messages about the dma enabling trick...but i did that without any improvement :

whan i type the command

hdparm -c1 -d1 -a8 -u1 -k /dev/cdrom

the result is :

setting fs readahead to 8
setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1
setting unmaskirq to 1 (on)
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 0 (off)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)

what's the problem? how can i fix it?

Supposing you did that as root... what kind of machine do you have. Looks like the dvd drive is connected to the sata interface, which happens with modern laptops.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Did you run the command as root and did you try playing a dvd (as a normal user) directly afterwards?

If the dvd plays fine directly afterwards, then a small edit to your /boot/grub/menulist will overcome the problem.

My Toshiba has a slim select bay (a removeable optical drive) that is connected to a SATA converter that makes hot plugging possible for the purposes of installing a seperate battery or hard disk with the optical drive removed. With this type of setup, dma is not possible because the drive is removeable, so either read-ahead or ide emulation are required.

With the line hdc-noprobe appended to the end of my fstab line for the running kernel, the drive plays DVDs beautifully, but if I try to burn or rip a DVD, insufficient data is sent back to the machine and the normal feedback becomes either "jumpy" (e.g. progress bars running like a vu meter for audio playback instead of a steady climb to the finish) or non-existant in the case with acidrip, but this is a small price to pay for a working DVD. All other functions are normal.

Mike P

--------------------
Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

This is what it did to mine.

root@3[~]# hdparm -c1 -d1 -a8 -u1 -k /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
setting fs readahead to 8
setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1
setting unmaskirq to 1 (on)
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 0 (off)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)

As you see not solving the problem. But the problem is somewhere else. You first have to think of why your cdrom/dvd-rom drive is labeled as a hard drive. DVD Drives and CD Drives should be on /dev/scd0,1 not /dev/hdc,d any ideas on this info let me know. I have fixed this problem in Fedora I can fix it here... I just need to know all I can about atapi, the boot loader options, and /etc/modprobe.conf options.

it's quite normal in debian for a cd/dvd to be /dev/hdc

You are talking about devices needing to be in a particular location etc, but udev does not essentially play by the old rules. New system for discovering hardware = different (read not necessarily wrong) labelling.

Try a kernel parameter at boot.

Either add hdc=noprobe to the end of the mepis bootloader menu.list or type it in during boot. Just start typing when you see the timer and it will be stopped and what you type will be appended to the end of the kernel parameters.

This worked for me and despite the addressing issue, all operations involving my optical drive sped up dramatically.

Mike P

--------------------
Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis