[jp.briggs]

I've almost had it, and am throwing this post out as a last ditch effort.

BLUF: I cannot get anything more than very poor performance for mpeg2 decoding in Kodi.

Background:
System: Shuttle XS35V3 (http://global.shuttle.com/news/produ...productId=1586)
Graphics: Radeon HD 6430M
OS: XUbuntu 14.04.03
Kodi: 15.1 Git:d496682
AMD driver: Downloaded and installed from the website, following this guide: wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Trusty_Installation_Guide

I have a MythTV backend that I connect to with the MythTV PVR plugin. Everything works from other front ends.

H.264 videos play fine, no problem. And the menu system is smooth as silk. But when watching LiveTV or recordings from Myth (MPEG2), I get unwatchable stuttered video. The codec OSD in Kodi shows dc:ff-mpeg2video - does this mean it's not using hardware acceleration? But within seconds of playing video, the drop and skip counts of the video are in the several hundreds.

The driver appears to have been installed properly:

Code:

$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6430M
OpenGL version string: 4.5.13399 Compatibility Profile Context 15.20.1013

Now I don't know much about VAAPI vs. VDPAU, but I saw something somewhere that looked like AMD had better support with VAAPI. In Kodi, I have vaapi hardware acceleration enabled for all available video formats. And it would appear that VAAPI is functioning properly as well:

Code:

$ vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 0.35.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_x64-linux-gnu/dri/fglrx_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_33
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.35 (libva 1.3.0)
vainfo: Driver version: AMD MMD 1.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG4Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG4AdvancedSimple    : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG4Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Baseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD

Is there a separate va driver I need to install?

Does anyone have mythTV mpeg2 working on a system like this? I think I'm really close except for this last piece!!!

I realize that this is not a Kodi problem per se; just hopeful that someone here maybe has this working with similar hardware setups.

[fritsch]

Fglrx is 100% not supported by kodi. VAAPI is irreparably broken by the fglrx devs ... use the OSS drivers with vdpau.

[fritsch]

To see what I mean: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...id=2050850

[jp.briggs]

So I purged fglrx*, and installed mesa-vpdau-drivers, basically just copying your apt-get install line from http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=174854

Now Kodi reports ff-mpeg2video-vdpau codec! Huzzah! I am still seeing quite a few drops and skips. I haven't had a chance to see the results first-hand. Making some of these changes remotely. Having x11vnc running may be screwing with things too. I'll take a look ASAP.

Next PC I get will definitely NOT have AMD graphics!!!

[fritsch]

Without a Debug Log I cannot help you at all ... also dmesg | pastebinit is needed as kms / firmware and so on needs to work correctly.

[jp.briggs]

Well I gave up, and installed OpenElec. Works a treat, which means I should have been able to get it working with Xubuntu. Oh well.

Thanks for your help anyway!!

[fritsch]

For xubuntu only two steps are needed:

a) install wsnipex mesa ppa
b) install a 4.1.x mainline kernel

done