[stack]

I am having some problems with 1080p playback and I was hoping someone could point out where I am going wrong.

I have a P4 3Ghz with 3GB of ram, a 500GB SATA drive (3Gb connection), and a 1GB GeForce 9400 GT/PCI/SSE2. I am using Big Buck Bunny as my testing ( http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download/ )

1) Fresh install of the Linux live CD - if I try to playback 480p content CPU usage is high.
2) apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
3) Install nvidia drivers - `sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-180`
4) set VDPAU to be used in display
Settings->Videos->Player->Render Method needs to be set to VDPAU
5) Reboot.

At this point I can play 480p and 720p OGM content and the CPU usage is really low (<8%). I get great play back and while I am watching the video I can hit the 'o' key and see the VDPAU listed on the second line.

When I play 1080p H.264 the video plays perfectly! 6-8% CPU, fps >23, fantastic quality. Again, I can hit 'o' and see VDPAU on the second line. Exactly what I am looking for.

However, when I play the 1080p MP4 the video and sound play jerky with high CPU. OGG is less jerky then MP4, but still barely watchable and sound desyncs after a couple seconds. The MSMP4 video plays smooth but slow (not at full speed as the sound gets further and further from the video). The thing is, the CPU usage when playing is almost always under 35% where as before (without VDPAU) it was always above 90%.

So I am pretty certain that VDPAU is working, however, just not some formats. I am wondering if some codecs just are not supported. I did a search for VDPAU enabled codecs but I didn't find an answer to my question.

Can anyone reproduce these problems with Big Buck Bunny?

Any help you guys can give would be great.

Thanks!
~Stack~

[stack]

I think I found the answer to my question.

Currently, the portions designed to be offloaded by VDPAU onto the GPU are motion compensation (mo comp), inverse discrete cosine transform (iDCT) and VLD (Variable-Length Decoding) for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), VC-1, and WMV3/WMV9 encoded videos.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU

It looks like the MP4, MSMP4, and OGG encodes don't fall into these categories

I think for now, all of the 1080p OGG files I have are unplayable; I am going to go try researching the current status.

I would love confirmation on my findings though.

Thanks!
~Stack~

[uomiarz]

Set render method to AUTO
Vdpau will kick in when it is needed.
I am pretty sure your P4 3Ghz should play mp4 file just fine.

[Surkow]

Remember that OGG and MP4 are container formats - not video formats. I'm more interested in what the containers actually contain (probably H.264).

[theuni]

Set render method to AUTO
Vdpau will kick in when it is needed.
I am pretty sure your P4 3Ghz should play mp4 file just fine.

No. Auto will not use VDPAU.

Should be set explicitly to VDPAU. If not applicable, will fallback gracefully to software.

TheUni

[stack]

Set render method to AUTO
Vdpau will kick in when it is needed.

According to the notes in the SVN it has to be explicitly set to VDPAU for it to work (I didn't install from SVN, I just read the documentation cause I figure that would be the latest)

I am pretty sure your P4 3Ghz should play mp4 file just fine.

Thats what I thought too. Other mp4 files play, but I don't have any other mp4 files that are 1080p. This is partially why I thought it might be how Big Buck Bunny was encoded.

Remember that OGG and MP4 are container formats - not video formats. I'm more interested in what the containers actually contain (probably H.264).

Is there an easy way to tell? Or do I need to extract the file from the container (ogg/mp4)? I am pretty sure that the OGG file is Theora (Although isn't it supposed to be OGM? Since Ogg is the audio and Theora the video? I am pretty sure that is right...anyway...)

If anyone has the chance to confirm the same problems with Big Buck Bunny, please let me know. It is a free download (and I am seeding the available torrents). I would be very happy to find out your results.

Thanks for the posts!
~Stack~

[Surkow]

(Ogg) Vorbis is an audio format, (Ogg) Theora is a video format and Ogg (or sometimes OGM) is a container format for audio, video, and metadata. I usually check mplayer logs ("VIDEO") to see what the video file contains. Theora is not accelerated with VDPAU.