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Full Version: How to Install XBMC PVR Xvba for AMD/Nvidia/Intel GPUs
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@MTroi:
I could not see something while looking at this logfile. Can you also pastebin your Xorg.0.log, together with your xorg.conf?

I think you already checked: System -> Settings -> System -> Energy settings?

This all happens whilde idling, correct?
(2012-06-23, 13:22)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]@MTroi:
I could not see something while looking at this logfile. Can you also pastebin your Xorg.0.log, together with your xorg.conf?

I think you already checked: System -> Settings -> System -> Energy settings?

This all happens whilde idling, correct?

This happens in the main menu (while idling) as well as during video playback. All Energy Settings are deactivated/diabled.

Xorg.conf

Xorg.0.log

Thanks for looking into it.
Maybe DPMS kicks in (default is 10min) because you have no screen saver. I would either activate the screen saver or deactivate DPMS.
Thought I should post a small report of my tests so far:

I installed it on top of Linux Mint 13 64-bit and I used xbmc-xvba-eden (since I didn't understand what the git build was before reading half the pages in this thread), on an E-350 board.

Installation worked without problems and I get <20% CPU usage for 1080p rips, but "blocking" defects for most 1080p rips (since they have level 5.1 and/or too many refframes). But most 720p videos work without defects. Tested ~15 files (SD/720p/1080p).

To my surprise, both YouTube and on-demand TV addons (via XOT) work with HW acceleration. But how is this possible? I thought they use Flash (at least some of the on-demand channels haven't implemented html5 support yet) and I thought Flash, being proprietary, could not be part of XOT, XVBA or YouTube addon? Or is it just the Flash browser plugin that is proprietary, not the stream format?

And for some reason I have to choose analog sound for it to come via HDMI. And for some AVIs the audio is out of sync by seconds. And mp3 files can consume over 50% CPU. But I'm guessing those issues are not xvba related?

I had no problems playing HD video i XBMC as part of Cinnamon, LXDE and XBMC user interfaces. Cinnamon added about 10% CPU usage that's all.

Suspend works both from terminal and from within XBMC with Cinnamon i/f, but locks the PC if I use LXDE i/f. And Linux Mint "start menu" is very slow with Cinnamon i/f (4-5 seconds sometimes). Perhaps off-topic, but could also be related to graphics driver I think. And personally I want to run XBMC in a Linux environment so that I e g can use Firefox as well (there is no web browser for XBMC afaik). I did not try the resume fix on page 1 since it seems to address a different issue.

So all in all: impressively low CPU usage and hazzle-free installation I'd say. And people who own AMD boards should definitely try this. And as soon as L5.1 is supported, especially now since HD audio is supposed to work, finally AMD boards will be useful for media players on Linux.

Especially cool that XBMC offers the only way to get Fusion boards to work on Linux systems! Great work. Smile I will most probably try this some more later on.

And I added a post to the AMD bug report as you wanted. Perhaps you should add a link to that bug thread at page 1 so that more people see it.
(2012-06-23, 15:24)FernetMenta Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe DPMS kicks in (default is 10min) because you have no screen saver. I would either activate the screen saver or deactivate DPMS.

I've tried all of that but still no improvement. I'm thinking about a fresh installation of the system, since this problem occured without any config changes done by myself.
(2012-06-24, 16:13)DavidGGG Wrote: [ -> ]...Or is it just the Flash browser plugin that is proprietary, not the stream format?
Exactly! Smile

(2012-06-24, 16:13)DavidGGG Wrote: [ -> ]And for some reason I have to choose analog sound for it to come via HDMI.
For me 5.1 Sound works well with the optical SPDIF output. Didn't tested sound over HDMI.

i'm about to reinstall because i borked my xorg trying to get 1.12 working with the 12.6 beta and kernel 3.5. was thinking of using mythtv as my backend. does this pvr branch support it. i know a few don't and i've always used tvheadend with this in the past
I am trying to understand if the long resume time is a graphics driver issue, and one thing I did was to take a new Ubuntu install (fully updated, i e just default graphics driver) and try on a Fusion E-350 and an Atom/ION2 system, and E-350 takes 17 secs, Atom 4 secs. One funny thing is that in syslog, both systems say resume took ~2.5secs, and both systems log all suspend and resume events with the same time stamp (i e suspend and resume according to log taking place at the same time..), perhaps it's just that the time stamps don't work during suspend, or perhaps it indicates whatever takes an extra 13 secs is before the PC is awake enough to log anything. Do you think it is graphics driver related? If not, I should take this question to another thread.

A completely different thing - I'm also trying to understand the status of this project especially when it comest to L5.1 support. At Phoronix they said yesterday that the XBMC team has said that XVBA "is still buggy and not actively progressing" while AMD recently said "H.264 Level 5.1 has been in the driver for some time but not enabled". Is it a correct assessment of the situation that everybody hopes AMD will release an SDK that makes L5.1 support etc available, but no one knows if & when this will happen (and if the new part is bug free), and until then AMD XVBA support is considered "buggy" and not too useful? I'm surprised how they mention VA-API as an option, I thought it was without leader and with the same L5.1 and refframe limitations, or does XVBA via VA-API work with L5.1 and refframes >4?

I wish there was a place with a complete and updated view on AMD HW acceleration, today there's this XVBA thread, the XVBA VAAPI thread, and there is this wiki but it is old and doesn't even mention XVBA. Not easy to get a full overview and to compare the options. Or am I missing something?

Vaapi on AMD is only a wrapper for xvba, so it has the exact same limitations and then some. So no, vaapi(on AMD) is in no way better or even on par with direct xvba support.

As of AMDs announcement, mpeg2/4 and h264 L5.1 has been implemented in their drivers, but we have not seen the necessary xvba-sdk update yet. As usual with AMD, there is no ETA either.
When it finally lands, Xvba should be mostly feature complete.

Everything you need to know about the state of HW accel on AMD is in this thread, it is fully up to date.
Level 51 "has landed"
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.ph...post271698

For now I could only test this with E350, E450 on Ubuntu 12.04 and flgrx 12.6b.
Make sure to really X stoppend, when you modify amdscdb.
for everyone interested in trying to enable L5.1:

EDIT: Easier method: thx Kano for pointing this out
Code:
sudo amdconfig --set-pcs-u32=MCIL,HWUVD_H264Level51Support,1


alternative method:
Code:
sudo service lightdm stop
sudo cp -p  /etc/ati/amdpcsdb  /etc/ati/amdpcsdb.bak
sudo sed -i '/UvdEnabled=V1/ a HWUVD_H264Level51Support=V1' /etc/ati/amdpcsdb
sudo reboot

Please report back with results and following info:
- What GFX card do you use
- uname -a
- dpkg -l | grep fglrx
If someone can please upload a sample of an out of spec Level4.1 File?

I think for now the decoder chooses different paths while doing the decode. So if you have an out of spec Level 4.1@high File with > 4 Reframes, you could still see artefacts. This was reported by a user. I do not have such an out of spec file to test. But it is possible to check this within xvba_h264.c

If width > XY and re frames > 4 set level 51...
Wow! I expected it to take a couple of years to get somewhere, not a couple of hours! Big Grin

I tested Killa sampla and two less extreme 1-minute HD clips (1080p 5.1 8 refframes ~10Mbps), and the blocking defects are gone on all of them! One of my clips runs perfectly, the other one I think also does but possibly doesn't have perfect A/V sync (using drop/dupe audio; I'll have to test some more to be sure). The Killa sampla runs perfectly except that at ~7secs the screen goes black for about 1/10 sec if I have enabled A/V sync (no matter which sync method) but this defect isn't present if I don't enable sync (i e disable both "adj disp refresh rate" and "sync playback to disp"). CPU usage then ~20%. On E-350 board.

Had to use Ctrl-Alt-F2 to be able to enter commands since windows go dead when lightdm is stopped, and "sed" command just produced an error (something like "command 'U' unknown) so I edited the file with text editor. Will test more later.

Congratulations, BTW!

uname -a:
Linux David 3.2.0-23-generic #36-Ubuntu SMP Tue Apr 10 20:39:51 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

dpkg -l | grep fglrx:
ii fglrx 2:8.960-0ubuntu1 Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators
ii fglrx-amdcccle 2:8.960-0ubuntu1 Catalyst Control Center for the AMD graphics accelerators
Okay, patch already in trunk, will be added, when wsnipex rebuilds packages:
https://github.com/FernetMenta/xbmc/comm...d98a43a602