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Hello All,

I built a Linux box (Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit) last year; I'm running Frodo 12.2 on it, and it all seems to work really well. I'm using an E350M1 (http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1) board with 4GB of RAM, though some of this is used by the integrated graphics chip (AMD Radeon HD 6310). This runs pretty much everything without any problems, including Blu-Ray (quality) movies. The only time that I see dropped frames/jerkiness is when I play .MTS files from a full-HD video camera. I followed a guide that explained how to get VAAPI working with the Linux Catalyst drivers, so I'm assuming that this is because the HD6310 just doesn't have enough grunt to play files of this quality. I had a look at the stats when playing a Blu-Ray movie (The Dark Knight Rises), and when playing an .MTS:

Dark Knight Rises
D(Audio: aac, 48000Hz, stereo, s16) P(aq:99%, Kb/s: 155.98, att:0.0dB)
D(Video h264(Main), yuv420p, 1920x800 [SAR 1:1 DAR 12:5]) P(fr: 23.976, vq:99%, dc:ff-h264-vaapi, Mb/s:3.12, drop:17, pc:1)
C(ad:0.000, a/v: 0.033, edl:-, dcpu1% acpu: 6% vcpu: 6% cache:0 B 100%)
W(fps: 48.00 CPU0: 68.6% CPU1: 45.8%)

Home movie (.MTS)
D(Audio: ac3 (AC-3 / 0x332D4341), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 256 kb/s) P(aq:99%, Kb/s: 247.14, att:0.0dB)
D(Video: h264(High) (HDMV / 0x564D4448), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9] P(fr:50.000, vq:99%, dc:ff-h264-vaapi, Mb/s: 20.01, drop:1127, pc:none)
C(ac: 0.000, a/v: 0.170, edl:-, dcpu: 5% acpu 6% vcpu: 9% cache:0 B 92%)
W(fps: 48.00 CPU0: 79.6% CPU1: 44.7%)

I don't fully understand the stats, but a few things jump out at me from the .MTS: the 'High' H264 preset, the video bandwidth of 20 Mb/s, and the 50 Hz frame rate (as opposed to Main, 3 Mb/s and 24 fps for Dark Knight). I'm presuming that these conspire to ask more of the HD6310 than it can give, and it starts to drop frames. I guess that the CPUs (AMD E-350 dual-core 1.6GHz) are adequate, since they're not maxed out.

So, if I want to view .MTS files of this quality, I guess I need to invest in some new graphics hardware. I wondered if anyone had a feel for what (Linux-friendly) video card, which I could slot into the E350M1's PCI Express 2.0 x16, 4-lane slot, would be sufficient.

Advice would be much appreciated; I want to make sure that the video card is adequate before I buy it, assuming that this will fix the issue. Advice on tech tweaks would be great too; I'm wondering if the Frodo XBVA builds would help me at all . . .

Many thanks

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=116996 <- have a look here.

(2013-07-08, 08:20)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=116996 <- have a look here.

Yeah, I've been wondering about that. Thanks for the link; I'll give it a try

. . . that is so much better; thank you for the pointer! Still drops a couple of frames a second, but it ground to a complete halt about twice a second before, so a huge improvement! I do get some other problems with video playback with the Frodo build that I used but that's a topic for another forum . . .

Looks like you play every file at 50Hz wich is not good for a 23,976 file and your CPU Usag is way to high for Hardware Decoding used.

Do a complete reinstall with ubuntu minimal and the xbmc-xvba branch.

But maybe getting a proper linux xbmc friendly GFX Card like a Nividia GT610 is not a bad idea...

An upgrade/reinstall is starting to seem attractive! Thanks for the advice; I will let you know how it goes . . .

Invested in a GT630 and did a complete reinstall (XBMCbuntu); the MTS movies are looking very smooth now, and no dropped frames! Re. the high CPU usage: this may be due to AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet power management, which reduces the CPU core frequency when the system is under low/moderate load. But it all seems stable so I'm not too concerned. Anyway, thanks again for the advice; things are running very well now