2015-08-11, 18:45
Hi all,
I am running Lubuntu 12.04 with kernel 3.2.0
I was previously running an old AMD video card with the ATI Linux driver and was getting reasonable performance on SD channels with software decoding and no interlacing. I decided to upgrade to a Nvidia GT 520 because I heard it had all the capabilities needed to do hardware decoding of HD video.
I Installed the card and then used Ubuntu Jockey to install the 295.40 driver. It made me lose lightdm and was buggy initially so I purged and reinstalled the same driver. I have my Ubuntu base system accessable and the Nvidia-settings reports the graphics card and the driver correctly. I lowered the resolution back down to 800 x 600 to make it comparable to the ATI setup. I set the shader to advanced and enabled the Vdpau to hardware acceleration
What I am getting is stuttering of the image on live TV using TVheadend every few seconds and pixilation. The CPU is working at between 40-70% which is not what I was expecting since most of the decoding should have been offloaded to the GPU. The HD channels are about the same. I also have 100% CPU usage when live streaming movies - but playback is fairly smooth. The framerate has jumped from about 25fps to 50fps since replacing the card.
Something is not right here and it seems superficially that the card is not using its Vdpau capabilities. I have a slight suspicion that the Kernel is to old to work well with Vdpau but don't have enough understanding to be certain. However if I upgrade the Kernel then I have to re-setup my sat capture card from scratch and this provides my remote capabilities which is a real pain to setup.
Any ideas where to look for the solution
Stephen
I am running Lubuntu 12.04 with kernel 3.2.0
I was previously running an old AMD video card with the ATI Linux driver and was getting reasonable performance on SD channels with software decoding and no interlacing. I decided to upgrade to a Nvidia GT 520 because I heard it had all the capabilities needed to do hardware decoding of HD video.
I Installed the card and then used Ubuntu Jockey to install the 295.40 driver. It made me lose lightdm and was buggy initially so I purged and reinstalled the same driver. I have my Ubuntu base system accessable and the Nvidia-settings reports the graphics card and the driver correctly. I lowered the resolution back down to 800 x 600 to make it comparable to the ATI setup. I set the shader to advanced and enabled the Vdpau to hardware acceleration
What I am getting is stuttering of the image on live TV using TVheadend every few seconds and pixilation. The CPU is working at between 40-70% which is not what I was expecting since most of the decoding should have been offloaded to the GPU. The HD channels are about the same. I also have 100% CPU usage when live streaming movies - but playback is fairly smooth. The framerate has jumped from about 25fps to 50fps since replacing the card.
Something is not right here and it seems superficially that the card is not using its Vdpau capabilities. I have a slight suspicion that the Kernel is to old to work well with Vdpau but don't have enough understanding to be certain. However if I upgrade the Kernel then I have to re-setup my sat capture card from scratch and this provides my remote capabilities which is a real pain to setup.
Any ideas where to look for the solution
Stephen