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No multithreaded Video decoding on XBMC INTREPID version (in-depth testing)
Rainbow 
olympia Wrote:I really think you should be more careful about that. Your voice is loud and people are hearing that. Read back just two pages. Alanwww1 also stated, that on Hardy, he was able to see smooth playback of killa even with an E7200 at stock speed. I have the same experience with E7300 and E8400, so forget about cache size.

I just wanted to raise a possible chance why you experienced slow playback at 2.66, not to begin an argue with you........

Well there's this. I'm not exactly seeing bunches of people stepping forward and saying 2.66ghz is enough and I don't see it myself.

My test 12/20 with it dropping frames at 2.7ghz and at 2.6ghz both of those on Intrepid. 3ghz cleared the drops. Here's where you popped up stating that it wasn't dropping frames for you on an 8200. So which CPU are you running an E8200 or E7300 along with an E8400? Have you tried underclocking the E8400? alanwww1 says he can run 2.66ghz in Hardy but 3ghz drops frames in Intrepid?

Why did I conclude cache? Because a dual core Celeron clocked to 3ghz dropped massive frames - on Intrepid. I'm open to alternative explanations, in fact I'd like to hear them. I can also state that compile times were noticeably slower vs my Hardy based 3ghz (overclocked) 65nm machine.

I will ask again - aside from the two of you - who is able to play the Killa' file at less than 3ghz and what is the config capable of doing this? How can we narrow down the performance difference?

My goal is simple - people are asking what hardware to buy and I'd like to be able to answer the question with something concrete and repeatable. I have tested on my own, documented the results, and concluded that a 3ghz C2D is needed or at least was less than a month ago. If you guys have found otherwise than others, including myself, ought to be able to repeat the performance and we can lower the requirements bar. Bueller?

Meanwhile you 2 guys are having issues on Intrepid that I am *not* seeing and are dropping frames. Is this issue appearing on the same machines that played fine under Hardy? I will ask again, anyone else on Intrepid *not* seeing this issue? Let's try to find what is common in the machines that ARE working. Tonight I didn't get to dork with my working box - I was building an ATOM based desktopBig Grin but I am open to pulling config files and running commands to probe the config as well as noting patches it may or may not have if folks can tell me what they want to see. Oh and I will try dropping to 2.66ghz too if folks want but I am pretty sure I know what will occur <shrug>
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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I booted hardy to see what latest ffmpeg can do. 8 dropped frames, 6 of which were straight off the bat, so there's no way in hell I'd have noticed w/o the stats up. Odds are the two that did drop during playback wouldn't have w/o the overhead of rendering the stats. This was on a 2.5GHz cd2 w/ ondemand governor active.
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BLKMGK Wrote:So which CPU are you running an E8200 or E7300 along with an E8400? Have you tried underclocking the E8400? alanwww1 says he can run 2.66ghz in Hardy but 3ghz drops frames in Intrepid?

Oooops, E8400 is a mistake, so yes I have an E8200 and an E7300. Sorry for that. But actually yes, if running them at stock speed (2.66), both are capable of playing killa without dropped frames on Hardy, but none of them are able to reproduce that on Intrepid, even in the case they overclocked to ~3Ghz.
Again, when you start playing with your new board (same as mine), please try to follow the guide first, as I asked you. We should be able to make a conclusion at the end on that, along with your stereo problems.... Wink
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olympia Wrote:Oooops, E8400 is a mistake, so yes I have an E8200 and an E7300. Sorry for that. But actually yes, if running them at stock speed (2.66), both are capable of playing killa without dropped frames on Hardy, but none of them are able to reproduce that on Intrepid, even in the case they overclocked to ~3Ghz.
Again, when you start playing with your new board (same as mine), please try to follow the guide first, as I asked you. We should be able to make a conclusion at the end on that, along with your stereo problems.... Wink

I have the very same experience. E7300 in Hardy OK, in Intrepid at 3Ghz overclocked, still not OK. I use the new Nvidia 9400 integrated motherboard with 2x1gb RAM in Dual Channel mode.

Blkmgk, thanks for trying out different setups. I think if you try the same hardware you have with both Intrepid and Hardy you will see the difference. Maybe 3.1 or 3.2Ghz could be enough for killa even in Intrepid. I have not tested.

I think we should try Aron's soultion.

aron Wrote:Yep (under intrepid) and I've compiled ffmpeg inside the chroot. So it may be one of the libs or something included. But it runs well outside of the jail. So It's like I compile it in hardy then copy it to Intrepid, so files from hardy are included like pthread.h ... :S

If this is what really makes the difference.
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aron Wrote:We did it Big Grin

Excelent work aron! Now I guess it is time to try to upgrade each library one by one and see which one is to blame! Let us know any of your findings!! As soon as I get my hardware I'll try to reproduce your tests Wink

PD: btw, haven't used ffplay myself (more of a mplayer's guy here), is there a way to display dropped frames in ffplay?
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BLKMGK Wrote:I will ask again - aside from the two of you - who is able to play the Killa' file at less than 3ghz and what is the config capable of doing this? How can we narrow down the performance difference?
<shrug>

I can play killa fine on Intrepid on an Intel QX6700 at stock, but i'm not sure thats relevant!
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Line 128 in DVDVideoCodecFFmpeg.cpp makes a difference for me too. Why isnt SSE2 in there by default?

Making it

PHP Code:
m_pCodecContext->dsp_mask FF_MM_FORCE FF_MM_SSE2

gained me approx 10% fewer dropped frames on killa (average 132 dropped over 4 runs before, average 122 dropped over 4 runs after)

Combine that change with the one I mentioned earlier, and i'm down from average 132 dropped, to average 72 dropped. Fairly significant.
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Great work Mot2dk !

Comining your two modifications and Aron's solution and we could have what we need ! Nod
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motd2k Wrote:Line 128 in DVDVideoCodecFFmpeg.cpp makes a difference for me too. Why isnt SSE2 in there by default?

Making it

PHP Code:
m_pCodecContext->dsp_mask FF_MM_FORCE FF_MM_SSE2

gained me approx 10% fewer dropped frames on killa (average 132 dropped over 4 runs before, average 122 dropped over 4 runs after)

Combine that change with the one I mentioned earlier, and i'm down from average 132 dropped, to average 72 dropped. Fairly significant.

These are really great finds! Thank you for that!

Do I understand well, that these mods are not Intrepid specific? If not, than it would mean implementing these on Hardy, it would get better as well, wouldn't it?
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Well we're not really sure what the problem with Intrepid is, indeed, I have the exact same trouble (on the exact same hardware) in Hardy.

The SSE2 addition should help hardy, the GetProcessorCount change... maybe, maybe not... give it a whirl and let us know.
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motd2k Wrote:Line 128 in DVDVideoCodecFFmpeg.cpp makes a difference for me too. Why isnt SSE2 in there by default?

Making it

PHP Code:
m_pCodecContext->dsp_mask FF_MM_FORCE FF_MM_SSE2

gained me approx 10% fewer dropped frames on killa (average 132 dropped over 4 runs before, average 122 dropped over 4 runs after)

Combine that change with the one I mentioned earlier, and i'm down from average 132 dropped, to average 72 dropped. Fairly significant.

Would you mind posting this as a patch on trac? that way we can discuss it there.

Cheers,
Tobias.
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"Well Im gonna download the code and look at it a bit but I'm certainly not a really good C/C++ programer but I'd help as much as I can, I mostly write in C#."
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Smile 
olympia Wrote:Oooops, E8400 is a mistake, so yes I have an E8200 and an E7300. Sorry for that. But actually yes, if running them at stock speed (2.66), both are capable of playing killa without dropped frames on Hardy, but none of them are able to reproduce that on Intrepid, even in the case they overclocked to ~3Ghz.
Again, when you start playing with your new board (same as mine), please try to follow the guide first, as I asked you. We should be able to make a conclusion at the end on that, along with your stereo problems.... Wink

Did some testing today preparing to move to new hardware - system is backing up right now. Dropped CPU to 2.66ghz STOCK and saw NO dropped frames, seems althekiller was right about improvements! In fact CPU usage never went much about 60%. Oddly CPU usage was about 60% or so when I ran it at 8x380mhz. <shrug> New board and CPU cannot go in until the backup is done and I will attempt to test with the SAME disk load for Hardy. If it boots and runs I will check it at stock speed on the new CPU (2.66ghz 45nm) and then load up Intrepid. Olympia I will try to find the guide and follow it, if I run into issues I'll just image the other box and move it overNod Working stereo sound though would be critical on this box <sigh> I want to image the other box anyway just in case some whacky update comes down and dorks it's performance before we get this solved!Stare

BTW SVN on my box was coming up as 16836m and claimed to have been last compiled on the 2nd even though I compiled last night before bedHuh

EDIT: Olympia, is that tutorial you are talking about using XBMCLive? Isn't Live! based on Hardy?
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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BLKMGK Wrote:EDIT: Olympia, is that tutorial you are talking about using XBMCLive? Isn't Live! based on Hardy?

Yes, it is, but once you will see Intrepid is a nogo yet, our only chance is Hardy now...
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motd2k Wrote:I can play killa fine on Intrepid on an Intel QX6700 at stock, but i'm not sure thats relevant!

I can play the killa sample without dropped frames with an e7200 at stock speed 2.53GHz and geforce 7100gs. This is with hardy. With intrepid I still had dropped frames at 3.1GHz and uneven CPU load. In hardy its perfectly symmetrical around 70% load on each core
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cejstrup Wrote:I can play the killa sample without dropped frames with an e7200 at stock speed 2.53GHz and geforce 7100gs. This is with hardy. With intrepid I still had dropped frames at 3.1GHz and uneven CPU load. In hardy its perfectly symmetrical around 70% load on each core

So to summerize a little what we found out so far:

Most people has problems with performance running XBMC on Intrepid. The performance difference is 20-35%

The possible reasons:
- The new Completely Fair Scheduler CFS intruduced from 2.6.26 kernel, has a different method for load distribution to CPUs.
- FFmpeg libs compilation difference in Hardy and Intrepid
- CPU energy management problem

Possible solutions:
- Tune CFS for focusing resources to xbmc. Or completely revert to the old scheduler if possible.
- Various tweaks in ffmpeg compile configuration files
- Copy the old dynamic linked libs from hardy to intrepid.

I will try out solution 2 and 3 tomorow and report back.
For solution 1 i don't have the knowledge.

Anybody to add something ?
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No multithreaded Video decoding on XBMC INTREPID version (in-depth testing)1