[meltingplastic]

So my HTPC is about 5 years old or so now and i've been running my setup with Ubuntu. Recently, with the updates to both Kodi and the Catalyst drivers, I feel my video performance has been dropping more and more. My setup is as follows:

Kodi 14.1
Ubuntu 14.04 (kernal 3.13.0-45)
Intel core2 quad(Q6600) @2.4ghz
4GB RAM
Radeon HD5450 1GB
Catalyst 14.6beta drivers

I feel like my setup is sufficient but i see a ton of aliasing and tearing when streaming video (most specifically hockeystreams HD feeds).

Is there some sort of settings i need to ensure I have for best playback at 1080? If i scale back to 720 all is well but I used to not have any problems at 1080 in the past. I've been looking into upgrading to an nVidia chipset soon but wanted to rule out everything I can before i spend money.

[fritsch]

We don't support Catalyst at all. It's the biggest crap driver out there. Use the oss radeon drivers and all is fine. Don't forget to install mesa-vdpau-drivers afterwards and kodi will use hw acceleration.

[meltingplastic]

We don't support Catalyst at all. It's the biggest crap driver out there. Use the oss radeon drivers and all is fine. Don't forget to install mesa-vdpau-drivers afterwards and kodi will use hw acceleration.

Hey, thanks for the info.

I stripped my catalyst drivers using the following bash script I created to remove them every time there was a kernal update:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Removing Drivers"
sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev*
sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-ra$
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:am$
sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
sudo rm -rf /etc/ati
echo "Please Reboot System"

I then followed your how-to from here: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=174854 and I feel like i'm still having issues.

Is there a step I'm missing to install the OSS drivers?

[wsnipex]

Don't forget to install mesa-vdpau-drivers afterwards and kodi will use hw acceleration.

[meltingplastic]

Don't forget to install mesa-vdpau-drivers afterwards and kodi will use hw acceleration.

i run sudo apt-get install mesa-vdpau-drivers and get the following:

mike@media:~$ sudo apt-get install mesa-vdpau-drivers
[sudo] password for mike:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
mesa-vdpau-drivers is already the newest version.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
linux-headers-3.13.0-40 linux-headers-3.13.0-40-generic
linux-headers-3.13.0-43 linux-headers-3.13.0-43-generic
linux-image-3.13.0-40-generic linux-image-3.13.0-43-generic
linux-image-extra-3.13.0-40-generic linux-image-extra-3.13.0-43-generic
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
mike@media:~$

So i think? the driver is installed.. maybe not though

[fritsch]

dmesg | pastebinit
vdpauinfo | pastebinit

please

[meltingplastic]

Much thanks for both of your help BTW. I honestly only use linux to run my HTPC and RPIs so most of this is just trial and error for me.

vmesg: http://paste.ubuntu.com/10242769/

vdpauinfo: http://paste.ubuntu.com/10242819/

[fritsch]

All fine. The output looks okay.

Under Video -> Acceleration (Expert Settings) Menus. Make sure VDPAU is enable, VDPAU Mixer is enabled - you only need to disable MPeg-4 and Mpeg-2 (as the 5450 has non thread mpeg-2 support done by a shader).

Please get me a kod.log

[meltingplastic]

here's my most recent logs:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/10243247/

The other issue I have is that my displace overscans like crazy with the OOS drivers. With the catalyst, I had no issues but with these drivers, even with adjusting my TV to use -1 overscan (42" sony vega rear projection) it's not enough.

[fritsch]

Use your TV remote and set the TV to "Just Scan" or "Fixed", Catalyst by default does underscan.

From your log: It seems you force Deinterlace to On - why, this is just insane for progressive material.

[meltingplastic]

I don't have a "just scan" or "Fixed" only -1, normal, and +1 hence setting it to -1 and it's still overscanned.

I have deinterlace on as i've been messing with setting trying to get the best picture. What should my proper settings be?

[fritsch]

Deinterlace: Auto
Deinterlace-Method: Auto
Scaling: Bilinear

Save for all files.

Those are the "safe" settings.

[meltingplastic]

Couple reboots and adjusted the zoom on Kodi and everything seems to be golden. Constant 23.8+ fps so everything looks okay to me.

Looks like I'm sticking to the terminal when not in Kodi as googling this says its a standard issue with the overscan. I'll deal with that when I get a new TV (a 10year old TV works more than fine for my purpose)

Thanks for all your help. Time to donate as a thank you

[fritsch]

If you get issues with "perfect" 23.98 fps playback - consider an upgrade to the latest 3.16.x kernel (not newer for now, cause of a later kernel change needs a mesa fix, not yet in mainline) ...

Have fun.