Every renderer other than VDPAU won't work
#1
Basically the title has the gist of the problem, I can specify VDPAU and it works brilliantly for x264, VC-1, MPEG-2, etc. It of course doesn't work for XviD and others, which I understand is just a limitation of that rendering engine as it now stands. That's all well and good. But absolutely none of the other rendering methods/engines work at all for me!

Software rendering flickers a jumbled static image, often the episode preview image as far as I can tell, while both the shaders ones flicker a green screen with random bits of code-looking text jumbled around on it. No moving images at all other than just the flickering.

I'm not TOO hard-pressed on this issue since of course as noted this leaves me still able to play any conventionally-encoded hi-def content (including my 1080i rip of Aliens, whoo!), and the irony of a 600-mHz Pentium III being only able to play hi-def content is pretty great (along with the puzzled and forlorn looks I get from my friends with their expensive Macbooks that have problems just playing fullscreen HD videos on YouTube, haha!). Still, it'd be nice if there was any thoughts out there on what it might be and how it might be fixed.
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#2
Please read the stickies on how to post in a useful manner. We can't help unless you provide the necessary details.

Thanks.
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#3
tslayer Wrote:Please read the stickies on how to post in a useful manner. We can't help unless you provide the necessary details.

Thanks.

Erk, sorry, I had an earlier draft of my post that somehow got lost when I let my session time out and I blanked on that when I re-wrote it I guess. (To be fair though I expected my signature to show up).

It's using XBMC 9.04 from the PPAs for *buntu 9.04 "Jaunty" (the revision appears to be r19954). It's on a PIII 600mHz, so naturally i386 is the arch (edit: well to be specific the kernel is i686 apparently, and it's 2.6.28-12), and the video card is an Nvidia GeForce 8400GS PCI (made by Sparkle).

The only renderer that works at all is VDPAU; in all cases the audio plays nonetheless.

As to what formats and containers, all that seems to matter is the video codec; on VDPAU, MPEG-2 works whether it be in a normal mpeg container, or from DVDs/vobs, or even raw TS stream captures. Furthermore, x264 gets decoded flawlessly in such containers as Matroska and even Apple's evil MOV. Throwing the video and audio streams from an HD Apple trailer into an AVI file quickly, even THAT works (well, it stutters, but the picture is pristine and I'm sure the stuttering is just from how silly it is to throw those codecs into an AVI container, or that Avidemux messed up a bit, but it proves the point about the container not being a problem).

The computer is definitely able to play XviD-encoded videos otherwise, in fact what I have to do at the moment is quit out of XBMC and load something like KPlayer and then it works fine (though obviously it's not nearly as nice and convenient as staying with XBMC).
XBMC on a barebones (K)Ubuntu 10.04
....on a PIII 600mHz with a GeForce 8400GS 512mb PCI, yes my HTPC can play hi-def videos despite being mostly manufactured in 1999.
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#4
You still failed to read the stickies on how to post in a useful manner... Hint: xbmc.log.

Also, VDPAU is not used for anything other than what it can accelerate. So, hardware acceleration isn't used for xvid. So, you are at the mercy of your cpu. So, you just may not have the horsepower except for high def (as you said, ironic Smile ).
42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot

Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#5
tslayer Wrote:You still failed to read the stickies on how to post in a useful manner... Hint: xbmc.log.

Maaaaaan I suck, I even looked at the log myself to see if there were any obvious errors (how did I not see that? /me fails), but on the plus side earlier that log would've been 13 megs heh. Here's a new (much smaller) one with me trying the different renderers, along with two pictures I took while I was doing so (since I'm not sure my textual explanations quite get across the visual problem):

Direct link to xbmc.log
What it looks like using software rendering
What it looks like using anything else (ie. basic shaders or advanced shaders)

As a further note, I did follow the advice in the cited post about updating and checked with apt, and I guess XBMC 9.04.1 got into the PPA yesterday, so I upgraded to it. I had to then restart since trying to run XBMC it claimed a conflict between the NVIDIA driver and the kernel module I had loaded, but now it's working again though the upgrade didn't fix the XviD rendering problem.

(For the record the NVIDIA driver I'm using is 185.18.10, which I suppose wouldn't be unlikely to matter at some point here).

Quote:Also, VDPAU is not used for anything other than what it can accelerate. So, hardware acceleration isn't used for xvid. So, you are at the mercy of your cpu. So, you just may not have the horsepower except for high def (as you said, ironic Smile ).

Heh yeah. But as I noted, things sans VDPAU play fine in other programs (and the specs of the computer are pretty close to the original XBOX, which played normal xvid/avi rips quite perfectly!). And I certainly played XviD rips back in the day when this computer was running Win98. Now, I know that XBMC has a higher overhead than other programs, but even then it should just play sloooowwwww then, no?

As an aside, my original intention was to put the 8400GS in an Althon XP 1800+ which I had already been using XBMC on, but the terrible motherboard it has (I got it in a pawn shop for $10) wouldn't even POST with the card in for some reason, and all my other spare computers I have are either too loud or even older than the PIII.
XBMC on a barebones (K)Ubuntu 10.04
....on a PIII 600mHz with a GeForce 8400GS 512mb PCI, yes my HTPC can play hi-def videos despite being mostly manufactured in 1999.
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#6
I suspect the various renderers are built with support for functions that your ancient CPU doesnt provide. SSE2 for example.

Have you tried compiling XBMC from source for yourself? I'd hate to imagine how long it'll take to do that though!
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#7
motd2k Wrote:I suspect the various renderers are built with support for functions that your ancient CPU doesnt provide. SSE2 for example.

Hmmmmm good point.

motd2k Wrote:Have you tried compiling XBMC from source for yourself? I'd hate to imagine how long it'll take to do that though!

Hahaha! I definitely had to do that when I first set this computer up since it was back in the early stages of VDPAU support in XBMC when it was only in its own SVN branch. It was actually kindof nostalgic since NOTHING on computers these days takes as long as it took! (Well, except maybe a Gentoo install entirely from source Wink )

I'll start it up, I guess I'll get back on this thread with the results in a day or two Laugh
XBMC on a barebones (K)Ubuntu 10.04
....on a PIII 600mHz with a GeForce 8400GS 512mb PCI, yes my HTPC can play hi-def videos despite being mostly manufactured in 1999.
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#8
Well, the compile finished sometime last night and I ran it, but the latest SVN manifested the same problem. Then I moved my .xbmc folder to a backup just in case and...things worked flawlessly. Even going back to the installed 9.04.1 it runs fine (sans all my customizations obviously) so I guess somewhere along the line it started working again but something in the .xbmc settings or data was keeping it messed up? I remember trying wiping my .xbmc folder way in the past (before upgrading to this current Jaunty/XBMC-9.04 install) and it didn't solve that problem, but maybe I just messed up somewhere.

Oh well, it works 100% fine now despite me having even less of an idea of what was wrong (but hey, it's a good bet that it was my own damn fault somehow Laugh), everything from SD XviD rips to 720p x264 and 1080i MPEG-2/TS is flawless, whoo!

Edit: To clarify, I just have the renderer set to VDPAU now and it's falling back seamlessly to software or whatnot when it hits something that can't be rendered with VDPAU. Also if I was to hazard a guess I'd bet that somehow I mistakenly copied back some of the data or settings from my copy of my .xbmc folder from when I was using the VDPAU SVN branch; I really don't remember doing so, but from my uninformed perspective it seems like the most reasonable explanation if a fresh settings folder solves the problem.
XBMC on a barebones (K)Ubuntu 10.04
....on a PIII 600mHz with a GeForce 8400GS 512mb PCI, yes my HTPC can play hi-def videos despite being mostly manufactured in 1999.
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