HOWTO: Nvidia Driver + VDPAU + Smplayer +Mplayer

[andrew.46]

Hi,

With a measure of luck and some hard work by the MPlayer developers vdpau may be ready for the upcoming MPlayer release:

http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/...ry/060077.html

or perhaps shortly after .

Andrew

[cor2y]

That would be nice but we still or at least i do , have to wait on nvidia to enable vc-1/wmv3 support for the older chipsets with vdpau.
It was a shock to learn that my 9800gts can support h264, and mpeg2 in vdpau but not vc-1 or wmv3.
Yeah thats why i got that error.
Also maybe find out when regular mpeg4/divx/xvid support will be added, yes its not as system intensive as h264 or vc-1 but wouldn't be nice if it was added the way mpeg2 support is in vdpau?

[AdrianVeidt]

That would be nice but we still or at least i do , have to wait on nvidia to enable vc-1/wmv3 support for the older chipsets with vdpau.
It was a shock to learn that my 9800gts can support h264, and mpeg2 in vdpau but not vc-1 or wmv3.
Yeah thats why i got that error.
Also maybe find out when regular mpeg4/divx/xvid support will be added, yes its not as system intensive as h264 or vc-1 but wouldn't be nice if it was added the way mpeg2 support is in vdpau?

There will be no vdpau support for other mpeg4 codecs. The PureVideo chip isn't programmed to handle them. It's possible that other hardware acceleration projects might be able to handle those codecs at some point in the future.

[sdennie]

There will be no vdpau support for other mpeg4 codecs. The PureVideo chip isn't programmed to handle them. It's possible that other hardware acceleration projects might be able to handle those codecs at some point in the future.

That's unfortunate. Unless, some sort of seamless transition/fallback mechanism is in place, the vdpau support may be too difficult for many users to take advantage of because of the constant switching back and forth between xv.

[AdrianVeidt]

That's unfortunate. Unless, some sort of seamless transition/fallback mechanism is in place, the vdpau support may be too difficult for many users to take advantage of because of the constant switching back and forth between xv.

No, I should clarify this point. Vdpau is two things. One, a display device, like xv. The other, a codec that can use the PureVideo chip to decode certain files.

You're just talking about using the display device, and that can be used for everything. But the PureVideo chip that takes full responsibility for decoding h.264 and mpeg1/2 doesn't extend to mpeg4 or anything else.

Using the instructions in the original post you can get an smplayer that seamlessly uses vdpau's decoding when available and standard codecs for everything else, and always uses vdpau as the display driver.

[frafu]

Hi AdrianVeidt,

Thanks for the explanation.

Could you please also tell us how deinterlacing fits in?
- Is the PureVideo chip hardware designed to also handle deinterlacing of the codecs it can handle?
- If so, does vdpau also use the PureVideo hardware to deinterlace the streams it decodes?

If the answer depends on the chipset, could you please also take the G98 of a nvidia 8400 with 512 MB into account?

Many thanks in advance for any reply.

Cheers

[AdrianVeidt]

Hi AdrianVeidt,

Thanks for the explanation.

Could you please also tell us how deinterlacing fits in?
- Is the PureVideo chip hardware designed to also handle deinterlacing of the codecs it can handle?
- If so, does vdpau also use the PureVideo hardware to deinterlace the streams it decodes?

If the answer depends on the chipset, could you please also take the G98 of a nvidia 8400 with 512 MB into account?

Many thanks in advance for any reply.

Cheers

Yes, the PureVideo chip supports temporal and temporal_spatial deinterlacing. Apparently it works very well, however your card is an economy card and wouldn't be powerful enough to deinterlace 1080i content.
Further reading.

[Hellkeepa]

HELLo!

After trying both to compile myself, and to use the repository linked to above, I've found that neither works for me (Kubuntu Hardy).

The compile seems to be flawless, but every time I try to start mplayer I just get the following message:

Error 1 at libvo/vo_vdpau.c:230

And my terminal isn't printing what I type either...

If I try to use the repo, I just get told the following:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
mplayer: Depends: libamrnb3 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libamrwb3 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libasound2 (> 1.0.17) but 1.0.15-3ubuntu4 is to be installed
Depends: libdirac0c2a but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libggi2 (>= 1:2.2.2) but 1:2.2.1-5ubuntu1 is to be installed
Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.14.1) but 2.12.9-3ubuntu5 is to be installed
Depends: libmad0 (>= 0.15.1b-3) but 0.15.1b-2.1ubuntu1 is to be installed
Depends: libmp3lame0 (>= 3.98) but it is not installable
Depends: libopenal1 (>= 1:1.3.253) but it is not installable
Depends: libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.21.6) but 1.20.5-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
Depends: libschroedinger-1.0-0 (>= 1.0.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libspeex1 (>= 1.2~beta3-1) but 1.1.12-3ubuntu0.8.04.1 is to be installed
Depends: nvidia-180-libvdpau but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

Now, I don't want to fark my system seeing as I use it for my work as well, so I have not forced the installation. Might do a DD of my root partition and give it a try, if no-one has any better suggestions on how I can get this to work?

The configure and make logs are here:
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/228121/conf.log
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/228121/make.log

Happy surfin'!

[frafu]

Hello,

Error 1 at libvo/vo_vdpau.c:230

I think that you have to type the following in the terminal to get rid of that error:

sudo chmod 777 /dev/nvid*

I also found on the net a solution to get rid of tearing. I had to type the following in the terminal which adds a few lines to the xorg.conf file:

sudo nvidia-xconfig --no-composite

@AdrianVeidt

Thanks for your answer about interlacing. I take the opportunity to inform you that nvidia has published a new package for the installation of mplayer that uses vdpau. You might want to update your new thread.

Cheers

[Hellkeepa]

HELLo!

I'm afraid that didn't do one bit of difference, frafu.

Happy codin'!