[mythtv-users] How to tell if XvMC is working?

[matthew.garman at gmail.com]

On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 05:24:55PM -0600, Mitch Gore wrote:
> The easiest way for me to tell is if i set my OSD to a color
> option and then play video.  XvMC will turn the OSD to balck and
> white.  (assuming you didnt do the hack to enable ColorOSD that is
> available witht the 5000 series cards.
> 
> And you cpu usage should be about the same as mplayer if working
> correctly.

I added 'Option "UseEvents" "true"' to the "Device" section of my
xorg.conf.  That made it so that XvMC was *definately* working, i.e.
lowered CPU usage.  (That setting was one of those little gems that
I wish I would have picked up on months ago!)

I was using NBC's "The Office" as my test program (recorded OTA HD).
What I found, though, was that even relatively simple motion---like
someone turning their head---wasn't particularly smooth.  It's hard
to describe, but it wasn't so much jerky as it was just "slowed
down".  I think it was most noticeable on peoples' body movements
because it was enough of an effect to make them look unnatural.

So I don't know if I can further tweak and tune XvMC, or just settle
for letting my CPU do the decoding.

Matt