[mythtv-users] mythfrontend with vmplayer

[Glen Sagers]

On Thursday 27 September 2007 09:57:05 martyn at wol.es wrote:
>    Hello!
>
>    I'm a new mythtv user. My system runs fine on an IBM Netvista with
> Mythbuntu 7.1 alpha 4. But very strange things happen when I try to execute
> a frontend with vmplayer under Vista: video is very choppy.
>
>    Strange because "mplayer" plays perfectly smooth video and audio full
> screen: the same recorded show (recorded with the remote backend) is ok
> with "mplayer" but choppy with the frontend.
>
>    This means that the system is powerful enough for software scaling with
> vmplayer. In fact, CPU usage in Vista is always under 30%.
>
>    And network throughput is not an issue: "scp" running in the same
> virtual machine can copy a 25 MB file in less than 3 seconds...
>
>    I tried playing video with no audio too. Same results. (Well, video with
> audio but with no souncard.)
>
>    So, what's happening? Why mplayer can cope with the video but
> mythfrontend cannot? Any ideas?
>

The simple answer would likely be that they're using different "video out" 
devices.  Mplayer allows you to specifiy -vo <videooutdevice> on the command 
line, but it's usually set within /etc/mplayer.conf or ~/.mplayer/config 
(check both).  If it's set to x11, like it often is, it's a generic, fairly 
low-performance, but safe with any hardware driver.  That would allow it to 
work well  under vmware.

With mythtv, go into your setup options (playback options) and make sure 
you're not using opengl output.  VMware's video drivers don't, to the best of 
my knowledge, work very well with opengl.  If you're not using opengl, try 
turning the XV picture controls on or off, and experiment one at a time with 
other video options.

Let me add that I rarely get really good movie performance from vmware 
products.  They can be watchable, as your mplayer experience shows, but you 
might be out of luck with mythtv.

Glen