[mythtv-users] Ticket 11377 was: Region free DVD player?

[faginbagin]

On 4/8/2014 4:12 PM, Richard Hulme wrote:
> On 05/04/14 06:12, faginbagin wrote:
>> On 4/3/2014 3:13 PM, Richard Hulme wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> Hi Helen,
>>>
>>> Sorry for not seeing this thread earlier.  I've been up to my ears in work recently.
>>>
>>> I don't have an awful lot to add but it's definitely not a DVD problem.
>>>
>>> I submitted a test file to NVidia and, as I wrote in the ticket, they confirmed they could reproduce it with MythTV but not with mplayer.  I don't know whether that means that MythTV is doing something wrong that mplayer is doing right, or maybe MythTV is using some feature of VDPAU that mplayer isn't.  I don't really know anything about the video decoding process.
>>>
>>> I've just sent another email to NVidia to ask if they have any further information.  I'm not holding my breath but since they should have a fair bit of expertise in this area, I'm hoping they may be able to give some pointers (e.g. the affected videos happen to use some special feature of MPEG2 that most other don't).
>>>
>>> If I get a reply, I'll report back here.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Richard.
>>
>> I appreciate you following up with NVidia as well as the info in the ticket and email archives. Changing playback profiles has allowed us to enjoy the box set while I hunt for a "real" solution.
> 
> Ok, I got a reply back from NVidia:
> 
> "This is still in our queue to investigate, but we haven't had time to dig into it, yet.  Hopefully we'll be able to take a look soon."
> 
> Since I reported the problem to them 15 months ago, it's unfortunately obviously not a high-priority issue.  That doesn't mean, of course, that there's no chance of them looking into it but a pro-active comparison of mplayer and MythTV would presumably bring results sooner (not that I'm volunteering - it's not that I'm not interested but I just don't have the time at the moment).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Richard.

Thanks for the update. I'm still working on this, albeit slowly.

I have tried the nvidia-319-updates package (aka nvidia 319.60 driver). It's the most recent driver supported by ubuntu package management on precise. No change.

I do know that mplayer, as provided by Ubuntu precise, uses an older version of libavcodec 53.32.2, vs mythtv fixes/0.27 which is 54.92.100, but I haven't checked ffmpeg or libav commit histories to see if there's any substantive differences between these versions when it comes to vdpau decoding.

I have run both mplayer and mythfrontend with libavcodec debug flags (specifically FF_DEBUG_PICT_INFO) and compared the outputs. I didn't see any real differences, certainly nothing to explain the differences in what they display.

I know that the version of vlc provided by ubuntu on precise (2.0.8) does not support vdpau decoding, but the version that will be provided on trusty (2.1.2) should, although that version isn't new enough to support vdpau post-processing and rendering. From their wiki:
"VDPAU is supported for decoding since VLC version 2.1.0, and for post-processing and rendering since VLC 2.2.0 (still in development as of late 2013)."

Other than that, I'm still tinkering and reading.

Regards,
Helen