[mythtv-users] mplayer doesn't work when started by mythfrontend

[Andrew Junev]

Hello Derek,

Monday, December 7, 2009, 5:20:35 PM, you wrote:

> Andrew, can you open another terminal window and run top?  My guess is that
> you are maxing out the cpu when running mplayer.  I see that you are forcing
> vdpau codecs; it appears to me that your playback is falling back to ffmpeg
> with ffodivx which would indicate software decoding.  In my experience,
> mplayer will play mostly fine with software decoding in its' own window, but
> mythtv using mplayer will show a blank screen if you use software decoders
> that use too much cpu.  I think that there isn't enough cpu left for X/Myth
> to function.

CPU load is 1.1% while mplayer is running, so the system is not busy...


> According to Wikipedia
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureVideo_HD#PureVideo_HD) only the Nvidia 2xx
> series of video cards will decode divx/xvid, and I don't know that mplayer
> has a vdpauffdivx codec for use at this point (although I could easily be
> wrong).

Well, I read somewhere 8600GT has some better level of VDPAU than the
lowest one. I don't remember which level it is exactly - there is a
good wiki page on that.

Anyway, the same file is played perfectly well and with a
minimal CPU usage (somewhere between 1-5%) when mplayer is started
from a terminal window. It makes me think that VDPAU really works on
my system and it's not a problem of some particular video file...


> Derek

-- 
Best regards,
 Andrew