[mythtv-users] Toggling compositing

HP-mini blm-ubunet at slingshot.co.nz
Sun Mar 24 19:07:41 UTC 2013


On Sun, 2013-03-24 at 11:00 -0700, Chris wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> I have very naive newby question.
> 
> When I setup my MythTV frontend I was having some trouble with tearing.  
> I originally had the video playback profile set at Normal and I read 
> somewhere that what I really wanted was VDPAU so I started messing 
> around with the settings but couldn't get it to work at first. (For the 
> record the GPU is GeForce 8200/integrated/SSE2 and the CPU is AMD 
> Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 4850e × 2). The MythTV Official Wiki had 
> a few suggestions one being to place the following in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
> 
>    Section "Extensions"
>         Option "Composite" "Disable"
>     EndSection
> 
> I think this was already in my xorg.conf  because it's there now and I 
> don't remember putting it in (but that's another story).
> 
> The problem is, I have recently downloaded the Netflix app onto my 
> computer and it wants compositing enabled.  So I looked for solutions 
> and I found that I have a package on my computer called 
> plasma-widget-toggle-compositing which looks like it might do the 
> trick.  My question is:
> 
> If I enable this widget is it going to screw-up Mythtv somehow (Synaptic 
> Package Manager suggests it is linked to file associated with Mythtv)?
> 
> My guess is no; but, I have had so much trouble getting this thing to 
> work and wasted so much time fixing mistakes that I really want to avoid 
> them.
> 
> Other possibly relevant information is that I'm using Mythtv 0.26 run on 
> Ubuntu 12.04.
> 
> Thank you once again for your help and guidance.
> Chris
> 
Lots of people have problems with tearing so I don't think the solutions
are so obvious..
I assume you are using unity desktop (compiz plugin).
I have never had to disable composite (disables effects managers) on old
lucid gnome 2 or 12.04 with unity/fallback/consort/kde/etc..

To get the best performance (mythtv & vdpau) you need vdapau to use
video overlay (guarantees no tearing) & that requires
composite/re-direction to be blocked.
You can use "ccsm" to tweak a couple of compiz/unity settings:
- enable un-redirect full screen
- enable legacy full screen support
Be very cautious with this tweak tool, unity seems not completely
compatible with compiz setting tool.
Of course this only works with mythtv in full screen mode.

Another possible problem is the incorrect refresh rate reported by
nVidia driver (when using twinview metamodes).
If using twinview you may need to manually set the composite refresh
rate (no auto detect).
AFAIK Later nVidia drivers have solved the incorrect refresh reporting.

I don't know about the plasma-widget-toggle...

Brett



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