XBMC 720p Playback

manxam · Post by **manxam** » Sat May 05, 2012 12:07 am

Does anyone have any experience playing back 720p mkv x264 encoded movies on the Joggler? I have tried XBMC on both Linux and Windows and neither will play back my files without severe choppiness (unwatchable); 100% cpu usage.

I was hoping to use netflix as well but it's just a choppy under windows. I could tell netflix to use a lower resolution but then I'd have to log in and change it every time I use netflix on my other devices so that it doesn't look terrible on those.

Any help / insight would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Post by **BuZz** » Sat May 05, 2012 12:37 am

did you enable "vaapi" in video settings. it does work on linux, but it is fussy on video depending on encoding.

much quicker is the mplayer build i did. should work on recent builds if i didnt include it

http://joggler.exotica.org.uk/packages/ ... 686.tar.gz

that was for an older buid but may still work. i can provide a new build if needed.

mplayer -vo vaapi -va vaapi file.mkv i think

Post by **hawsey** » Sat May 05, 2012 7:39 am

A tick in the Vaapi box did it for my joggler, using Linux Mint 720p plays fine .
Where are you streaming the movies from ? it could be a wireless issue ,try plug the Joggler in to the ethernet port of your router to prove that .
Also on my network i was initially trying to stream from my Acer Revo running W7 xbmc , i switched to a live boot Openelec build which improved almost everything including playback and library search .

Post by **hawsey** » Sat May 05, 2012 7:58 am

Sorry to double post but i remember when i had problems this thread helped
Plenty of tips and tweaks for xbmc on here

http://www.jogglerwiki.com/forum/viewto ... live#p3407
Did you all ready do the thermal trip point tweak i wonder? as looking back at the above thread that sorted things out for me .

Also Dan pointed us in the direction of a Live xbmc build here

http://www.hi-pda.com/forum/viewthread. ... a=page%3D1

I like the idea of this xbmc live build for the Joggler , i might give it a go

manxam · Post by **manxam** » Sat May 05, 2012 3:51 pm

I did enable VAAPI and have tried both wired and wireless to no avail. These same files served from the same sources play perfectly on my other wireless devices. I have also modified grub to change the thermal set point again with no appreciable change.

I'd really like to try the XBMC live build but can't seem to get to the download page. the link to 115.com keeps timing out. The one time that I made it there I couldn't figure out what button to press to download

dps5pt · Post by **dps5pt** » Sat May 05, 2012 5:13 pm

Does windows XBMC support the Joggler GPU?

I've only ever had good HD video playback using Windows and and a player like media player classic that supports GPU other wise your always going to get CPU throttle on the Joggler especially when the video is streaming over the wireless as that will be using a chunk of CPU too - some members obviously get good video out of linux using just the CPU are they modded for cooling???

Post by **BuZz** » Sat May 05, 2012 5:37 pm

mplayer with vaapi can play 1920x1080 h264 video. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API - on xbmc I have played back 720p h264 ok.

Post by **hawsey** » Sat May 05, 2012 5:57 pm

Not modded for cooling but thermal trip points increased using the instructions from Buzz's site
http://joggler.exotica.org.uk/ubuntu/#screengrabs
Might sound a bit daunting to some but I am quite a novice and I managed it and well worth it for the benefits ...

dps5pt · Post by **dps5pt** » Sat May 05, 2012 6:04 pm

BuZz wrote:with mplayer and vaapi can play 1920x1080 h264 video. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API

Thanks BuZz, when it says...

"The non-free drivers for Intel's Poulsbo Chipset with Imagination Technologies's PowerVR-based GMA 500 integrated graphics[5]"

This is just reference to the non open source nature of GMA500?

Bit of a noob as only just started to embrace LINUX having moved to FEDORA F15 on the desktop - I was running XP. VISTA and W7 left me cold as did UBUNTU but enjoying F15 so far.

Anyways Thread hi-jak over - and time to lookup Joggler LINUX distros to try VAPI!

Post by **BuZz** » Sat May 05, 2012 6:47 pm

currently, there is only a very basic "open" driver for this gpu which is part of newer kernels. no 3d acceleration etc. the emgd driver which has both open/closed parts is the one that supports vaapi.

manxam · Post by **manxam** » Sun May 06, 2012 5:27 am

Buzz, I attempted to use your mplayer build above after installing all the dependencies but unfortunately get nothing but a green blocky screen. I've been reading up on the "Guide to get the best performance from the GMA 500" thread (which I see you participate in) and there are a number of people stating that 11.04 is far better than 11.10 for acceleration. I'm using your Xubuntu 11.10 build, could this be the issue?

I have tested many different mkv files all of which are x/h264 720p encoded and they're all very choppy but can't figure out why. This is driving me batty!

Also, did you build xbmc yourself with vaapi enabled or is this just the binary from xbmc? The reason I ask is because I updated xbmc to eden and want to ensure that i didn't overwrite a "special" build or something.

Thanks again for your help!

Post by **BuZz** » Sun May 06, 2012 1:09 pm

i have yeh. ive not tseted it recently though. my dists come with my own build. you ran mplayer with -va vaapi -vo vaapi ? worked last time i tried too. ill have another test to see.

Post by **BuZz** » Sun May 06, 2012 2:01 pm

vaapi definitely works on xbmc with jolios. just tested. it might have gotten broken on 11.10 due to multi arch and file locations. run xbmc from a terminal and turn on vaapi/try to play a video and then quit xbmc and paste the output.

Post by **BuZz** » Sun May 06, 2012 3:36 pm

looks like it is a problem with the vaapi driver with the emgd 1.10 for xserver 1.10. still debugging, but it's possible I missed this, due to juggling far too many images and stuff and getting confused. since I run jolios on my joggler's I hadn't noticed. I'll update you when I have more info. in the meantime you could try it out on jolios.

If emgd_drv_video turns out to be broken and non fixable, I may have to look at ditching xserver 1.10 and reworking all the builds for xserver 1.9 (as jolios uses)

manxam · Post by **manxam** » Sun May 06, 2012 4:18 pm

Thanks for looking into this Buzz! I'm downloading Joli currently and will have a go.

Cheers

manxam · Post by **manxam** » Sun May 06, 2012 10:38 pm

Buzz, now she works but I'm REALLY disliking JoliOS. Hopefully you can put together a ubuntu build with these reversions in place. XBMCUbuntu would be awesome if you could make it work!

Thanks again

Post by **roobarb!** » Sun May 06, 2012 11:31 pm

manxam wrote:Buzz, now she works but I'm REALLY disliking JoliOS.

Give it chance! It took a while to click with me, but now I think it's superb, and a natural step up from the standard OS. Full Ubuntu underneath, touch-friendly UI, Chromium, XBMC... What's not to like?

Post by **BuZz** » Sun May 06, 2012 11:56 pm

Im planning on doing 12.04 with xserver 1.9 - but i have to patch some more stuff else it wont work and make some fake packages to solve dependencies. very annoying. come on intel. how about a new and bettr working driver!!

ps. I didn't like jolios at first, but now I do. more touch friendly than ubuntu/xubuntu at least for me.

danfoshizzle · Post by **danfoshizzle** » Sun May 06, 2012 11:58 pm

Yeah Intel, buck up your ideas!!

james · Post by **james** » Mon May 07, 2012 11:56 pm

Hey there - I am a heavy user of netflix on the windows distro on joggler.

Yes - you need to reduce the resolution to minimum. I have a ps3 and want top quality resolution for that but my wife also uses an intel atom powered netbook and so I always default to low quality resolution when I'm not using the ps3 so she doesn't get lipsync problems etc on her netbook.

It is quite easy to do if you get in the habit. You can log in to the netflix options page on android browser or set it as a favourite on your joggler. Then as soon as you've finished watching a program just go to that page and change resolution back to max.

You'll get used to it and it's fine.

Hopefully one day netflix will allow different resolutions set for each device.. but hey!

Cheers
James

p.s. I found internet explorer worked much better than Chrome. In fact sometimes Chrome doesn't work with netflix on joggler. I think this must be a silverlight problem - Microsoft not letting anyone else play.

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