[MPlayer-users] performance...

[Brian J. Murrell]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 11:00:33PM +0000, Stephen Davies wrote:
> 
> So you and me both.  Why don't we fix it...

OK, let's explore...

> Full-screen output to video is to do with getting your vga->tv ouput chip
> correctly set up. 

Right.  I would prefer to use my Radeon than my G400 as it's TV out
picture is nice.  Fully stretched to fill the screen, even, nice
brightness, etc.

> Getting playback locked to vsync could be done two ways I can think of:
>  - queue up frames in the driver itself and copy them on vsync, or
>  - pass vsync "phase" info back into mplayer and have mplayer adapt
>    its playback to match.

Is the vsync info actually available easily currently?  Perhaps with
all of Nick's knowlege of the ATI cards, he could comment on how easy
it would be to get the vsync info from the current driver (i.e.
radeon_vid).

> What cards do you have, which is your preferred output card?  

I have a G400 and a Radeon both with TV out.  I prefer the Radeon as
it is much more comodity than the G400 and the image on the TV is just
a whole lot nicer than the G400 (using -vo vesa:lvo:/dev/radeon_vid
anyway).

> Which preferred output driver...?

VESA is really simple to use.  Requires no X server although I think
trying to build PVR gui goo on top of it will be a PIA.  I think next
in order of preference is DirectFB (because it has GTK+ on it and aims
to use the acceleration hardware where available -- although nothing
for Radeon as of yet I don't think), framebuffer (which also
purportedly has GTK+ on it), and then X.

I really want to avoid the overhead of an X server if I can, and
TV-Out on Radeons with Gatos' ati.2 driver has only the first bits of
TV-Out in it -- very experimental.  My display has a vertical green
line in the black border on the right for instance.

> For me its my Voodoo3 TV,  and the xv output driver that I'm interested
> in.

Cool.

I know pretty much nothing about video driving however.  I can test
and hack but I probably won't be much good at designing or writing
this stuff or even understanding it without some hand-holding
(something I owe Nick a beer or 17 for already.  :-).

Heck, I only know what I know about video quality as it relates to
judder and vsync syncing courtesy of you.  :-)  Thanks BTW.  You did
put your finger right on the one thing that I think is sucking bigtime
with regards to doing decent video on Linux.

I will do what I can though.

b.

-- 
Brian J. Murrell