[MPlayer-users] MPlayer performance problems with Compiz

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 10:38:18AM -0300, Diogo Franco wrote:
> MPlayer is r27120-4.2.3, FFmpeg is r13836. MPlayer links to libav* wit
> dynamic linking

That is a truly horrible idea and in the case of libavutil unsupported
(well, more precisely you will end up with a mixture of installed and
in-MPlayer-tree libavutil).

> > [gl] using extended formats. Use -vo gl:nomanyfmts if playback fails.
> > VDec: vo config request - 640 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
> > [swscaler @ 0x7d8410]using unscaled yuv420p -> rgb32 special converter
> > VO: [gl] 640x480 => 640x480 BGRA 
> > BENCHMARKs: VC:   5.440s VO:   5.293s A:   0.803s Sys:  18.670s =   30.206s
> > BENCHMARK%: VC: 18.0107% VO: 17.5233% A:  2.6591% Sys: 61.8070% = 100.0000%
> > BENCHMARKn: disp: 712 (23.57 fps)  drop: 10 (1%)  total: 722 (23.90 fps)
> The only 'yuv=' mode my card supports is 'yuv=0'.

I completely forgot how crappy the MX cards were, given that my GeForce
3 can handle yuv...
Then -dr is an absolute must. -vo gl:force-pbo might help too, though
with yuv=0 -dr should work better.
And those Sys numbers are insane, there is something very wrong.

> > [VO_SDL] Using driver: x11.
> > VDec: vo config request - 640 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
> > VO: [sdl] 640x480 => 640x480 Planar YV12 
> > BENCHMARKs: VC:   5.299s VO:   3.711s A:   0.850s Sys:  20.239s =   30.099s
> > BENCHMARK%: VC: 17.6058% VO: 12.3283% A:  2.8248% Sys: 67.2411% = 100.0000%
> > BENCHMARKn: disp: 720 (23.92 fps)  drop: 2 (0%)  total: 722 (23.99 fps)
> Nothing big, only that it always creates the window on the lower left.

Well, actually the window ends up where ever your window manger puts it.
You should be able to tell your window manager to do at least a bit
better.

[...]
> > VDec: vo config request - 1280 x 720 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
> > VO: [xv] 1280x720 => 1280x720 Planar YV12 
> > BENCHMARKs: VC:  14.001s VO:  20.111s A:   0.397s Sys:   6.840s =   41.348s
> > BENCHMARK%: VC: 33.8605% VO: 48.6374% A:  0.9607% Sys: 16.5415% = 100.0000%
> > BENCHMARKn: disp: 694 (16.78 fps)  drop: 29 (4%)  total: 723 (17.49 fps)
> Don't be fooled by the low drop rate, mplayer hang many times and when it hang
> the vo would go back and forth one frame and repeated that until mplayer
> 'revived'. If I use -noslices, tearing happens at multiple points.

To be honest, with -framedrop and H.264 you are quite lucky if it works
at all.
But overall I would say that somehow compiz breaks xv. Are you using the
latest version? There was a patch to hack special "compiz support" for
-vo xv but nobody could really explain why it would be necessary for, it
might have been to work around compiz bugs...

Greetings,
Reimar Döffinger