[And1.G]

Hello,

on my HTPC (Arch Linux), I would like to use the free Radeon (AMD A45300 integrated Radeon HD 7480D) drivers which now support the UVD unit for video acceleration with VDPAU in Mesa 3D 9.2. VDPAU and VAAPI are enabled in settings menu.

Action:
Select a x264 encoded video file
play it
Notice very low CPU usage, indicating hardware acceleration is used (Is very much higher, with VDPAU disabled in settings)
watch a bit, then stop it
Select the same (or any other x264 video) file again to play

Expected behaviour:
Video plays again

Actual behaviour:
XBMC freezes

Debug log:
http://pastebin.com/u3puip3q


There's a second issue and I think they are closely related. When I want to watch TV (Channel uses h264) with xvdr, XBMC immediately freezes, even on the first attempt.
Debug log: http://pastebin.com/8h3ig66r


Can anyone here help me with these issues? Since the free drivers are much less complicated to use than the closed fglrx stuff, I really would like to use these.
Since video acceleration works fine on the first try to play a file, I think there can't be that much wrong...


Software versions:
Linux xbmc 3.10.10-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Aug 30 11:30:06 CEST 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux
XBMC version 12.2 Git:Unknown (Compiled: Jul 26 2013) from the Arch Linux repository
Mesa drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon 9.2.0-1

[wsnipex]

those drivers are far from being a complete VDPAU implementation and far from being mature. If the same issue happens with a nvidia card and the nvidia binary drivers, then the problem is in xbmc.
Some discussion about the OSS drivers can be found in http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=116996

[And1.G]

If this implementation is so faulty, how is it then possible that I can watch entire movies with mplayer and VDPAU codexs? And how does XBMC manage to play the file on the first attempt and only crashes on the second? This behaviour does not really sound like it's the drivers fault.
I don't have an Nvidia card that fits my HTPC so that I could test it.
But thanks for your reply!

[wsnipex]

try with a gotham nightly from fernetmentas master, see the thread above.

[fritsch]

If this implementation is so faulty, how is it then possible that I can watch entire movies with mplayer and VDPAU codexs? And how does XBMC manage to play the file on the first attempt and only crashes on the second? This behaviour does not really sound like it's the drivers fault.
I don't have an Nvidia card that fits my HTPC so that I could test it.
But thanks for your reply!

xbmc uses OpenGL. If graphic drivers have flaws, they will easily hit you, when using such experimental works in combination with video playback. So the comparison with mplayer does not exactly match.

Btw: xbmc implements vdpau since several years now. The reason mplayer works better with the new radeons is quite easy: ckoenig used it to test his implementation. For xbmc the interest currently is limited, as this new vdpau OSS don't support deinterlacing via vdpau and therefore LiveTV would just suck.

[fritsch]

@And1.G:
I have seen your posts in the heise news forum. Please don't spread wrong information. Xbmc implements vdpau via gl interop, that is right - but not only, it has two implementations. The old pixmap code is still alive and used, if the gl interop is not found. But radeon does it much too slow to keep up with display, decode and so on. From my tests I'd say: radeon driver is too slow to decode and render into a pixmap and transfer to GL afterwards. That is the whole problem with xbmc. No feature, that is optional.

Even an old ION-1 and ION-2 with nvidia drivers is fast enough to use the "pixmap" approach within xbmc.

[fritsch]

The pixmap code has been removed from xbmc completely. It was not standard conform and nothing more than a evil hack.
See here: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/commit/2eb7...f93a8bb301