[SamLowry]

I'm trying to use mplayer as external player for AVCHD files (CANON HF100 recordings).

I understand that VDPAU capable hardware is recommended for this scenario, but I would like to use my MSI MEDIA LIVE powered by “AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2350 and GeForce 6150-LE”.

If I run mplayer in standalone mode, the video is played very smoothly.

However, if I spawn mplayer as XBMC’s external player, it reports that my hardware is too slow to play this content. It looks like CPU resources available to mplayer in this context are just below the required minimum.

Is there anything I can do about this?


DETAILS:
OS: Linux
Kernel: 2.6.32-gentoo-r7
XBMC: Camelot compiled from source
Xorg-server: 1.6.5
Nvidia Drivers: 173.14.25
Mplayer: mplayer from SVN trunk with ffmpeg-mt git.

[poofyhairguy]

Why not use the regular XBMC player instead of an external player?

[SamLowry]

Why not use the regular XBMC player instead of an external player?

Well, I prefer to use mplayer because of it's "fixed-vo" function. I play playlists of multiple clips, and the RE-INITIALIZING if video output device (without fixed-vo) is really boring. Furthermore, my hdmi-connected JVC tv misses (skips) first 2 seconds of audio stream whenever audio output is RE-initialized. To handle this, I've made a small patch to mplayer that implements "fixed-ao" as well. This way I get really smooth switching from one clip to another within the playlist.

[SamLowry]

Hey, I found the trick that does it: "nice -n -20 mplayer ...".

Thanks anyway.