Problems with VDADecoder on MacMini (2ghz/1gb ram. nVidia 9400m)

Hello All!

after posting on the xbmc.org homepage, davilla recommended I post my error here. Unfortunately, the mini that I'm experiencing problems with is at another location and I can't currently provide a debug log (however I will update as soon as I can).

I've tried Every OS X XBMC build since May 1st and have encountered the same problem. 1080p videos still stutter and drop a ton of frames (Avatar 1080p release 15mb/s video bitrate, Planet Earth 1080p bird scene, etc. ) I HAVE verified that the mini is running osx 10.6.3 and that the vda-h264 appears when I hit "o" during playback of hi-def content. CPU usage tends to be around 75% or so on all the high def stuff. To make things more complicated, I'm running boot camp with ubuntu karmic (9.1) and while running VDPAU in XBMC, all videos play perfectly (including the killa_sample!) .. I have another mac mini (more recent: 2.26 ghz, 2 gb ram nvidia 9400) running both Ubuntu and OSX 10.6.3 as well, and all 1080p content streams perfectly as well. This leads me to believe that perhaps I do not have enough ram in the 2.0 ghz mini to decode 1080p content even though VDADecoder appears to be running properly. Prior to updating to svn builds and using VDADecoder, CPU usage on the same files (avatar, planet earth) was over 150%! So clearly, the decoder is working to an extent.. but its still dropping too many frames, and is much too choppy to watch.

Does anyone else have a similar mini? (2.0 ghz, 1 gb ram) if so... Have you managed to get hardware acceleration using vdadecoder working proplerly?? Please help! With the exception of that one slower mini, XBMC has been running fantastically well on all my other systems! Any advice would be much appreciated. I will provide a debug log as soon as I can! Hopefully within the next 24-48 hours or so..

jkillah Wrote:Hello All!

after posting on the xbmc.org homepage, davilla recommended I post my error here. Unfortunately, the mini that I'm experiencing problems with is at another location and I can't currently provide a debug log (however I will update as soon as I can).

I've tried Every OS X XBMC build since May 1st and have encountered the same problem. 1080p videos still stutter and drop a ton of frames (Avatar 1080p release 15mb/s video bitrate, Planet Earth 1080p bird scene, etc. ) I HAVE verified that the mini is running osx 10.6.3 and that the vda-h264 appears when I hit "o" during playback of hi-def content. CPU usage tends to be around 75% or so on all the high def stuff. To make things more complicated, I'm running boot camp with ubuntu karmic (9.1) and while running VDPAU in XBMC, all videos play perfectly (including the killa_sample!) .. I have another mac mini (more recent: 2.26 ghz, 2 gb ram nvidia 9400) running both Ubuntu and OSX 10.6.3 as well, and all 1080p content streams perfectly as well. This leads me to believe that perhaps I do not have enough ram in the 2.0 ghz mini to decode 1080p content even though VDADecoder appears to be running properly. Prior to updating to svn builds and using VDADecoder, CPU usage on the same files (avatar, planet earth) was over 150%! So clearly, the decoder is working to an extent.. but its still dropping too many frames, and is much too choppy to watch.

Does anyone else have a similar mini? (2.0 ghz, 1 gb ram) if so... Have you managed to get hardware acceleration using vdadecoder working proplerly?? Please help! With the exception of that one slower mini, XBMC has been running fantastically well on all my other systems! Any advice would be much appreciated. I will provide a debug log as soon as I can! Hopefully within the next 24-48 hours or so..

are both MacMini's running with pbo's enabled ?

davilla Wrote:are both MacMini's running with pbo's enabled ?

Sorry, new to the whole debug thing... pbo's? tried googling, but I'm still not sure what you mean.

jkillah Wrote:Sorry, new to the whole debug thing... pbo's? tried googling, but I'm still not sure what you mean.

system -> video -> playback -> use pixel buffer objects, click.

davilla Wrote:system -> video -> playback -> use pixel buffer objects, click.

Sorry it took me so long to get back. Pixel buffer Objects is clicked on both minis... still no dice. Any other ideas?

jkillah Wrote:Sorry it took me so long to get back. Pixel buffer Objects is clicked on both minis... still no dice. Any other ideas?

compare xbmc.log from both boxes, playing the same video content. what's different ?

davilla Wrote:compare xbmc.log from both boxes, playing the same video content. what's different ?

Thanks for the reply!

The non-working mini is at my parents place. I'll head over tomorrow morning and grab the xbmc.log. I'll post the results tomorrow afternoon/evening.

But as far as you know, hardware should be ok, right? You think upgrading to 2 or 4 gigs of ram could make a difference? I noticed that his cpu is running around 75% on 1080p content, mine is around 40%, and a friend of mine with 4 gigs of ram in his mini is apparently around 25%.. I didn't think it could make that big a difference... but I'm not sure??

jkillah Wrote:Thanks for the reply!

The non-working mini is at my parents place. I'll head over tomorrow morning and grab the xbmc.log. I'll post the results tomorrow afternoon/evening.

But as far as you know, hardware should be ok, right? You think upgrading to 2 or 4 gigs of ram could make a difference? I noticed that his cpu is running around 75% on 1080p content, mine is around 40%, and a friend of mine with 4 gigs of ram in his mini is apparently around 25%.. I didn't think it could make that big a difference... but I'm not sure??

Possible, I forget the rules about GPU memory usage with OSX. There might be some issue with that. More ram always helps and since you know how to take it apart now

davilla Wrote:Possible, I forget the rules about GPU memory usage with OSX. There might be some issue with that. More ram always helps and since you know how to take it apart now

haha, actually, I never had to take it apart! Pop's mini was the first gen to come with the nVidia 9400. He'd actually bought a mini a week prior to the release of that one, with the GMA 950 chipset, but when the new one came out, I made him take it back and exchange it...

Ok, I've got the log file for the non-working mini...

This is the pastebin: http://pastebin.com/MUxFGESt


Haven't had a chance to compare it to to the working one yet, but I was wondering if maybe you're seeing something just by looking at it?

Also, I just did a completely clean install of the newest svn. App Zappered my previous version, hoping a clean install would help, but no dice!

The xbmc.log is me trying to play the 1080p avatar. XbMC dropped a ton of frames, and was nowhere near smooth... help!!