Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Dev

MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL

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gary.buhrmaster at gmail

Apr 10, 2012, 1:41 PM

Post #1 of 21 (10583 views)
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MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL

Now that 0.25 has been released (congratulations and
thanks to all the developers for their work), a question
about the 0.26 feature list, and specifically OpenGL
plans and the removal of XVideo.

As originally announced at:

http://www.mythtv.org/news/144/XvMC%20and%20libmpeg2%20to%20be%20dropped%20in%200.25

there is a long term plan to move to OpenGL and
remove XVideo support. Where does this plan stand
for the 0.26 time frame?

Thanks for any feedback.

Gary
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danielk at cuymedia

Apr 11, 2012, 5:27 AM

Post #2 of 21 (9644 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On Tue, 2012-04-10 at 20:41 +0000, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> Now that 0.25 has been released (congratulations and
> thanks to all the developers for their work), a question
> about the 0.26 feature list, and specifically OpenGL
> plans and the removal of XVideo.
>
> As originally announced at:
>
> http://www.mythtv.org/news/144/XvMC%20and%20libmpeg2%20to%20be%20dropped%20in%200.25
>
> there is a long term plan to move to OpenGL and
> remove XVideo support. Where does this plan stand
> for the 0.26 time frame?

Not in 0.26. I did some testing and the OpenGL video
renderers are just too demanding to run acceptably
on graphics cards released just last year.

I do plan to simplify the XVideo renderer so it is
easier to maintain going forward, but that should
impact almost no-one.

-- Daniel

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jyavenard at gmail

Apr 11, 2012, 6:08 AM

Post #3 of 21 (8147 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 11 April 2012 22:27, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk [at] cuymedia> wrote:
> Not in 0.26. I did some testing and the OpenGL video
> renderers are just too demanding to run acceptably
> on graphics cards released just last year.

What graphic cards have you tried for which OpenGL was too demanding?

even the Intel HD3000 has no issue handling OpenGL ; I can't think of
a lower spec graphic card.
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danielk at cuymedia

Apr 11, 2012, 6:44 AM

Post #4 of 21 (11766 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On Wed, 2012-04-11 at 23:08 +1000, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> On 11 April 2012 22:27, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk [at] cuymedia> wrote:
> > Not in 0.26. I did some testing and the OpenGL video
> > renderers are just too demanding to run acceptably
> > on graphics cards released just last year.
>
> What graphic cards have you tried for which OpenGL was too demanding?
>
> even the Intel HD3000 has no issue handling OpenGL ; I can't think of
> a lower spec graphic card.

NVS 3100M -- http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs_techspecs.html

It's a lower end laptop chip but it was in a new laptop I bought
just last year. It was close enough that maybe some optimization
might make it work, but it wasn't up to the job as is.

-- Daniel

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raymond at wagnerrp

Apr 11, 2012, 7:09 AM

Post #5 of 21 (8076 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 4/11/2012 09:44, Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-04-11 at 23:08 +1000, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
>> On 11 April 2012 22:27, Daniel Kristjansson<danielk [at] cuymedia> wrote:
>>> Not in 0.26. I did some testing and the OpenGL video
>>> renderers are just too demanding to run acceptably
>>> on graphics cards released just last year.
>> What graphic cards have you tried for which OpenGL was too demanding?
>>
>> even the Intel HD3000 has no issue handling OpenGL ; I can't think of
>> a lower spec graphic card.
> NVS 3100M -- http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs_techspecs.html
>
> It's a lower end laptop chip but it was in a new laptop I bought
> just last year. It was close enough that maybe some optimization
> might make it work, but it wasn't up to the job as is.

That doesn't make much sense, as the NVS 3100M is just an ION2, which
does fine with the OpenGL video renderer. Even my considerably lesser
powered onboard 8200 can handle OpenGL.
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Apr 11, 2012, 4:01 PM

Post #6 of 21 (8766 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 04/11/2012 10:09 AM, Raymond Wagner wrote:
> On 4/11/2012 09:44, Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
>> On Wed, 2012-04-11 at 23:08 +1000, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
>>> On 11 April 2012 22:27, Daniel Kristjansson<danielk [at] cuymedia>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Not in 0.26. I did some testing and the OpenGL video
>>>> renderers are just too demanding to run acceptably
>>>> on graphics cards released just last year.
>>> What graphic cards have you tried for which OpenGL was too demanding?
>>>
>>> even the Intel HD3000 has no issue handling OpenGL ; I can't think of
>>> a lower spec graphic card.
>> NVS 3100M -- http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs_techspecs.html
>>
>> It's a lower end laptop chip but it was in a new laptop I bought
>> just last year. It was close enough that maybe some optimization
>> might make it work, but it wasn't up to the job as is.
>
> That doesn't make much sense, as the NVS 3100M is just an ION2, which
> does fine with the OpenGL video renderer. Even my considerably lesser
> powered onboard 8200 can handle OpenGL.

I think the issue is that (our current implementation of) OpenGL video
rendering is significantly more CPU-intensive (and/or
memory-/bandwidth-intensive) than XVideo rendering, so OpenGL rendering
with any video card--even modern/high-performance/"ideal" ones--will
require significantly more resources than XVideo. Chances are Daniel's
laptop has a less-capable CPU or whatever than your system--even though
it has a newer GPU.

Mike
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jyavenard at gmail

Apr 12, 2012, 6:24 PM

Post #7 of 21 (8680 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 11 April 2012 23:44, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk [at] cuymedia> wrote:

> NVS 3100M -- http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs_techspecs.html
>
> It's a lower end laptop chip but it was in a new laptop I bought
> just last year. It was close enough that maybe some optimization
> might make it work, but it wasn't up to the job as is.

There is no way that video chip, with any CPU currently available
wouldn't handle OpenGL just fine.

The issue is more likely with your setup and probably not using the
correct drivers than with the hardware.

Even a low-end atom with the nvs 3100M will do just fine (and there
are plenty of users using such low-end machine as frontend).

Having said that. I don't see why keeping XVideo is incompatible with
improving OpenGL rendering/playback. For some reasons, few have
started to repeat that nonsense when it has no technical basis.
That XVideo doesn't allow some features, doesn't mean it can't be done
with OpenGL and only available when using OpenGL.
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dargllun at googlemail

Apr 17, 2012, 11:07 AM

Post #8 of 21 (7909 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

Sorry to jump in late, I just found this thread and subscribed to the
list, hence I have no previous mail to reply properly to.

I'm a long-term Radeon HD3200 user. To this day, even with 0.25, the
best option for this chip (and presumably many others) unfortunately
still is Xv using the open-source radeon driver. Believe me, I have
spent countless hours trying different options and always came back to
this configuration. To sum it up:

a) fglrx:
- unstable feature set
- flakey suspend behaviour (by itself a no-go for me)
- no /sys/class/drm/ interface for HDMI hotplug scripting
- Xv: tearing, jittery
- OpenGL: tearing, jittery

b) OSS radeon
+ good OS integration
+ Xv: superb performance, very real-time even with additional system-load
- OpenGL: has gotten way better over the past year, but still jittery,
even without deinterlacing. Note that there is still lots of CPU power left
- OpenGL lite: same as OpenGL
- VDPAU mesa state tracker: same as OpenGL
+ nice /sys/class/drm/ interface for HDMI hotplug scripting

As much as I love to use OpenGL for the well known benefits, it simly is
no option.

That leaves us with 2 bottom lines:

a) Xv is still badly needed, please treat it gently

b) OpenGL on radeon seems to be almost there, but still uses a bit more
CPU than Xv and suffers from real time issues (judder)

Thanks for a great piece of software!

Greg
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jyavenard at gmail

Apr 17, 2012, 4:50 PM

Post #9 of 21 (7897 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 18 April 2012 04:07, dargllun <dargllun [at] googlemail> wrote:
>
> a) fglrx:
> - unstable feature set
> - flakey suspend behaviour (by itself a no-go for me)
> - no /sys/class/drm/ interface for HDMI hotplug scripting
> - Xv: tearing, jittery
> - OpenGL: tearing, jittery

As a side note, last week I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 and also tried
the latest ATI drivers as of early April 2012.

OpenGL painter with OpenGL rendering was just perfect. I had some
tearing which disappeared after I set the "Tear-free desktop" option.

I was very pleased. It worked brilliantly and the quality was as good
as it could be (when using non-nvidia deinterlacers that is)..

>
> b) OSS radeon
> + good OS integration
> + Xv: superb performance, very real-time even with additional system-load
> - OpenGL: has gotten way better over the past year, but still jittery, even
> without deinterlacing. Note that there is still lots of CPU power left
> - OpenGL lite: same as OpenGL
> - VDPAU mesa state tracker: same as OpenGL
> + nice /sys/class/drm/ interface for HDMI hotplug scripting

OSS Radeon OpenGL was broken for me however still... Had to use Qt/Xv
; which gave me a good quality anyway...

I would still go with an nvidia card should I have a choice.
But as my iMac comes with an ATI Radeon 9670 I had no choice on the matter.

I had no issue with suspend / resume with either drivers...

JY
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dargllun at googlemail

Apr 17, 2012, 11:27 PM

Post #10 of 21 (7852 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 18.04.2012 01:50, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> As a side note, last week I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 and also tried
> the latest ATI drivers as of early April 2012.
>
> OpenGL painter with OpenGL rendering was just perfect. I had some
> tearing which disappeared after I set the "Tear-free desktop" option.
>
> I was very pleased. It worked brilliantly and the quality was as good
> as it could be (when using non-nvidia deinterlacers that is)..

Thanks for reporting this. I must admit I don't try every single fglrx
release anymore. Funny though, over at the xbmc-xvba guys, the first
thing they urge you to do is turn OFF "Tear-free desktop" :-) It's a mess...

> OSS Radeon OpenGL was broken for me however still... Had to use Qt/Xv
> ; which gave me a good quality anyway...

Indeed. But again, OpenGL isn't broken, it's just not yet fully
real-time. But then again I'm using cutting edge Mesa drivers which may
be better than stock ones.

> I had no issue with suspend / resume with either drivers...

Long run is what counts - care to report again in a month or so when
there's been plenty of suspend/resume cycles without a reboot?

Greg
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lvr at softsystem

Apr 18, 2012, 2:21 AM

Post #11 of 21 (8463 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On Wed, 2012-04-18 at 08:27 +0200, dargllun wrote:
> On 18.04.2012 01:50, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> > As a side note, last week I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 and also tried
> > the latest ATI drivers as of early April 2012.
> >
> > OpenGL painter with OpenGL rendering was just perfect. I had some
> > tearing which disappeared after I set the "Tear-free desktop" option.
> >
> > I was very pleased. It worked brilliantly and the quality was as good
> > as it could be (when using non-nvidia deinterlacers that is)..
>
> Thanks for reporting this. I must admit I don't try every single fglrx
> release anymore. Funny though, over at the xbmc-xvba guys, the first
> thing they urge you to do is turn OFF "Tear-free desktop" :-) It's a mess...

I'm using the latest 12.3 Catalyst driver with a Radeon HD6410D (onboard
a 3400 APU) and OpenGL is 'juddery' on both Myth 0.24 and 0.25 (any
profile). OpenGL is definitely better on 0.25 but is not really
watchable on a big screen, unlike Xv. It's not a CPU problem - top only
shows 30% rendering HD material. The system also has problems with
OpenGL GUI rendering on both Myth 0.24 and 0.25 so this system uses Qt
for its GUI.

The only issue I had with Xv is occasional tearing which was resolved
with:
aticonfig --set-pcs-u32=DDX,EnableTearFreeDesktop,1
aticonfig --vs on

> > OSS Radeon OpenGL was broken for me however still... Had to use Qt/Xv
> > ; which gave me a good quality anyway...
>
> Indeed. But again, OpenGL isn't broken, it's just not yet fully
> real-time. But then again I'm using cutting edge Mesa drivers which may
> be better than stock ones.

I too would prefer to run the Xorg radeon driver (for better 2D
performance and to test OpenGL) but the xorg-video-ati driver (version
6.14.0) that ships with Xorg 7.6 on Ubuntu doesn't support the HD6410D.
According to the Xorg release notes I need the 6.14.99 driver. So I
need to pluck up courage and try the xorg-edgers fresh X ppa at
Launchpad. Anyone know if this is stable and usable?

I have another box with a Radeon HD 4250, which is supported by the
xorg-video-ati v6.14 driver, and have tried that with Myth 0.24 OpenGL
and found the quality significantly inferior to Xv - again playback is
juddery. This system works OK with OpenGL GUI rendering. I will be
upgrading to 0.25 over the coming weeks so will test again with OpenGL
playback.

> > I had no issue with suspend / resume with either drivers...
>
> Long run is what counts - care to report again in a month or so when
> there's been plenty of suspend/resume cycles without a reboot?

Suspend/resume work fine for me too on both Radeon systems with a custom
Linux 3.2.12 kernel.

--
Lawrence
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dargllun at googlemail

Apr 18, 2012, 2:45 AM

Post #12 of 21 (7946 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 18.04.2012 11:21, Lawrence Rust wrote:
> I too would prefer to run the Xorg radeon driver (for better 2D
> performance and to test OpenGL) but the xorg-video-ati driver (version
> 6.14.0) that ships with Xorg 7.6 on Ubuntu doesn't support the HD6410D.
> According to the Xorg release notes I need the 6.14.99 driver. So I
> need to pluck up courage and try the xorg-edgers fresh X ppa at
> Launchpad. Anyone know if this is stable and usable?

This well maintainted PPA contains much more recent drivers which should
support your HW:
https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/graphics-drivers

Support and discussion can be found here:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?50038-Updated-and-Optimized-Ubuntu-Free-Graphics-Drivers

If it doesn't work you can always ppa-purge it to get back to your
current drivers, so not much courage is required for this. Make sure you
save your current xorg.conf somewhere though.

Jean-Yves, given that with AMD we never know when the rope will be cut
for older GPUs, I think the OSS driver performance is important. Also,
as indicated in my earlier post with OSS drivers there even is VDPAU
support for capable AMD GPUs. Perhaps you want to try this on your Mac
and give some feedback.

--
Regards
greg
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lvr at softsystem

Apr 18, 2012, 3:20 AM

Post #13 of 21 (7859 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On Wed, 2012-04-18 at 11:45 +0200, dargllun wrote:
> On 18.04.2012 11:21, Lawrence Rust wrote:
> > I too would prefer to run the Xorg radeon driver (for better 2D
> > performance and to test OpenGL) but the xorg-video-ati driver (version
> > 6.14.0) that ships with Xorg 7.6 on Ubuntu doesn't support the HD6410D.
> > According to the Xorg release notes I need the 6.14.99 driver. So I
> > need to pluck up courage and try the xorg-edgers fresh X ppa at
> > Launchpad. Anyone know if this is stable and usable?
>
> This well maintainted PPA contains much more recent drivers which should
> support your HW:
> https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/graphics-drivers

Thanks for the link. that's exactly what I was looking for. Just
upgrading the driver is much safer & easier than the whole of X. I have
used the “xorg crack pushers” ppa in the past for just driver updates
but sadly it's no longer maintained.

--
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jyavenard at gmail

Apr 18, 2012, 3:37 AM

Post #14 of 21 (8764 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 18 April 2012 19:45, dargllun <dargllun [at] googlemail> wrote:
> Jean-Yves, given that with AMD we never know when the rope will be cut
> for older GPUs, I think the OSS driver performance is important. Also,
> as indicated in my earlier post with OSS drivers there even is VDPAU
> support for capable AMD GPUs. Perhaps you want to try this on your Mac
> and give some feedback.

BTW, I made a mistake in regards to my mac, it's not a 9670, but a
Radeon HD 6970.

A slightly more powerful beast.
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dargllun at googlemail

Apr 19, 2012, 12:02 PM

Post #15 of 21 (7833 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 18.04.2012 01:50, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> On 18 April 2012 04:07, dargllun<dargllun [at] googlemail> wrote:
>>
>> a) fglrx:
>> - unstable feature set
>> - flakey suspend behaviour (by itself a no-go for me)
>> - no /sys/class/drm/ interface for HDMI hotplug scripting
>> - Xv: tearing, jittery
>> - OpenGL: tearing, jittery
>
> As a side note, last week I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 and also tried
> the latest ATI drivers as of early April 2012.
>
> OpenGL painter with OpenGL rendering was just perfect. I had some
> tearing which disappeared after I set the "Tear-free desktop" option.
>
> I was very pleased. It worked brilliantly and the quality was as good
> as it could be (when using non-nvidia deinterlacers that is)..

Ok, so I took up the challenge and installed fglrx 12.3. Unfortunately I
was not as pleased. BTW, for testing I usually not only play SD and HD
material, but I always try a canned clip from some news channel which
contains a text scroll at the bottom - the ultimate test for the
real-time performance.

Specs:
AMD HD3200 RS780 GPU (r600),
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+
FGLRX 12.3
MythTV 0.25 fixes from mythrepos as of today

In all configurations the kernel(2x) deint was used, as it gives me the
best results while treating the CPU gently.

- Qt painter, xv-blit: nearly ok, but occasionaly hic-ups.
- Qt painter, Open-GL, tear-free off: nearly ok, but occasionaly hic-ups.
- Qt painter, Open-GL, tear-free on: good rendering, but burning CPU
cycles as crazy. One core fully loaded. Quitting sometimes resulted in a
frozen image and non-responding frontend, but the X session could at
least be terminated
- OpenGL painter, Open-GL: frozen GPU, had to reboot.

So that's leading me nowhere really. Also, this GPU is rather old and I
wouldn't be surprised if AMD stopped supporting it.

On the bright side, the OSS drivers have very much improved over the
last years, and substantially so by AMD devs. It would be good if the
OSS drivers would be supported by mythtv, cause they'll stay around. For
the time being, Xv is mandatory, but perhaps OpenGL will be an option in
the future if it's real-time performance improves. (It doesn't appear to
be a CPU issue as Lawrence and I have observed!)

Regards
Greg

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stuart at tase

Apr 19, 2012, 12:47 PM

Post #16 of 21 (7789 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On Thursday 19 Apr 2012 21:02:53 dargllun wrote:
> On the bright side, the OSS drivers have very much improved over the
> last years, and substantially so by AMD devs. It would be good if the
> OSS drivers would be supported by mythtv, cause they'll stay around.

We support vendor neutral APIs* e.g. OpenGL. It's really up to the drivers to
support OpenGL and if they do that then it should just work with MythTV. We're
not talking about a proprietary protocol, or even something new since OpenGL
has been around for 20 years. We're not expecting high demand 3D processing at
100 fps with AA, dynamic lighting effects and the rest, just very basic 2D
performance. It's shocking really that we were able to play Quake 2 et al 15
years ago on hardware less powerful than you'd find in many mobile devices,
yet even today you can't get decent 2D performance from enormously more
powerful hardware on linux.

Right now it seems only the proprietary Nvidia drivers work well enough. The
drivers for Intel and ATi hardware display underwhelming performance and
stability.

* with the exception of vdpau for which there is no working ATI equivalent
--
Stuart Morgan
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dargllun at googlemail

Apr 19, 2012, 1:03 PM

Post #17 of 21 (7802 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 19.04.2012 21:47, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> On Thursday 19 Apr 2012 21:02:53 dargllun wrote:
>> On the bright side, the OSS drivers have very much improved over the
>> last years, and substantially so by AMD devs. It would be good if the
>> OSS drivers would be supported by mythtv, cause they'll stay around.
>
> We support vendor neutral APIs* e.g. OpenGL. It's really up to the drivers to
> support OpenGL and if they do that then it should just work with MythTV. We're
...
> Right now it seems only the proprietary Nvidia drivers work well
> enough.

You are right, of course. With "support" I really meant testing.
Currently it seems no longer to be a performance issue. The OpenGL video
rendering of the AMD OSS drivers is good enough. Mplayer and xbmc show
it can be done. I'm not aware of the implementation details, but to me
it seems that opengl output may not benefit as much/at all from
real-time prios and/or drm vblank interrupts.

> Right now it seems only the proprietary Nvidia drivers work well enough. The
> drivers for Intel and ATi hardware display underwhelming performance and
> stability.
>
> * with the exception of vdpau for which there is no working ATI equivalent

Actually there is, as I have mentioned in previous posts to this thread.
The open source drivers for r600+ chips and Mesa > 8.0 do provide the
VDPAU interface. And it actually works with MythTV, but with the same
limitations as OpenGL: not fully real-time rendering.

Greg
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gary.buhrmaster at gmail

Apr 19, 2012, 1:38 PM

Post #18 of 21 (7846 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 20:03, dargllun <dargllun [at] googlemail> wrote:
....
> Actually there is, as I have mentioned in previous posts to this thread. The
> open source drivers for r600+ chips and Mesa > 8.0 do provide the VDPAU
> interface. And it actually works with MythTV, but with the same limitations
> as OpenGL: not fully real-time rendering.

VAAPI was promoted as the open source vendor neutral
solution. Other than Intel (who has clear motives for
choosing a solution that does not tie you to A or n),
there has not been a lot of manufacturer support for
that solution.

Gary
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dargllun at googlemail

Apr 19, 2012, 10:57 PM

Post #19 of 21 (7828 views)
Permalink

Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 19.04.2012 21:02, dargllun wrote:
> On the bright side, the OSS drivers have very much improved over the
> last years, and substantially so by AMD devs. It would be good if the
> OSS drivers would be supported by mythtv, cause they'll stay around. For
> the time being, Xv is mandatory, but perhaps OpenGL will be an option in
> the future if it's real-time performance improves. (It doesn't appear to
> be a CPU issue as Lawrence and I have observed!)

As a small follow up, at the end of my testing session last night, when
I reverted the system back to the OSS drivers, I still had enabled the
opengl renderer and for exactly one time I got a perfect picture,
without any judder! "top" should absolutely reasonable values and I just
could not believe my eyes. I exited watching and double checked the
renderer settings. I then restarted and things were worse as ever: the
video came out in juddery, jerky bursts, a complete nightmare. I know
such a report sounds lame and everybody will be thinking I must have
missed something very important. But for the life of me I can't figure
it out. (Of course I do have configured real-time priorities and I let
Myth adjust the display frequency according to the video).

Greg
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dargllun at googlemail

May 1, 2012, 11:33 PM

Post #20 of 21 (7215 views)
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Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On 19.04.2012 21:47, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> We support vendor neutral APIs* e.g. OpenGL. It's really up to the drivers to
> support OpenGL and if they do that then it should just work with MythTV. We're
> not talking about a proprietary protocol, or even something new since OpenGL
> has been around for 20 years. We're not expecting high demand 3D processing at
> 100 fps with AA, dynamic lighting effects and the rest, just very basic 2D
> performance. It's shocking really that we were able to play Quake 2 et al 15
> years ago on hardware less powerful than you'd find in many mobile devices,
> yet even today you can't get decent 2D performance from enormously more
> powerful hardware on linux.
>
> Right now it seems only the proprietary Nvidia drivers work well enough. The
> drivers for Intel and ATi hardware display underwhelming performance and
> stability.

I just receveived some interesting feedback from an OSS DRI developer.
When reading the mythtv logs I always thought that the KMS blanking
method is the best to choose. Hower, it seems that for OpenGL output
there are special APIs which would be more approriate:

On 01.05.2012 09:49, Michel D�nzer wrote:
> On Fre, 2012-04-27 at 17:21 +0200, Greg G. wrote:
> > On 26.04.2012 07:58, Michel D�nzer wrote:
> >> What are the other options for 'blanking method' (I assume that's
> >> related to sync to vertical blank)? Do any of them work better?
> > Myth automatically chooses that mechanism, I can't change it. IIRC
> > if there is now KMS vblank it used to use an RTC timer. But surely
> > KMS blanking is the best way to do it.
>
> No, the corresponding GLX APIs would be better.

To me this sounds like a very promising option to explore. What do you
think?

Regards
Greg
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james.dutton at gmail

May 2, 2012, 5:25 AM

Post #21 of 21 (7529 views)
Permalink

Re: MythTV 0.26, XVideo, and OpenGL [In reply to]

On Apr 11, 2012 9:45 AM, "Daniel Kristjansson" <danielk [at] cuymedia> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2012-04-11 at 23:08 +1000, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> > On 11 April 2012 22:27, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk [at] cuymedia>
wrote:
> > > Not in 0.26. I did some testing and the OpenGL video
> > > renderers are just too demanding to run acceptably
> > > on graphics cards released just last year.
> >
> > What graphic cards have you tried for which OpenGL was too demanding?
> >
> > even the Intel HD3000 has no issue handling OpenGL ; I can't think of
> > a lower spec graphic card.
>
> NVS 3100M -- http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs_techspecs.html
>
> It's a lower end laptop chip but it was in a new laptop I bought
> just last year. It was close enough that maybe some optimization
> might make it work, but it wasn't up to the job as is.
>
From my experience developing xine, the main problem with video playback is
not CPU power. It is the amount of data sent over the pci/agp etc. video
bus.
Sending RGB is the worst.
Sending XV or YUV is better.
Sending XVMC is much better
Sending VDPAU or VAAPI is the best, but only slightly better than XVMC.

Another consideration is how to do overlays with each of the above.
OpenGL makes overlays easy, but does not perform well on some systems.
OpenGL and vdpau/vaapi go well together.
I don't understand why OpenGL with YUV blits turns out worse than XV,
because the amount of data over the bus should be the same.

James

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