NVidia & XBMC - Coppy Playback (with a twist...)

English Multimedia
1

Hi everyone!

Ok, been battling a choppy playback with mild tearing issue with XBMC on my OpenSUSE 12.1 box. Let me preface this by saying that XBMC worked fine when this same PC was loaded with Mandriva 2010.0. There’s a twist though: XBMC works fine when logged into the Gnome session, but is choppy when logged into the standalone XBMC session. This choppiness includes playback of all video filetypes (that I tried) choppiness of the menus and GUI as well as choppiness of the music visualizations. All of which work fine when running XBMC from the Gnome session. Here’s some info:

  • Hardware: Core i5 -based home built PC with NVidia GT220 graphics card (eVGA if it matters) and 2GB of DDR3 ram
  • I have the G02 NVidia drivers installed (via one-click) which seem to be working fine when logged into Gnome
  • I have added “nomodeset” to the /boot/grub/menu.lst file which fixed the choppiness in XBMC when logged into Gnome, but not the standalone XBMC!!!

At least I can run XBMC from Gnome, but why is the standalone XBMC session still acting screwy? Could it be because nvidia-settings doesn’t run with the standalone? I noticed when trying to set the refresh rate in the standalone, that some weird options were only available: 55, 56, 57, 58Hz.

Any idears? And thanks in advance as always!!! :slight_smile:

Y’all got me this far…I’M SO CLOSE to a perfect system!!! :smiley:

2

As an nVIDIA card user its my suggestion you load the Proprietary Video driver and see what you get:

Installing the nVIDIA Video Driver the Hard Way - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

LNVHW - Load NVIDIA (driver the) Hard Way from runlevel 3 - Version 1.20 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

It is also possible to load the nVIDIA driver from a repository as well.

Thank You,

3

I do have the proprietary NVidia driver installed. Unless that’s not what gets installed here (via one click): SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE

Would reinstalling via “the hard way” make a difference? I’ll try when I get home.

Thanks for the reply!

4

If XBMC works fine in the Gnome session, but not fine in its standalone XBMC session…what is different between the two sessions (other than Gnome is not loaded in the standalone)? This is the same user for both sessions too.

Could it be that nvidia-settings is not loading? Or something like that?

In the Gnome session, everything in XBMC works perfectly so there’s got to be a configuration issue going on.

5

I’ve seen choppy playback in a weak CPU (intel atom w/pinetree video) running under KDE when compositing is enabled. You could try disabling it in Xorg.conf if it isn’t already.

6

There is no xorg.conf file. Do I need to create one? If so, is there a template or something I can use because if I create one from scratch I’m sure I’ll have this thing crashing harder than a drunk driver on new years. :wink:

7

^^^Never mind to the above question. I found this:

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/advanced-how-faq-read-only/438705-opensuse-graphic-card-practical-theory-guide-users.html#post2164522

Should I create an xorg.conf file or edit one of the xorg.conf.d files? If I should edit one of the existing files, I’m assuming it’s the “device” file. If I remember back to the Mandriva 2010.0 installation I had before this, I had to manually add “DynamicTwinView = false” and “Compositing = Disable” to it (or something along those lines).

Thank you for the reply!

8

FIXED!

For future reference for others out there wanting to create their own media center PCs with OpenSUSE 12.1 and NVidia graphics, here’s what I did to get XBMC working in standalone:

  1. Install NVidia proprietary driver (I used the one-click and it worked fine): SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE
  2. Create an xorg.conf file: at the boot prompt, type 3 to boot to command prompt. Login as user, then “su -”, and type “nvidia-xconfig.” This will create an xorg.conf file for you. Reboot.
  3. Edit the newly created xorg.conf file using your favorite editor and add this to the “Device” section: Option “DynamicTwinView” "false"
  4. Install XBMC from .rpm. Can be found here: Files of Package xbmc (Project Multimedia) - Packman Build Service

Enjoy! VDPAU and playback should work fine after that!

Edit: if you still experience choppy playback after all that, then type “nomodeset” at the boot prompt and see if that fixes it. Google how to make that permanent if it does clear things up.

9

Ran out of time to edit the post above. :frowning:

To make nomodeset permanent, do this:

Open the /boot/grub/menu.lst file using your favorite editor as root and add nomodeset to the end of the normal linux section. Like this:

title openSUSE 12.1
    root (hd0,4)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.0-1.2-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS545050B9A300_110827PD6400X7KRPB3A-part5 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS545050B9A300_110827PD6400X7KRPB3A-part6 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=normal nomodeset

That will make it permanent. :smiley:

10

So, you must add in nomodeset kernel load option to install the nVIDIA driver the hard way & you should also be blacklisting the nouveau driver to prevent it from needlessly loading. So, not quite sure how the one click is working there, but I am happy to hear you got your XBMC working as you like. Thank You,

11

I think I did the nomodeset thing first before I installed the nvidia driver via one-click. Not positive…I’ve slept since then :wink: …but I think I did that first.

Would I still need to blacklist the nouveau driver since I now have a specific xorg.conf file pointing to the proprietary driver?

12

Yes, you need to black list nouveau because it can still load even though it is not used. Take a look with my S.K.I.M. bash script you can find here:

S.K.I.M. - SuSE Kernel Installed Modules - A lsmod replacement- Creates Alphabetized Module Listing - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

Thank You,

13

WOW! I didn’t know it could still load. Well, I definitely don’t want that so I’ll blacklist that sucker.

Thank you so much for your time and help! :slight_smile:

14

jdmcdaniel3 wrote:

> So, you must add in nomodeset kernel load option to install the nVIDIA
> driver the hard way & you should also be blacklisting the nouveau driver
> to prevent it from needlessly loading. So, not quite sure how the one
> click is working there, but I am happy to hear you got your XBMC working
> as you like. Thank You,

From what I’ve seen, the later drivers (.280+) make several changes to the
config files to take care of nouveau. One of the .270+ Nvidia drivers noted
nouveau installed during installation and offered to make the changes for
you so it’s likely included under the hood in later versions.

–
Will Honea