Video still skipping

Well I have tried a few more things to get video not to skip.

I upgraded the slower computer to KDE 4.2 and that didn’t help. I rechecked all my packages and had a few that came from VideoLan that I changed to packman.

I added a few more media players with no change.

I can except the fact that maybe Linux requires faster hardware then Windows does to play Video but the main system I have should be well within the system requirements.

The only thing that I can tell makes a difference is the length of the video. 15m videos don’t skip at all. 30m videos skip just enough to make them unwatchable. 1hr videos are really bad and movies are bad.

Mainly MPG video skips. If I play an XviD from AXXO I can play it but it feels slow. You guys know what I mean when a program feels sluggish.

I have completely given up on the computer in my garage it does everything slow. I think I might upgrade my main system with a quad core AMD soon and move all the parts from this system in to the garage. But I sill can’t get video to play on this system though and its hard to believe that I need to use a multiple core processor just to play video. But thats what it feels like. The program just feels like it needs more power to play smooth. I just can’t believe that is the case.

I tried changing the priority of kaffene and that didn’t help. I set it to -15 and it didn’t change anything. I can’t figure out how to change the priority permanently. I just used renice to change the priority after it was running.

Does anyone have any ideas here, this can’t be the only time this has came up. I am really desperate for some help.

Hi
The only two things that I can think of now are setting the cache to be
bigger for which ever media player your using and the other one is GPU
temperature…

I play 40-50 min recordings on this machine with mplayer or stream DVB
from my USB HDTV adaptor and have no problems…


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 x86 Kernel 2.6.27.7-9-default
up 1 day 16:28, 2 users, load average: 1.23, 1.35, 1.09
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 180.22

I think you will need to list the specific versions of the applications that you are using, and their dependencies, if you wish to have this investigated further.

I typically use KDE-3.5.10 on openSUSE-11.1, but I had not experienced any problems with video playback on openSUSE-11.1 KDE-4.1.3 on an old PC (athlon-1100 with 1GByte of RAM, slow nVidia MX400/440 graphics).

So I just started up the PC a few minutes ago, and played a couple of 45-minute video clips with KDE-4.1.3 on openSUSE-11.1.

They played fine with smplayer. No sluggishness. Note I do NOT have special desktop effects enabled. Do you?

I can’t help but think this is something in your hardware, or your software setup.

I did nothing special after install. I simply added Packman, oss, non-oss, and update as my repositories and installed my multimedia on this old PC, and it just works under KDE-4.1.3 for video playback.

I have tried playing with the cashe, The only thing it does is make it harder to skip ahead in the video.

I am nut sure about the GPU temp lmsensors will not read it.

I was just using smplayer and watching the logs while a video plays. After a few seconds sound stops and the video slows down to a crawl and a few seconds later it stops all together. Like its paused. If a pause and play it it does the same thing.

Nothing comes up in the logs at all during this.

What information do you need. I would be happy to provide it.

Hardware:
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
AMD Athlon 2800+
1G Corsair TwinX (2x512 dual channel)
Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT (Using Nvidia Drivers - Oneclick)

  • Configured in dual head with 2 monitors
    Sound Blaster Audigy

Software:
OpenSUSE 11.1 - KDE 4.1
Conky

Regarding software I have tried disabling desktop affects and it does not help the problem and I have tried shutting conky off and still no help.

I can’t believe this.

I just tried again to disable desktop affects and it worked.

No more skipping.

I guess I will just have to disable desktop affects before I watch videos. Do you think at some point this will be fixed.

Hi
nvidia-setting GUI should show you the GPU temperature?


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 x86 Kernel 2.6.27.7-9-default
up 1 day 17:01, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.40, 0.56
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 180.22

I just looked and it did not show temp.

As noted above, the information would be the applications you are using, their version numbers, and the version numbers of their dependencies.

If that appears difficult, then you could also try working your way through the follow troubleshooting guide created by RedDwarf, to see if can discover any applications that you may be missing/find useful. Check your multimedia problem in ten steps - openSUSE Forums

The fact that avi’s play ok and mpeg’s do not, suggest to me that there may be a more efficient mpeg decoder than what you are using now? or it could be your player? Did you try all of the following ?

  • xine
  • vlc
  • smplayer

I note your hardware is significantly faster than my old athlon-1100. Yet my althlon appears to be ok.

I also note there was a bug in “vlc” where it skipped when playing mpeg files on openSUSE-10.3. This was a vlc version specific bug, which did not exist on older vlc versions. I have not observed this behavior on 11.1 KDE4.

I recommend you keep your 3D disabled, until you sort this. Also, after disabling your 3D, do NOT forget to switch your video output module in your video players to “auto” or “xv” (for xvideo) to take full advantage of 3D being disabled.

OK, glad you have this sorted.

It could be you had a different output video mode selected the second time you tested it.

Hi
You could try setting your output to X11 if it’s set to xv.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 x86 Kernel 2.6.27.7-9-default
up 1 day 17:09, 1 user, load average: 0.29, 0.25, 0.40
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 180.22

I didn’t disable 3D support. I just disabled desktop affects.

Should I disable 3D support. Wouldn’t that require a restart of the Xserver.

I have tried that. I don’t have an X11 output modual.

I meant desktop effects. I inappropriately used those two synonymously.

I do not use 3D nor desktop effects.

Typically xv is far more efficient than x11, when x11 is available.

Yes xv is the one I have been using.

I think now I am going to upgrade this computer and use the left over hardware to upgrade the computer in my shop.