Re: Ideas why dvd playback is jerky?
On Fri, 2007-06-08 at 11:08 -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 11:34:21PM -0700, Kenward Vaughan wrote:
> > I've tried mplayer, codeine, ogle, totem, and vlc. Totem ca't read the
> > disc.
>
> xine perhaps? Although mplayer tends to work too.
Codeine is a frontend to xine, and gives me some info on the settings I
can change in xine as well. The one setting that _seemed_ to make any
difference was the one concerning a pitch alignment workaround for buggy
(video) drivers. Still had problems, which xine reports as dropped
frames due to age.
>
> > I disabled everything else including xscreensaver, and shutdown folding
> > @home as well. Essentially no processes outside that of the system and
> > X, excepting evolution. I run fluxbox for WM.
> >
> > I have 2 Gb Mushkin memory.
> >
> > ** One thing that comes to mind is that I have no patch audio wires from
> > the player to the MB at this point. Could this make a big difference in
> > what the player has to do to get things to work?
>
> That only applies to audio CDs.
OK. Good to know.
>
> > I saw a fair amount of output from codeine about dropped frames (being
> > too old) as well as other issues. I can post some of that in a separate
> > email.
>
> Any chance DMA isn't enabled for the DVD drive? That would cuase a ton
> of extra cpu work reading the drive and make it read much slower too.
>
> cat /proc/ide/hda/settings |grep -i dma
>
> Replace hda with whatever the DVD drive is.
>
> I have this:
> using_dma 1 0 1 rw
Ahh. I had not seen this earlier when I scanned your letter briefly
before answering someone else's up the list. My result:
using_dma 0 0 1 rw
Looks like I need to turn on dma with hdparm. If that works, I can
place it into rcS.d, yes?
> The first value is current, followed by min and max. 1 means using dma,
> 0 means not using dma. Usually if you don't have DMA, you have the
> wrong ide driver loaded for your IDE chipset. Usually the debian
> kernels are quite good at detecting and loading the right drivers from
> the initrd, but sometimes it needs help.
Well, I have an MSI K9A Platinum, with the SB600 controller. I have to
boot with nomsi/irqpoll kernel options, and currently have msi left out
of the kernel configuration altogether.
I'm uncertain about any kernel configuration items I might want to
activate. I think I need to burrow into the board's handbook for other
chips which might be a part of the system.
I will get into the BIOS configuration to look at the ide settings (DMA
mode, etc.), but was curious how much difference that makes to the
kernel, as I have always had the impression that Linux works more or
less independently of the BIOS once it has booted up.
Kenward
--
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I
have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than
in the church. --Ferdinand Magellan
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