Re: Xvideo, gmplayer and xawtv goofiness

[Marty <martyb@ix.netcom.com>]

Alban Browaeys wrote:
> Marty <martyb <at> ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
> > My graphics driver is ATI with a Radeon 7500 on stock sarge.  If I run
> > gmplayer with xvideo enabled, subsequently xawtv displays no video, only a
> > black screen.  I have to restart xawtv with the "-noxv" option (turning 
> > off xvideo) 
>
> > I can sometimes run both apps successfully if I start xawtv before gmplayer.
>
> Check the log from gmplayer ( or use mplayer which has a verbose output) 
> when you start it after xawtv. It should not be able to access xvideo.
>
>
> You can download  xvattr from marillat repository. And send the output from
> xvinfo and xvattr. My geforce card (using nv driver) for example show only one
> 'overlay' port for its 'adaptator' (that s some sort of chip on the card i
> guess). So i can only have one application bound to xvideo (it binds to the 
> port).
>
> I guess some card support more than one xv port as some audio card support
>  more than a hardware channel (thus removing the need for esd or such).
>
>
> Btw you should use xvideo for xawtv or to play dvd. Usually divx don't really
> need it.
>
> If you found you have more than one xv port and you cannot use more than a xv
> app this should be a shortcoming of the driver. Please report the bug as
>  wishlist.

I suspected the xvideo hardware has a resource sharing issue, but I don't need
two different xvideo sources at the same time.  The real issue seems to be that
gmplayer apparently leaves the system (hardware or software, I don't know)
in a state that requires restarting X to allow xawtv work again with xvideo.
This is too much like Windoze (non-)functionality for my tastes :-)

This suggests that either mplayer is leaving the system in a "bad" state (which
seems unlikely) or that xawtv does not or cannot reinitialize some stored
states, somewhere (again,either in hardware or software, which I don't know and
cannot even begin to guess).