Edge Computing Division Users Forum

I am having issues with mplayer. It can play a file in 720p H.264 format, but the following is occurring:

I have to explicitly set the audio (-ao alsa) to get sound (manageable, but an issue nonetheless)

I can not use explicit '-vo vaapi' or '-va vaapi' options. If I do, the video does not play.

It stops working after several (2-5) iterations of running mplayer from the command line (of the same terminal / shell session). The failure takes the form of choppy audio and no video.

Sometimes, it leaves the screen in a filled with all grey mode where the normal background and windows panel do not show or work. When this happens, I have to reboot the unit to clear it.

I am running LinuxMint 9, which was installed using the instructions on this site. Here is an extract from one invocation:

mplayer 11_Caan_720p_h264.mov
MPlayer UNKNOWN-4.4.3 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing 11_Caan_720p_h264.mov.
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] stream 0: audio (pcm_s16le), -aid 0, -alang eng
[lavf] stream 1: video (h264), -vid 0
VIDEO: [H264] 1280x720 24bpp 29.970 fps 5720.8 kbps (698.3 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
major_brand: qt
minor_version: 537199360
compatible_brands: qt
libva: libva version 0.31.0
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/emgd_drv_video.so
Intel(R) Embedded Media and Graphics Driver 1.5 Build 1742
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
[VD_FFMPEG] VA API accelerated codec.
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 0->192000)
Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm: pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
==========================================================================
[AO ESD] latency: [server: 0.19s, net: 0.00s] (adjust 0.19s)
AO: [esd] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=1.
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [vaapi] 1280x720 => 1280x720 H.264 VA-API Acceleration
[VD_FFMPEG] XVMC-accelerated MPEG-2.
Audio output truncated at end.ct: -0.020 0/ 0 6% 2% 3.2% 62 0
A: 53.5 V: 53.6 A-V: -0.136 ct: -0.037 0/ 0 6% 2% 3.2% 62 0

Exiting... (End of file)


Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

As a clarification on the last post, when the grey screen appears, the only way (I've found) to clear it is to reboot. Also, the screen looks normal on a remote desktop connection, it's just the real display that's affected, not the virtual one.

This issue was reported as occurring with a high def (720p) format file. I've confirmed that it also happens with a low res (480p) one, at least when "-loop 0' is used. The file plays fine once, but goes to grey screen (and garbled audio) when it tries to restart play.

This does not happen with audio files, just video.

Hi BrotherRichard,
I can advise you to try Ubuntu 9.10 and compare results. http://www.fit-pc2.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 50&start=0

I tested mplayer-vaapi on Mint9 with .flv 1080p h264 video, it was playing with -loop 0 option all night. I realy don`t know why on 5`th time your video fails, must be some bug in Intel driver and/or mplayer-vaapi and/or something else.

Denis,

We tried Ubuntu 9.10. It works (with -loop 0, as we've been discussing) fine in "normal" mode, but fails when we use the "-fs" (fullscreen) option. When we try to play in fullscreen mode, it fails (goes to the previously mentioned grey screen) after three or so loops.

If we can make the Ubuntu version work, that will get it done for now. However, all things being equal, I'd rather run on the current Officially Supported Version, which I understand is LinuxMint 9.

On both distributions, when it fails, the load average (as reported by top) spikes and shows xorg using 100% of the CPU.

When the video plays normally, the load average for Ubuntu is around .4, for Mint its about 1.5. This suggests that, for Mint, the video acceleration is not being done by hardware as we'd expect.