Video Playback

[naticus]

You are probably in the sam boat I am in, the drivers are just not yet comparable to their Win7 conterpart -- my problem is Fusion AMD and Linux. I have worked on my ATI config and have found that it works a lot better than before. Also I am using Kernel Linux 3.0, which seems to help a lot for ATI cards, etc.,

[ZaZ]

It looks like I'm back to Windows then, which is a bummer.

I had a box a few years back running 8 or 9, I can't remember. I never had any trouble with it, BDs or DVDs. I never even installed the drivers. That's why I'm surprised this has turned out to be such a pain. I wonder if a different distro would offer me something better? Thanks for the help nonetheless.

[Sxooter]

It looks like I'm back to Windows then, which is a bummer.

I had a box a few years back running 8 or 9, I can't remember. I never had any trouble with it, BDs or DVDs. I never even installed the drivers. That's why I'm surprised this has turned out to be such a pain. I wonder if a different distro would offer me something better? Thanks for the help nonetheless.

It's possible that that machine had a chipset in it that was old enough it had gotten support slipped into the mainline kernel etc by the time you got it. Give it time, the AMD Fusion based machines will catch up.

[ZaZ]

Thanks Sxooter. I'm curious, is my Foxconn A74ML-K board considered that new?

[Sxooter]

Thanks Sxooter. I'm curious, is my Foxconn A74ML-K board considered that new?

That's got a Radeon 2100 which is quite old actually.

[ZaZ]

I'd be using the 5450, which is pretty new I think. The chipset is the 740g, but I don't know if that's old or new.

[TuxDude]

As far as I know Linux mainline kernel do not remove support for mainstream chipsets released within the past 10 yrs at least. But support for proper drivers especially the ones which are not part of the Linux kernel source/modules itself is a totally different thing.

I dont know which distro would help you but it is really worth trying out another distro just to see if the problem gets fixed there.

I myself notice occasional screen tearing when watching few of the videos but I watch it on my 46" TV connected to my linux rig, so I dont notice the screen tear unless I'm really looking for it (rather than watching a movie). Is this something similar to this or something which really affects your viewing completely ?

[ZaZ]

Thanks Tux. The machine works great in all other respects. Sometimes I'll go 10-15 minutes without seeing anything and others I'll see quite a bit of it. Some videos stutter too. Since watching movies on it is it's primary purpose, it's a deal breaker for me, especially since it works perfectly in Windows. It's too bad as I really wanted to use it. I really liked the preview pictures I could use in Linux that I can't find a way to do in Windows.

[TuxDude]

I do not unfortunately wish to give up that easily especially on Linux - I've given up many times in the past but have somehow landed upon a solution when I was not looking for it

Okay I was going thru VLC's settings and I noticed these settings under Tools->Preferences->Input&Codecs:
Skip H.264 in-loop deblocking filter - Try setting it to "All"
Use GPU acceleration(experimental) - enable this

I'm sure these settings have been there for quite some time in VLC preferences, so it should be pretty much there even if you're using an older version of VLC. Give it a shot and let me know if it works.

One more thing you can try to do (although I doubt this would work) is try starting these players from command line and probably redirecting the output to a log file like:

vlc abcd.avi 2>&1 | tee myfile.log

You should be able to see the logs on screen as well as redirected into the log file - also you'd get both stdout and stderr in a single file (as well as on the screen)

So in these logs - try to see if you notice any erroneous messages especially when you see these screen tears happening. I doubt the player would be able to catch an error which happens for screen tearing in the first place but it also gives you the chance to notice if there are any suspicious error messages which you can try to fix.

[ZaZ]

I got Windows back on my machine. I don't think I'm really ready to install Linux once again to test another theory. Perhaps I'll try it on my R60e. If it goes well, then we'll see. Thanks again.