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Help troubleshoot video skip

  • 22-11-2010 08:51AM
    #1
    pickarooney
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 35,930 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    I have this recurrent nagging problem that's really difficult to pin down. Basically whenever I'm watching a video file at some stage there will be a slight 'hiccup' and the video will skip forward a second. It happens on average once in a half-hour video so it's not a massive problem but still very annoying. I can't reproduce it at will.

    I'm running Xubuntu Lucid with nvidia drivers, smplayer as the front end to mplayer. I've not had this problem in previous versions of (X)ubuntu.

    I'm going to try watching video with a load of different players and with nothing running in the background to see can I eliminate any possible causes but in case this problem sounds familiar to anyone...


Comments

  • #2
    BopNiblets
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,579 ✭✭✭BopNiblets


    I know this may sound counter-productive, but try remove the nvidia drivers and see if that helps.

    On my mams Dell 1545 now, and removing the ATI drivers early on fixed a lot of hiccups, and HD vids play perfectly on Mint 9 and 10.

    Also maybe run (s)mplayer via the terminal and see if any errors popup during playback.


  • #3
    pickarooney
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 35,930 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney


    It does sound counter-productive... but I will try it once I've exhausted other options.
    The problem is the same in xine and vlc and I don't get any noticeable errors either in the terminal window or in dmesg. I tried turning off Firefox and a couple of other programs last night and managed to watch an entire 30 minutes with no skipping, so I'm going to keep trying that for a bit.


  • #4
    Jagera
    Closed Accounts Posts: 910 ✭✭✭Jagera


    pickarooney wrote: »
    It does sound counter-productive... but I will try it once I've exhausted other options.
    The problem is the same in xine and vlc and I don't get any noticeable errors either in the terminal window or in dmesg. I tried turning off Firefox and a couple of other programs last night and managed to watch an entire 30 minutes with no skipping, so I'm going to keep trying that for a bit.

    Is this the same PC you have had numerous Linux issues with before?


  • #5
    Mathiasb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 425 ✭✭Mathiasb


    What videos are you watching, where are they located? (local, on disk?)

    sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda

    That will give you a rough estimation about the performance of the HDD.


  • #6
    loldog
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 634 ✭✭✭loldog


    Try this GPU validation bypass hack:

    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/force-flash-gpu-acceleration-in-linux-improve-performance/

    .


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  • #7
    pickarooney
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 35,930 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney


    bw wrote: »
    Is this the same PC you have had numerous Linux issues with before?

    Not really. This is a PC where I have currently a few niggly issues with Lucid specifically; the other one (laptop) just has issues with anything released since 2009 :)
    Mathiasb wrote: »
    What videos are you watching, where are they located? (local, on disk?)

    sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda

    That will give you a rough estimation about the performance of the HDD.

    They're on my second internal (SATA) hard drive. It's been a while since I ran a hdparm but I'll do it for the sake of completeness.
    loldog wrote:
    Try this GPU validation bypass hack:

    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/f...e-performance/

    Sounds a bit mad but will add it to the list of stuff to try.


  • #8
    pickarooney
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 35,930 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney 


    /dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   1346 MB in  2.00 seconds = 672.86 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  214 MB in  3.01 seconds =  71.05 MB/sec

/dev/sdc:
 Timing cached reads:   1340 MB in  2.00 seconds = 669.67 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  168 MB in  3.04 seconds =  55.26 MB/sec

    sda is the second HD; sdc is the / HD.


  • #9
    Khannie
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,485 ✭✭✭✭Khannie


    Well....they're not stellar numbers, but they're not crap either. Certainly plenty fast to play back video.

    I have heard of issues with vdpau (or whatever it's called). Maybe try using a software library to render and see what happens? (mplayer -vo x11 <filename> )


  • #10
    Mathiasb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 425 ✭✭Mathiasb


    Try to see which one works best, you could run top on the side to check cpu usage.

    mplayer -vo vdpau
    mplayer -vo xv
    mplayer -vo opengl


  • #11
    pickarooney
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 35,930 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney


    I'm going to try mplayer with a few different switches tonight. Strangely enough I played back 1.5 hours of video with no skipping when running mplayer from the command line with no arguments yesterday.


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