[xine-user] good work! (was xine too slow)

[Andrew E. <ee...@ei...>]

Hi,

I have tried out both css and ordinary xine 0.3.2 with the following
results:

- 1 to 10 frames dropped per 200, depending on the complexity of the
picture
- peak frame rate is perfect but is broken up by jerks
- consistent sound, with good sync
- css enabled version leaks memory like there is no tomorrow, ac3dec dies
when RAM is full which takes about five minutes of movie playback.
- managed to watch the whole of the 3rd vob off Apollo 13 on non-css
enabled version

The performance is about the same as software only PowerDVD in windoze 98. 
(with compilation optimisations -O6 and -march=k6 and after stripping
executable).  ATI DVD works perfectly for me on this machine (using
hardware) in windoze 98.  Pretty good considering this project is still
alpha, is not commercial and considering the status of other Linux/freeBSD
DVD projects.

hardware details:
ATI expert 98 AGP graphics, 8MB (with Xv extensions enabled)
K6-2 400
128MB 100Mhz SDRAM
VIA MVP3 chipset
IBM UDMA 100 HD (only being used in UDMA 33 mode)
es1371 sound card using OSS (alsa modules load but xine won't use them, see
below).

system details:
2.4.0-test12 (also tried with 2.2.18, 2.4 is much better) with mtrr and agp
support
the rest is fairly standard RH7 with X4.01 (plus gatos extensions)

also tried on Debian potato (on same machine) with X3 and 2.2.18, much
inferior results.

Any one else having memory leak problem with css enabled version?

> I've installed ALSA 0.5.9 (and working), but when I start xine I get:
> 
> tmm@bandit:~ > xine -A alsa dvd://vts_01_1.vob
> This is xine - a mpeg 1, 2 player v0.3.2 - (c) 2000 by G. Bartsch.
> audio driver 'alsa' failed, using null driver instead.
> Using null audio output driver.
> 
> -A oss works fine.

This is my experience too, even with alsa being verified as working by
alsautils.

> Can I do something to increase speed?

Things that increased my frame rate were:

- switching to 2.4.0test12 (from 2.2.18)
- recompiling a VERY minimal kernel (no networking, absolute minimum to
play a DVD, but with agp, mtrr support etc)
- turning off just about every system service (inetd, apm etc) except bare
essentials
- compiling with processor specific optimisations
- stripping executable (keep old one if you want to do any debugging!)
- dumping gnome and going to twm

xine is a great piece of work.  livid project have some catching up to
do... ;)

regards,

Andrew