Re: [xine-devel] dxr3 support.

[Harm v. d. H. <ha...@et...>]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 03:18:54PM -0000, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> I have a dxr3 card (Thank you sponsors), so I could help if I knew what the
> problem is.
> I have played with "The Matrix" using A52 passthru, and sync is perfect.
> 
> I have also made a lot of changes to the dxr3 driver in the last month,
> which I think have improved things a lot.
> If someone can show me how to reproduce the problems you see in the latest
> 0.9.8 release, then I might be able to do something about it.

I've been very busy since last Christmas and am going on a much looked-for
holiday next week, so I won't be able to do dxr3 work for at least a week
and a half. At the moment I don't even have a dxr3 card in my computer due
to some stupid problems. 

However, the dxr3 code hasn't changed much since I last used it, and I have 
confidence in the method that dxr3_decoder.c uses now. I haven't followed
what's happened with metronom and audio though and am now not in a position
to test, obviously. I'm sure, though, that James (and/or I, when I get back)
can get dxr3 support in a usable state for 1.0.

Also, the dxr3 mpeg-encoding support, which allows you to display non-mpeg
content (say, AVIs) on the TV through the hollywood+ card, is a feature 
that's fairly popular. AFAICT, this is working well at the moment and is 
ready for 1.0.

I'd like to draw attention to a feature that I've added which is perhaps
overlooked (but it's still there, if I read the source correctly). The
user can change a variable "sync_every_frame" in .xine/config or the
GUI (it has a callback) which will change the sync behaviour. If 'true'
the dxr3 decoder will attempt to set the dxr3 PTS value at every frame,
if false, it will only set it when the buffer contains a PTS value (happens
about every 12 frames or so).

When I used it, I found that PAL works well with sync_every_frame, while
NTSC does not. I put this down to the fact that metronom's interpolated
PTS values were not precise enough for video with variable frame duration.
I understand James had this fixed in the xine-lib dvd branch, but I'm
not aware of the current status of this code.

Still, it might be usefull to request a user to play with this option in
case of problems. If nothing else, it might give a hint of what's wrong.

Regards,

Harm