#20 choppy h264 decoding

[Michael Buro]

Hello all,

after upgrading to FC38 from FC35 I noticed that some h264 mkv videos don't play smoothly on xine 1.2.13, whereas vlc and mplayer don't show any problems. I am not 100% sure whether xine was ever able to show them without issues in the past, and perhaps this is a known issue. I tried to search the bug mailing list, but the results were old and likely not relevant anymore.

The ffmpeg -i output looks like this

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'test.mkv':
Metadata:
encoder : libebml v1.3.10 + libmatroska v1.5.2
creation_time : 2020-06-27T07:00:58.000000Z
Duration: 00:59:58.50, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2160 kb/s
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Main), yuv420p(progressive), 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 24 fps, 24 tbr, 1k tbn (default)

Playing it with xine prints:

This is xine (X11 gui) - a free video player v0.99.14.
(c) 2000-2019 The xine Team.
libva info: VA-API version 1.18.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_18
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
libva info: VA-API version 1.18.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_18
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc066100] reference picture missing during reorder
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc066100] Missing reference picture, default is 65558
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc025480] co located POCs unavailable
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc025480] co located POCs unavailable
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc025480] co located POCs unavailable
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc066100] co located POCs unavailable
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc07aac0] reference picture missing during reorder
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc07aac0] reference picture missing during reorder
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc07aac0] reference picture missing during reorder
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc07aac0] reference picture missing during reorder
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc07aac0] Missing reference picture, default is 0
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc07aac0] decode_slice_header error
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc025480] Missing reference picture, default is 65566
[h264 @ 0x7f4fcc066100] Missing reference picture, default is 65566

with the video stopping for a bit with any of the error messages - audio is fine

The CPU load is ~30%, so probably not the cause for the hickups.

I could use vlc or mplayer, but I like xine for its continuous scaling feature.
Is there anything (like setting the right options - which I tried for a day) that could allow it to play such h264 videos smoothly?

Cheers

[Michael Buro]

The relevant installed packages are:

xine-lib-1.2.13-2.fc38.x86_64
xine-lib-extras-1.2.13-2.fc38.x86_64
xine-ui-0.99.14-3.fc38.x86_64
libva-2.18.0-1.fc38.x86_64
libva-devel-2.18.0-1.fc38.x86_64
libva-utils-2.18.2-1.fc38.x86_64
libva-vdpau-driver-0.7.4-202.20211013.fc38.x86_64
libva-intel-driver-2.4.1-12.20221130gitab755cb.fc38.x86_64
libvala-0.56.13-1.fc38.x86_64
intel-media-driver-23.1.6-1.fc38.x86_64

Running on
Linux foo 6.5.7-200.fc38.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Oct 11 04:07:58 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz