[Solved]I don't know if hardware acceleration is working

Question

I often watch movies in HD, and when using XBMC, they sometimes lag and/or get out of sync (audio/video). So recently I tried mplayer, and it seems better, but I've also looked into va-api. So I grabbed the pkgbuild for mplayer-vaapi (in community) and edited it to include pulseaudio and then built and installed it. But when trying 'mplayer -ao pulse -vo vaapi [movie] I don't really notice any difference. Htop shows cpu usage 70-90%, I thought it would be lower if it is working. My hardware is not the best though, so maybe it is? how do I know?
Here is output of mplayer:
MPlayer SVN-r32025-4.5.1 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
159 audio & 342 video codecs
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
Playing f-brothers.720p.mkv.
libavformat file format detected.
[matroska,webm @ 0x360dbc0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (dca), -aid 0
VIDEO: [H264] 1280x536 0bpp 24.000 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Opening video filter: [expand osd=1 aspect=16/9 round=16]
Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 1.777778, round: 16
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
[VD_FFMPEG] VA API accelerated codec.
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 1536.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 192000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffdca] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg DTS)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
Unsupported PixelFormat 61
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=1.
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try appending the scale filter to your filter list,
e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
Unsupported PixelFormat 61
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=0.
Unsupported PixelFormat 61
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try appending the scale filter to your filter list,
e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=2.
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try appending the scale filter to your filter list,
e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
[VD_FFMPEG] Trying pixfmt=3.
Movie-Aspect is 2.39:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [x11] 1280x720 => 1280x720 Planar YV12
[swscaler @ 0xeafc20]using unscaled yuv420p -> bgra special converter
A: 1.5 V: 1.5 A-V: -0.002 ct: 0.007 0/ 0 19% 27% 3.1% 1 0
Exiting... (Quit)
in ~/.mplayer/config I have this:
# default configuration that applies to every file
[default]
# use X11 for video output
vo=x11
va=vaapi
# use also for audio output
ao=pulse
# scale the subtitles to the 3% of the screen size
subfont-text-scale = 3
# never use font config
nofontconfig = 1
# add black borders so the movies have the same aspect ratio of the
# monitor
# for wide screen monitors
vf-add=expand=::::1:16/9:16
If I use vo=vaapi and va=vaapi, I get audio, but video is black. Mplayer seems to think it's working, though there is no video.
My system is:
Asus UL30a
Intel CULV 1,3ghz
4GB ram
Intel x4500mhd
I am running gnome with compiz enabled, and system is fully up-to-date with [testing] enabled:
testing/kernel26 2.6.35.4-1 (base)
testing/xf86-video-intel 2.12.0-2 (xorg-video-drivers)
extra/libva 1.0.4-1
extra/libdrm 2.4.21-2
So, how do I know if it's working if I can't see any difference just by my eyes?
Last edited by KlavKalashj (2010-08-29 18:08:00)

Answer 1

Ok, so I installed mplayer-mt-git from aur, and it's now working nicely. It's still not super smooth, but I guess that's becouse of my hardware. At least it syncs perfectly now, and I did not need to add anything to get pulse support. So thanks for the help! I'll keep my eyes open for va-api support