How to Fix Choppy Video Playback in Ubuntu?

Question

On Ubuntu 10.04 I experience choppy video playback.

I am running Mplayer and have an Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ video card. I have already installed the libvdpau1 library. I don't know if hardware acceleration is enabled on my video card or if it is supported.

Can anyone provide suggestions on how to decrease the choppiness?

Here is my xorg.conf file:

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 1.0  (buildd@yellow)  Fri Apr  9 11:51:21 UTC 2010

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "ACI ASUS VH236H"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 85.0
    VertRefresh     55.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 9800 GTX+"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0, DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Solution

The reason you have an xorg.conf with all those settings is that you use the proprietary nvidia driver and the GUI tools that come with it; my Intel & ATI graphics (with open source drivers) don't need any xorg.conf settings anymore.

Now, about the choppiness:

1. what sort of video are you trying to play (resolution, codec, ...)?
2. does mplayer actually use vdpau? (I'm pretty sure it will say that somewhere in the output you get when you start it in a terminal.)
3. is your PC doing other things at the time you try to play this?
4. are you playing this from a local drive or over a network? (wired/wireless?)

Comments

[xenoterracide]

curious why do you have an xorg.conf? most of the time these days xorg auto detects everything? I speculate that even if you need one for something things you could leave a lot of stuff out like the kbd and mouse sections.

[Noah Goodrich]

The xorg.conf file is still configured and used in Ubuntu 10.04 even though its all done through a gui.

[clee]

This really belongs on ubuntu.stackexchange.com, not here.

[Sqeaky]

Are we even sure that the proprietary nVidia drivers are installed, what framerate do you get when you run glxgears, a really low one ( less than 1000 ) indicates that they are not installed correctly. If they are installed does the card support hardware accelerated video? Some higher end gaming cards from that time period do not, despite impressive 3d performance.

[JanC]

@Sqeaky: his xorg.conf is hardcoded to work with the binary driver: ` Driver "nvidia"`