Solved [Solved] Tweaking multimedia performance

Hello,

I'd like to ask if it is possible to somehow tweak multimedia performance. The problem is with movies - if I resize a player window to be too big (or worse - go fullscreen) the frame rate is so low that it's simply unwatchable and after a while it freezes completely (only the player). If the window is small enough it's fine but from time to time (like every 2 minutes) the screen goes black for a second or two. It doesn't matter what player I use or what format the movie has - it happens every time (no trouble with sound by the way).

However, this issue doesn't affect just movies but KDE, too. I'm using XFCE but I tried to install KDE and it was horribly slow - even opening Dolphin was a challenge and mouse was constantly disappearing and reappearing. KDE doesn't bother me, though, but the movies do (but I'm guessing the reason is the same - something about codecs but I know too little about this to be able to tweak it). I have tried to increase the kern.ipc.shmmax and kern.ipc.shmall as instructed in documentation (although I had to increase the numbers greatly because my original values were far higher by default) but it doesn't have any impact.

I have
Code:
WITH_NEW_XORG=yes
in my make.conf and everything compiled from ports. My laptop has Intel HD video adapter - the pciconf output is:
Code:
vgapci1@pci0:0:2:0:	class=0x030000 card=0x129d1043 chip=0x04168086 rev=0x06 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Haswell Integrated Graphics Controller'
    class      = display
    subclass   = VGA
It also has a nVidia adapter but since it's Optimus (which is unsupported in FreeBSD as I hear it) I don't think it's even being used for anything. But here's the output for it:

Code:
vgapci0@pci0:1:0:0:	class=0x030200 card=0x129d1043 chip=0x0fe410de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
    class      = display
    subclass   = 3D

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

Setting WITH_NEW_XORG alone is not necessarily enough. What does glxinfo | grep renderer say? Please post your /var/log/Xorg.0.log somewhere on line where it can be viewed. http://www.pastebin.com is popular.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

wblock@ said:
What does glxinfo | grep renderer say?

Hello, it says
Code:
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.3, 256 bits)
    GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_fog_distance, GL_NV_light_max_exponent,
I had to install this port extra from graphics/mesa-demos as it didn't install with xorg. Now I see it mentions Gallium which I didn't define in make.conf because the xorg port told me I only need to do this if I use radeon and swrast (and a few other) drivers which I don't use.
You can find my /var/log/Xorg.0.log here. Could you please tell me which port exactly I should reinstall after adding
Code:
WITH_GALLIUM=yes
to make.conf? Since x11/xorg is a meta port I don't think it's necessary to recompile it whole.

Thank you.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

wblock@ said:

Thank you, I followed the guide and reinstalled the ports with WITH_GALLIUM=yes in my make.conf() but the trouble remains. I also created new xorg.conf file via Xorg -configure. You can see a new Xorg.0.log here - still complaining about /dev/dri not existing and falling to use VESA driver. To be sure, I loaded the following modules (and also added relevant entries to loader.conf()):
- drm
- drm2
- i915
- i915kms
but no /dev/dri appears even after reboot and Xorg still uses VESA.

EDIT: The xdriinfo says
Code:
Screen 0: not direct rendering capable.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

With xdriinfo the result here is "LibGL is too old." This persists after a rebuild. Several dependent programs run fine, others give a terse error glclock for example. I'm accustomed to that program working, then not working, then working, the reason never known. Eventually someone may code less-terse error messages into xdriinfo, glclock, mesa-demos... so that one may know precisely which ports to rebuild, if base source is missing, or some other cause...

And not to * stray too off-topic, but something in this thead (KMS, GL, vesa, ati, nvidia,) could possibly be more user-friendly if it was large-flowcharted additionally to having been wikified; the latter one reads then hopefully grasps all the terms enough to construct one's own flowchart if need be.
* or apologize for.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

natharran said:
To be sure, I loaded the following modules (and also added relevant entries to loader.conf()):
- drm
- drm2
- i915
- i915kms
but no /dev/dri appears even after reboot and Xorg still uses VESA.

Do not load the kernel modules, the needed ones are all auto-loaded and existing ones might interfere.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

On re-examination of the first post, it jumps out: Haswell.

The Haswell graphics are not yet supported. Intel up to the previous third-generation graphics are supported, but Haswell is still under process. At present, Haswell systems are limited to the vesa driver.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

wblock@ said:
Do not load the kernel modules, the needed ones are all auto-loaded and existing ones might interfere.
Is this auto-loading reliable? I'm asking because if I want to mount NTFS partition the fuse module isn't auto-loaded and the ntfs-3g just give me an error. After loading the module manually it works fine.
 
It also doesn't work for my acpi_asus_wmi module which also must be either loaded manually or added to loader.conf(). Without it I can't control my keyboard backlight for example. But that's way too off topic for this thread :). Thank you again for your time and the information.
 
Re: Tweaking multimedia performance

jb_fvwm2 said:
With xdriinfo the result here is "LibGL is too old." This persists after a rebuild. Several dependent programs run fine, others give a terse error glclock for example. I'm accustomed to that program working, then not working, then working, the reason never known. Eventually someone may code less-terse error messages into xdriinfo, glclock, mesa-demos... so that one may know precisely which ports to rebuild, if base source is missing, or some other cause...

And not to * stray too off-topic, but something in this thead (KMS, GL, vesa, ati, nvidia,) could possibly be more user-friendly if it was large-flowcharted additionally to having been wikified; the latter one reads then hopefully grasps all the terms enough to construct one's own flowchart if need be.
* or apologize for.

Well, glclock is working again, though I had to rebuild a slew of Xorg drivers and files in an attempt to let chromium start, which broke Xorg for a few hours. The only difference this time than the others, I've saved the command history to a few xinit, /etc/X11 (etc) places for maybe help for the next time. Here's wishing that the Xorg EE WW etc Logfile eventually becomes more explanatory as to the precise error... [ Chromium still does not start...
 
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