[PlanetCCRMA] DVD playback not fluent

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

> hmmm, RH73 recognizes my graphic card as follows:
> -----
> Manufacturer: nVidia Corporation
> Driver: Card:nvidia geforce2MX generic
> -----
> (does this indicate that there is some hardware accelleration driver
> installed??) 

Nope, nVidia drivers are not open source so they are not part of XFree86
or the kernel. You must install their driver to get acceleration. They
are somewhere in their web site. 

> it has more problems with my toshiba DVD-ROM (48*cd,16*dvd)
> -----
> Manufacturer: unknown
> Driver: ignore
> device: /dev/hdc
> -----
> 
> there is only a /dev/cdrom and no /dev/dvd. i made a /dev/dvd symlink
> to satisfy MPLAYER   :)

That should be enough to get it working...

> when i play a movie with MPLAYER, i get dropped frames as well as
> what appears as 20x20 pixel checkerboard 'blocks' on the screen,
> filled with very coarse imaging. its clearly not keeping up with
> decoding or so. i tried playing around with the settings, but with no
> luck.
> 
> cpu usage doesn't really exceed 50% during playback. 
> 
> my questions: 
> * how do i know if the hardware accellerated driver for nVidia is
> installed or not? (RH menu above seems to indicate yes, but i think
> no)

It is not if you did not install it. It does not come with RedHat and is
not part of Planet CCRMA. 

> * can i do harm if i install the linux drivers from the nvidia
> website with the ccrma ll kernel??

No, should not be a problem. You should follow their instructions and
the build process will create binary kernel drivers that match the ccrma
kernel. I think there is a package that creates and installs rpms, try
to use that one (maybe other Nvidia users could comment). 

> * does it make sense to try RH80 + CCRMA ??

It would not solve your problems (although a lot of stuff is newer). 

> * any other 'magic' things that i can try to improve DVD playback? i
> tuned the /dev/hdc drive with hdparm, though it only gives me
> 1.40MB/sec, dma and the lot enabled. is that okay for a 16*DVD /
> 48*CDROM? 

Probably the problem is lack of X11 acceleration and the dri (direct
rendering interface or something like that) that would enable mplayer to
blast the bits directly into the display buffer (and use the hardware
scaling that your card probably does for full screen playback). 

Of course it is too late now but I try to stay away from nVidia because
of the binary drivers. 

-- Fernando