I'm building a HTPC with this ASRock E350M1/USB3 motherboard. The onboard ATI Radeon HD 6310 graphics had a hard time swallowing a 1080p x264 mkv (~10 GB) so I popped in a discrete Nvidia GT 240 (1024MB). Oddly enough, that also wouldn't play it properly.

Both cards had the associated vendor drivers installed and active, I have tried x264 and raw blu-ray to no avail. I know the GT 240 is capable of playing 1080p movies, so what is the hangup?

Choppy refers to getting about one frame every few seconds, but I also see this from time to time: http://ptpimg.me/8yt8ev.png

Output from running vlc from the command line on a untouched Blu-ray (m2ts) rip.

me@GAMMA ~ $ vlc

VLC media player 1.1.9 The Luggage (revision exported)

Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_ADDRESS")

Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_BUS_TYPE")

[0x8d41914] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.

Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")

Warning: call to srand(1326832540)

Warning: call to rand()

Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")



(process:2617): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.

    Using the fallback 'C' locale.

Warning: call to rand()

Warning: call to rand()

Warning: call to rand()

Warning: call to rand()

libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 0

libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 0

libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 3, expected 0) for PID 256

libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 3, expected 0) for PID 256

[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error: signal 17 overriden (0x3b114c0)

[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error:  /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4(?)[(nil)]

[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error: signal 17 overriden (0x3b114c0)

[0x8ddc6e4] signals interface error:  /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4(?)[(nil)]

Output from vlc -vvv on the same file: Here

OK, so we got the GT 240 working by using VD-PAU which is a magical thing that tells software like nplayer to use the GPU to do the work instead of the CPU. Problem is that VD-PAU is essentially Nvidia only and the built in graphics are ATI based.

(in ~/.mplayer/config)

vo=vdpau,xv

vc=ffh264vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau

I've done some digging and it seems VA-API and XVBA are the ATI equivalents. The question now is how do I get these to work in natty (preferentially with something like xbmc)

So far, with just the onboard Radeon HD 6310 graphics I've done this:

sudo apt-get install xvba-va-driver libva-glx1 vainfo

mplayer -vo xv -framedrop -ao sdl /path/to/000000.m2ts

and it is certainly getting close. Still too many dropped frames to be considered watchable however.