Media Playing on lower-end Linux boxes?

Obviously there are some hardware configurations that are too low-spec to play a video, but when you dual boot and one flies and the other loses sync quick, you may start to wonder if Linux requires higher end hardware or if anything can be done. Not trying to get 4K - 720p ought to be fine.

The hardware I'm running is a 10ZiG ThinClient (VIA VX900 chipset) with chrome graphics. With Windows 7 running on hard drive my media player of choice is MediaPlayer Classic. It's by a 3rd party and is lightweight, real nice little video player. Over on Mint, this wont' work on WINE and noone really knows why (wink, nudge).

So back to Mint or AV Linux, common media players like Banshee and VLC are way too sluggish and lose sync terrible. The best I have from Linux has been the SMPlayer frontend on I think mplayer. It loses sync right away but isn't slow frames a or anything.

Okay - so VIA has a financial gain in making hardware acceleration drivers for Windows. But there's the other factor - you guys are bright, real bright. And I can't see even one of you having choppy video. You aren't like that. As for me, the guess is something to do with a light media player that works in WINE. But I can't figure it out. I've got The 7 Ages of Starlight running and they say quasar and I'm seeing a Nebula, it's so out of sync.

What works?

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-

Joey,

How much RAM do you have on this?

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 01:12AM by bodhi.

@joey

my guess is you are running on an unaccelerated frame buffer, much the same as the HP T5325.
If it is what i think it is - then the higher the resolution you go the harder the cpu has to work and at 400mhz its not got a lot of power to do much beyond 640x480.

can you do an "lspci"

and check if your graohics chipset is any of the following https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Openchrome/SupportedHardware/

If its the CN700 you have a chance of adding the xorg accelerated driver and running upto 1024x1024, running mpeg2, but mpeg4 and compression algorithms beyond mpeg2 you will fall back to cpu rendering....

See here for how to install
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Openchrome/Installation/



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 09:44AM by Gravelrash.

bodhi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Joey,
>
> How much RAM do you have on this?

2 GB


lspci:

mint@10zig ~ $ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 Host Bridge: Host Control (rev 80)
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 Error Reporting
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 CPU Bus Controller
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 DRAM Bus Control
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 Power Management and Chip Testing Control
00:00.5 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 APIC and Central Traffic Control
00:00.6 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 Scratch Registers
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 North-South Module Interface Control
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 Graphics [Chrome9 HD]
00:01.1 Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. Device 9170
00:03.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 PCI Express Root Port 0
00:03.1 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 PCI Express Root Port 1
00:03.2 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 PCI Express Root Port 2
00:03.3 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 PCI Express Root Port 3
00:03.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. Device e410
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 Serial ATA Controller
00:10.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0)
00:10.1 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0)
00:10.2 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0)
00:10.3 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a0)
00:10.4 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 90)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX900 Bus Control and Power Management
00:11.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX8xx South-North Module Interface Control
00:13.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VX855/VX875/VX900 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:14.0 Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A/VT8251 HDA Controller (rev 20)
02:00.0 USB controller: Fresco Logic FL1009 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 03)

Wow you guys fast! Just woke up and will have a morsel and get back to check chrome supported

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 03:17PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not trying to get 4K - 720p ought to be
> fine.

> The hardware I'm running is a 10ZiG ThinClient
> (VIA VX900 chipset) with chrome graphics.

> So back to Mint or AV Linux, common media players
> like Banshee and VLC are way too sluggish and lose
> sync terrible.

First off install the correct driver for your card and make sure you have more than 1GB ram on the system 2GB plus is preferred

do this

apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-openchrome

edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and ensure it is choosing the openchrome driver.

if that doesnt work, do the following

If you can boot your computer into non-graphic mode, you can create
a /etc/X11/xorg.conf that will bypass the automatic selection of the
"openchrome" video driver.

As root, enter the following command:
  Xorg -configure

This will create the file:
  xorg.conf.new

Edit this file and replace "openchrome" with "vesa" and then copy
the file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and now your display should work again
in vesa mode

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 12:35PM by Gravelrash.

If you have 2GB, you should try Ubuntu. And then install Kodi, and don't use any heavy skin. See if can run well after doing what Gravelrash said above.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

I'd changed from Chrome to VESA driver last week, and it did make a slightly better difference, but it wouldn't roll back today, and I used a Linux Device Manager. All good now I put the USB stick into my desktop and restored the .bak file.

Now, this ThinClient has a factory 10ZiG Linux on NAND. I never go into that because it's so locked down. I'll boot from USB or 2nd SATA port.

So I thought "Aha! I'll find out what's in their own xorg.conf", right? Makes sense. After all this ThinClient has two DVI outs and was used by a hospital on large monitors, so maybe the answer is there all along. In their own compressed files I see from this partition, there's a lot of .squash files. Could be encrypted for all I know.

But until I've got Ubuntu in, can you show me how to know what's in their own xorg.conf? Like if I boot into it, would some terminal command list what's there?

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 03:44PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

now there in lies the million dollar question - it all depends on how they boot and mount the os

you will need to dig around such areas as /etc/X11 to find the .conf file, it could also be in a writeable area

starter for 10 would be

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

if that gives nothing useful, then you are down to hunting around the workstation, you could try

which xorg.conf

after that its down to your skills at google-fu[[/url]/color]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 05:10PM by Gravelrash.

This former Hospital ThinClient, left to its own devices is locked down, but someone forgot Firefox's Open > File, and voila LOL
The immediate xorg.conf yielded this:

#!/bin/sh

XORG_ROOT="/usr/Xorg"
XORG_CONF=$XORG_ROOT/conf
KEY='Software\CompuMaster\X'

cat $XORG_CONF/options.part.conf
cat $XORG_CONF/input.part.conf

/usr/X11R6/applets/kbdcfg -X

$XORG_ROOT/displaycfg -X

#Default Layout
cat $XORG_CONF/layout.part.conf

Also .squash files are supposed to open with a freeware file compress app so I might batch the whole works and search better. I did find the list of drivers (pretty sure it's the actual driver repository) and chrome9 and vesa were both in the list.

ViaIntegratedTV.so
ad9389.so
intel_drv.so
openchrome_drv_so
sil164.so
vesa_drv.so
via_drv.so
vt1625.so

You be the judge what I found, and I'm sure of the names except "sil164", might have bee ssl164 or something else.

Very cool to find out. Thanks a million for the helps gents!

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 07:49PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

Someone like playing with variables for the sake of it with that config. just pull the files it references together and you have your X config

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man5/xorg.conf.5.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 08:07PM by Gravelrash.

Thank you so much sir(s), great information right when I need it. Ubuntu and UbuntuStudio are incoming and we'll see how that looks.

Years ago, not long after Ubuntu was first released, I was persuaded to install and keep upgrading over like 5 years. I used it rarely and as a Windows fallback if something went wrong. I was never sure if I like Unity or not, but it's a shame all that time I didn't realize how much you could change the Themes. Stock colors were opposite what I like lol And even the sound scheme, when an event happened, it was like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom or something. I didn't feel comfortable in the jungle wilds with my desktop computer.

But yeah I see there's a big dependency problem why Kodi can't just install to anything I've got here. I might be wise to try bodhi Linux as well, as that seems to be an exceptional release as well.

Should get to the bottom of this in a day or two.

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-