Linux Placeshifter Problem-Video Out Drivers

[reggie14]

So, I've used Linux for programming projects for years but now I'm trying to switch to it (nearly) full-time on my laptop. I'm having problems getting the placeshifter to work. I would really appreciate some help here, but I don't exactly know what information you need to help me troubleshoot. I'm running Ubuntu and have loaded Sun's java 1.6. I also made sure the libraries in the readme file were already installed.

Placeshifter loads fine, but when I try watch a video I get an error in the console, that seems to describe my problem.

Tue 4/3 1:09:40.575 stderr:It seems there is no Xvideo support for your video card available.
Tue 4/3 1:09:40.575 stderr:Run 'xvinfo' to verify its Xv support and read DOCS/HTML/en/video.html#xv!
Tue 4/3 1:09:40.575 stderr:See 'mplayer -vo help' for other (non-xv) video out drivers. Try -vo x11
Tue 4/3 1:09:40.575 stderr:Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

If I run mplayer -vo help, then I get the following:

MPlayer dev-SVN-r-3.4.4 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU:         Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz (Family: 6, Model: 13, Stepping: 8)
SSE2 supported but disabled
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx SSE
Available video output drivers:
        stv     SageTV Miniclient
        xv      X11/Xv
        x11     X11 ( XImage/Shm )
        xover   General X11 driver for overlay capable video output drivers
        null    Null video output
        mpegpes Mpeg-PES file
        yuv4mpeg        yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools

I'm sorry if I haven't provided enough information. Again, I will appreciate any help I can get.


Update:
I think I got xvideo support working by running a tool that came with my video card drivers (ATI x300) that modified the xorg.conf file. Now I get video started, but it only flashes on the screen before it goes dark. The sound keeps playing, but the video stops. This is the error I can in the console, which seems to be relevant to my problem.

Tue 4/3 1:49:44.345 stdout:==========================================================================
Tue 4/3 1:49:44.345 stdout:Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Tue 4/3 1:49:44.346 stderr:Trying to parse MPEG1/2 video stream but MPEG4 start codes were detected. Switching to MPEG4 video format.
Tue 4/3 1:49:44.476 stdout:Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
Tue 4/3 1:49:44.476 stdout:==========================================================================

The file I am playing is an mpeg2 file. I'm on my LAN at home, so the server shouldn't be transcoding it. So, I don't know why it thinks it should use Mpeg4. Any ideas?

[reggie14]

I got it working, sort of. I removed ATI's proprietary drivers and after that it starting work.

But, I'd really like to use those drivers, so I'd still appreciate some help trying to figure out what was causing the problem. It must be some sort of overlay issue. I would start a video, it would flash on the screen, then it would go blank. It would actually keep playing. When Sage's UI would appear on top of the video I could see the video playing in some little rectangular boxes "underneath" the Sage UI.

I said before that I used an ATI config tool to modify the xorg.conf file. It added the following lines to the device section.

Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"

Evidently only one can be on at a time and enabling OpenGLOverlay takes a lot of CPU power, according to the ATI Proprietary Driver entry at MythTV's wiki. (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php...prietaryDriver)

Would this setting prevent Sage from working? Is there anything I can do to make Sage, mplayer and ATI's drivers play nicely together?

Thanks in advance.

[jreichen]

I don't have an ATI card, but the symptoms sound similar to what I had. Try telling Placeshifter to use OpenGL by adding the following line in your ~/.sagetv/SageTVPlaceshifter.properties file.

opengl=true

[reggie14]

Thanks for the suggestion, but that didn't do the trick. That gave me a javax.media.opengl.GLException.

Interestingly enough, I tried running the mplayer application that came with sage alone. It was able to play videos fine.

I noticed when I type "mplayer -vo help" I see "stv SageTV Miniclient" as one of the available video output drivers. I tried playing a video file using the command "mplayer -vo stv filename", but it said there was an error opening/initializing the selected video-out device.

Thinking that video out driver might be the problem I tried creating a .mplayer/config file and included the line "vo=xv". It didn't seem to do anything.