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Speeding MPlayer on VIA EPIA motherboards, non-M versions

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pete-edworthy

Post subject: Speeding MPlayer on VIA EPIA motherboards, non-M versions

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 3:29 pm

Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2004 3:25 pm

Posts: 49

Location: Coventry England

Thanks to a wonderful guy called Alastair Robinson an accelerated video driver exists for the CyberBlade C1i graphics adapter that is used on the non-M versions of the VIA EPIA motherboards.

His website is at http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/EPIAVidix.shtml

Even better the version of MPlayer included has this driver, sadly MPlayer needs re-compiling to deal with the limitations of the C3's missing instructions so...

From a terminal window:

Code:

cd /home/mythtv/r4_src
tar -xvjf MPlayer-0.92-patched.tar.bz2
cd Mplayer-0.92
./configure
make
su
[root password]
make install

because of the low level access of the driver to the video card it needs root access. This is a security risk so if you are worried about this stuff read the MPlayer docs on how to setup a driver, but this is much easier

Code:

cd /usr/local/bin
chown root:mythtv mplayer
chmod u=rwxs mplayer
chmod g=rxs mplayer

To use the driver go into 'Setup' -> 'Video Settings' -> 'Player Settings'
and set it to:

Code:

/usr/local/bin/mplayer -fs -vo xvidix -framedrop -quiet %s

This has improved the playback on my 800MHz greatly, although I'm still playing with settings to get high quality DVD's to play well. 8000Mbs plays perfectly, but 9200Mbs is choppy on with the research :twisted:

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pete-edworthy

Post subject: yet more improvements

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 4:21 pm

Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2004 3:25 pm

Posts: 49

Location: Coventry England

Installing as tv i.e. 800x600 also saves a few cpu cycles.

For SP/DIF output you need the viaudiocombo driver.

Code:

#get the driver
wget http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/audio/viaudiocombo-2.3-1.tar.gz
#get rpm utils
tar -xvzf viaudiocombo-2.3-1.tar.gz
cd viaudiocombo-2.3-1
rpm2cpio viaudiocombo-2.3-1.rpm | cpio -ivd
tar -xvzf viaudiocombo-2.3.tar.gz
su
[password]
cp viaudiocombo.o /lib/modules/2.4.21-xfs/kernel/drivers/sound/
depmod
#cp viasound /etc/init.d/
cd \etc\modutils\
mv alsa-0.9-knoppix ..\alsa-0.9-knoppix.old
echo alias sound-slot-0 viaudiocombo > viaudiocombo
update-modules

cd \etc
#edit modules
#comment out snd-via82xx
#add viaudiocombo spdif_out=1
exit
reboot

also make sure to have the jumper in the right (pins 3&4) place.

to use it just use mplayer as shown above.

Sadly a few limitations, the non-M versions can only do two channels of audio even through the sp/dif port. It is possible to overclock it with the longhall driver 1GHz is reachable, this does disable LIRC though. I'm not going to explain how to do this as its quite dangerous.

Even with all this fast sections in DVDs will have dropped frames.

I'm looking forward to a 1GHz EPIA-M for my birthday, which should be easier.

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Xsecrets

Post subject:

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 5:17 pm

Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2003 10:38 am

Posts: 4978

Location: Nashville, TN

yes the nemiah is the way to go. I haven't used one myself, but the upgraded specs should make it plenty for this kind of thing. 1Gh with full speed FPU, and sse instructions, plus I think all the nemiah boards have the mpeg2 decoder on them. Pretty sweet. At some point if I have some extra money I will probably get one of these to play with. Only downside over the lower clocked M boards is you need some sort of cooling.

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pete-edworthy

Post subject: M1000 baby

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 8:59 am

Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2004 3:25 pm

Posts: 49

Location: Coventry England

Just got my board and the cooling fan on this is very quiet, much quieter than my hd or quiet (30db) psu. So I don't think it will be a problem

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