I have figured out how to get this HD clip:
http://www.pchdtv.com/downloads/tst.tar
to play full screen with 30% idle on my Commell LT-667T (1GHz, CN400)

The actual howto has been moved to it's own thread:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=51201

The default install of xine will play the tst.ts file using -V xxmc (not xvmc!!!) at 30% idle
MPlayer will play a 624x352 xvid movie at 78% idle using -vo xv (doesn't seem to work with -vo xvmc. Any ideas?)

Thanks to:
The Unichrome Project http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=21910&group_id=102048
openChrome.org http://www.openchrome.org/[url][/url]

You need to apply the mplayer patch from openchrome.org to use xvmc.
Cheers,[/quote]

ribs, rainecc, ivor

You seem to be the world's leading experts in the cn400 chipset and knoppmyth.

I hope you are still subscribed to this thread and that you can advise me on these issues: I was planning to by a via epia sp8000 which uses the same cn400 chipset that you did battle with, and run knoppmyth. The problem for me may be that I am a linux newbie of just a few months, although pretty handy around windoze. I have setup several distros on different machines, but only once had to compile stuff. I found it quite difficult and it only worked after endless tries.

From what I have seen of your post, I am wondering if it might be better to buy a different board or try a different distro? I like the idea of the epia because of the onboard hardware decoder, of course, and the fact that I can build a silent combo box for mythtv at not too much expense.

Have you any thoughts for me? Also, are you planning to write up your procedures as a simple to follow guide for the rest of us? With that I might just be able to give it a go

Regards

RJ

only a few of the newest epia boards actually have the cn400 chipset. most that you find have the cle266 which is supported fine on a default install of Knoppmyth. Two big advantages of cn400 are it can by some reports decode hdtv resolutions in hardware, and it uses hardware mpeg4 acceleration (not sure if it is supported by the linux drivers yet).

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Ivor is the real expert here - personally I have struggled to get mythtv working on the cn400 - it is, however, now working. Documenting how I got there, though is not trivial. Here's a very rough guide - most of the actual instructions to do this are contained in the relevant readmes.

1. install a distro - I used knoppmyth, but have upgraded away from the standard distro, which had mythtv installed in a location that was not appropriate for me since I want TWO versions of mythtv installed so I can switch between Girlfriend Friendly and Bleeding Edge easily.

2. Build the xvmc drivers. This means a) getting and building the xorg source tree first, then b) installing xorg in place of xfree86 as supplied with knoppmyth, c) building and installing ivor's excellent openchrome drivers against that source tree then d) getting xorg to actually use those drivers. OTTOMH this involved changes to the xorg.conf file (set to use via) and to switch the library used from libXvMC.so to libXvMCPro.so.1 in one of the xorg config files. gr8nash's post above details this.

3. Get the CVS version of mythtv and build with relevant config options for the xvmcPRO driver. I use the config below. Of particular note the last time I built this in December, is that the ./configure script does not correctly enable xvmcpro or the SP1300 Nehemiah processor, so I had to modify it to ensure that the right variables were set. Read the post-configure summary carefully!



4. Ensure that xvmc is used in the myth settings.

On the SP1300 it works a treat, I installed one of the excellent silent cases that replaced the fan with a heat-pump affair so I could get the extra grunt, and it helps.

None of the above is trivial (I think I already said that) but the learning curve is not as steep as it seems. I am about to do another build from CVS (now that the LiveTV/DVB/XvMC stuff seems to be settling down), so I'll share any experiences/config, etc, where it may help.

-D

rainecc

Thanks for the tips. I am going to buy an epia-boarded machine. At the moment I am trying a dry run on a bog-standard PIII with a matrox g400 card. I figure that if i can get mythtv running on that i stand a chance on something more "exotic". So far I have not succeeded with knoppmyth, Fedora FC4 or ubuntu (tried them all because of so-called excellent howtos). All the howtos fall apart between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way through. Howtos are great if they just run through from start to finish, but worse than useless if they don't. If I knew what I was doing I wouldn't need a howto would I? So when the howto fails - I usually don't know where to go from there.

Anyway I am persevering, like all linux, it is great providing you don't actually need something or have a deadline. If i did I would use windoze. I have been mucking about with mythtv for 6 hours a day for two weeks No doubt, if I bought a copy of win MCE I could be up and running in about an hour. if you costed that out at an hourly rate for wasted time, it would be a good deal. Then I could just wait until mythtv was a reasonably decent program - it is still MILES away from that IMHO. - then switch back again to linux

Hey ho. It would be nice to be competent for a change.

RJ

BTW your post was absolute gobbledegook to a newbie like myself!!

I finally got some time to get back into this. Here is the howto for OpenGL:
*Removed Code
Go to
http://dri.freedesktop.org/snapshots/
and get the latest common file and the latest via file.

Untar and run the install.sh script.
Test with glxgears (I got 720fps).

I applied the patch to MPlayer v1.0pre7try2 and the latest CVS. Although there were patch errors, I found where they needed to go. The configure script said it supports "XvMCW + vld" without using any options (after changing xvmc=no to xvmc=auto). Everything compiled fine, but I am still unable to play MPEG4 videos in mplayer with xvmc.

This may be asking a bit too much, but is there a deb package that is compiled with the patch? Or, do I need to add something to my configure conmmand?

I have been trying to follow gr8nash's suggestions to get hw acceleration working on my cn400 based epia board but am having some problems - I am getting various make errors on the below marked line:



The errors are plentiful and range from:


to



There is much more but I do not wish to flood - does anyone know what could be going on? I compiled a new drm module for my kernel already based on instructions here:
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~mfgalizi/epia/x106.html

Everything there executed without error. My kernel is using the new module. Was I not supposed to do this? I think my problem is I'm bouncing from thread to how-to to thread - there is no real unified source of info on how to do this yet.

I'd humbly appreciate any help you experts can give - I'm quite lost here.

Thanks!
K

there's a howto on this board written by gr8nash, and It supposedly takes you from clean install to done. I do not have one of these boards, so I can't confirm.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Thanks Xsecrets - didn't know he moved it. Still - same problem occurs. I could always do a clean install and start from there but I've already done so much with this install.

Meh - I suppose it beats choppy decoding

I had exactly this issue and fixed it by adding an include and a definition. I am not near the box (or at home) right now but will be tomorrow. I will post the change when I get there.

-David

Thanks David!

I'd appreciate it. In the meantime I'll see if I can do the same (I'm not really a C guy but I'll try).

Thanks again,
Ken

David,

Have you gotten a chance to glance at the patches you've made to get this procedure to work? Myself and one other gentlemen are interested in it.

Thanks!
Ken

ok i updated the howto again:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8791&highlight=cn400
sometime around R5b7 give or take libpam0g-dev got stuck in denpendancy hell. But i found a debian deb file that while it complains does install and get you past the compiling.. so could someone try it and see if it works for you guys now?