OpenGLOverlay vs. Xvideo. Which one is better?

[Zibi1981]

I wonder if someone could help me with an advice...
I have a Radeon X800Pro and my system is Mandriva 2008.0. Finally, after some struggle and with major help from this forum users, I managed to install AMD/ATI's drivers ver. 8.1 (AKA 8.45.4) on my new kernel

Linux Felipe 2.6.24-rt1 #3 PREEMPT Mon Jan 28 21:21:12 CET 2008 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3200+ GNU/Linux

System is working well now and I have direct rendering. The only problem I've noticed is when I'm watching movies on Kaffeine (ver. 0.8.6; xine-lib version 1.1.9.1) - the picture sometimes "jitters". It's generally not a problem when using SMPlayer (ver. 0.5.62; mplayer ver. 1.0-1.rc1.20plf2008.0-4.2.1). Now, I did some research and read man pages of website-stories (especially forum-stories ;) ) and found out, that it might be the problem with the driver. I now know there are many types of overlays, which can make video playing smoother and produce more or less CPU-load, and the major two, AFAIK, are OpenGLOverlay and Xvideo. My question is: which one is better?

I forced my driver to use Xvideo at the moment by passing the argument

aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

and changing settings for both, SMPlayer and Kaffeine (xine), to xv driver. All seems to work well at the moment, but I'm wondering whether OpenGLO isn't better option. Anyone have some experience with this? Which one would you advice?

Thx in advance :)

[givemesugarr]

I wonder if someone could help me with an advice...
I have a Radeon X800Pro and my system is Mandriva 2008.0. Finally, after some struggle and with major help from this forum users, I managed to install AMD/ATI's drivers ver. 8.1 (AKA 8.45.4) on my new kernel

Linux Felipe 2.6.24-rt1 #3 PREEMPT Mon Jan 28 21:21:12 CET 2008 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3200+ GNU/Linux

System is working well now and I have direct rendering. The only problem I've noticed is when I'm watching movies on Kaffeine (ver. 0.8.6; xine-lib version 1.1.9.1) - the picture sometimes "jitters". It's generally not a problem when using SMPlayer (ver. 0.5.62; mplayer ver. 1.0-1.rc1.20plf2008.0-4.2.1). Now, I did some research and read man pages of website-stories (especially forum-stories ;) ) and found out, that it might be the problem with the driver. I now know there are many types of overlays, which can make video playing smoother and produce more or less CPU-load, and the major two, AFAIK, are OpenGLOverlay and Xvideo. My question is: which one is better?

I forced my driver to use Xvideo at the moment by passing the argument

aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

and changing settings for both, SMPlayer and Kaffeine (xine), to xv driver. All seems to work well at the moment, but I'm wondering whether OpenGLO isn't better option. Anyone have some experience with this? Which one would you advice?

Thx in advance :)

with Xv overlay you'll be able to use either Xv or opengl with kaffeine. if you select instead opengl as overlay you would be able to use only opengl. if you don't select one, then Xv should be enabled by default. if you switch both to off in xorg.conf then you'll have both overlays off and maybe the board could be faster, but this is just ipotetical.
for your board the Xv should be the one to select.

[Zibi1981]

Thx for your reply givemesugarr :)

You're claiming that when I enable Xvideo, I'll be able to use both, OpenGL and Xv overlay, but I read that on ATI drivers one can't use them both. So it's kind of choice between one of them. Moreover, when I passed the argument mentioned above, this is what appeared in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "FSAAEnable" "on"
Option "FSAAScale" "4"
EndSection

So how is it really?

[givemesugarr]

Thx for your reply givemesugarr :)

You're claiming that when I enable Xvideo, I'll be able to use both, OpenGL and Xv overlay, but I read that on ATI drivers one can't use them both. So it's kind of choice between one of them. Moreover, when I passed the argument mentioned above, this is what appeared in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf



So how is it really?

well, for me opengl in xine and opengl programs work when oepngloverlay is off and xv on. of course they also work when i have opengloverlay to on, but in that case xv won't work.
the options there are the ones that enable xv and disable opengl. you cannot enable both of them together, but you can disable both of them.

[Melcar]

I can always use both rendering methods, regardless of what options I set in xorg.conf. One thing I have noticed though, is that using opengl takes nearly twice as much CPU usage than with Xv.

[domi]

I can always use both rendering methods, regardless of what options I set in xorg.conf. One thing I have noticed though, is that using opengl takes nearly twice as much CPU usage than with Xv.

Confirmed. And with Xv, video scaling is horrible (lots of blocks seen with 7.12, not yet checked with 8.01). On the other hand video scaling with opengl works fine (checked on 8.01 )

[Zibi1981]

well, for me opengl in xine and opengl programs work when oepngloverlay is off and xv on. of course they also work when i have opengloverlay to on, but in that case xv won't work.
the options there are the ones that enable xv and disable opengl. you cannot enable both of them together, but you can disable both of them.

On my system I enabled Xvideo using aticonfig command, and now I cannot use OpenGL overlay in both, Xine or MPlayer related applications.

I can always use both rendering methods, regardless of what options I set in xorg.conf. One thing I have noticed though, is that using opengl takes nearly twice as much CPU usage than with Xv.

Hmm, interesting. Have to check that on my system. Thanks for the info :)

Confirmed. And with Xv, video scaling is horrible (lots of blocks seen with 7.12, not yet checked with 8.01). On the other hand video scaling with opengl works fine (checked on 8.01 )

Well I'm using a 2.6.24-rt1 (preemptible) kernel with 8.1 drivers and haven't noticed any problem with scaling...

[givemesugarr]

On my system I enabled Xvideo using aticonfig command, and now I cannot use OpenGL overlay in both, Xine or MPlayer related applications.


well, i think it depends on the boards. some boards behave well with xv and don't disable opengl and others disable it, as it should be normal.
i was only telling of my experience on the x200m. on the hd2600xt the opengloverlay works in the same way while xv indeed disables opengl. but on that board xv is worse than opengl.

[Melcar]

I think it depends on the engine and player being used. While using Xine what I can use depends on what I set as on in xorg.conf; the same with VLC. If using Gstreamer I can use both regardless of what xorg.conf says; Mplayer also lets me use either Xv or opengl regardless of any parameter in xorg.

[Zibi1981]

Is there a benchmark or something, which could be used to compare these overlays?

[givemesugarr]

Is there a benchmark or something, which could be used to compare these overlays?

well, try out gtkperf and glxgears. the first should give you the seconds to complete a test and the second the fps you get. the first gives better results with lower values while the second with higher.
also you could test out your favourite apps behavior in the different overlays and decide based on their functioning. this is the best test in my opinion.

[Zibi1981]

Thanks much :)

[bridgman]

For an X800 and any GPU before 690 or HD1xxx I would go with :

- Textured video off (Textured Video is primarily for GPUs with the AVIVO display controller, which don't have the older overlay)

- OpenGL overlay off (OpenGL overlay is for workstation apps only, and I believe it's ignored when Video overlay is enabled)

- Video overlay on (the pre-5xx overlay included a lot of video processing HW -- on the later chips we used the silicon for a more flexible display controller and shaders instead)

... and go with Xv.

[Zibi1981]

Here's my xorg.conf's device section

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "FSAAEnable" "on"
Option "FSAAScale" "4"
# Option "Textured2D" "true"
Option "TexturedXrender" "true"
EndSection

Should I comment TexturedXrender?

[bridgman]

You might want to turn it off while you're experimenting with video settings but I believe TexturedXRender is independent of TexturedVideo.

I believe you just need something like Option "TexturedVideo" "off" to make sure it is disabled. Of course it may be disabled by default on your card in which case you wouldn't see any difference. I'm not sure what the results are if you have both TexturedVideo and VideoOverlay enabled.

Remember that there are two ways of setting options in fglrx -- the conf file and the amdpcsdb file. I'm fairly sure (but not 100% sure) that amdpcsdb "wins" in the event of a conflict between the two files. My understanding is that the aticonfig utility will set both files but I haven't played with it myself yet.

[damentz]

Here's a question, should I just leave those options out of xorg.conf, remove /etc/ati/* and reinstall the driver? Will this let the driver choose the best option?

I'm guessing since you have two different technologies, it has to choose one automatically since someone is bound to screw up.

[bridgman]

My guess is that running aticonfig with the right options would do the job as well. I don't have the options in front of me but I think there's an aticonfig command line option that dumps 'em out. Matthew showed me a few weeks ago but I'm not remembering...

[sloggerKhan]

xv is the one to choose if it works. For me, xv is pretty much broken with the latest driver, though, so I'm using the opengl overlay, which kinda sucks. Lots of video tearing, and in general just annoying.

[cyrus_mc]

Here's my xorg.conf's device section

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "FSAAEnable" "on"
Option "FSAAScale" "4"
# Option "Textured2D" "true"
Option "TexturedXrender" "true"
EndSection

Should I comment TexturedXrender?

Something I have been trying to find out for a while. The options to fglrx, what ones exist and what do they mean. Is there any document that describes them? All I really have is VideoOverlay "on" and OpenGLOverlay "off". I added the TexturedVideo "on" as well but as for some of the others above, I dont' even know what they mean.

[bridgman]

OpenGLOverlay is for specific workstation apps which "float" a second layer of display information over the work area. It should be turned off on consumer cards.

You don't need OpenGLOverlay to play video through OpenGL, btw.

VideoOverlay is for pre-5xx cards which had video acceleration hardware built into the overlay block. For more recent cards (5xx and higher GPUs), or when you are running Compiz, you need to use TexturedVideo.

There is an aticonfig option which dumps out the commands, probably --help, but I don't think it goes into detail about when/how/why you would use each option.

[snakemedia]

Hello i am newbie on our forum.

I ask you about display problem while flicker was re-slowed?

I have display driver: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT on my Fujitsu Siemens Computer. Did you believe because my monitor shows some flickers in screensaver, videoplayer or windowed game programs. i want to stop with stupid ugly flickers. How do i fix my display by flickers? I want to make my display like new computer. Or some wrong display driver like MesaGL.

While i try with terminal this: fglrxinfo:

Output is some different. to Mesa?

Why does Ubuntu run only hated loved Software Driver. I want to go back into current display driver by ATI Technology.

Can you to help for me someone?

I ask you while i have installed old windows xp on my computer. Can i use with Disk Erase all hard disk formatting with "full erase" over than 1 hour. Does Ubuntu not show flicker problems while last erasing disk from computer?

Thank you for tips! Nice result for Option - Fsaa* in Xorg.conf
What is fsaa? How does fsaa work? fsaa can to ban to flicker or not?

Thanks. Regards SnakeMedia

[bridgman]

You will see flicker when running OpenGL applications under Compiz (aka desktop effects) with both the open source and fglrx drivers which ship with 9.04. For now you can get rid of the flicker by turning desktop effects off.

The latest fglrx driver (Catalyst 9.3) gets rid of that flicker by adding a feature called Redirected Direct Rendering, but that 9.3 driver won't work with Ubuntu 9.04. An upcoming driver release will give you Redirected Direct Rendering on Ubuntu 9.04, which should get rid of the flicker even when Desktop Effects are turned on.

If you are running open source drivers you will have three different drivers; the X driver (called -ati or -radeon), the kernel driver (drm), and the 3D driver (mesa).

If you are running the ATI Proprietary driver (fglrx) there will still be an X driver, a drm driver and a 3D driver, but they are all called fglrx and are all installed as a set.

Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) helps to remove the jagged edges on angled parts of the image; won't help with flicker.

[macmus]

but that 9.3 driver won't work with Ubuntu 9.04.

What about FC10 does 9.3 support that linux ?

An upcoming driver release will give you Redirected Direct Rendering on Ubuntu 9.04,

Does RDR increase CPU usage ?