Bug 398808

(In reply to knossos456 from comment #0)
> I have a question , I haven't found the method.
> 
> I have big problems with VLC and my Radeon 5450 .
> Under vdpau it stutter every 4- 5 seconds on HD content.

Well proprietary GPU stacks are usually full of bugs, and don't work too well.

> Mplayer and Xine works perfectly with same content.
> 
> As i have read that vlc is a bad player with old graphic cards ( i haven't
> found the correct setting to play fluently a simple HD movie ) , i'm
> searching the method to compile Kaffeine with Mplayer instead vlc.
> 
> I have see backend-mplayer source sub directoty, but haven't found the
> method to compile Kaffeine to use mplayer.
> 
> Can somebody help (or if it is outdated why not delete it in repo ? or put a
> comment it is not working ...)

Kaffeine had an option in the past to work with different backends. That was during a period of time where it as transitioning to use a different backend.
The code there at backend-mplayer is for that time.

On older versions, it used lib-xine. This was replaced by vlc in 2011:

   commit e31652b06cc46dde488804b09205487d8036114f
   Author: Christoph Pfister <christophpfister@gmail.com>
   Date:   Sat Apr 30 18:48:07 2011 +0200

    switch from (lib-)xine to (lib-)vlc
    
    - many issues (esp. crashes) vanish / are easier to fix
    - likely you need the 'full' vlc package (with X11 plugins)
    - this commit introduces introduces various regressions ;-)
    - big picture problems with libvlc:
      - dvd navigation (likely solved with libvlc 1.2 once it's released)
      - VDPAU
    - make MediaWidget more state-orientated, i.e. separate between
     - functions, which modify the state (e.g. a signal from the backend)
     - functions, which rely on the state (e.g. ui updates)

The support for mplayer happened for a while, until it got removed, back in 2012:

   commit 05841ede2f902b3a47da6cbb2fd9edc069224abb
   Author: Christoph Pfister <christophpfister@gmail.com>
   Date:   Sun Mar 4 12:57:46 2012 +0100

       stop mplayer experiment (--> vlc)

The code changed a lot since then, and, even if you revert that patch, other changes would be required for it to work.

Anyway, if you're interested on developing support for another backend, I would, instead, try to use Gstreamer, as it provides a more controllable approach.

Thanks for quick answer.

I have not a  proprietary GPU stack , but the one comming with bionic ..

I have try to compile kaffeine 1.2.2 from source ( that is running with xine).
I had to do with aptitude to install qt4 libs, but finally v 1.2.2 runs fluently also on bionic , some icons are missing, haven't finalized the patches.

Just to say kaffeine with xine was a must for video .., really.
But i have look inside the source, backend kaffeine-xbu etc stuff, complicated...

If you have a project with Gstreammer yes i would try of course.

I've send you a mail for my DVB-T patch proposal ..

(In reply to knossos456 from comment #2)
> Thanks for quick answer.
> 
> I have not a  proprietary GPU stack , but the one comming with bionic ..

I suspect that bionic has both the open source and the closed source drivers.

If you're using an open source driver, you could try to open a bug at freedesktop and/or at vlc.

> I have try to compile kaffeine 1.2.2 from source ( that is running with
> xine).
> I had to do with aptitude to install qt4 libs, but finally v 1.2.2 runs
> fluently also on bionic , some icons are missing, haven't finalized the
> patches.
> 
> Just to say kaffeine with xine was a must for video .., really.
> But i have look inside the source, backend kaffeine-xbu etc stuff,
> complicated...

xine has issues on its own, as it is not maintained for a *long* time. It probably won't allow you to use channels with h.264/h.265. Also, if you look at the Kaffeine's closed bug reports, you'll see hundreds of bugs due to it.

> If you have a project with Gstreammer yes i would try of course.

Once I played with the idea, but never had time to do any serious stuff. I guess I found somewhere a Gstreamer backend for Kaffeine (I guess it was on some version 0.9x). I suspect it shouldn't be that hard to make it work again, but it would require a lot more time than I have to dedicate on userspace projects nowadays.

> 
> I've send you a mail for my DVB-T patch proposal ..

(In reply to Mauro Carvalho Chehab from comment #3)
> (In reply to knossos456 from comment #2)

> Once I played with the idea, but never had time to do any serious stuff. I
> guess I found somewhere a Gstreamer backend for Kaffeine (I guess it was on
> some version 0.9x). I suspect it shouldn't be that hard to make it work
> again, but it would require a lot more time than I have to dedicate on
> userspace projects nowadays.

Yeah, Kaffeine 0.87 used either gstreamer or xine as backend:

$ ls kaffeine-0.8.7/kaffeine/src/player-parts
dummy-part  gstreamer-part  kaffeine-part  Makefile.am  Makefile.in  README  xine-part

(I extracted its source from a Fedora RPM file)

The backends README of such version used to say:

- xine-part
  This is the default (and recommended) player part for kaffeine using xine-lib.

- gstreamer-part
  This is an experimental player part using GStreamer.

As far as I remember, on that time, Xine were very stable and well maintained, and Gst was the new kid in the block.

Xine is working properly and fluent , stand alone or under Kaffeine up to 1.2.2 for up to h.264 HD content.

h.265 is a other story.
All HD is H.264 here, and i haven't the hardware ressources ( GPU and CPU) to test Uhd with players (windows or ubuntu)

Shame the VLC wasen't corrected for Radeon 5000 familly, all other players are working fine , Windows also, 3 % cpu for hd content with vdpau or under windows.


I will try to post a bug report as you have reported.

I'm exiting to see if kaffeine is still working with gstreamer.

As this bug is actually a problem at libVLC (with should probably be fixed there some day - if not already), I'm closing this.