HD video playback

[KaIIen]

I have searched but not found anything... I have a new Kodak camera that records HD, both 720p and full 1080. When I play these files in Ubuntu (Lynx) it will not playback properly. I have thus far tried VLC, Movie Player, and Mplayer. VLC and Movie Player both drop frames so it stutters. Mplayer give me the error "Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device" and then continues to play just the audio.

I am running a Toshiba Satellite, 1.6gHz and 2.5Gb ram. Yes, i realize that this is "low end" for HD, but I know this system can play it with no problem as I am able to play these video files in XP. And if Windows can play my files, I know Ubuntu can too. I assume I need a codec but I am not sure what/where to get...

Thanks for the help!

[Segfault]

This is not low end. I have a low-power VIA based PC, 1.5 GHz, 1 GB of RAM. Thanks to SSE3 extensions and proper GPU (integrated S3 Unichrome Pro) HD video plays back fine.
You need to configure your video driver properly and also select correct video output for player you are using.

[KaIIen]

This is not low end. I have a low-power VIA based PC, 1.5 GHz, 1 GB of RAM. Thanks to SSE3 extensions and proper GPU (integrated S3 Unichrome Pro) HD video plays back fine.
You need to configure your video driver properly and also select correct video output for player you are using.

I have seen a lot of people asking this basic question when I googled, and the only responses I have found were that their systems were not good enough. And some of the people asking had slightly better systems then i do and a few that were way better... So I tossed that in to prevent that from being a response...

Not sure what exactly or how I need to configure. I have looked through my hardware setup but not found anything useful.

[MikeTbob]

Which video card do you have? Have you installed the correct drivers for it?
Post the output of

sudo lspci |grep -i vga

[KaIIen]

Which video card do you have? Have you installed the correct drivers for it?
Post the output of

sudo lspci |grep -i vga

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

[KaIIen]

SSooooo....any idea what would cause my issue or what I need to do to fix? Thanks!

[Rubberman]

What format is the video in, mpg2, mpg4, h264? What version of Ubuntu are you running? As for HD on a laptop, don't try to run greater than 720p. At 1080 your system will be working hard to scale down the output to fit the screen. Also, the Intel video is pretty minimal. However, as you get decent results with Windoze, as you surmise, you should also be able to get decent results with Linux. I run 720p all the time on my Dell D630 that has nVidia hardware. However, the nVidia hardware has dedicated video RAM. I think that the Intel video uses "shared" RAM. In this case, you may need to do something to increase the amount of RAM allocated to the video system drivers. I'm reasonable certain you can do that, but I really don't know how. Sorry...

[KaIIen]

What format is the video in, mpg2, mpg4, h264? What version of Ubuntu are you running? As for HD on a laptop, don't try to run greater than 720p. At 1080 your system will be working hard to scale down the output to fit the screen. Also, the Intel video is pretty minimal. However, as you get decent results with Windoze, as you surmise, you should also be able to get decent results with Linux. I run 720p all the time on my Dell D630 that has nVidia hardware. However, the nVidia hardware has dedicated video RAM. I think that the Intel video uses "shared" RAM. In this case, you may need to do something to increase the amount of RAM allocated to the video system drivers. I'm reasonable certain you can do that, but I really don't know how. Sorry...

Sorry, I should have been specific on the files. This camera records to .MOV format. But since it uses an HD codec, I assumed my issue was with that. As for Ubuntu, I am running the 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

In windows, I am able to play the 1080 files as well as the 720. I will reboot and check my BIOS settings on the amount of RAM allocated to video. I didn't think about that because this isn't an issue in Windows, so i figured everything else being equal... Thanks

[KaIIen]

I would have sworn that my systems BIOS supported options to change how mach RAM was allocated to video but it does not. I must be thinking of my old desktop.

[Rubberman]

There may be a driver option that does that (determine how much memory to "share" with video card). It may also be accessible in the /proc file system so you could possibly change it at runtime after booting. Also, Apple formats (.MOV supports a number of encodings) are sometimes "clunky" in Linux. When I have an HD one, I will use ffmpeg to transcode it to a more amenible format, yet preserve the resolution, aspect ratios, sound, etc.