slow video playback, high cpu load

[Stefan K.]

Binary package hint: totem

I usually have very slow video playback speed at the moment, about 1-3 fps. This affects several codecs and players. An older version (jaunty) I use on "productive partition" is usable and also a live-cd distro slax (kde, intel 2.4 exa).

OS: Karmic alpha-3 up-to-date (intel 2.8 uxa)
System: Acer Travelmate 223 (from 2002. yes, rather old)
Video: VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller] (rev 04)
CPU: Intel Celeron Mobile 1.13 Ghz

totem 2.27.2-0ubuntu1, vlc 1.0.0-1ubuntu1
gstreamer0.10-alsa 0.10.23.4-1 GStreamer plugin for ALSA
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg 0.10.7-1 FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer
gstreamer0.10-nice 0.0.8-1ubuntu1 ICE library (GStreamer plugin)
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base 0.10.23.4-1 GStreamer plugins from the "base" set
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-apps 0.10.23.4-1 GStreamer helper programs from the "base" set
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good 0.10.15-2ubuntu1 GStreamer plugins from the "good" set
gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio 0.10.15-2ubuntu1 GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio
gstreamer0.10-schroedinger 1.0.7-1 GStreamer plugin for encoding/decoding of Di
gstreamer0.10-tools 0.10.23.4-1 Tools for use with GStreamer
gstreamer0.10-x 0.10.23.4-1 GStreamer plugins for X11 and Pango

What I expected:
Well, fluent playing of SD-material as the sys always did.

What I experienced:
Very choppy/jerky playback right from the beginning of any tested video. I tried "Big Buck Bunny" in ogg and h264 encoding at a resolution of 480p. vlc is also affected and uses xvideo. Audio runs fine. BBB on youtube (flv) is mostly fluent, but the cpu is very utilized.

Some DVDs I tested have the same problems. Commercial content around 5 Mbit/s is no fun. A DVB recording around 2,5 MBit/s is fine as long as the bitrate remains low. On slax it plays acceptable at roughly 33% cpu load.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Jul 29 20:19:10 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem
Package: totem 2.27.2-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-4.23-generic
SourcePackage: totem
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-4-generic i686

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for the report, do you get the same if playing the files with gst-launch playbin uri=file:///path/to/file?

[Stefan K. (archilles)]

It is better with gst-launch. I guess 15 fps on average, but cpu load is 100%. It varies on each playback. Sometimes it is (nearly) fluid for some seconds and gets choppy again. h264 is generally faster, but I think it is because he cannot decode the audio data in that container and save some cpu cycles. Sometimes debug says:

"A lot of buffers are being dropped.
There may be a timestamping problem, or this computer is too slow."

How can I detect a "timestamping problem"? Probably it is connected to issues with UXA and the intel drivers (had some trouble before and posted on bugs.freedesktop.org which are now solved). On jaunty (EXA) problems with video acceleration are less. And the live-cd works fine.

[Kai Mast (kai-mast)]

I have a lot of lag when i start a video. Then it plays kinda fine but a bit sluggish.

Could this be the same problem?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

re assigning to gstreamer for now then, thanks.

[Hans van den Bogert (hbogert)]

also experiencing this since karmic alpha 2, my su3500 cpu could play 720p content flawlessly with around 40-50 cpu usage, but it's unworkable now, sound gets heavily out of sync too.

[Bouba (fjacquot)]

i'm experiencing the same behaviour as dlgandalf.

playing the same media with a xine based media player work flawlessly, i'm missing totem-xine !

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. A new version of GStreamer is available in both Lucid and Maverick and we are wondering if this is still reproducible in any of those versions, May you please test and give us of feedback about it? Thanks in advance.

[Stefan K. (archilles)]

I updated to lucid recently. BBB is running fine now in totem. CPU load is 80% on average. Probably there were some impacts from the xserver-xorg-intel driver as well. It was under heavy development to make uxa/libdrm/kms work. I'd like to test an unencrypted DVD with a 8 MBit/s MPEG-2 (DVB recording), but totem won't play it - no codec available. In vlc it runs smooth with very little juddery. But that is fine. At least it works. Thanks for the efforts :)

[Stefan K. (archilles)]

Just a little addendum: I installed the "ugly" and "bad" codecs from gstreamer by hand and now it plays DVD. Without them totem looks for "DVD playback" and finds no appropriate package. The "high" bitrate DVD with 8Mbit/s ("Das Boot" FYI) runs fine like in vlc.