[mythtvnz] VDPAU OK on TV3, not elsewhere

[Nick Rout]

OK I am reporting back [1] now with some details from Bret's logs.

The major offender appears to be an almost endless reptition of:

2009-02-28 16:30:05.883 [h264 @ 0x7f6addcd3f10]number of reference
frames exceeds max (probably corrupt input), discarding one

Although there are sometimes other messages in there too like in this sequence:

2009-02-28 16:30:05.366 [h264_vdpau @ 0x7f2d790e7f10]number of
reference frames exceeds max (probably corrupt input), discarding one
2009-02-28 16:30:05.366 [h264_vdpau @ 0x7f2d790e7f10]mmco: unref short failure
2009-02-28 16:30:05.366 [h264_vdpau @ 0x7f2d790e7f10]number of
reference frames exceeds max (probably corrupt input), discarding one
2009-02-28 16:30:05.367 WriteAudio: buffer underrun
2009-02-28 16:30:05.433 [h264_vdpau @ 0x7f2d790e7f10]mmco: unref short failure
2009-02-28 16:30:05.433 [h264_vdpau @ 0x7f2d790e7f10]number of
reference frames exceeds max (probably corrupt input), discarding one
2009-02-28 16:30:05.501 GetNextFreeFrame() served a busy frame G.
Dropping. AAAA(au)UUUUUUUUuLLL
2009-02-28 16:30:05.539 GetNextFreeFrame() served a busy frame E.
Dropping. ULLLUAAUUUUUUUuUU
2009-02-28 16:30:10.672 [dvbsub @ 0x7f2d790e7f10]Invalid y position!
2009-02-28 16:30:10.881 [dvbsub @ 0x7f2d790e7f10]Invalid y position!

Has anyone seen these messages before or able to help.

[1] to recap my original message:

I have been helping a newbie get his DVB-T box up and running. I am
sorry but some of this will be vague until I ssh into his system again
tonight to get exact error messages, but I am looking for some tips in
advance as I don't want to miss anything when I have the chance to ssh
in.

The CPU is some grunty quadcore monster and he has a EN9400GT Silent
512MB video card.

Its a fresh install of Mythbuntu 8.10 plus I have enabled JY Avenard's
stable repo and upgraded. [1]

TV3 seems to run fine but every other channel  runs very badly [2],
being totally broken up (a bit like a video where the player is
struggling to find an I-frame). Sometimes a message comes up in the
frontend saying there has been a video error, sometimes it simply
freezes and won't respond to keypresses, sometimes it plays on for
quite a while, but badly. There is a stream of messages in the
frontend log but I didn't write them down at the time, hopefully can
access them tonight.

Composite is disabled in xorg.conf and the output of
/var/log/Xorg.0.log seems to confirm it is disabled.

Not sure if I got my playback profiles right - does anyone have a set
they use successfully in NZ with vdpau? (also where do I find these in
the database as I will be accessing by ssh).

[1] I did encounter problems upgrading because of the shift of
libvdpau from nvidia-glx to nvidia-libvdpau, and in the end had to use
dpkg to remove the nvidia driver and then do the upgrade. But it is
all up and running at 180.29 now.

[2] for the benefit of JY and any other people who may not be familiar
with the NZ channels there is a summary here:

http://www.mythtv.co.nz/mythtv/2009/02/11/initial-vdpau-testing/

In short TV3 is 1080i, the others are all 720p or 576i.