comparison DOCS/video.html @ 8177:1f00a3d29b20

some TOC reorder new sections updates fixes girls etc

8176:15fa4667cddf

<P>Not all CPUs support MTRRs. For example older K6-2's [around 266MHz,
  stepping 0] doesn't support MTRR, but stepping 12's do ('<CODE>cat
  /proc/cpuinfo</CODE>' to check it').</P>


<H4><A NAME="xv">2.3.1.2 Xv</A></H4>

<P>Under XFree86 4.0.2 or newer, you can use your card's hardware YUV routines
  using the XVideo extension. This is what the option '-vo xv' uses. Also,
  this is driver supports adjusting brightness/contrast/hue/etc (unless you use
  the old, slow DirectShow DivX codec, which supports it everywhere), see the

  <LI>And finally, check if MPlayer was compiled with 'xv' support.
    ./configure prints this.</LI>
</UL>


<H5><A NAME="xv_3dfx">2.3.1.2.1 3dfx cards</A></H5>

<P>Older 3dfx drivers were known to have problems with XVideo acceleration, it
  didn't support either YUY2 or YV12, and so. Verify that you have XFree86
  version 4.2.0 or greater, it works OK with YV12 and YUY2. Previous versions,
  including 4.1.0, <B>crash with YV12</B>. If you experience strange effects

<P><B>OR</B>, try the NEW -vo tdfxfb driver! See the
  <A HREF="#tdfxfb">tdfxfb</A> section.</P>


<H5><A NAME="xv_s3">2.3.1.2.2 S3 cards</A></H5>

<P>S3 Savage3D's should work fine, but for Savage4, use XFree86 version 4.0.3
  or greater (in case of image problems, try 16bpp). As for S3 Virge.. there is
  xv support, but the card itself is very slow, so you better sell it.</P>

  and convert by driver (slow). If you suspect your card, get a newer driver,
  or ask politely on the mplayer-users mailing list for an MMX/3DNow enabled
  driver.</P>


<H5><A NAME="xv_nvidia">2.3.1.2.3 nVidia cards</A></H5>

<P>nVidia isn't a very good choice under Linux (according to nVidia, this is
  <A HREF="users_against_developers.html#nvidia">not true</A>).. You'll have to
  use the binary closed-source nVidia driver, available at nVidia's web site. 
  The standard XFree86 driver doesn't support XVideo for these cards, due to

<P>Riva128 cards don't have XVideo support even with the nVidia driver :(
  Complain to nVidia.</P>


<H5><A NAME="xv_ati">2.3.1.2.4 ATI cards</A></H5>

<UL>
  <LI>The <A HREF="http://gatos.sourceforge.net">GATOS driver</A> (which you
    should use, unless you have Rage128 or Radeon) has VSYNC enabled by
    default. It means that decoding speed (!) is synced to the monitor's

    happily get <B>accelerated</B> display, with or without <B>TV output</B>, and
    no libraries or X are needed. Read <A HREF="#vidix">Vidix</A> section.</LI>
</UL>


<H5><A NAME="xv_neomagic">2.3.1.2.5 NeoMagic cards</A></H5>

<P>These cards can be found in many laptops. Unfortunately, the driver in
  X 4.2.0 can't do Xv, but we have a modified, Xv-capable driver for you.
  <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/contrib/NeoMagic-driver/neomagic_drv.o.4.2.0.bz2">Download from here</A>.
  Driver provided by Stefan Seyfried.</P>

  &nbsp; &nbsp; <B>Option "OverlayMem" "829440"</B><BR>
  &nbsp; &nbsp; <I>[...]</I><BR>
  EndSection</P>


<H5><A NAME="xv_trident">2.3.1.2.6 Trident cards</A></H5>

<P>If you want to use xv with a trident card, provided that it doesn't work
  with 4.1.0, install XFree 4.2.0. 4.2.0 adds support for fullscreen xv
  support with the Cyberblade XP card.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga">2.3.1.3 DGA</A></H4>


<H5><A NAME="dga_summary">2.3.1.3.1 Summary</A></H5>

<P>This document tries to explain in some words what DGA is in general and what
  the DGA video output driver for MPlayer can do (and what it
  can't).</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_whatis">2.3.1.3.2 What is DGA</A></H5>

<P>DGA is short for Direct Graphics Access and is a means for a program to
  bypass the X-Server and directly modifying the framebuffer memory.
  Technically spoken this happens by mapping the framebuffer memory into
  the memory range of your process. This is allowed by the kernel only

<P>However DGA has some drawbacks. It seems it is somewhat dependent on the
  graphics chip you use and on the implementation of the X server's video
  driver that controls this chip. So it does not work on every system ...</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_installation">2.3.1.3.3 Installing DGA support for MPlayer</A></H5>

<P>First make sure X loads the DGA extension, see in /var/log/XFree86.0.log:</P>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>(II) Loading extension XFree86-DGA</CODE></P>

<P>Now use the <CODE>-vo dga</CODE> option, and there you go (hope so :))!
  You should also try if the <CODE>-vo sdl:dga</CODE> option works for you. It's
  much faster.</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_resolution">2.3.1.3.4 Resolution switching</A></H5>

<P>The DGA driver allows for switching the resolution of the output signal. 
  This avoids the need for doing (slow) software scaling and at the same time
  provides a fullscreen image. Ideally it would switch to the exact resolution
  (except for honoring aspect ratio) of the video data, but the X server only

  <CODE>/var/log/XFree86.0.log</CODE>.</P>

<P>See appendix A for some sample modeline definitions.</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_mplayer">2.3.1.3.5 DGA &amp; MPlayer</A></H5>

<P>DGA is used in two places with MPlayer: The SDL driver can be made to
  make use of it (-vo sdl:dga) and within the DGA driver (-vo dga). The above
  said is true for both; in the following sections I'll explain how the DGA
  driver for MPlayer works.</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_features">2.3.1.3.6 Features of the DGA driver</A></H5>

<P>The DGA driver is invoked by specifying -vo dga at the command line.
  The default behavior is to switch to a resolution matching the original
  resolution of the video as close as possible. It deliberately ignores the
  -vm and -fs switches (enabling of video mode switching and fullscreen) -

  works with doublebuffering enabled. However, enabling doublebuffering may
  result in a big speed penalty (on my K6-II+ 525 it used an additional 20% of
  CPU time!) depending on the implementation of DGA for your hardware.</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_speed">2.3.1.3.7 Speed issues</A></H5>

<P>Generally spoken, DGA framebuffer access should be at least as fast as using
  the X11 driver with the additional benefit of getting a fullscreen image. 
  The percentage speed values printed by MPlayer have to be interpreted
  with some care, as for example, with the X11 driver they do not include the

<P>I've seen some AVI files already be replayed on a Pentium MMX 266. AMD K6-2
  CPUs might work at 400 MHZ and above.</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_bugs">2.3.1.3.8 Known bugs</A></H5>

<P>Well, according to some developers of XFree, DGA is quite a beast. They
  tell you better not to use it. Its implementation is not always flawless
  with every chipset driver for XFree out there.</P>

    100000x100000 or the like ...</LI>
   <LI>OSD only works with doublebuffering enabled.</LI>
</UL>


<H5><A NAME="dga_future">2.3.1.3.9 Future work</A></H5>

<UL>
  <LI>use of the new X11 render interface for OSD</LI>
  <LI>where is my TODO list ???? :-(((</LI>
</UL>


<H5><A NAME="dga_modelines">2.3.1.3.A Some modelines</A></H5>

<PRE>
  Section "Modes"
    Identifier    "Modes[0]"
    Modeline	"800x600"  40     800 840 968 1056  600 601 605 628

<P>These entries work fine with my Riva128 chip, using nv.o X server driver
  module.</P>


<H5><A NAME="dga_bug_reports">2.3.1.3.B Bug Reports</A></H5>

<P>If you experience troubles with the DGA driver please feel free to file
  a bug report to me (e-mail address below). Please start MPlayer with
  the -v option and include all lines in the bug report that start with
  vo_dga:</P>

  also help. Thanks!</P>

<P><I>Acki ([e-mail], www.acki-netz.de)</I></P>


<H4><A NAME="sdl">2.3.1.4 SDL</A></H4>

<P>SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) is basically a unified video/audio
  interface. Programs that use it know only about SDL, and not about what video
  or audio driver does SDL actually use. For example a Doom port using SDL can
  run on svgalib, aalib, X, fbdev, and others, you only have to specify the

    It's bug in SDL, I can't change it (tested with SDL 1.2.1).</LI>
  <LI>DO NOT USE SDL with GUI! It won't work as it should.</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="svgalib">2.3.1.5 SVGAlib</A></H4>

<H4>Installation</H4>

<P>You'll have to install svgalib and its development package in order for
  MPlayer build its SVGAlib driver (autodetected, but can be forced),

  &nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>-sws 4</CODE><BR>
  Maybe automatic aspect correction has to be shut off:<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>-noaspect</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="fbdev">2.3.1.6 Framebuffer output (FBdev)</A></H4>

<P>Whether to build the FBdev target is autodetected during ./configure .
  Read the framebuffer documentation in the kernel sources
  (Documentation/fb/*) for more information.</P>

<P>If your card doesn't support VBE 2.0 standard (older ISA/PCI
  cards, such as S3 Trio64), only VBE 1.2 (or older?):
  Well, VESAfb is still available, but you'll have to load SciTech Display
  Doctor (formerly UniVBE) before booting Linux.  Use a DOS boot disk or
  whatever.  And don't forget to register your UniVBE ;))</P>

<P>The FBdev output takes some additional parameters above the others:</P>

<DL>
  <DT><CODE>-fb</CODE></DT>

<P>NOTE: FBdev video mode changing _does not work_ with the VESA framebuffer,
  and don't ask for it, since it's not an MPlayer limitation.</P>


<H4><A NAME="mga_vid">2.3.1.7 Matrox framebuffer (mga_vid)</A></H4>

<P>This section is about the Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 BES (Back-End Scaler)
  support, the mga_vid kernel driver.  It's active developed by me (A'rpi), and
  it has hardware VSYNC support with triple buffering. It works on both
  framebuffer console and under X.</P>

<P><B>WARNING</B>: on non-Linux systems, use <A HREF="#vidix">VIDIX</A> for
  mga_vid!</P>

<P>The <CODE>/dev/mga_vid</CODE> device file can be read (for example by
  <CODE>cat /dev/mga_vid</CODE>) for some info, and written for brightness
  change: <CODE>echo "brightness=120" &gt; /dev/mga_vid</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="tdfxfb">2.3.1.8 3dfx YUV support (tdfxfb)</A></H4>

<P>This driver uses the kernel's tdfx framebuffer driver to play movies with
  YUV acceleration. You'll need a kernel with tdfxfb support, and recompile
  with <CODE>./configure --enable-tdfxfb</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="opengl">2.3.1.9 OpenGL output</A></H4>

<P>MPlayer supports displaying movies using OpenGL, but if your
  platform/driver supports xv as should be the case on a PC with Linux, use xv
  instead, OpenGL performance is considerably worse. If you have an X11
  implementation without xv support, OpenGL is a viable alternative.</P>

  4.2.0 or later  supports Rage128. See
  <A HREF="http://dri.sourceforge.net">http://dri.sourceforge.net</A>
  for download and installation instructions.</P>


<H4><A NAME="aalib">2.3.1.10 AAlib - text mode displaying</A></H4>

<P><B>AAlib</B> is a library for displaying graphics in text mode, using powerful
  ASCII renderer. There are LOTS of programs already supporting it, like Doom,
  Quake, etc. MPlayer contains a very usable driver for it.
  If ./configure detects aalib installed, the aalib libvo driver will be

<P>Use the <CODE>-framedrop</CODE> option if your computer isn't fast enough to
  render all frames!</P>

<P>Playing on terminal you'll get better speed and quality using the Linux
  driver, not curses (<CODE>-aadriver linux</CODE>). But therefore you need write access on
  <CODE>/dev/vcsa&lt;terminal&gt;</CODE>.  That isn't autodetected by aalib, but vo_aa tries
  to find the best mode.  See
  <A HREF="http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/tune/">http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/tune/</A>
  for further tuning issues.</P>


<H4><A NAME="vesa">2.3.1.11 VESA - output to VESA BIOS</A></H4>

<P>This driver was designed and introduced as a <B>generic driver</B> for any
  video card which has VESA VBE 2.0+ compatible BIOS. Another advantage of this
  driver is that it tries to force TV output on.<BR>
  <B>VESA BIOS EXTENSION (VBE) Version 3.0 Date: September 16, 1998</B> (Page

    booting your PC since video BIOS initializes itself only once during POST
    procedure.</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="x11">2.3.1.12 X11</A></H4>

<P>Avoid if possible. Outputs to X11 (uses shared memory extension), with no
  hardware acceleration at all. Supports (MMX/3DNow/SSE accelerated, but still
  slow) software scaling, use the options <CODE>-fs -zoom</CODE>. Most cards
  have hardware scaling support, use the <CODE>-vo xv</CODE> output for them,

<P>If you can't find the modes you inserted, browse XFree86's output. Some
  drivers can't use low pixelclocks that are needed for low resolution
  video modes.</P>


<H4><A NAME="vidix">2.3.1.13 VIDIX</A></H4>

<P>VIDIX is the abbreviation for <B>VID</B>eo <B>I</B>nterface for
  *ni<B>X</B>.<BR>
  VIDIX was designed and introduced as an interface for fast user-space drivers
  providing such video performance as mga_vid does for Matrox cards. It's

<H4>USAGE</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>You can use standalone video output driver: <CODE>-vo xvidix</CODE><BR>
    This driver was developed as X11's front end to VIDIX technology.  It
    requires X server and can work only under X server. Note that, as it
    directly accesses the hardware and circumvents the X driver, pixmaps
    cached in the graphics card's memory may be corrupted. You can prevent
    this by limiting the amount of video memory used by X with the XF86Config
    option "VideoRam" in the device section. You should set this to the amount

  <DT><CODE>-contrast</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust <B>CONTRAST</B> of video output. Works in similar manner as
    brightness.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-saturation</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust <B>SATURATION</B> of video output.  You can get grayscale
    output with this option.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-hue</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust <B>HUE</B> of video signal.  You can get colored negative
    of image with this option.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-red_intensity</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust intensity of <B>RED</B> component of video signal.</DD>

  or<BR>
  <CODE>mplayer -vo xvidix -red_intensity -50 -saturation 400 -hue 300
  filename.vob</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="zr">2.3.1.14 Zr</A></H4>

<P>This is a display-driver (<CODE>-vo zr</CODE>) for a number of MJPEG
  capture/playback cards (tested for DC10+ and Buz, and it should work for the
  LML33 and the original DC10). The driver works by encoding the frame to jpeg 
  and then sending it to the card. For the jpeg encoding <B>libavcodec</B> is
  used, and required. With the special <I>cinerama</I> mode, you can watch
  movies in true wide screen provided that you have two beamers and two
  MJPEG cards. Depending on resolution and quality settings, this driver
  may require a lot of CPU power, remember to specify <CODE>-framedrop</CODE>
  if your machine is too slow. Note: My AMD K6-2 350MHz is (with <CODE>
  -framedrop</CODE>) quite adequate for watching VCD sized material and
  downscaled movies.

<P>This driver talks to the kernel driver available at
  <A HREF="http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net">http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net</A>, so
  you must get it working first. The presence of an MJPEG card is autodetected
  by the configure script, if autodetection fails, force detection with

<PRE>
  ./configure --enable-zr
</PRE>

<P>The output can be controlled by several options, a long description of the
  options can be found in the man page, a short list of options can be
  viewed by running

<PRE>
  mplayer -zrhelp
</PRE>

<P>Things like scaling and the OSD (on screen display) are not handled by
  this driver but can be done using the video filters. For example, 
  suppose that you have a movie with a resolution of <CODE>512x272</CODE> and
  you want to view it fullscreen on your DC10+. There are three main
  possibilities, you may scale the movie to a width of <CODE>768</CODE>,
  <CODE>384</CODE> or <CODE>192</CODE>. For performance and quality reasons,
  I would choose to scale the movie to <CODE>384x204</CODE> using the fast
  bilinear software scaler. The commandline is

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -sws 0 -vop scale=384:204 movie.avi
</PRE>

<P>Cropping can be done by the <CODE>crop</CODE> filter and by
  this driver itself. Suppose that a movie is too wide for display on your
  Buz and that you want to use <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE> to make the movie less
  wide, the you would issue the following command

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -zrcrop 720x320+80+0 benhur.avi
</PRE>

  if you want to use the <CODE>crop</CODE> filter, you would do

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -vop crop=720:320:80:0 benhur.avi
</PRE>

<P>Extra occurances of <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE> invoke <I>cinerama</I> mode, i.e.
  you can distribute the movie over several TV's or beamers to create a larger
  screen. Suppose you have two beamers. The left one is connected to your Buz
  at <CODE>/dev/video1</CODE> and the right one is connected to your DC10+ at
  <CODE>/dev/video0</CODE>. The movie has a resolution of <CODE>704x288</CODE>.
  Suppose also that you want the right beamer in black and white and that
  the right beamer should have jpeg frames at quality <CODE>10</CODE>,
  then you would issue the following command

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -zrdev /dev/video0 -zrcrop 352x288+352+0 -zrxdoff 0 -zrbw \
          -zrcrop 352x288+0+0 -zrdev /dev/video1 -zrquality 10 movie.avi
</PRE>

<P>You see that the options appearing before the second <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE>
  only apply to the DC10+ and that the options after the second 
  <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE> apply to the Buz. The maximum number of MJPEG cards
  participating in <I>cinerama</I> is four, so you can buid a <CODE>2x2</CODE>
  vidiwall.</P>

<P>Finally an important remark: Do not start or stop XawTV on the playback
  device during playback, it will crash your computer. It is, however, fine to
  <B>FIRST</B> start XawTV, <B>THEN</B> start MPlayer, wait for
  MPlayer to finish and <B>THEN</B> stop XawTV.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dvb">2.3.1.15 DVB</A></H4>

<P>MPlayer supports cards with the Siemens DVB chipset from vendors like
  Siemens, Technotrend, Galaxis or Hauppauge.  The latest DVB drivers are
  available from the <A HREF="http://www.linuxtv.org">Linux TV site</A>. If you
  want to do software transcoding you should have at least a 1GHz CPU.</P>

<P>Configure should detect your DVB card. If it did not, force detection with

  the native OSD feature of DVB cards, as well as more fluent playback of
  non-25fps movies and realtime transcoding between MPEG2 and MPEG4 (partial
  decompression).</P>


<H4><A NAME="dxr3">2.3.1.16 DXR3/Hollywood+</A></H4>

<P>MPlayer supports hardware accelerated playback with the Creative DXR3
  and Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus cards. These cards both use the em8300 MPEG
  decoder chip from Sigma Designs.</P>

    especially if you are using prebuffering. Then why 25 and not 29.97? Well,
    the thing is that when you use 29.97 the picture becomes a bit jumpy. The
    reason for this is unknown to us. If you set it to somewhere between 25 and
    27 the picture becomes stable. For now all we can do is accept this for a
    fact.</DD>
  
  <DT><CODE>-ac hwac3</CODE></DT>
  <DD>The em8300 supports playing back AC3 audio (surround sound) through the
    digital audio output of the card. See the <CODE>-ao oss</CODE> option
    above, it must be used to specify the DXR3's output instead of
    a soundcard. Also read <A HREF="codecs.html#hardware_ac3">hardware AC3</A>

  when viewing DVDs with subtitles. When running with <CODE>-vop lavc</CODE>
  MPlayer will reencode video to MPEG (even if it already is MPEG). This means
  that it will need more CPU power, and you might loose some picture quality.</P>


<H4><A NAME="tv-out">2.3.1.A TV-out support</A></H4>


<H5><A NAME="tv-out_matrox">2.3.1.A.1 Matrox G400 cards</A></H5>

<P>Under Linux you have 2 methods to get G400 TV out working:</P>

<P><B>IMPORTANT:</B> for Matrox G450/G550 TV-out instructions, please see the
  next section!</P>

    Change 640x512 if you set the resolution to other.<BR>
    <B>Enjoy the ultra-fast ultra-featured Matrox TV output (better than Xv)!</B></P>
  </LI>
</UL>


<H5><A NAME="tv-out_matrox_g450">2.3.1.A.2 Matrox G450/G550 cards</A></H5>

<P>TV output support for these cards has only been recently introduced, and is
  not yet in the mainstream kernel. Currently the <B>mga_vid</B> module
  can't be used AFAIK, because the G450/G550 driver works only in one
  configuration: the first CRTC chip (with much more features) on the first

<P>The necessary kernel patch and the detailed howto is downloadable from
  <A HREF="http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.eriksen/matrox_tvout/">http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.eriksen/matrox_tvout/</A></P>


<H5><A NAME="tv-out_ati">2.3.1.A.3 ATI cards</A></H5>

<H5>PREAMBLE</H5>

<P>Currently ATI doesn't want to support any of its TV-out chips under Linux,
  because of their licensed Macrovision technology.</P>

<P>Only thing you need to do - <B>have TV connector plugged in before
  booting your PC</B> since video BIOS initializes itself only once during
  POST procedure.</P>


<H5><A NAME="tv-out_voodoo">2.3.1.A.4 Voodoo 3</A></H5>

<P>Check <A HREF="http://www.iki.fi/too/tvout-voodoo3-3000-xfree">this URL</A>.</P>

</BODY>
</HTML>

8177:1f00a3d29b20

<P>Not all CPUs support MTRRs. For example older K6-2's [around 266MHz,
  stepping 0] doesn't support MTRR, but stepping 12's do ('<CODE>cat
  /proc/cpuinfo</CODE>' to check it').</P>

<H4><A NAME="normal">2.3.1.2 Video outputs for traditional video cards</A></H4>

<H4><A NAME="xv">2.3.1.2.1 Xv</A></H4>

<P>Under XFree86 4.0.2 or newer, you can use your card's hardware YUV routines
  using the XVideo extension. This is what the option '-vo xv' uses. Also,
  this is driver supports adjusting brightness/contrast/hue/etc (unless you use
  the old, slow DirectShow DivX codec, which supports it everywhere), see the

  <LI>And finally, check if MPlayer was compiled with 'xv' support.
    ./configure prints this.</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="xv_3dfx">2.3.1.2.1.1 3dfx cards</A></H4>

<P>Older 3dfx drivers were known to have problems with XVideo acceleration, it
  didn't support either YUY2 or YV12, and so. Verify that you have XFree86
  version 4.2.0 or greater, it works OK with YV12 and YUY2. Previous versions,
  including 4.1.0, <B>crash with YV12</B>. If you experience strange effects

<P><B>OR</B>, try the NEW -vo tdfxfb driver! See the
  <A HREF="#tdfxfb">tdfxfb</A> section.</P>


<H4><A NAME="xv_s3">2.3.1.2.1.2 S3 cards</A></H4>

<P>S3 Savage3D's should work fine, but for Savage4, use XFree86 version 4.0.3
  or greater (in case of image problems, try 16bpp). As for S3 Virge.. there is
  xv support, but the card itself is very slow, so you better sell it.</P>

  and convert by driver (slow). If you suspect your card, get a newer driver,
  or ask politely on the mplayer-users mailing list for an MMX/3DNow enabled
  driver.</P>


<H4><A NAME="xv_nvidia">2.3.1.2.1.3 nVidia cards</A></H4>

<P>nVidia isn't a very good choice under Linux (according to nVidia, this is
  <A HREF="users_against_developers.html#nvidia">not true</A>).. You'll have to
  use the binary closed-source nVidia driver, available at nVidia's web site. 
  The standard XFree86 driver doesn't support XVideo for these cards, due to

<P>Riva128 cards don't have XVideo support even with the nVidia driver :(
  Complain to nVidia.</P>


<H4><A NAME="xv_ati">2.3.1.2.1.4 ATI cards</A></H4>

<UL>
  <LI>The <A HREF="http://gatos.sourceforge.net">GATOS driver</A> (which you
    should use, unless you have Rage128 or Radeon) has VSYNC enabled by
    default. It means that decoding speed (!) is synced to the monitor's

    happily get <B>accelerated</B> display, with or without <B>TV output</B>, and
    no libraries or X are needed. Read <A HREF="#vidix">Vidix</A> section.</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="xv_neomagic">2.3.1.2.1.5 NeoMagic cards</A></H4>

<P>These cards can be found in many laptops. Unfortunately, the driver in
  X 4.2.0 can't do Xv, but we have a modified, Xv-capable driver for you.
  <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/contrib/NeoMagic-driver/neomagic_drv.o.4.2.0.bz2">Download from here</A>.
  Driver provided by Stefan Seyfried.</P>

  &nbsp; &nbsp; <B>Option "OverlayMem" "829440"</B><BR>
  &nbsp; &nbsp; <I>[...]</I><BR>
  EndSection</P>


<H4><A NAME="xv_trident">2.3.1.2.1.6 Trident cards</A></H4>

<P>If you want to use xv with a trident card, provided that it doesn't work
  with 4.1.0, install XFree 4.2.0. 4.2.0 adds support for fullscreen xv
  support with the Cyberblade XP card.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga">2.3.1.2.2 DGA</A></H4>


<H4><A NAME="dga_summary">2.3.1.2.2.1 Summary</A></H4>

<P>This document tries to explain in some words what DGA is in general and what
  the DGA video output driver for MPlayer can do (and what it
  can't).</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_whatis">2.3.1.2.2.2 What is DGA</A></H4>

<P>DGA is short for Direct Graphics Access and is a means for a program to
  bypass the X-Server and directly modifying the framebuffer memory.
  Technically spoken this happens by mapping the framebuffer memory into
  the memory range of your process. This is allowed by the kernel only

<P>However DGA has some drawbacks. It seems it is somewhat dependent on the
  graphics chip you use and on the implementation of the X server's video
  driver that controls this chip. So it does not work on every system ...</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_installation">2.3.1.2.2.3 Installing DGA support for MPlayer</A></H4>

<P>First make sure X loads the DGA extension, see in /var/log/XFree86.0.log:</P>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>(II) Loading extension XFree86-DGA</CODE></P>

<P>Now use the <CODE>-vo dga</CODE> option, and there you go (hope so :))!
  You should also try if the <CODE>-vo sdl:dga</CODE> option works for you. It's
  much faster.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_resolution">2.3.1.2.2.4 Resolution switching</A></H4>

<P>The DGA driver allows for switching the resolution of the output signal. 
  This avoids the need for doing (slow) software scaling and at the same time
  provides a fullscreen image. Ideally it would switch to the exact resolution
  (except for honoring aspect ratio) of the video data, but the X server only

  <CODE>/var/log/XFree86.0.log</CODE>.</P>

<P>See appendix A for some sample modeline definitions.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_mplayer">2.3.1.2.2.5 DGA &amp; MPlayer</A></H4>

<P>DGA is used in two places with MPlayer: The SDL driver can be made to
  make use of it (-vo sdl:dga) and within the DGA driver (-vo dga). The above
  said is true for both; in the following sections I'll explain how the DGA
  driver for MPlayer works.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_features">2.3.1.2.2.6 Features of the DGA driver</A></H4>

<P>The DGA driver is invoked by specifying -vo dga at the command line.
  The default behavior is to switch to a resolution matching the original
  resolution of the video as close as possible. It deliberately ignores the
  -vm and -fs switches (enabling of video mode switching and fullscreen) -

  works with doublebuffering enabled. However, enabling doublebuffering may
  result in a big speed penalty (on my K6-II+ 525 it used an additional 20% of
  CPU time!) depending on the implementation of DGA for your hardware.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_speed">2.3.1.2.2.7 Speed issues</A></H4>

<P>Generally spoken, DGA framebuffer access should be at least as fast as using
  the X11 driver with the additional benefit of getting a fullscreen image. 
  The percentage speed values printed by MPlayer have to be interpreted
  with some care, as for example, with the X11 driver they do not include the

<P>I've seen some AVI files already be replayed on a Pentium MMX 266. AMD K6-2
  CPUs might work at 400 MHZ and above.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_bugs">2.3.1.2.2.8 Known bugs</A></H4>

<P>Well, according to some developers of XFree, DGA is quite a beast. They
  tell you better not to use it. Its implementation is not always flawless
  with every chipset driver for XFree out there.</P>

    100000x100000 or the like ...</LI>
   <LI>OSD only works with doublebuffering enabled.</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="dga_future">2.3.1.2.2.9 Future work</A></H4>

<UL>
  <LI>use of the new X11 render interface for OSD</LI>
  <LI>where is my TODO list ???? :-(((</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="dga_modelines">2.3.1.2.2.A Some modelines</A></H4>

<PRE>
  Section "Modes"
    Identifier    "Modes[0]"
    Modeline	"800x600"  40     800 840 968 1056  600 601 605 628

<P>These entries work fine with my Riva128 chip, using nv.o X server driver
  module.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dga_bug_reports">2.3.1.2.2.B Bug Reports</A></H4>

<P>If you experience troubles with the DGA driver please feel free to file
  a bug report to me (e-mail address below). Please start MPlayer with
  the -v option and include all lines in the bug report that start with
  vo_dga:</P>

  also help. Thanks!</P>

<P><I>Acki ([e-mail], www.acki-netz.de)</I></P>


<H4><A NAME="sdl">2.3.1.2.3 SDL</A></H4>

<P>SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) is basically a unified video/audio
  interface. Programs that use it know only about SDL, and not about what video
  or audio driver does SDL actually use. For example a Doom port using SDL can
  run on svgalib, aalib, X, fbdev, and others, you only have to specify the

    It's bug in SDL, I can't change it (tested with SDL 1.2.1).</LI>
  <LI>DO NOT USE SDL with GUI! It won't work as it should.</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="svgalib">2.3.1.2.4 SVGAlib</A></H4>

<H4>Installation</H4>

<P>You'll have to install svgalib and its development package in order for
  MPlayer build its SVGAlib driver (autodetected, but can be forced),

  &nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>-sws 4</CODE><BR>
  Maybe automatic aspect correction has to be shut off:<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>-noaspect</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="fbdev">2.3.1.2.5 Framebuffer output (FBdev)</A></H4>

<P>Whether to build the FBdev target is autodetected during ./configure .
  Read the framebuffer documentation in the kernel sources
  (Documentation/fb/*) for more information.</P>

<P>If your card doesn't support VBE 2.0 standard (older ISA/PCI
  cards, such as S3 Trio64), only VBE 1.2 (or older?):
  Well, VESAfb is still available, but you'll have to load SciTech Display
  Doctor (formerly UniVBE) before booting Linux. Use a DOS boot disk or
  whatever. And don't forget to register your UniVBE ;))</P>

<P>The FBdev output takes some additional parameters above the others:</P>

<DL>
  <DT><CODE>-fb</CODE></DT>

<P>NOTE: FBdev video mode changing _does not work_ with the VESA framebuffer,
  and don't ask for it, since it's not an MPlayer limitation.</P>


<H4><A NAME="mga_vid">2.3.1.2.6 Matrox framebuffer (mga_vid)</A></H4>

<P>This section is about the Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 BES (Back-End Scaler)
  support, the mga_vid kernel driver. It's active developed by me (A'rpi), and
  it has hardware VSYNC support with triple buffering. It works on both
  framebuffer console and under X.</P>

<P><B>WARNING</B>: on non-Linux systems, use <A HREF="#vidix">VIDIX</A> for
  mga_vid!</P>

<P>The <CODE>/dev/mga_vid</CODE> device file can be read (for example by
  <CODE>cat /dev/mga_vid</CODE>) for some info, and written for brightness
  change: <CODE>echo "brightness=120" &gt; /dev/mga_vid</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="tdfxfb">2.3.1.2.7 3dfx YUV support (tdfxfb)</A></H4>

<P>This driver uses the kernel's tdfx framebuffer driver to play movies with
  YUV acceleration. You'll need a kernel with tdfxfb support, and recompile
  with <CODE>./configure --enable-tdfxfb</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="opengl">2.3.1.2.8 OpenGL output</A></H4>

<P>MPlayer supports displaying movies using OpenGL, but if your
  platform/driver supports xv as should be the case on a PC with Linux, use xv
  instead, OpenGL performance is considerably worse. If you have an X11
  implementation without xv support, OpenGL is a viable alternative.</P>

  4.2.0 or later  supports Rage128. See
  <A HREF="http://dri.sourceforge.net">http://dri.sourceforge.net</A>
  for download and installation instructions.</P>


<H4><A NAME="aalib">2.3.1.2.9 AAlib - text mode displaying</A></H4>

<P><B>AAlib</B> is a library for displaying graphics in text mode, using powerful
  ASCII renderer. There are LOTS of programs already supporting it, like Doom,
  Quake, etc. MPlayer contains a very usable driver for it.
  If ./configure detects aalib installed, the aalib libvo driver will be

<P>Use the <CODE>-framedrop</CODE> option if your computer isn't fast enough to
  render all frames!</P>

<P>Playing on terminal you'll get better speed and quality using the Linux
  driver, not curses (<CODE>-aadriver linux</CODE>). But therefore you need write access on
  <CODE>/dev/vcsa&lt;terminal&gt;</CODE>. That isn't autodetected by aalib, but vo_aa tries
  to find the best mode. See
  <A HREF="http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/tune/">http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/tune/</A>
  for further tuning issues.</P>


<H4><A NAME="vesa">2.3.1.2.10 VESA - output to VESA BIOS</A></H4>

<P>This driver was designed and introduced as a <B>generic driver</B> for any
  video card which has VESA VBE 2.0+ compatible BIOS. Another advantage of this
  driver is that it tries to force TV output on.<BR>
  <B>VESA BIOS EXTENSION (VBE) Version 3.0 Date: September 16, 1998</B> (Page

    booting your PC since video BIOS initializes itself only once during POST
    procedure.</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="x11">2.3.1.2.11 X11</A></H4>

<P>Avoid if possible. Outputs to X11 (uses shared memory extension), with no
  hardware acceleration at all. Supports (MMX/3DNow/SSE accelerated, but still
  slow) software scaling, use the options <CODE>-fs -zoom</CODE>. Most cards
  have hardware scaling support, use the <CODE>-vo xv</CODE> output for them,

<P>If you can't find the modes you inserted, browse XFree86's output. Some
  drivers can't use low pixelclocks that are needed for low resolution
  video modes.</P>


<H4><A NAME="vidix">2.3.1.2.12 VIDIX</A></H4>

<P>VIDIX is the abbreviation for <B>VID</B>eo <B>I</B>nterface for
  *ni<B>X</B>.<BR>
  VIDIX was designed and introduced as an interface for fast user-space drivers
  providing such video performance as mga_vid does for Matrox cards. It's

<H4>USAGE</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>You can use standalone video output driver: <CODE>-vo xvidix</CODE><BR>
    This driver was developed as X11's front end to VIDIX technology. It
    requires X server and can work only under X server. Note that, as it
    directly accesses the hardware and circumvents the X driver, pixmaps
    cached in the graphics card's memory may be corrupted. You can prevent
    this by limiting the amount of video memory used by X with the XF86Config
    option "VideoRam" in the device section. You should set this to the amount

  <DT><CODE>-contrast</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust <B>CONTRAST</B> of video output. Works in similar manner as
    brightness.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-saturation</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust <B>SATURATION</B> of video output. You can get grayscale
    output with this option.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-hue</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust <B>HUE</B> of video signal. You can get colored negative
    of image with this option.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-red_intensity</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Adjust intensity of <B>RED</B> component of video signal.</DD>

  or<BR>
  <CODE>mplayer -vo xvidix -red_intensity -50 -saturation 400 -hue 300
  filename.vob</CODE></P>


<H4><A NAME="directfb">2.3.1.2.13 DirectFB</A></H4>

<P><I>"DirectFB is a graphics library which was designed with embedded systems in
  mind. It offers maximum hardware accelerated performance at a minimum of
  resource usage and overhead."</I> - quoted from
  <A HREF="http://www.directfb.org">http://www.directfb.org</A>.</P>

<P>I'll exclude DirectFB features from this section.</P>

<P>Though MPlayer is not supported as a "video provider" in DirectFB, this
  output driver will enable video playback through DirectFB. It will -
  of course - be accelerated, on my Matrox G400 DirectFB's speed was the
  same as XVideo.</P>

<P>Always try to use the newest version of DirectFB. You can use DirectFB
  options on the command line, using the <CODE>-dfbopts</CODE> option.
  Layer selection can be done by the subdevice method, e.g.: <CODE>-vo
  directfb:2</CODE> (layer -1 is default: autodetect)</P>


<H4><A NAME="dfbmga">2.3.1.2.14 DirectFB/Matrox (dfbmga)</A></H4>

<P>Please read the <A HREF=#directfb>main DirectFB section</A> for general
  informations.</P>

<P>This video output driver will enable CRTC2 (on the second head) on the
  Matrox G400 card, displaying video <B>independently</B> of the first head.</P>

<P>Instructions on how to make it work can be found here:
  <A HREF="http://www.sci.fi/~syrjala/directfb/readme.txt">http://www.sci.fi/~syrjala/directfb/readme.txt</A></P>

<P>Note: we haven't been able to make this work, but others did. Anyway,
  porting of the CRTC2 code to <B>mga_vid</B> is underway.</P>


<H4><A NAME="mpegdec">2.3.1.3 MPEG decoders</A></H4>

<H4><A NAME="dvb">2.3.1.3.1 DVB</A></H4>

<P>MPlayer supports cards with the Siemens DVB chipset from vendors like
  Siemens, Technotrend, Galaxis or Hauppauge. The latest DVB drivers are
  available from the <A HREF="http://www.linuxtv.org">Linux TV site</A>. If you
  want to do software transcoding you should have at least a 1GHz CPU.</P>

<P>Configure should detect your DVB card. If it did not, force detection with

  the native OSD feature of DVB cards, as well as more fluent playback of
  non-25fps movies and realtime transcoding between MPEG2 and MPEG4 (partial
  decompression).</P>


<H4><A NAME="dxr2">2.3.1.3.2 DXR2</A></H4>

<P>TODO: somebody please fill this section with information.</P>


<H4><A NAME="dxr3">2.3.1.3.3 DXR3/Hollywood+</A></H4>

<P>MPlayer supports hardware accelerated playback with the Creative DXR3
  and Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus cards. These cards both use the em8300 MPEG
  decoder chip from Sigma Designs.</P>

    especially if you are using prebuffering. Then why 25 and not 29.97? Well,
    the thing is that when you use 29.97 the picture becomes a bit jumpy. The
    reason for this is unknown to us. If you set it to somewhere between 25 and
    27 the picture becomes stable. For now all we can do is accept this for a
    fact.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-vop lavc,expand=-1:-1:-1:-1:1</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Altough the DXR3 driver can put some OSD onto the MPEG1/2/4 video,
    it has much lower quality than MPlayer's traditional OSD, and has several
    refresh problems as well. The command line above will firstly convert the
    input video to MPEG4 (this is mandatory, sorry), then apply an expand
    filter which won't expand anything (-1: default), but apply the normal OSD
    onto the picture (that's what the "1" at the end does).</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-ac hwac3</CODE></DT>
  <DD>The em8300 supports playing back AC3 audio (surround sound) through the
    digital audio output of the card. See the <CODE>-ao oss</CODE> option
    above, it must be used to specify the DXR3's output instead of
    a soundcard. Also read <A HREF="codecs.html#hardware_ac3">hardware AC3</A>

  when viewing DVDs with subtitles. When running with <CODE>-vop lavc</CODE>
  MPlayer will reencode video to MPEG (even if it already is MPEG). This means
  that it will need more CPU power, and you might loose some picture quality.</P>


<H4><A NAME="other">2.3.1.4 Other visualization hardware</A></H4>

<H4><A NAME="zr">2.3.1.4.1 Zr</A></H4>

<P>This is a display-driver (<CODE>-vo zr</CODE>) for a number of MJPEG
  capture/playback cards (tested for DC10+ and Buz, and it should work for the
  LML33 and the original DC10). The driver works by encoding the frame to jpeg 
  and then sending it to the card. For the jpeg encoding <B>libavcodec</B> is
  used, and required. With the special <I>cinerama</I> mode, you can watch
  movies in true wide screen provided that you have two beamers and two
  MJPEG cards. Depending on resolution and quality settings, this driver
  may require a lot of CPU power, remember to specify <CODE>-framedrop</CODE>
  if your machine is too slow. Note: My AMD K6-2 350MHz is (with <CODE>
  -framedrop</CODE>) quite adequate for watching VCD sized material and
  downscaled movies.

<P>This driver talks to the kernel driver available at
  <A HREF="http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net">http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net</A>, so
  you must get it working first. The presence of an MJPEG card is autodetected
  by the configure script, if autodetection fails, force detection with

<PRE>
  ./configure --enable-zr
</PRE>

<P>The output can be controlled by several options, a long description of the
  options can be found in the man page, a short list of options can be
  viewed by running

<PRE>
  mplayer -zrhelp
</PRE>

<P>Things like scaling and the OSD (on screen display) are not handled by
  this driver but can be done using the video filters. For example, 
  suppose that you have a movie with a resolution of <CODE>512x272</CODE> and
  you want to view it fullscreen on your DC10+. There are three main
  possibilities, you may scale the movie to a width of <CODE>768</CODE>,
  <CODE>384</CODE> or <CODE>192</CODE>. For performance and quality reasons,
  I would choose to scale the movie to <CODE>384x204</CODE> using the fast
  bilinear software scaler. The commandline is

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -sws 0 -vop scale=384:204 movie.avi
</PRE>

<P>Cropping can be done by the <CODE>crop</CODE> filter and by
  this driver itself. Suppose that a movie is too wide for display on your
  Buz and that you want to use <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE> to make the movie less
  wide, the you would issue the following command

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -zrcrop 720x320+80+0 benhur.avi
</PRE>

  if you want to use the <CODE>crop</CODE> filter, you would do

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -vop crop=720:320:80:0 benhur.avi
</PRE>

<P>Extra occurances of <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE> invoke <I>cinerama</I> mode, i.e.
  you can distribute the movie over several TV's or beamers to create a larger
  screen. Suppose you have two beamers. The left one is connected to your Buz
  at <CODE>/dev/video1</CODE> and the right one is connected to your DC10+ at
  <CODE>/dev/video0</CODE>. The movie has a resolution of <CODE>704x288</CODE>.
  Suppose also that you want the right beamer in black and white and that
  the right beamer should have jpeg frames at quality <CODE>10</CODE>,
  then you would issue the following command

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo zr -zrdev /dev/video0 -zrcrop 352x288+352+0 -zrxdoff 0 -zrbw \
          -zrcrop 352x288+0+0 -zrdev /dev/video1 -zrquality 10 movie.avi
</PRE>

<P>You see that the options appearing before the second <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE>
  only apply to the DC10+ and that the options after the second 
  <CODE>-zrcrop</CODE> apply to the Buz. The maximum number of MJPEG cards
  participating in <I>cinerama</I> is four, so you can buid a <CODE>2x2</CODE>
  vidiwall.</P>

<P>Finally an important remark: Do not start or stop XawTV on the playback
  device during playback, it will crash your computer. It is, however, fine to
  <B>FIRST</B> start XawTV, <B>THEN</B> start MPlayer, wait for
  MPlayer to finish and <B>THEN</B> stop XawTV.</P>


<H4><A NAME="blinken">2.3.1.4.2 Blinkenlights</A></H4>

<P>This driver is capable of playback using the Blinkenlights UPD protocol.
  If you don't know what Blinkenlights is, you don't need this driver.</P>


<H4><A NAME="tv-out">2.3.1.5 TV-out support</A></H4>


<H4><A NAME="tv-out_matrox">2.3.1.5.1 Matrox G400 cards</A></H4>

<P>Under Linux you have 2 methods to get G400 TV out working:</P>

<P><B>IMPORTANT:</B> for Matrox G450/G550 TV-out instructions, please see the
  next section!</P>

    Change 640x512 if you set the resolution to other.<BR>
    <B>Enjoy the ultra-fast ultra-featured Matrox TV output (better than Xv)!</B></P>
  </LI>
</UL>

<H4>Building a Matrox TV-out cable</H4>

<P>This information was contributed by <B>Rácz Balázs</B>. Of course
  no one takes any responsibility, nor guarantee for any damage caused
  by this documentation.</P>

<P>The CRTC2 connector's fourth pin is the composite video signal. The ground
  are the sixth, seventh and eighth pins.</P>


<H4><A NAME="tv-out_matrox_g450">2.3.1.5.2 Matrox G450/G550 cards</A></H4>

<P>TV output support for these cards has only been recently introduced, and is
  not yet in the mainstream kernel. Currently the <B>mga_vid</B> module
  can't be used AFAIK, because the G450/G550 driver works only in one
  configuration: the first CRTC chip (with much more features) on the first

<P>The necessary kernel patch and the detailed howto is downloadable from
  <A HREF="http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.eriksen/matrox_tvout/">http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.eriksen/matrox_tvout/</A></P>


<H4><A NAME="tv-out_ati">2.3.1.5.3 ATI cards</A></H4>

<H5>PREAMBLE</H5>

<P>Currently ATI doesn't want to support any of its TV-out chips under Linux,
  because of their licensed Macrovision technology.</P>

<P>Only thing you need to do - <B>have TV connector plugged in before
  booting your PC</B> since video BIOS initializes itself only once during
  POST procedure.</P>


<H4><A NAME="tv-out_voodoo">2.3.1.5.4 Voodoo 3</A></H4>

<P>Check <A HREF="http://www.iki.fi/too/tvout-voodoo3-3000-xfree">this URL</A>.</P>

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