Python player rendering performance issues with Intel 945

I'm afraid the Intel 945 graphics are very underpowered - especially coupled with an Atom CPU.

You can try disabling compiz if you have it enabled and reducing the output resolution - but beyond that it's the limit of what the hardware can do.

The text scrolling is jerky on all hardware. I'm waiting for a new browser embedding engine to be complete before I tackle that.

You can also try pulling my latest development code which has tiny speed up on some hardware.

Alex

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Thanks Alex for quick turn around.
I implemented your suggestions and we noticed improved performance however some sluggishness still remains. Let me know if you have any other work around for our problem else we will have to go for ION boards.

thanks,
Rambhia

All I can suggest is waiting for the Berkelium based version of the
client to come out (rather than Awesomium which is the version you're
using now).

I'm hoping there's some performance to come there for Flash/Text but
video will be unaffected. Video performance will be alot better on an
ION board once we have VDPAU implemented - but nobody is working on that
at the moment.

Alex

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Alex,
I understand you have used ASUS Eee Box B202 in past as player. Have you tested linux on it? How was the performance?

thanks,
Sanket

Hi,

I'm using Xibo Python Client on an 1st generation Atom board (945G/GZ). Although video is a little jerky, it performs reasonably well with 90º software rotation and 768x1366 resolution.

Have a look at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130582 and SPECIFICALLY the "fixmtrr.sh" part which I found out REALLY speeds up things on most Intel graphic boards (not only Atom).

Hope it helps

Hi Rui,

Thanks for the info. We followed the guide you sent us. We can not perform part C of the guide as kernel 2.6.30.9 no longer exists at http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30.9/...in any case we are using kernel 2.6.31-21 which should have all the bug fixes of 2.6.30.9.

We were getting FPS of ~20 in extremetuxracer before the changes and after the changes the performance gain was about 10%. Now we get FPS of about ~22. We were hoping for better gain in performance.

Do you think we are doing something wrong? We are using Ubuntu 10.04 on one machine and 9.10 on another.

thanks,
Rambhia

Hi Rambhia,

Here's what I do to install an Xibo client on an Ubuntu 10.04:
1) Do all steps mention in http://wiki.xibo.org.uk/wiki/Install_Guide_Python_Client#Ubuntu_10.04_and_derivatives EXCEPT I install "adobe-flashplugin" instead of "flashplugin-nonfree" (must enable 'partner' repositories)
2) Remove/purge gdm (dpkg -P gdm)
3) Download 'fixmtrr.sh' into /usr/local/bin
4) Create an .xinitrc on (eg) /home/xibo :
    /usr/local/bin/fixmtrr.sh
    cd /opt/xibo/pyclient/client/python/ ; ./run.sh
5) Create an "/etc/init/xibo.conf":
### begin xibo.conf
start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]

respawn
exec su -c startx -l xibo
### end xibo.conf

Besides this, you check what the CPU is doing using 'top': if you find 'python' using >60% CPU, than you're probably looking at the wrong problem: try different video formats/bit rates. Also check RAM usage.

Hope it helps

Thanks Rui Bernardino, that solved my question.

Thanks Rui,
I followed your instructions and everything seems to work like a charm. The video having problem was a high bitrate WMV video. While playing that video CPU utilization went up to 140%, everything else seems to play perfectly.

We are still testing but so far so good.

Cheers,
Rambhia