Few problems

wiiija

wiiija

wiiija

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Northants
Hi all,

Decided to give Ubuntu a go tonight, briefly tried it from a USB stick first, liked it and installed.
While I love it in general I do have a few problems which I've been pulling my hair out about all night. Firstly I cannot get audio over HDMI working (acer revo R3610 ION based nettop).

Sound properties shows HDMI audio etc, its all selected but nothing, no sound at all, I figured it would be chipset drivers or something but nothing seems available for linux.

Secondly and something I am fairly surprised about is video performance, I've installed the drivers using Ubuntu hardware drivers application.
Firstly I have screen tearing which is noticeable even just by dragging windows around the desktop, this is both with desktop effects enabled and with them disabled.
Secondly I was using MPC-HC on windows 7 which has hardware accel, 1080p .mkv ran smooth as silk without a glitch, on the linux install I've tried VLC and it would not play ball with an .mkv, it runs it but its just a blocky jerky mess! I thought VLC had hardware accel now?

Any alternatives that will fully support hardware accel with ION chipset or is that just a nono on linux at the moment?


Cheers,
Sean
 
The audio over HDMI is a known issue with this release. There is a workaround; someone on here posted about it the other day. Maybe a have a search? Or try the Ubuntu forums.

The video issue is definitely not normal mate. Mine's smooth as silk. Which driver did you install? There are open source drivers and Nvidia (proprietary) drivers. Did you install via the restricted hardware drivers popup? Through synaptic? More info please. :)

VLC has indeed upgraded to use hardware acceleration for those with Nvidia cards, but only as of the new version 1.1 which hasn't made it to the repos on Ubuntu yet. It's not as simple as adding the new installer, as there's a lot of code behind the scenes that ties in (ffmpeg, rendering etc). This is what makes Linux so stable (once you have it working :p) - everything is tested first and all maintained centrally.

If you're having problems and want it to "just work, now" might I suggest that you install over it with a slightly older (six months, i.e. 9.10) version, or maybe try Mint 8? They're rock solid, well "ironed out" and shouldn't give you any grief. :)
 
Thanks for your help Rainmaker.

I've actually managed to sort everything! The screen tearing on desktop was due to compiz refreshing at 50hz instead of 60, so fixed that!
The 1080p playbck I fxed by installing mplayer/smplayer and using vdpau as the output, perfect now!

Last night was spent getting the wireless working which is now sorted AND I even got audio over HDMI working by uopdating the alsa drivers.

Very very happy now, everything is running smoothly :)

Sean
 
wiiija said:
Thanks for your help Rainmaker.

I've actually managed to sort everything! The screen tearing on desktop was due to compiz refreshing at 50hz instead of 60, so fixed that!
The 1080p playbck I fxed by installing mplayer/smplayer and using vdpau as the output, perfect now!

Last night was spent getting the wireless working which is now sorted AND I even got audio over HDMI working by uopdating the alsa drivers.

Very very happy now, everything is running smoothly :)

Sean
Click to expand...

Really happy for you Sean. It's a great feeling isn't it? A day of blood, sweat and tears spent pulling your hair out in mild frustration... then that sweet, sweet success! :D Glad to see you stuck with it; you'll learn a LOT about how computers really work by doing this - it is NOT wasted effort if you look at it like that. It's a good skill to have, and in a year or two once you're used to this stuff, you'll be able to do it all with your eyes closed within 10 mins of a fresh install.

A little tip, if you don't mind... Keep a little notebook, or a folder on a USB drive or something with a group of text files in it. Every time you find a solution to a problem, or work out something new (installing codecs on a particular release, how to add repos, whatever), make a note! I have a nice reference collection now, that even today still comes in handy. "How to install Sun JRE on 'distro'", "how to install NZB client from source code" etc.

Over time you'll have a nice little library of tips and tricks, and it saves hours of Googling when you need to repeat something in a year. Before I started keeping little notes like this, I'd often thought "Ah ha! There's the solution! But it's so easy, I'll not forget that now".... Famous last words LOL Saves a lot of headache in the long run.

Enjoy! :)
 
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