streaming video/audio sync problem; Question about drivers.

Mortuis · Post by **Mortuis** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:17 pm

I'm still new to Linux on the desktop, I have ubuntu running on my Thinkpad T23, and one problem I've noticed recently is that when I'm watching streaming video, on google video's for instance, the audio will lose sync with the video, becoming noticable after something like 30 seconds to a minute.

I know the hardware can handle it, because I watched the entire spore presentation with this computer without a problem when I had windows on it. If I was running windows my first inclination would be to check if I had the latest drivers, as I know that's a necessary step in a windows installation to get this computer running nicely. Unfortunatly, I don't know how to approach this with linux.

So my questions:
If anyone has experienced this sync problem on their system, what was your fix?
Where do I look up/update the drivers?
Are drivers universal, or OS specific? Can I download the latest drivers from ibm.com and install them somehow, or is it more involved than that?

Post by **dann** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:42 pm

Does this only happen with streaming video? Could it be a network issue? Have you tried downloading the video and playing it from the system?

Perhaps you could provide a lnk to a video you notice the problem with and others can try.

Mortuis · Post by **Mortuis** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 5:00 pm

As far as I can tell it's only a streaming video problem. I've downloaded videos from google video and they play fine off my hard drive. It's strange though because the google video will appear to be buffering far ahead that there shouldn't be a performance issue.

<a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... ue">Google Video</a> example.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC9A9a2R ... YouTube</a> example.

I ruled out network issues and hardware issues by running both of these on my windows partition. In the google video in Ubuntu I can start to see the loss of sync at around 45 seconds in the close up shots. The sync is totally off after about a minute. Likewise with the youtube example. So I'm certain the problem is just that my Linux partition is poorly configured, because I suffer the same problems in windows if I don't update the drivers and such.

My problem is that being new to Linux, I don't know how to configure or update.

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Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 9:27 pm

I believe YouTube and Google Video both use Flash. As far as I know, Flash 7 for Linux has audio/video sync problems. When 8.5 gets released, these issues should be resolved.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:53 am

What's strange is that flash works perfectly on some distos, and like absolute ass on others. I've tried the both the aoss hack and the esd hack, both with and without a sound system running, and I'll be goddamned if I can get flash to work correctly on my arch box. However, flash seems to be perfect on fedora core 4, and I've heard there are no flash issues using suse either. As far as "Fixed in the next release of flash" goes, I'll believe it when I see it.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:15 am

Flash movies seem to run fine on my Arch/Underground desktop, but I haven't done a system upgrade in months... which might be the reason for that.

They play fine on my Slackware systems, too.

Post by **Patrick** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:15 am

Snarkout wrote:What's strange is that flash works perfectly on some distos, and like absolute ass on others. I'll be goddamned if I can get flash to work correctly on my arch box.

Flash worked great for me in Arch before my hard drive took a dump. Must be a hardware issue.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:10 am

Define great please. I have a very hard time believing that my hardware sound audigy is the issue, as well as every other card I've ever used. Flash plays just fine, but the sound is out of synch in 30 seconds or so.

Post by **Patrick** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:24 am

Snarkout wrote:Define great please. I have a very hard time believing that my hardware sound audigy is the issue, as well as every other card I've ever used. Flash plays just fine, but the sound is out of synch in 30 seconds or so.

Great as in stays in synch for the entire clip. Unfortunately the hard drive Arch was installed on took a major dump. Partitions are now corrupted so I'm searching for a new distro and hard drive.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:03 am

I keep thinking I'll look for a new distro, but I never get very far. I'd love rubix if it weren't for the fact that nearly every package in the community repo is built against packages in current. Even that I don't mind so much, but what's the point in running the unstable branch of a slack/arch merge instead of plain old arch? (K|U)buntu? I can't even get the most recent dapper iso (flight 6) to boot on 4 different boxen. I'm still trying to get comfortable with slack or vector, and really haven't yet. Fedora? Well, it's nice, and I have to admit that I haven't played with fc5 at all yet, but the list of packages for it keeps dwindling - at least from the repos I prefer.

That being said, arch does fart in my face at least once or twice every few weeks, probably because I can't seem to stop upgrading. It's a sickness, I suppose.

Post by **Patrick** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:10 am

Snarkout wrote:That being said, arch does fart in my face at least once or twice every few weeks, probably because I can't seem to stop upgrading. It's a sickness, I suppose.

This happens when you first get a decent package management tool such as apt-get or pacman. It's kind of like when someone gets a mircrowave for the first time and they try to cook everything in it!

Judah · Post by **Judah** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:59 pm

I've had some problems with synching.

Moreso with Google video than Youtube. But it's sporadic.
Some clips work fine, others don't. Usually, on youtube, I just let
the whole video get buffered and then watch it and I usually don't
have a problem.

I'm using an old SuSE distro as well..

I do wish they would release the new version of flash for linux
sometime soon. Especially if it will help with these issues..

I do watch Digital Life TV through their streaming flash and I have to say,
I have never had a problem with synching on it. So whatever they are doing,
they are doing it right..

SHALOM!
Judah

Mortuis · Post by **Mortuis** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:54 pm

Well, I investigated the driver avenue some more and found out that whether it affects my streaming video sync issue or not, my driver settings aren't optimal. <a href="http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~dugan/t23.html">this site</a> says

Type “glxinfo | grep direct”. You should see“direct rendering: Yes.”

My computer says "no". I found a howto for upgrading the T23's video driver and grabbed the necessary files and tried to install them. However I got the following error message:

Code: Select all

ERROR: Kernel modules did not compile

The DRI drivers can not be installed without the latest kernel modules.
Installation will be aborted. See the dri.log file for information on
what went wrong.

So I go ahead and check the dri.log and get:

Code: Select all

root@uriel:/home/john/work2/dripkg# cat dri.log
make DRM_MODULES=savage.o modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/john/work2/dripkg/drm/linux-core'
+ ln -s ../shared-core/drm.h drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/drm_sarea.h drm_sarea.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mga_dma.c mga_dma.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mga_drm.h mga_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mga_drv.h mga_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mga_irq.c mga_irq.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mga_state.c mga_state.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mga_ucode.h mga_ucode.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mga_warp.c mga_warp.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/r128_drv.h r128_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/r128_drm.h r128_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/r128_cce.c r128_cce.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/r128_state.c r128_state.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/r128_irq.c r128_irq.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/radeon_drv.h radeon_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/radeon_drm.h radeon_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/radeon_cp.c radeon_cp.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/radeon_irq.c radeon_irq.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/radeon_mem.c radeon_mem.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/radeon_state.c radeon_state.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/sis_drv.h sis_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/sis_drm.h sis_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/sis_ds.c sis_ds.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/sis_ds.h sis_ds.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/sis_mm.c sis_mm.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/tdfx_drv.h tdfx_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_drm.h via_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_drv.h via_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_mm.h via_mm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_ds.h via_ds.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_3d_reg.h via_3d_reg.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_drv.c via_drv.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_ds.c via_ds.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_irq.c via_irq.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_map.c via_map.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_mm.c via_mm.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_dma.c via_dma.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_verifier.c via_verifier.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_verifier.h via_verifier.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/via_video.c via_video.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mach64_drv.h mach64_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mach64_drm.h mach64_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mach64_dma.c mach64_dma.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mach64_irq.c mach64_irq.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/mach64_state.c mach64_state.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/i915_drv.h i915_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/i915_drm.h i915_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/i915_irq.c i915_irq.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/i915_mem.c i915_mem.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/i915_dma.c i915_dma.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/savage_drv.h savage_drv.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/savage_drm.h savage_drm.h
+ ln -s ../shared-core/savage_bci.c savage_bci.c
+ ln -s ../shared-core/savage_state.c savage_state.c
rm -f linux
ln -s . linux
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.12-10-386/build  SUBDIRS=`pwd` DRMSRCDIR=`pwd` modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.12-10-386'
/home/john/work2/dripkg/drm/linux-core/Makefile:279: *** CONFIG_X86_CMPXCHG needs to be enabled in the kernel.  Stop.
make[2]: *** [_module_/home/john/work2/dripkg/drm/linux-core] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.12-10-386'
make[1]: *** [modules] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/john/work2/dripkg/drm/linux-core'
make: *** [savage.o] Error 2

It looks like I need to enable CONFIG_X86_CMPXCHG in the kernel, but I don't know how to do this, could someone please advise?