Struggling with Ubuntu / AMD Video driver for HD playback

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leonos

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Apr 2, 2014
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OS- Ubuntu 13.10 (will switch distros or versions if it proves useful to do so)
MOBO- ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI
CPU- AMD FX-8120 CPU 3.10GHz Eight-Core AM3+
RAM- G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900)
BLURay- LG Super Multi Blu-Ray Writer Drive BH12LS35
VIDEO- AMD/ATI RADEON HD 6770

So after trying all driver options:
I am struggling with the following:
decoding of certain videos (seems early 2000 HD rips are most common but some newer > 2010 same issue) are having errors while decoding, showing as boxes or pix-elation in the output.
Also I notice a lot of system lag, just while doing normal things like browsing local files, sometimes causing lockups and forcing me to hard boot.
Also I can't seem to play movies from an external USB3.0 HDD hooked into a USB3.0 port without it freezing just because it can't read the drive fast enough to play it.
I don't know if these issues are related, I used to be a windows guy and the transition to linux has not been as easy as I hoped--but damned if I'm going back now.

I have tried with VLC and XBMC but run into different issues with each player.
VLC does not play AAC audio properly over my Toslink cable to the surround sound (AAC capable) however I realize this can't be done over that medium, and tried XBMC for AC3 re-coding on the fly; but XBMC won't play ANY 5.1 content properly it seems, even content that does play in VLC properly. It does however, seem to play all video streams that VLC has errors with just fine.
 
Solution
spankmon
The jerky freezes might be because you have Tear-Free desktop enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center. When I tried the tear free, no video tearing at all... but the video was so jerky and dropping frames it was unwatchable. Ubuntu might have a sync to vblank setting that you can also turn off. It caused things like delayed keyboard input and squirrily, cheezy behavior in general.
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spankmon

spankmon

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I've never been able to get decent video playback with the Unity desktop and Radeon graphics (I have 3 different cards in other computers). Assuming you've already installed ubuntu-restricted-extras, you might try switching to the low graphics session (available from the login screen). Or switch to the XBMC desktop session rather than using XBMC from inside the Unity desktop. Neither of those options work for me.

These days I always use the XFCE desktop and turn off compositing. I get smooth video playback with no screen tearing using the standard driver rather than any of the others. When I need the proprietary drivers (for gaming) I turn off compositing, and in the VLC video preferences turn-off video acceleration. With this done I get smooth video playback with occasional slight tearing.

My USB 3 external hard drive has never worked with any recent Linux distro, even though they claim that it should. It does work when plugged into a USB 2 port.

No suggestion for the audio as I use only stereo setup.
 
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spankmon

spankmon

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I've used only ATI video cards for several years. Video playback was always best with the default open soruce drivers, but I could never enjoy the 3D effects of the distro's desktop because the compositing would ruin video. Not trying to be a fanboi, but two months ago I bought my first NVidia card and have been able to use every distro I've tried with full effects and flawless video playback at the same time. You'd think that AMD would consider someday fixing their problem with Linux.
 
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leonos

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I actually tried xbmcbuntu awhile back but really struggled with it. This interface seems like it would be confusing but you know what I'm willing to try again. If it's stable, I'll get used to interface changes with enough time and effort.
XBMC did have flawless audio pass through for me once before, but I have not been able to reproduce it. That was in 12.04 LTS with an older version of xbmc though.

You personally use gnome3 with xfce? Is that still Ubuntu as the OS? What's MPlayer stand for :) media player classic?
 
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leonos

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Apr 2, 2014
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What you're describing sounds a lot like what I went through with Fedora on an intel motherboard but the same video card. The thing is I have a laptop running the same Ubuntu distro, with onboard Nvidia gpu / prop drivers and still have issues with the UI freezing up. I think that may be related to the hard drive though, I have to swap with another HD I've been sitting on awhile and see if the problem happens with that too.

I'd really like to find optimal hardware / software for using linux to it's full potential. I know this is the OS I want to use but I've been struggling to get a real good hang on it. I don't have a lot of sources of information when I run into problems, so often my only solution is 'format and try again' which is... so very tedious.
 
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spankmon

spankmon

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Dec 31, 2011
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The jerky freezes might be because you have Tear-Free desktop enabled in the AMD Catalyst Control Center. When I tried the tear free, no video tearing at all... but the video was so jerky and dropping frames it was unwatchable. Ubuntu might have a sync to vblank setting that you can also turn off. It caused things like delayed keyboard input and squirrily, cheezy behavior in general.
 
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