Are there any tweaks I can do to improve video playback in KDE 4?

On my desktop I am currently using KDE 4.3 with FGLRX 9.8 I also prefer Kaffeine or SMPlayer for video playback.

Video starts off playing well, I can use KDE 4's effects like wobbly windows or the cube and video will play fine. Over time (hours), video performance will decline. Video will drop frames, some choppiness, and when using the effects, video will drop more frames or even appear to freeze till the effects are done. Also, I noticed over time video will use more CPU usage to play.

Video seems to play fine with other WMs such as XFCE4 and Fluxbox.

If you disable Desktop Effects does this occur? If it does not, please file a bug at bugs.kde.org

@replica9000 Try checking systemsettings > Multimedia > Backend tab. If it's set to Xine, try setting it to GStreamer. That cured it for me.

@ bcooksley: This helps, but still video playback is not what it could be.

@ annew: I have already tried this, from what I can tell this doesn't seen to make much difference in video performance, also dragon player doesn't play video with gstreamer selected.

When I was using KDE 4.2.4 with FGLRX 9.7, video performance was much worse. I upgraded both at the same time so I can't tell which was the issue. I have used older FGLRX drivers with KDE 3.5 with no issues. So this must be something within KDE 4.

I gave up on the fglrx driver - it seemed to cause a lot of problems. I just use the free ati driver now. It doesn't play well with desktop effects, but I can live without them. One day I'll have a graphics card that does everything

annew wrote:I gave up on the fglrx driver - it seemed to cause a lot of problems. I just use the free ati driver now. It doesn't play well with desktop effects, but I can live without them. One day I'll have a graphics card that does everything

Well my laptop is currently on KDE 4.3 as well. And with the free ati driver video was fine, and KDE effects were a little slow. I switched to the free radeon driver. KDE 4's effects are fast, but again video performance suffers if I drag a wobbly window across the screen or the cube etc...

Maybe KDE 4 has issues with 3D drivers?

Unfortunately it is the graphics drivers having unoptimized functions which KDE makes use of.

bcooksley wrote:Unfortunately it is the graphics drivers having unoptimized functions which KDE makes use of.

Is this something I can fix by optimizing xorg.conf? Or is this something I'm stuck with till the drivers get better.

Your stuck unfortunately, unless you try a different driver or version of driver, which may have different results.

I'm not completely convinced it's only the video driver though. I switched SMPlayer to use X11 output instead of xv, and video will play fine. When I play the video and move a window, video will be choppy. If I jump position to anywhere in the video, moving windows no longer affect video output. I'm not seeing X11 output option for Kaffeine/Xine like MPlayer. Sometimes I even temporarily lose audio output from any video player.

Here is a snapshot of my desktop. I am playing a video in Kaffeine, and holding on to Konsole after dragging it with the mouse so it stays translucent. I have a dual core processor at 3300mhz and doing the above is eating more than 50% per core!

Edit: If I try to change the video output driver in Xine-UI, the desktop becomes very slow, almost freezes. Seems to cause plasma-desktop to eat cpu power which causes xorg to eat more cpu power...

Still trying to debug my video problem here....

Since my last post I have upgraded KDE to 4.3.1 from 4.3.0.

MPlayer based apps seem to run ok using X11 output.

KDE 4 + Xine has some issues for me:
- Kaffeine no longer work under KDE 4, plays video with no sound, and freezes before 10 seconds. (Xv or Xshm output)
- Dragon Player's output doesn't change using Xv or Xshm output, playback is still choppy.
- Xine player itself is the worst. Video will play fine with Xshm output. The real issue with Xine player is that trying to do anything with it hurts system performance greatly. Xine player will cause the system to constantly use about 50% of the CPU, though it feels like trying to run KDE on an old 386. System performance will continue like this even after all Xine processes are killed. [Screenshot]

Notes:
libxine1 (1.1.16-3.1+b2)
xine-ui (0.99.5+cvs20070914-2.1
phonon-backend-xine (4:4.3.1-4)