Setting up VDPAU on Ubuntu

Ed Hewitt — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:43:04 +0000

In the past few months, there has been a surge in a new way of processing video content on computers. Video playback has been the job of the processor (CPU), which has left the graphics card (GPU) doing pretty much nothing on most computers. In most cases, the GPU is far more powerful than the CPU, and most CPUs struggle to play HD video and have very high CPU usage. nVidia has been the leader in moving video playback off the CPU onto the GPU. Even Adobe has followed suit with Flash 10.1, moving all processing to the GPU. Computers like my Acer Aspire Revo has powerful nVidia ION graphics card, but a not so quick Intel Atom CPU; usage of the GPU is a necessary for me to be able to play HD video.

nVidia uses an API called VDPAU to be able to use the GPU for video. The problem with this API, is that it will only work with a media player which supports it. Ubuntu's default media player, Totem, does not.

First of all, you will need to download the API, in the terminal type:

sudo apt-get install libvdpau1

Next you will need to use a different media player, Gnome MPlayer is your best bet.

sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer

Load Gnome MPlayer, select your HD video, and the HD video should play with no shutter, and your CPU usage should be nice and low.

One side note, VDPAU will only work with certain nVidia cards. You need to make sure you have a nVidia Geforce 8series and above.

Video Playback on GPU in Linux!

Ed Hewitt — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:54:46 +0000

One of the major new advancements in nVidia drivers has been the ability to playback video on the GPU instead of the CPU. This is freeing up CPU usage, and putting all the work on the powerful GPUs. However, one of the major problems is getting the correct software to do the job.

In Linux, it appears that there is only one media player which fully supports VDPAU, which is the Linux API developed by nVidia which decodes video on the GPU. Gnome MPlayer supports this technology, which allows both 720p and 1080p video to play on the GPU, without the CPU usage going too high. This technology has allowed me to play HD videos on my Acer Aspire Revo, which if you tried to play on Totem (which renders video on the CPU), the CPU hits 100% and the video very choppy. In Gnome MPlayer, it can playback without a problem with the CPU sitting at 20%.

This is a plea to Gnome to implement VDPAU into Totem!

Ed Hewitt » totem

Setting up VDPAU on Ubuntu

Video Playback on GPU in Linux!