Guide to Get the Best Performace from the GMA 500

[Speedster]

Unfortunately after following the wiki for Karmic and rebooting I was greeted with a black screen after the splash screen and an error in the dmesg regarding a null pointer reference. Strangely, booting up in recovery mode and performing a "modprobe psb" got a 1366x768 console no problems.

After much trial and error I eventually got it working by performing the following:

1) Removing "quiet splash" from /etc/default/grub, then running update-grub

#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

2) Adding "psb" to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

3) Creating an initramfs-tools hook script to copy the firmware to the initramfs. Script was saved as /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/psb and made executable with "chmod +x"

#! /bin/sh -e

PREREQ="kernelextras"

prereqs () {
	echo "$PREREQ"
}

case $1 in
prereqs)
	prereqs
	exit 0
	;;
esac

. /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions

# Console utilities needed for console-setup
copy_exec /lib/firmware/msvdx_fw.bin /lib/firmware

exit 0

4) Ran update-initramfs -u and rebooted. After the scrolling text boot I was greeted with a GDM screen and vastly faster desktop experience!


Dean

[Mattia]

I reproduced this problem. An alternative is use

mplayer -vo vaapi -ao pulse filename.mp4

ok for the video, but for other apps thet use pulseaudio?

[michael37]

ok for the video, but for other apps thet use pulseaudio?

Pulseaudio fully supports audio access by multiple applications.

[Mattia]

Pulseaudio fully supports audio access by multiple applications.

yes, i know, but the problem is that the audio works only one time, then all the pc is mute. And i must to reboot.

[michael37]

yes, i know, but the problem is that the audio works only one time, then all the pc is mute. And i must to reboot.

I reproduced this problem with using -ao oss. It works once, then mplayer reports "/dev/dsp" busy and no audio comes out. But you can switch to, for example, -ao sdl, and audio should play again.

As I said, experiment with different -ao options. Your hardware might be different from mine, so what works for you might be different.

My netbook has snd_hda_intel audio driver, and I had to tweak it per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto guide. The problem is completely separate and independent from mplayer and/or GMA 500, so please start another thread for this particular type of troubleshooting.

[Mattia]

I reproduced this problem with using -ao oss. It works once, then mplayer reports "/dev/dsp" busy and no audio comes out. But you can switch to, for example, -ao sdl, and audio should play again.

As I said, experiment with different -ao options. Your hardware might be different from mine, so what works for you might be different.

My netbook has snd_hda_intel audio driver, and I had to tweak it per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto guide. The problem is completely separate and independent from mplayer and/or GMA 500, so please start another thread for this particular type of troubleshooting.

You are right, i think that is a poulse audio problem.
I've asked here because i've an asus 1101 .

I must to reboot every time i need to use 2 times skype

[ayoli]

You are right, i think that is a poulse audio problem.
I've asked here because i've an asus 1101 .

I must to reboot every time i need to use 2 times skype

<ot>
You might want to try to kill restart pulse (as user) instead of reboot.
'Maybe you need to force-reload or restart alsa-utils also).
</ot>

[Udibuntu]

Thank you michael137, guys - that's just awesome!

It plays 1080P wmv clips flawlessly!

2 more tests I need to take - playing to an external HDTV via VGA (AAO 751 doesn't have digital video output), and the reboot test

I'll update later.

Again - thank you guys and especially michael137 for the effort!!!

Udi

[Udibuntu]

mplayer VA API works well after reboot, but sometimes sans sound due to an unknown problem which affects my Ubuntu session every once or twice.

Is there a way to let other applications use the hardware acceleration enabled by this fix? Youtube streaming is a slide show..

Thanks again,

Udi

[jbernardo]

The sound problem appears to be pulse related - I am not seeing it, but i am using kubuntu, so don't have to put up with pulseaudio.

As for mplayer-vaapi, did you try it on films with subtitles? I have it working perfectly except for that, *** subtitles don't show up, and non-*** kills mplayer with error 11 (mostly at the first subtitle).