This used to be near impossible some time ago however a new ATI driver just got released: 10.6 and now VSYNC actually works on application level. However, this still does not make it work under mplayer. To get that working you will have to do a few tricks. If you run a desktop WITHOUT compisiting the tricks are easy, but with compositing i found myself trying a whole lot more things to get it working.

Note: I suspect the ATI catalyst 10.6 driver is needed!

The trick when you run a desktop without compositing:

mplayer -vo gl2 yourvideo.avi

The trick when you do run compositing is quite a bit more complex.

First edit xorg with the following edits in the device section:

And add the following at the bottom of your xorg.conf file (if not there already):

Section “Extensions”
Option     “Composite” “Enable” # If enabled (and used), use OpenGL to VSync
EndSection

Now restart your X by logging out and back in. Playing a video that is tear free with compositing enabled should now be possible with the following mplayer command:

mplayer -vo gl yourvideo.avi

Note the “-vo gl” instead of “-vo gl2” …. With my ATI cards the xorg.conf edits where needed to get -gl playing nicely.

This post probably helps some people with the same problem. Leave a comment if this helped you (or not).

Regards,
Mark

Update

I noticed a big difference between windowed and fullscreen mode. On ATI video just seems to flickr when run in windowed mode (even with “-vo gl”) but the same video with the same settings runs without any flickering in fullscreen mode (press “f”).

It “seems” like a windows task not “possible” on linux but that’s wrong. Auto suspending can be done through con jobs as is a widely known.

Auto resuming is something that is in a bit darker area of Linux.
This is how you can do that. There is a linux command line tool (probably even installed by default) called: rtcwake. With this tool you can use your system “Real Time Clock (RTC)” and that allows you to wake your pc at a set point in time.

The commands to do that are very simple but hard to find out if you don’t know what to look for. For example the following commands set your PC to wake in 5 minutes (asuming it’s sleeping) — execute as root! — :

echo 0 >/sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm # Clear RTC
date “+%s” -d “+ 5 minutes” >/sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm # Set the time 5 minutes in the future

The latter command can also be done like this:

echo +300 >/sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm

Now all you have to do is suspend your pc and it will (probably) wake up at the set time.
On the command line there are various ways to suspend:

echo -n mem > /sys/power/state

or

pm-suspend

or other ways (like dbus).

Where is this usefull? Well, this might be very handy for HTPC setups that you can just turn off at times when not a single person is gonna use it.

Hope you found this usefull.
Regards,
Mark.

Yet again i had issues to get this working. Documenting it this time for myself in the future and perhaps other persons that might want to do the same.

To even get the 150 card working install ivtv-utils:
sudo pacman -S ivtx-utils

To scan your card for tv channles install xawtv:
sudo pacman -S xawtv

And to play it install mplayer:
sudo pacman -S maplyer

The last thing you need to change is the /dev/video0 permissions:
sudo chown root.users /dev/video0

Now to start watching tv you need to type:
mplayer /dev/video0 or gmplayer /dev/video0 for a gui

If you have an nvidia GPU (and working in linux) append “-va vdpau” (without the quotes). That should of load some stuff to your video card.

By now you probably want to switch channels? To do that we first need to scan the tv channels by typing:
scantv (fill in your options and it will scan)

Once that is done save that list to a file! The channels in that list are the numbers you need to use.
To change a channel type something like this:
ivtv-tune -teurope-west -c37 -d/dev/video0 (change your -teurope-west to the one you picked)

The last thing before the video is “nice” (as far as nice video can be nice on a computer monitor). You probably have seen some odd lines on the live tv. That’s called interlacing. To “fix” that you need to deinterlace the video. A nice resource that shows the options mplayer has is: http://guru.multimedia.cx/deinterlacing-filters/

The command that i use:
mplayer -vo vdpau -ao oss /dev/video0 -vf yadif=1:1,denoise3d

yadif is used for deinterlacing and denoise3d is used to filter out noise which is quite a lot on tv broadcasts and this filter makes it look nice!

All i still want to find out is ho to cut off the black bars since the broadcast is 4:3 now on my 16:10 display. The broadcast has bars at the top and bottom since it’s a widescreen broadcast but that is being broadcasted in 4:3 so the result is black bars on the left, right, top and bottom.. not nice ^_^

Hope this was helpful for others as well.

Update
After many hours of trial and error and very close to make a mplayer filter to filter out the letterboxing bars (black bars on the top and bottom of widescreen broadcasts). The solution? panscan! The command that i use now is:
mplayer -vo vdpau -ao oss /dev/video0 -vf yadif=1:1,denoise3d -panscan 1

Update 2
This command might give better image results (other denoiser):
mplayer -vo vdpau -ao oss /dev/video0 -vf yadif=1:1,hqdn3d -panscan 1

That only works when your in fullscreen. Then press W or E to zoom in or out.

Update 3
I found this command to be giving very nice results (for when you don’t have vdpau):
mplayer /dev/video0 -cache 2000 -panscan 1 -vo gl -vf yadif=1/3
Note the -cache 2000; that seems to be just fine to have a smooth deinterlaced  PVR stream. The yadif on this setting also produces nice results. You could append “,hqdn3d” to have a somewhat smoother image but it will start to look ugly when you play anything with a lot of action in it.

Good luck,
Mark

Yet again a issue in ubuntu that lets me search for hours only to find non working solutions.
So here i go again.. i will just post the solution that worked for me.

The issue was that i had an ip address in a different part of the same subnetwork. all in 192.168.1.*
Now on the ubuntu forums you can find a lot of questions to release and renew your ip. None of those methods worked for me.
This did:

sudo echo '' > /var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient.leases
sudo echo '' > /var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient-eth0.lease
sudo dhclient -r // or with eth0
sudo dhclient // or with eth0

What this is doing is cleaning the dhclient lease files and after that releasing your current ip followed by a new dhcp request to get a new ip.Big downside is that the ip doesn’t seem to be released on the actual dhcp server thus for the remaining lease time no other computers willbe able to get that ip.

This is how it worked for me and i take the downside for what it is.

This will probably help a few other ubuntu users out there with the same issue.
Mark

Just a quick post with some links that will help you get your PVR-150 device running in ubuntu or just linux.
http://www.simsemporium.com/Stuff/Mythtv+-+PVR-150+-+Ubuntu+-+New+Zealand+HOWTO.html

Note about that link. They tell you to compile ivtv. That’s not needed! ivtv is in the ubuntu repository (universe repo) so you can search for that in synaptic or just by typing this in a console: sudo apt-get install ivtv-utils.

And if your sound is not working this might be very helpful: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/228363

That’s it for this quick twitter like post. I hope this helped a few people with this issue.

Good luck,
Mark

Since there is no guide anywhere on the internet that tells you how you can get DirectFB working on ubuntu, i will make one.

I expect you know how you compile things in this article. If you don’t follow some guide that explains how to do that.

The very first thing you have to do is get ubuntu (9.04 but the last few versions should all work fine).
next is setting up your “framebuffer” at boot time. To do this restart your pc. while in grub press “e” to edit that boot line. Then select the kernel line and again press “e” to edit that line. Now add (at the end of that line) vga=ask. Right after that it will ask you which resolution you want. See if yours is in that list and anter the number that’s standing infront of it. Now just let it boot. Once booted you will have to edit your grub menu file (sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst) and add vga=0xthe number you picked) and then when you reboot you should have the framebuffer stuff. If you don’t have it look for a solution somewhere on the internet. Problems with framebuffers can be quite hard to understand or find solutions for. I don’t know much more about those framebuffers then this.

Once that’s all done you will have to setup your build environment. run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install linux-source // Will install the actual linux source of your current kernel
sudo apt-get build-dep linux // Will get your linux kernel source dependencies installed on your system
sudo apt-get build-dep libdirectfb-1.0-0 // We are going to use a later version of DirectFB but this will do fine to install the requirements
wget http://www.directfb.org/downloads/Core/DirectFB-1.2.8.tar.gz
wget http://www.directfb.org/downloads/Core/linux-fusion-8.1.1.tar.gz
wget http://www.directfb.org/downloads/Extras/DirectFB-examples-1.2.0.tar.gz

Note: go to: http://www.directfb.org/index.php?path=Main%2FDownloads to download the latest DirectFB 1.2.* (do not download the 1.3.* versions because that’s still in development) release and the latest linux-fusion file.

Once you’ve done the two apt-get lines and downloaded the files you will have to extract those later two.
Do that by running:

tar -xvf DirectFB-1.2.8.tar.gz
tar -xvf linux-fusion-8.1.1.tar.gz
tar -xvf DirectFB-Examples-1.2.0.tar.gz

The first thing we’re going to do now is getting that fusion module compiled and loaded at boot time.
Here is the list of commands to do that:

cd linux-fusion-8.1.1 make && sudo make install
sudo su -
echo fusion >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules // this adds the text “fusion” at the end of the modules file
exit
sudo update-initramfs -u // This updates your initramfs file
sudo modprobe fusion // Only needed if you didn’t restart after you changed initramfs. Otherwise this module will be loaded anyway beacayse it’s done so during boot.

Now fusion is done.
Next is compiling DirectFB with multi application support.

Here is the list of commands needed for that:
cd DirectFB-1.2.8
./configure –enable-multi –libdir=/usr/lib64 –bindir=/usr/bin // note the libdir is /usr/lib64 for x86_64 distributions and just /usr/lib for the rest. Change it to your needs
make && sudo make install

Now it should be compiling for a few minutes. Depending on your cpu. My quadcore does this in a few minutes.
Once it’s done DirectFB is installed and (if all previous steps worked fine) can be used.

Now to see it in use we need some examples.
here is the command list for that:

cd DiirectFB-Examples-1.2.0
./configure –bindir=/usr/bin // note no need to set a libdir because it’s not making libs
make && sudo make install

Now the examples are also ready to use.
You can now switch to another tty (CTRL + ALT + F<number>), login and run something like df_window.
Be sure to type df_ followed by a hit on the tab button. It will give you all run commands that start with df_ and all the results that  you get to see are DirectFB examples.

But this didn’t show you a multi-app environment yet.

Log in into your gnome or kde or whatever graphical environment you use. Open up a terminal in there and type:

nano ~/.directfbrc

What we’re going to do now is change a few directfb settings to run it under X11. (see man directfbrc for more settings)
Just plain copy and paste the following settings in that file:

mode=1024×768
pixelformat=RGB32
system=x11

You can change the resolution to your liking if you want.

Now type (still in that same console that’s running inside your graphical environment):

df_window & // runs it in the background
df_cpuload &

And you will see the df_window example with in there the cpuload graphic. Nifty huh?
Just be carefull here. save all your data before you start with this because if you do anything wrong it COULD completely crash your system in a way that you just have to reboot to get it back. While writing this howto i experienced this myself because i did do df_window & but i didn’t add the “&” to df_cpuload

This was it for the DirectFB howto.
I might post more stuff about DirectFB in the future.

I hope it was useful to you,
Mark

After hours of testing i finally found out how to get my microphone to work under ubuntu.
The thing that i had already working “out of the box” is that you could talk in your microphone and you would hear it come out of your speakers but somehow it wasn’t recording it when i tried to record the input from the microphone. So once i got it working i started writing this howto so that others can get a microphone (and skype) working as well. This howto should work in any linux distribution since it’s not ubuntu specific. It is gnome specific so i don’t know how well this works (if at all) in kde.

The first thing i did (and you should do as well) is open a console (ALT+F2 -> gnome-terminal or xterm).
Now type this:
[sourcecode]
alsamixer
[/sourcecode]

now you should see something like this:

My advise would be to just put all at max EXEPT for the values that contain anything like “boost”.. i put them up to test with and it didn’t really improve microphone quality or made it louder. It just made it sound horrible and it was even affecting the normal playback sound as well.

Now once this is done press TAB in that alse mixes stuff. You should now get the properties for “Capture” (seen at the top left corner in those few lines of text) devices:

I’m not sure if anything here helped getting it working but i turned all “boost” things off and the rest on. Feel free to tweak those settings a bit to see if they actually do something with the microphone.

Now, once you’ve done this, you “should” have your microphone setup currectly and it should just work. There are just a few more issues. When you start recording your microphone imput you most likely don’t hear anything when you play it back. That’s because the “Sound Capture” setting in gnome’s sound settings is set wrong.
So open the gnome sound settings: System -> Preferences -> Sound and you should see this:

The way to test if your microphone is actually working is by clicking on the “Test” button behind “Sound capture”. Press test and talk in your microphone. If you hear yourself with a slight delay from the speakers you have it working. If not try every option in the list (in the screenshot it’s on “ALSa – Advanced Linux Sound Architecture” between the “Sound capture:”  and “test”. one of them should be working. Also note that there seems to be double values with exactly the same name but they do act differently! atleast that was the case for me.

Once you’ve done that and you found one that seems to be working (the right one for me was: “HDA Intel something…” which was in the list twice. the top one did it for me) then you can start recording your microphone if you want. Try it out in gnome-sound-recorder but i won’t go deeper in that stuff.

Oke, by now your microphone should be working and you can record your microphone input and it seems to be working fine. If that’s the case then you now install skype (i used this link: http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu-amd64 which should be the latest x64 version) Open skype and go to the “Sound Devices” tab in skype.

For me the Sound out and Ringing was just fine but the Sound in was wrong. To get that one good you have to (sadly) test every option in the Sound in list and “Make a test call”… say something and see if it gets out of your boxes after the second beep.

This is how i got it working.
Here are my settings from the volume control stuff in gnome incase you might be interested in those as well.

Note for the image above: i have no clue why the microphone icons have a cross in there. i could turn them off/on whatever i wanted but the setting didn’t seem to be saved and didn’t seem to mather for the microphone.

It should all be working fine now.

I hope this howto has been helpfull for you. If you found another solution or have something to add to this feel free to post so in the comments.
Good luck,
Mark

Gnome 2.22 introduced quite a few new features and not all of them are working nicely.
The automatic adjusting of the brightness in Gnome 2.22 is a good example of a horrible feature. The idea is good but it simply isn’t working out, at least on my notebook, so therefore it’s best to just turn it off.

In the “Power Management Settings” is a option to turn it off, or that’s what you would think judging the name. The setting is: “Dim display when idle”. Turning that off won’t help a bit. might be a bug, might be intentional, but it’s not working.

The real trick to turn this setting off is in the gconf settings. In your distribution install the package: “gconf-editor” (in fedora it’s with “yum -y install gconf-editor”).

Now press ALT+F2 and type: gconf-editor. The editor will popup. Now go to this location: /apps/gnome-power-manager/backlight/enable and you should see something like this:

Uncheck the “enable” and your done. No more irritating backlight changes.

Hope that helped for you,
Mark.