Totem playback choppy with H264

Thank you for your bug report.

Cappy-chan:
Can you post a link to one of the choppy videos?

Hello, thank you for the speedy reply.

I looked around for a small H264 video I could give you, maybe a trailer or anything. No luck.
Instead, here is a link to a video with a 264 codec which makes the video skip:
www.boundlesssupremacy.com/capricous/kaze_no_stigma.mkv
It's a large file (140MB). Sorry, I really dug through google to find a smaller file =(

It wasn't necessary to download the whole video to demonstrate the problem. This video doesn't play in xine at all so I shall assume that Cappy-chan was using totem-gstreamer too (can you verify this in totem's Help -> About)?

Video stutters (even though there is CPU left) and occasionally shows green artefacts. Problem also occurs when using gst-launch-0.10 playbin . Speculatively punting from totem -> gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg and confirming.

Forgot to add version information:
Ubuntu 7.04
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg 0.10.2-0ubuntu4
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad 0.10.4-1ubuntu1
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse 0.10.4-3
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base 0.10.12-0ubuntu1
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-apps 0.10.12-0ubuntu1
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good 0.10.5-1ubuntu2
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly 0.10.5-0ubuntu2
totem 2.18.1-0ubuntu3
totem-gstreamer 2.18.1-0ubuntu3

GNOME totem 2.18.1 using GStreamer 0.10.12

I made a small typo, I accidently said "Totem" in this sentence when I meant "Mplayer":

I've been working around this bug for a while by using MPlayer. Before I re-install ubuntu the only Video Driver [out of all the working ones] that would work in [MPLAYER] to make playback smooth would be "gl" (I tried them all). Now the playback in [MPLAYER] is smooth with any Video Driver I use.

It also plays in VLC perfectly.

I can confirm this problem, it's still present in Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10. Versions are Totem 2.20.0 and GStreamer 0.10.14. My problem is exactly the same, I experienced non-fluent video playback with the "H264" codec (I'm sure it's not my hardware, because the same video file plays fine on my Windows XP dual-boot) and also spotted a green artifact in the video once.

I'm disappointed that this bug has been reported three months ago, was given a low priority, and still is present in Ubuntu 7.10/Gutsy. All due respect to the hard-working Ubuntu developers, but this bug should have received a high priority and it should have been fixed for Gutsy. H.264 is a very popular codec, and with this bug it's such a pain to watch video files encoded in H.264 that I have to boot Windows XP to be able to watch them properly.

Because the Ubuntu developers haven't done anything with this bug yet, I guess it would be better if I'd file a bug report for this bug in GStreamer's bugtracker directly.

With just one minute of searching I already found the upstream bug report, it's here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=482660

I can confirm this in Gutsy x86_64.

There seems to be a patch which fixes the problem now in the upstream report.

I'm currently using Hardy with the latest GStreamer, which includes the fix in the upstream bugreport AFAIK. It seems that it was fixed mostly, but not completely.

I'm dual-booting with Ubuntu Hardy and Windows XP. On Windows XP I use CCCP - http://www.cccp-project.net/ - with Media Player Classic to watch movie files. I tested how both Media Player Classic and Totem with GStreamer would play an identical file. For testing purposes I used this file - http://bt.mymenclave.com/torrents/%5BConclave-Mendoi%5D_Mobile_Suit_Gundam_00_-_15_%5B1280x720_H.264_AAC%5D%5B2CEA655C%5D.mkv.torrent - an anime fansub.

Media Player Classic plays this file completely smooth, and now Totem does as well for most of the time. I notice that during scenes which scroll over or zoom in on a still image (which can be frequently seen in anime) Totem doesn' t provide smooth playback for those scenes, while MPC does. Otherwise,

Can anyone reproduce this behavior?

Please read here
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=494056
and the resolution of the bug here:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=482660

I hope you release a patched version for Gutsy too, not just for Hardy, because this bug is there for a long time now, and it affects playback of one of the most popular codecs out there.

This does not seem like a possible candidate for a Stable Release Update (SRU) for Gutsy. See link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates

And a fix seems to be committed to the development version of gst-ffmpeg.

What is the current state of playback of these files in an up-to-date Hardy install?

I'm not sure if only the fix from comment #10 in the upstream bug report is included in 8.04 already, or if the one mentioned in comment #19 is as well, but I can still see that playback of H.264 is still not completely fluent in my up-to-date 8.04 install.

i'm having problems playing videos from the www.apple.com/trailers site. no sound and video sometimes show up with green artifacts.

mplayer plays them fine.

Changelog from upstream:

  * ext/ffmpeg/gstffmpegdec.c: (gst_ffmpegdec_class_init),
        (gst_ffmpegdec_setcaps), (check_keyframe),
        (gst_ffmpegdec_video_frame), (gst_ffmpegdec_sink_event),
        (gst_ffmpegdec_set_property):
        Detect DTS or PTS as timestamps. This is done by tracking frame
        reordering on the output and making sure that timestamps don't go
        backwards. Fixes #482660.

Adding the patch from upstream that fixes this bug.

Same problem with the mov files on the javafx.com website. Video is slightly choppy, audio is VERY choppy.

This patch (adapted from the upstream patch) applies cleanly to the gstreamer-ffmpeg source package in hardy and fixes the problem for me. Please get this fix into hardy, it is a very annoying bug, as it affects most H.264 files and H.264 is getting more and more common.

This bug affects me as well. It is an issue on totem/gstreamer where it skips many frames, but the audio plays. In vlc/ffmpeg video plays for a semi second then freezes up, while audio continues.

Attached is example media for testing purposes. This clip was created with a Canon Powershot SD780 IS Elph on HD video mode. All other modes playback fine. Please review the attachment as I would like to be informed if the upstream fix will correct this,. If so, in which version, and is there is a ppa with that version? I would really love to get started on editing some of these clips.

Codec information:
Nautilus properties says: H.264 / AVC
VLC says: AVC1

After testing, if the bug is fixed, I think this should be updated in karmic.

Cheers!

I think this bug has been fixed from Intrepid onwards. At least your file works on my Karmic system in Totem.The fix for Hardy never made it to Ubuntu's repository. I used the above patch to create a fixed package in my PPA.
Have a look at https://launchpad.net/~tukss/+archive/ppa/+packages

Hi Philipp, I would like to test your ppa package, but I get the following error when trying to install it on karmic:

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libavcodec1d (>= 0.cvs20070307)

Hi komputes,

That is probably because, the package has been compiled for Hardy. As I said before, the bug was fixed upstream and it should work in Intrepid and the following releases. I could play your video file on my Karmic system with Totem without any issues.

You wrote, that you are also experiencing the problem with VLC. VLC doesn't use Gstreamer so I doubt your problem is Gstreamer related. Do you have problems with any player? You could also try mplayer and gxine, as they use different frameworks. If that is the case, maye there is something wrong with your graphics drivers. Are you using Xv or plain X11? (For Totem you can set this in gstreamer-properties)

Good luck!

I have tested this again on another card, and it seems to work perfectly. The system which is having issues is a Dell Mini 9 - Inspiron 910.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:27ae] (rev 03)
 Kernel driver in use: i915
 Kernel modules: i915

gstreamer-properties shows that it is using 'Autodetect' as the video plugin. Besides that, I'm not too sure how to check if I am using Xv or X11. Since this bug has been fixed (even though it seemed to be similar at first sight) I have opened up another bug (hardware specific) for my particular issue.

Bug #490946 is the new bug for my issue. Thank you for your help Philipp.

The remaining h264 playback problems should be fixed in the gstreamer0.10-plugins-good 0.10.25-4ubuntu2 package which is included in Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat".

See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=630088 for more info.

Official support for Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" has ended.