OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => Zaurus Distro Support and Discussion => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => Angstrom & OpenZaurus => Topic started by: ksignorini on November 01, 2004, 05:38:04 pm
-
I've installed XMMS out of the OZ 3.5.1 feed on my SL-5500. When playing MP3's I get quite a few skips.
It reminds me of when I was playing MP3's on my old Pentium 75.
Can anyone offer suggestions to fix this? Or is it simply that the processor on the 5500 is too slow? Or could it be XMMS?
Thanks,
Kent!
-
What kind of skips do you mean? My xmms often stops playing a track befor it has ended, and jumps to the next one. It did so on all ROM's, and doesn't always do it, so dunno what's going on...
Or does it keep playing the song, though there are random pauses? Maybe you can shut down some stuff you're running (ssh for example isn't needed while not connecting to your desktop), also check your memory. What initrd are you using? I had memory trouble one with a just-32-MB-memory-initrd, but that was with OZ 3.2.
Cheers
Philipp
-
Random pauses within songs. I'm using a 64-0 OZ 3.5.1.
I'll have to see what processes are running and do some experiments, I guess.
Thanks,
Kent!
-
I'm not sure what xmms uses as it's decoder, but take a look at this just in case:
https://www.oesf.org/forums/inde...ic=5220&hl=xine (https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=5220&hl=xine)
Si
-
Thanks. I'll try this.
Kent!
-
OK, I opened this link and found instructions for modifying a xine config file of some kind.
Thing is: I don't have this config file on my Z. In fact, this xine package isn't installed (it was obviously not a dependency for XMMS).
I imagine this is something that opie-player2 uses.
Now what? Will installing this xine package do anything for me if XMMS doesn't actually use it?
Thanks again.
Kent!
-
I'm not sure what xmms uses as it's decoder
Now what? Will installing this xine package do anything for me if XMMS doesn't actually use it?
No; ignore my post, I wasn't sure.
Si
-
Anyone else have any ideas?
Kent!
...bump...
-
...bump...
-
Now I'm really confused! For a couple days it didn't skip at all!
Now it skips on every song. And what's confusing is that I have rebooted and restarted Opie and nothing makes any difference.
And when it DID work without skipping I hadn't done anything special like stop any processes.
Does anyone else have this happening?
Thanks,
Kent!
-
Same tracks presumably.....?
Si
-
Same tracks skipping today that didn't yesterday, yes.
Kent!
-
Dumb question of the day: are you familiar with the "top" command? It runs a list of processes ordered by their resource consumption. You seem to have a process hogging the CPU. Sorry, no further ideas.
z.
-
Here is my top output:
Mem: 38872K used, 23516K free, 0K shrd, 1764K buff, 22256K cached
Load average: 3.08, 3.10, 2.92 (State: S=sleeping R=running, W=waiting)
PID USER STATUS RSS PPID %CPU %MEM COMMAND
2189 root R 776 2175 7.2 1.2 top
2080 root S 6864 2077 4.5 11.0 xmms
2079 root S 6864 2077 3.6 11.0 xmms
2146 root S 6864 2077 3.6 11.0 xmms
704 root S 8672 1 0.0 13.9 qpe
2076 root S 6864 704 0.0 11.0 xmms
2078 root S 6864 2077 0.0 11.0 xmms
2081 root S 6864 2077 0.0 11.0 xmms
2077 root S 6864 2076 0.0 11.0 xmms
1757 root S N 4008 704 0.0 6.4 quicklauncher
2060 root S 1216 476 0.0 1.9 dropbear
2174 root S 1216 476 0.0 1.9 dropbear
2175 root S 780 2174 0.0 1.2 sh
2061 root S 780 2060 0.0 1.2 sh
609 root S 760 1 0.0 1.2 cardmgr
476 root S 636 1 0.0 1.0 dropbear
500 root S 584 1 0.0 0.9 apmd
617 root S 580 1 0.0 0.9 syslogd
526 root S 556 1 0.0 0.8 hcid
619 root S 552 1 0.0 0.8 klogd
533 root S 540 1 0.0 0.8 sdpd
1 root S 532 0 0.0 0.8 init
682 root S 524 1 0.0 0.8 getty
683 root S 524 1 0.0 0.8 getty
410 daemon S 440 1 0.0 0.7 portmap
176 root S 312 1 0.0 0.5 sdmgr
6 root SW 0 1 0.0 0.0 kapm-idled
10 root SW 0 0 0.0 0.0 kupdated
11 root DW 0 1 0.0 0.0 swapper
7 root SWN 0 0 0.0 0.0 ksoftirqd_CPU0
2 root SW 0 1 0.0 0.0 keventd
4 root DW 0 1 0.0 0.0 swapper
3 root DW 0 1 0.0 0.0 swapper
5 root SW 0 1 0.0 0.0 swapper
8 root SW 0 0 0.0 0.0 kswapd
9 root SW 0 0 0.0 0.0 bdflush
12 root SW 0 1 0.0 0.0 mtdblockd
83 root SWN 0 1 0.0 0.0 jffs2_gcd_mtd4
I don't really see anything too heavy but maybe someone else does?
Thanks,
Kent!
edit: posted wrong top output
-
Course, um, just after running top and posting the last post, um, it's not skipping anymore (again).
Damn.
No...wait, there it goes skipping again. Yup, it's skipping.
Damn.
Kent!
-
Does anyone see anything funny in my top output?
Thanks,
Kent!
-
Well, the sum of all %CPU values is more than 100, if I'm correct. Your processor seems to be working too hard which would explain the skipping if it was physically possible.
I would still try to run xmms with as few other processes as possible (you can kill processes through Settings > System Info > Processes).
-
Actually, the % CPU is only 15% or so. The % MEM is more than 100%.
So, is it the % MEM causing me problem? I mean, this is a newly rebooted Z where all I launched was XMMS to play the music.
Thanks,
Kent!
-
Memory usage shouldn't be a problem. Beats me.
-
I had the same trouble and it turned out to be because I was storing them on my 1Gb Sandisk SD card (I know I know! It works great for me with ext2 on my SL-5500). Turns out it couldn't quite read the data off the card fast enough. If I copied the mp3s to /mnt/ram and then played them, it's fine.
Someone else had success using an older version of libmad/xmms (but I didn't fancy that).
Cheers...
-
I had the same trouble and it turned out to be because I was storing them on my 1Gb Sandisk SD card (I know I know! It works great for me with ext2 on my SL-5500). Turns out it couldn't quite read the data off the card fast enough. If I copied the mp3s to /mnt/ram and then played them, it's fine.
Got the same problem with my SD (same as yours actually!) - maybe because both xmms and the files are on the same SD? Thing is if I install oz (64-0) I don't have enough room in root to install xmms.
-
Here's what I've experinced on Opie 3.5.2:
- XMMS (from OZ3.5.1 feed) mounted on a loopback on top of my 1GB FAT FS Kingmax SD card works no problem
- XMMS and Opie-mplayer2 (from OZ 3.5.2 feed) skips and blips when installed to a similar SD loopback
Anyway... if you want to try with a loopback you can get the file with scripts from here http://stacktrace.org/ (http://stacktrace.org/)
It'd be interesting to see if it helps with your problems.
Cheers
-G
-
Here's what I've experinced on Opie 3.5.2:
- XMMS (from OZ3.5.1 feed) mounted on a loopback on top of my 1GB FAT FS Kingmax SD card works no problem
- XMMS and Opie-mplayer2 (from OZ 3.5.2 feed) skips and blips when installed to a similar SD loopback
Anyway... if you want to try with a loopback you can get the file with scripts from here http://stacktrace.org/ (http://stacktrace.org/)
It'd be interesting to see if it helps with your problems.
Cheers
-G
Thanks for the info. I've since updated to 3.5.2 (need to update my sig!) so I assume it won't work then I also have formatted my SD card to be ext2 - windows is not something that I use too often
What I don't comprehend is that the files will play fine if I transfer them to my CF card and play them from there. Doesn't make much sense but I may try a reinstall of 3.5.1 to try out your method (and format my card in fat)...
-
I've now given the hentges roms (3.5.2) a try - problem seems to have dissapeared.
-
I've now given the hentges roms (3.5.2) a try - problem seems to have dissapeared.
Haven't used my Zaurus for a while but the skipping problem is back - how would I force OZ to buffer the contents of an MP3 to cache before playing it (or something else that would solve the problem)?
-
I've now given the hentges roms (3.5.2) a try - problem seems to have dissapeared.
Haven't used my Zaurus for a while but the skipping problem is back - how would I force OZ to buffer the contents of an MP3 to cache before playing it (or something else that would solve the problem)?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=62765\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
I have a feeling that it's just that the SD port's specs doesn't allow for a certian speed, while the CF port does. For example, a 64Kbps Ogg gives the popping on 3.5.1 off of a 128 Meg SD card.
It's a hardware problem.
-
I have a feeling that it's just that the SD port's specs doesn't allow for a certian speed, while the CF port does. For example, a 64Kbps Ogg gives the popping on 3.5.1 off of a 128 Meg SD card.
It's a hardware problem.
Really? I was under the impression that the SD port was actually faster than the CF one on the SL-5500. I thought this was a recent issue rather than one that has been with us for a long time but I may be wrong... It's a bummer if it is a hardware issue though
-
Well it's definately an SD vs CF thing for me.
When I use the SD card, I get skips all over the place (sucks 'cause this is where I'm storing all my user "documents") but when I put them on the CF card, everything plays with no skips at all.
Oh well, at least that's the solution.
Kent!
-
Well it's definately an SD vs CF thing for me.
When I use the SD card, I get skips all over the place (sucks 'cause this is where I'm storing all my user "documents") but when I put them on the CF card, everything plays with no skips at all.
Oh well, at least that's the solution.
Kent!
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=64714\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
Mmmm... so would it be possible to have the option of caching a file to CF before starting to play it on xmms for example?
-
You might be able to alter the memory cache (to make it sufficiently large that the slow SD read won't matter), but I don't know that you'd be able to cache to CF (nor would you really want to - lots of writing to a flash device) unless you write a wrapper of your own.
I don't know know which program you guys are talking about here, but looking at the mplayer or xine docs may help you to find out how to alter the default memory cache.
Si
-
[Really? I was under the impression that the SD port was actually faster than the CF one on the SL-5500.
The SD port is attached over a 1 bit interface on the SL-5500 where as the CF is attached via a 16 Bit interface. Guess what's faster
-
So the bottleneck really is the SD card - what's the best option for extending the caching of the SD card? Would that depend on the image I choose when I flash the Zaurus? I'm currently running 64-0 so what should I change it too... It makes sense not using the CF for caching if I want to keep it alive
Should the SD be so slow that it can't play files properly though? It seems chronically slow considering the size of the files we're talking about.