How to use a Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus and/or a Creative DXR3 by David Holm ============================================================================== Thanks goes out to Daniel Bell for the donation of a brand new 20GB IBM harddisk. 1. Requirements * First of all you will need the DXR3/H+ drivers properly installed. Version 0.10.0 or later. You can find it at http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/ * Run /configure and make sure that DXR3/H+ support = yes if you want to play files other than mpeg libmp1e should be = yes as well From here on compilation (of at least my code ;) should go without any problems. 2. Usage -vo dxr3: For video output : is not needed unless you have more than one em8300 device in your computer -vo dxr3:noprebuf Turn of prebuffering. This is only needed if you are having sync issues with normal playback, this will make playback appear less smooth and will not use all available cpu power when playing non-mpeg content. * With prebuffering A-V: should be negative, if it's nonnegative your computer is too slow to properly play the video and you should disble prebuffering if you have sync issues. Without prebuffering this value should stay close to 0 at all times. * Some very fast computers seems to have issues with prebuffering. Blame Sigma for that ;). You can safely use :noprebuf since your machines are fast enough to give you smooth playback anyway. * If you plan to do other stuff that uses resources simultaneously with watching video, this options is probably preffered as it is much less sensitive to syncloss. * If you loose sync do a small seek (using left/right arrow, it will resync) -ao oss: For audio output -ac hwac3 For digital audio output instead of analog -vc mpegpes For mpeg playback -aop list=resample:fout=48000 If samplerate is below 44100Hz This does not work with digital audio output (-ac hwac3) Number of device to use for playback (if you have more than one card.). This can usually be left out (-vo dxr3). Mandrake 8.1 uses devfs by default. If you are running mandrake 8.1 please use -vo dxr3:0 Normally /dev/em8300_ma or /dev/em8300_ma- (-ao dxr3:/dev/em8300_ma). If left out the default oss device will be used (normally soundcard). MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VCD and DVD Notes There are some important notes to take into account here for optimum playback. MPlayer currently does not autodetect that the dxr3 can playback mpegs. So for mpeg files, dvd's and vcd's you have to add -vc mpegpes to tell mplayer that you are using a hardware accelerator. Otherwise mplayer will decode the movie in software, which is much slower. Note that you cannot use -vc mpegpes with movies that aren't mpeg 1 or 2 or you will get an error message saying "Can't find codec for video format...". * If you run mplayer as root, or set userid root it will use your pc's internal realtime clockgenerator for syncing. (If your kernel supports it (It's located in character devices and called "Enhanced realtime clock support")). Some people report that this has improved playback (which it should), but others have had problems with it. You will have to experiment yourself with this to find your optimum setup. 3. Contacting me You can contact me either by e-mailing me, or by using icq: 798427 Feedback, bugreports and general suggestions are appreciated (preferably by e-mail).