Dual Head RADEON MergedFB, overlay causes shimmer on screen0
Bob
flash advertising or watch a clip on youtube, my primary screen, (right
hand side analogue over DVI, CRT 1600x1200@85Hz) shimmers, my secondary
screen, (left hand side, analogue over VGA D-sud 15, LCD 1280x1024@60Hz)
stays steady as a rock.
This still happens if I drop the resolution and frequency of my CRT to
1280x1024@60 but it clears up if I disable MergedFB and use xinerama.
I have a Radeon 9250 (RV280) and I'm using the Open source RADEON driver
(xorg.conf has Driver "ati" specified but that loads RADION) and I'm
running Etch with Xfce with everything stock from apt (except flash, eww
I feel dirty now).
Is this a known problem? Is there a fix? Google says not but my search
skills may be poor today.
Thanks for your time.
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Bob
> When I playback video with mplayer (vo=xv), visit a site with animated
> flash advertising or watch a clip on youtube, my primary screen,
> (right hand side analogue over DVI, CRT 1600x1200@85Hz) shimmers, my
> secondary screen, (left hand side, analogue over VGA D-sud 15, LCD
> 1280x1024@60Hz) stays steady as a rock.
>
> This still happens if I drop the resolution and frequency of my CRT to
> 1280x1024@60 but it clears up if I disable MergedFB and use xinerama.
>
> I have a Radeon 9250 (RV280) and I'm using the Open source RADEON
> driver (xorg.conf has Driver "ati" specified but that loads RADION)
> and I'm running Etch with Xfce with everything stock from apt (except
> flash, eww I feel dirty now).
Sorry bad form, replying to myself, but I ran into someone else with the
same problem on a different thread (Fullscreen on dual monitors) and
I've put together a list of questions to help build a profile of this
issue. If anyone else experiencing the same problem had the energy to
answer them as well, it should be possible to get an idea of the nature
and extent of the problem.
When do you see the shimmer effect?
any time I've got any kind of overlay, video, flash advertising etc, but
only when using MergedFB, colour or brightness is irrelevant for me, the
shimmer reduces when I pause the video, getting worse again when I
resume play.
What hardware are you using?
Radeon 9250 (RV280 256MB, 128bit)
What drivers are you using?
Open Source RADEON stock xorg with Etch
Which port is the screen that shimmers attached to?
DVI which is the primary output but I have "CRT2Position" "LeftOf 176"
in xorg.conf as it's on the right side, only this screen shimmers,
introspective of which screen the overlay is taking place on
Does it make any difference if you reduce the resolution, frequency,
colour, etc...?
not really, maybe the problem seems slightly less pronounced
Does it make any difference if the screens are running the same
resolution, frequency, colour depth etc..?
Not really, maybe slightly because usually Screen0 runs at 1600x1200 and
Screen1 1280x1024 so I think it's just a function of the previous
question, though if I drop both screens to 1024x768@60Hz the problem
goes away but man is it ugly and tight on the elbows.
Does the shimmer occur if you run both screens at 1024x768@60Hz?
no
Does the shimmer occur if you use Xinerama instead of MergedFB?
no
Does the shimmer appear on the overlay itself?
yes, if it's on that screen
Bob
> When I playback video with mplayer (vo=xv), visit a site with animated
> flash advertising or watch a clip on youtube, my primary screen,
> (right hand side analogue over DVI, CRT 1600x1200@85Hz) shimmers, my
> secondary screen, (left hand side, analogue over VGA D-sud 15, LCD
> 1280x1024@60Hz) stays steady as a rock.
>
> This still happens if I drop the resolution and frequency of my CRT to
> 1280x1024@60 but it clears up if I disable MergedFB and use xinerama.
>
> I have a Radeon 9250 (RV280) and I'm using the Open source RADEON
> driver (xorg.conf has Driver "ati" specified but that loads RADION)
> and I'm running Etch with Xfce with everything stock from apt (except
> flash, eww I feel dirty now).
Sorry bad form, replying to myself again, but I thought I'd post an
update in case this comes up in a search, the problem doesn't occur with
my Radeon 9000 (R250) or my Radeon 9800Pro (R350 which also doesn't have
the irritating 1536 pixel with limit on xv video overlay, I can watch
the Elephants Dream clip in full 1920x1080 but only just with my
AthlonXP 3200)
I'm a bit baffled as to what's causing this, I've tried tinkering with
various driver options to no avail, neither my older or my newer cards
exhibit the behavior but some guy on another thread claims to have the
same problem with an ATI x1950 pro, I get it with my Radeon 9250 using
any kind of overlay vx, x11 even -vo gl2.
As a side note the OpenGL video output driver overcomes the 1536 pixel
with limit on xv video overlay with these older Radeons, it's more
demanding on processor time, but it should be possible to use one of
these graphics cards with a decent dual core processor to playback 1080p
HD video on an untainted AMD system, (anyone know where I can get a
Asrock 939 dual SATA2 MotherBoard) without having to prescale the video,
(like gmplayer -fs -vo xv -vf scale=1536,pp=lb
/home/bob/media/video/Elephants_Dream_HD.avi) which if you're lucky
enough to have a 1080p display you won't want to do. (I don't but I can
run my CRT at 2048x1536 to test playback of HD content)
If anyone has any bright ideas (preferably polite ones) about what's
causing or how to cure the shimmer I'd love to hear them.
Thanks