qubes r3 vchan rewrite

[Raymond Rizzuto]

I'm guessing that R3's vchan reqrite might improve video from guest VM's.  I am hoping it will allow streaming video to work without all the skipping I see.  Anyone know any details?

[Jason M]

On Saturday, 4 April 2015 20:16:15 UTC-4, Raymond Rizzuto wrote:

I'm guessing that R3's vchan reqrite might improve video from guest VM's.  I am hoping it will allow streaming video to work without all the skipping I see.  Anyone know any details?

I find that video in R3 is much worse then in R2.  I run plex and in R3 its has been unusable where in R2 I considered it at least acceptable.

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Have you tried enabling low latency audio mode [1]? It solved the
problem with web-embedded videos (flash/html5) for me. Without that
setting, the html5 videos were stuttering. Standalone players like
mplayer or vlc works pretty well (including full HD) regardless of this
setting, at least on my computer.

[1]
https://wiki.qubes-os.org/wiki/UserDoc/ConfigFiles#GUIandaudioconfigurationindom0

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVIJSQAAoJENuP0xzK19csRZMH/36/S1/1An2fXIMetjR8Ho4Z
9cEgDXmYedSNsyZIL9pKVWRkrqEfklU59+o4Yhashr7jrblUo/mBqrjLgZYPs/et
psrX9keZD4r3Xolagb0whB8RTsAdLE6FN2nNxlkscrBCqf3Ht2TJ8oH/+JmAm1/f
/VufErYALosGLW8GkI6xJXQ0uYOvd1tcBigUSvZFdw1uSNYqv4ckAmVmLaRpTCAO
V9Qp9oWMCUOQKnZWtvAJo3ie3eqBvLidH/6kUltuJrRBbfMYUd4WqWDQHdw2jYX0
z5NWOrq2L20MR0/0IePp2J8JZwX22PhYqsbX5B/dFHcmEEI0Kue8Rm0bkXMh5Lw=
=foHu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, Apr 05, 2015 at 03:49:04AM +0200, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 05:44:20PM -0700, Jason M wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Saturday, 4 April 2015 20:16:15 UTC-4, Raymond Rizzuto wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm guessing that R3's vchan reqrite might improve video from guest VM's.
> > > I am hoping it will allow streaming video to work without all the skipping
> > > I see. Anyone know any details?
> > >
> >
> > I find that video in R3 is much worse then in R2. I run plex and in R3 its
> > has been unusable where in R2 I considered it at least acceptable.
>
> Have you tried enabling low latency audio mode [1]? It solved the
> problem with web-embedded videos (flash/html5) for me. Without that
> setting, the html5 videos were stuttering. Standalone players like
> mplayer or vlc works pretty well (including full HD) regardless of this
> setting, at least on my computer.
>
> [1]
> https://wiki.qubes-os.org/wiki/UserDoc/ConfigFiles#GUIandaudioconfigurationindom0

Hmm, it looks to be somehow hardware dependent. Above statement was
about system with integrated intel graphics (2nd gen). But when I've
checked on much older hardware, with discrete Nvidia Quadro 140M, it
isn't so good, actually hardly usable. Frankly I don't remember what was
video performance on this hardware under R2...

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVIJ9QAAoJENuP0xzK19csWVkH/3SSHu0On4jdvHyhvkQ8Y9p7
HfqX4897op0oU+jlxrYF76XYyR+J9yPCuCubP09tza2ZB3kLicy/XfJ25vcDY7tv
c5zZWq6MfH9zItsaAJHrYq4HSULUHYnOxPlpwL2lbHZxvdM+Xk+OzNV2Sx0GZwhi
TSXFCzVqK3CflIPMNm8wnfHKoxZqGVyIp4hfhFlFHDRgMeSxtTDT4bY9FYxttpIA
IcOFB18/l0btetxPKyY4zhJpxrGt3xUk90WFSgc8iPrI85ZN9qiMlndke9wnqIy3
JOHmbxsj8gj2FGmpOev6raeV5l4sy8gZ4BpywWnv7BOCjuYF9pu29U2T4zjhqoo=
=txLo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[nrgaway]

On 4 April 2015 at 21:49, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki <marm...@invisiblethingslab.com> wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 05:44:20PM -0700, Jason M wrote:
>
>
> On Saturday, 4 April 2015 20:16:15 UTC-4, Raymond Rizzuto wrote:
> >
> > I'm guessing that R3's vchan reqrite might improve video from guest VM's.
> >  I am hoping it will allow streaming video to work without all the skipping
> > I see.  Anyone know any details?
> >
>
> I find that video in R3 is much worse then in R2.  I run plex and in R3 its
> has been unusable where in R2 I considered it at least acceptable.

Have you tried enabling low latency audio mode [1]? It solved the
problem with web-embedded videos (flash/html5) for me. Without that
setting, the html5 videos were stuttering. Standalone players like
mplayer or vlc works pretty well (including full HD) regardless of this
setting, at least on my computer.

Thanks,

I have not; it was on my list of possible things to try.  I just modified the setting and will report back.  I am assuming this modification requires a reboot so it will be many hours before I can do that as I am waiting for templates to complete the build cycle.

The issue I was having seemed to be related to sound in some way as the video seemed to play fine, but sound either got out of sync or pops or mili-second drop outs which made it too annoying to use for watching TV shows which ended up in me using my smart phone and Chromecast to view shows.

The video component is one of the most important personal items to get working for me on R3.  Maybe I will get some time one day soon to get Intel GVT-g working again.  I had it going on the 3.14 kernel with xen 4.3 but not sure how difficult it would be to get it working with 4.4 as there is no reference implementation for 4.4 and the current kernel implementation is for 3.17.  I was secretly hoping they (Intel  - 01.org) would be releasing a new version soon as it seems their previous release cycle had been about every 3 months with the last release being in January.  I think I read that their code has already been included in the 3.21 kernel (which may become 4), which is good news too.

[Olivier Médoc]

On 04/05/15 03:49, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote:

On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 05:44:20PM -0700, Jason M wrote:


> On Saturday, 4 April 2015 20:16:15 UTC-4, Raymond Rizzuto wrote:
>>
>> I'm guessing that R3's vchan reqrite might improve video from guest VM's.
>>  I am hoping it will allow streaming video to work without all the skipping
>> I see.  Anyone know any details?
>>

> I find that video in R3 is much worse then in R2.  I run plex and in R3 its
> has been unusable where in R2 I considered it at least acceptable.

Have you tried enabling low latency audio mode [1]? It solved the
problem with web-embedded videos (flash/html5) for me. Without that
setting, the html5 videos were stuttering. Standalone players like
mplayer or vlc works pretty well (including full HD) regardless of this
setting, at least on my computer.

[1]
https://wiki.qubes-os.org/wiki/UserDoc/ConfigFiles#GUIandaudioconfigurationindom0

Similarly, you can try running pavucontrol (a PulseAudio mixer GUI) in dom0 while your video is playing to see if it stops skipping frames. Strangely, runnning pavucontrol seems to increase to priority of sound mixing somehow (reason unverified).



>

[Raymond Rizzuto]

I'm still curious about whether the vchan change in R3 should provide better video playback on the same hardware vs R2.  

My experience with watching HTML5 streams on a HP 8460P (i5, sandy bridge Intel HD 3000) under R2 is that the video is not very smooth, and that there are audio issues as well that might be helped by the low latency setting. 

[nrgaway]

On 4 April 2015 at 23:06, nrgaway <nrg...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 4 April 2015 at 21:49, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki <marm...@invisiblethingslab.com> wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 05:44:20PM -0700, Jason M wrote:
>
>
> On Saturday, 4 April 2015 20:16:15 UTC-4, Raymond Rizzuto wrote:
> >
> > I'm guessing that R3's vchan reqrite might improve video from guest VM's.
> >  I am hoping it will allow streaming video to work without all the skipping
> > I see.  Anyone know any details?
> >
>
> I find that video in R3 is much worse then in R2.  I run plex and in R3 its
> has been unusable where in R2 I considered it at least acceptable.

Have you tried enabling low latency audio mode [1]? It solved the
problem with web-embedded videos (flash/html5) for me. Without that
setting, the html5 videos were stuttering. Standalone players like
mplayer or vlc works pretty well (including full HD) regardless of this
setting, at least on my computer.

Enabling low latency audio mode seems to have helped immensely.  Now, I can watch a TV show without all the stuttering.  Maybe low latency mode should be enabled by default as video now-a-days is quite common.

My hardware setup was using a Haswell i7 with 16G RAM and with on-board integrated Intel video.
 

[Raymond Rizzuto]

Is audio_low_latency just for audio, or does it improve video as well?  

The reason I ask is that the video AND audio quality are not sufficient to watch Netflix or other html5 video streams.  Sometimes the audio pops, sometimes the video seems to have judder.  The video/audio sync is the least of the issues.

[Jason M]

For me without low_latency being enabled watching a video in plex was un-watchable.  The video would freeze and stutter.  I have seen this type of behaviour before with the audio effecting the video playback. Now the video is nearly acceptable although fast scenes cause tearing.

I never really had any sync issues.

 

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Apr 06, 2015 at 01:31:14PM -0700, Raymond Rizzuto wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, April 6, 2015 at 3:08:20 PM UTC-4, Jason M wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 4 April 2015 at 23:06, nrgaway <nrg...@gmail.com <javascript:>> wrote:
> >
> >> On 4 April 2015 at 21:49, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki <

> Is audio_low_latency just for audio, or does it improve video as well?
>
> The reason I ask is that the video AND audio quality are not sufficient to
> watch Netflix or other html5 video streams. Sometimes the audio pops,
> sometimes the video seems to have judder. The video/audio sync is the
> least of the issues.

Most players tries to synchronize audio and video, so if you have audio
latency problems, video also would have them.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVIveGAAoJENuP0xzK19csjdoH/3afk4dhIoY+LP9uoLUc5tC9
JvnPhm0IFOo+g72Q8NsA/r+6sAgRC1Mjch6j7m9vxCJffkLwYFANXbCJ0SV46+lv
0Etv9hHPJTlXxAmZwf9hdV+rrT6qoNzX/d/l+GNt43xXEvQjak0KuxWzD4RhJw5j
KophrSUWQ+6usjbKLnXzSIje7xXk0deNeYhUQgIYDpTu3xFeiWbKKQXjIZZPif4F
QniUUs2qnNUu8o8OGdSguggKGKiOG9vctdSVU0VdBHCFbpbHRC3HUNAuxjpXGSFW
Bf5d4G3xQUPR63OtVvumlgmQB4xmwk6caxnKN82+ZJ4PS31736iviOGsAYNqPrI=
=iAOg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Raymond Rizzuto]

Most players tries to synchronize audio and video, so if you have audio
latency problems, video also would have them.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVIveGAAoJENuP0xzK19csjdoH/3afk4dhIoY+LP9uoLUc5tC9
JvnPhm0IFOo+g72Q8NsA/r+6sAgRC1Mjch6j7m9vxCJffkLwYFANXbCJ0SV46+lv
0Etv9hHPJTlXxAmZwf9hdV+rrT6qoNzX/d/l+GNt43xXEvQjak0KuxWzD4RhJw5j
KophrSUWQ+6usjbKLnXzSIje7xXk0deNeYhUQgIYDpTu3xFeiWbKKQXjIZZPif4F
QniUUs2qnNUu8o8OGdSguggKGKiOG9vctdSVU0VdBHCFbpbHRC3HUNAuxjpXGSFW
Bf5d4G3xQUPR63OtVvumlgmQB4xmwk6caxnKN82+ZJ4PS31736iviOGsAYNqPrI=
=iAOg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Well, I updated qubes. conf in dom0 to set audio_low_latency to true for the VM I use to play videos.  What an amazing difference!  It is now working as well as a native Windows install.