The xine engine FAQ

Table of Contents

General questions about xine and this document

What is the xine engine?
What's the aim and scope of this text?
My question is not yet covered here - where can I ask for help?
How do I pronounce "xine"?
What are those xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine, ... modules in cvs for?
Where and how do I get the latest development version?
Where can I find pre-compiled binaries, e.g. RPMs?

Building and installing xine from source

What do I need to compile everything properly?
How do I compile xine?
Making your own RPM packages (xine-lib, xine-ui)
Can I provide additional CFLAGS for compilation?
Are there binaries for my AMD K7 (Athlon™) available? Can I build them?
Build problems: xine engine (xine-lib)
Build problems in frontends (gxine/xine-ui/...)
Can I install xine in my home directory (without being root)?

Playback of various stream types

DVD Playback with xine
Can I watch Video CDs (VCDs)? SVCDS ? CD-i?
Can I watch Quicktime (.mov, .mp4) files using xine?
Real Network files/streams
Can I watch Windows Media (.asf/.wmv/.wma) files using xine?
Can I watch Digital TV (Digital Video Broadcast) using xine?
How do I play streams from STDIN?
How can I watch files with external AVI subtitles?

Running xine

I have a lot of dropped frames - what can I do?
Oki, xine doesn't drop frames now but video output still is not really smooth!
I have problems when using xine on FreeBSD, Solaris, ... !
What is aalib? How do I use it in xine?
What do all these ~/.xine/config (~/.gxine/config) entries mean?
Does xine support my dxr3 / hollywood+ card?

Audio related questions

What audio drivers does xine support? OSS? Alsa? Arts? Esd?
When I'm watching a movie, the sound effects are much higher in volume than the voices!
When I play this stream, xine shows video but there's no audio!
Can xine produce 4-/5-channel surround audio output?
What about ac3 output via spdif to an external ac3 decoder?
Getting SPDIF output from a SBLive 5.1 using OSS drivers
Changing the volume with the GUI control has no effect! What's up!?
Audio is stuttering and i see a lot of "metronom: fixing sound card drift by -2115 pts" on the console output
xine seems to lose sound arbitrarily during playback, especially with DVDs

Video related questions

I can hear the audio - but I don't see a picture!
How can I make xine use the Xv extension and what drivers do I need?
Some parts of my X Desktop get transparent when xine plays the video!
The aspect ratio of the video is wrong!
What is the difference between discarded and skipped frames?
My xine is runing in black and white! / I only get a gray video output!
Which is the best video driver to use?

Error Messages: What they mean and what you can do

Starting xine fails with complains about audio drivers/devices!
"no video port found"
"Unable to open dvd drive (/dev/dvd)"
My drive doesn't work and the kernel says "status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }"
"demux error! 00 00 00 (should be 0x000001)"
"audio driver 'oss' failed, using null driver instead"
"video_out: throwing away image with pts xxx because it's too old"
"No video plugin available to decode 'xxxxxx'."
"w32codec: decoder failed to start. Is 'xxxxxx' installed?"
xine just crashed on me - i didn't get any error message

General questions about xine and this document

What is the xine engine?

- The xine engine is a free media player engine. It comes in the form of - a shared libarary and is typically used by media player frontends - and other multimedia applications for playback of multimedia streams - such as movies, radio/tv network streams, DVDs, VCDs. -

Since there are several frontends for the xine library available, - this document has a problem when it comes to examples. - The two most common frontends xine-ui and gxine are mixed in command - line examples throughout this FAQ. When you use a different - frontend, some of these will not work for you. The filename of - the config file also varies amongst frontends. If you get confused, - I recommend you try with one of xine-ui or gxine. -

What's the aim and scope of this text?

The primary goal of this FAQ is to cover all recurring questions related - to the xine engine. Frontend specific questions are usually not covered here. -

My question is not yet covered here - where can I ask for help?

First of all be sure that your question is really not covered here and - that you haven't just been a bit too lazy to read through all of this - text. ;-). Also check out the documentation specific to - the frontend (e.g. xine-ui or gxine or - totem). -

That said - you are welcome to mail to our user mailing list: - <xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net> - Please provide some info about your setup so people have a chance to - help you, e.g. include information about your audio/video hardware - and drivers you use, operating system, cpu type and some console - output/any error messages. Also include command line parameters you - have specified and information about the type of stream you're - trying to play back. Also very important is the version of xine - you're using and information about any additional plugins you - may have installed on your system. -

How do I pronounce "xine"?

As long as people know what you are talking about, you are free to - pronounce it the way you like, but the official pronounciation is - [ksi:n], like the name "Maxine" with the "Ma" removed. -

What are those xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine, ... modules in cvs for?

Some time ago xine just became too complex to be just one big program. - Therefore it was split into two major parts. -

xine-lib is simply speaking the engine of xine. It contains all basic plugins - and is necessary to run anything that relies on xine. (This is the part that - is covered in this FAQ.) -

Then there are frontends - applications that use xine. The most - common frontend is that of a media player. There are currently - two frontends being developed in the xine project, xine-ui (skinned - dvd-player style frontend directly based on xlib) and gxine, - a desktop media-player style frontend using the standard gtk widget set - and comes with a mozilla browser plugin. - External projects like kaffeine, sinek and totem develop additional frontends. - In the future you will likely see more and different types of applications - being developed which will use the xine engine for video processing - and other multimedia purposes. -

If you simply want a media/dvd player, you'll need to install xine-lib - first and then choose and install a player frontend like xine-ui or gxine. -

Other modules in CVS are: xine-plugin a mozilla browser plugin - for streaming media playback using xine, - xine-www the - xine project website sources. -

Where and how do I get the latest development version?

Be advised that end-users should stick to the official xine releases. - CVS is only intended for developers and for others who know why they use it. -

To check out xine-modules from CVS, first do this: -
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine login
- The password is empty, just press Enter. -

Then, to check out individual modules (e.g. xine-lib, - gxine or xine-ui): -
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine co <modulename>
-

Where can I find pre-compiled binaries, e.g. RPMs?

The xine project does not provide pre-compiled binaries for legal - reasons (some parts of xine may be covered by patents in some countries). - Some OS projects/vendors (e.g. debian, freebsd, ...) offer binaries - for their distributions - please contact them for further info. - You can also find links to third parties providing xine RPMs on - the xine homepage at - http://xinehq.de/index.php/releases. -

See the next section of this FAQ for instructions on how to build xine - from source. -

Building and installing xine from source

What do I need to compile everything properly?

First of all an official and stable release of gcc. Also be aware - that patched gcc versions may break parts of xine and are therefore - not supported by the xine project. -

Furthermore you'll have to use GNU make to compile xine. On most GNU/Linux - systems "make" is GNU make - on other platforms use "gmake" instead. - Also, zlib is required (including the appropriate header files, which are - often found in a package called zlib-devel or similar.) -

If you want to compile xine from CVS, you'll need to have the autobuild tools - installed (automake, autoconf and libtool - in recent versions). -

Frontends might need additional libraries, e.g. for gxine you'll need to have - GTK installed. Make sure you have not only the shared libraries themselves - but also the header files (often packaged seperately as so-called -dev packages) - on your system. -

Some plugins that come with the xine engine need additional libraries (otherwise - they will not be built). For example, libogg and libvorbis (plus their include files) - are needed for ogg/vorbis support. Most notably, if you want to see any video - on your X11 desktop (and that's what you're here for, isn't it?), you need the - XFree developer packages as well. -

Don't worry about this too much right now, xine's configure - (see below) will check for all the stuff needed and will tell you what's missing - (which means that you should check the output it produces carefully ;) ). -

How do I compile xine?

Simple build instructions for beginners

Download the latest xine-lib and gxine/xine-ui tarballs, then follow - these instruction. To unpack a tarball, use: -
tar xfvz tarballname.tar.gz
-

The following instructions will install xine in /usr/local - where it will be visible for all users. You need root privileges to do this on most systems. -

After unpacking xine-lib, issue: -
./configure - make install
-

Make sure your /etc/ld.so.conf contains - /usr/local/lib and continue with: -
ldconfig
-

Now unpack your frontend (gxine or xine-ui or ...), then: -
./configure - make install
-

Complete build instructions

The build process is the same for all of the xine modules. -

You have to start with xine-lib. If built and installed successfully, you - can continue with the frontend(s). -

If you have installed xine-lib to a non-standard prefix, make sure - that you have $prefix/bin in your PATH and that your linker finds - libs in $prefix/lib - otherwise trying to build modules that - rely on xine-lib will fail with configure complaining about not - finding certain parts of libxine. Using bash you can do something like: -
export PATH="$prefix/bin:$PATH" - export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$prefix/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
- to make sure libxine can be found by the frontend(s). -

Last but not least. Here the build instructions. As stated earlier, - those are the same for every xine module. -
./autogen.sh [-> *only* if you checked your sources out of CVS] - ./configure - make - make install
-

Making your own RPM packages (xine-lib, xine-ui)

Basically you will only have to issue one command, if you have just - downloaded a source tarball from our web site: -
rpm -ta <THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_SOURCE_TAR_BALL>
-

This will start the binary and source RPM building. After compiling is - finished, a binary rpm is placed in your rpm binary directory which is - something like /usr/src/RPM/RPMS/<YOUR_ARCHITECTURE> - and a source RPM is written to your rpm source dir - (e.g. /usr/src/RPM/SRPMS). -

In case that you have a fresh CVS checkout, you will need to do the - following first in order to get a tarball release out of it which you - can later use with the rpm -ta command above: -
./autogen.sh && make clean && make dist
-

In any case, please keep in mind that you have to build and install - xine-lib first before you can proceed with xine-ui. -

Can I provide additional CFLAGS for compilation?

Yes, you can do so by setting the CFLAGS variable and then running - configure again. You can even pass them to - configure directly. Example: -
./configure CFLAGS="-march=i686"
-

Other user variables configure respects are: -

CC to specify the compiler executable -
CPP to specify the C preprocessor executable -
LD to specify the linker executable -
CPPFLAGS to pass additional include paths or other - preprocessor options -
LDFLAGS to pass additional library paths or other - linker options -

An example combining some of these would look like: -
./configure CC="/opt/intel/bin/icc" LD="/opt/intel/bin/xild" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include/dvdnav" LDFLAGS="-L/home/guenter/xine_libs"
-

Are there binaries for my AMD K7 (Athlon™) available? Can I build them?

If you have a recent gcc you can try to compile "more" k7 support in (esp. - better instruction scheduling). If the configure script should fail to - detect your processor/gcc correctly, try passing the canonical system name for - your machine to configure with the --host option, e.g. -
./configure --host=k7-pc-linux-gnu
-

Build problems: xine engine (xine-lib)

The package doesn't compile at all!

In order to be able to compile xine-lib, you need (amongst other things) - the zlib compression library plus the appropriate headers, which are - often found in a package called zlib-devel or similar. -

Read again carefully the output ./configure - produced and/or compiler warnings and error reports, they often contain - helpful information to find out what's going on. If you're stuck here - and decide to post your problem on the xine-user mailing list, - make sure you include these outputs. -

The Xv video-out plugin fails to compile!

If you want to have Xv support compiled in, make sure you either have - a shared Xv library on your system, e.g. - ls /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv* - should give you some .so libs, like this: -
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.a - /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.so - /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.so.1
-

Alternatively you need to have libtool 1.4 or newer installed, then - libXv.a is sufficient. Otherwise you can create the shared versions yourself: -
ld --whole-archive -shared -o libXv.so.1 libXv.a - ln -s libXv.so.1 libXv.so - ldconfig
-

Now you should be ready to build the Xv video-out plugin on your system. -

Build problems in frontends (gxine/xine-ui/...)

I have installed xine-lib but the frontend complains about not finding it!

First of all take a closer look at the compilation instructions above again. - You will probably find your answer there right away. -

As stated there (there again that hint *grin*), make sure that you - have $prefix/bin in your path and that your - linker is able to find libraries installed in $prefix/lib - By the way, $prefix is where you installed your xine-lib to earlier - (yes, installing xine-lib with make install would be a good - idea before trying to compile the frontend ;) ). -

Can I install xine in my home directory (without being root)?

Sure. First set up a subdir where you install your private software, eg. -
mkdir ~/xine
-

Then you have to set a few environment variables - it's probably a good - idea to add this to your ~/.bashrc (or somewhere similar): -
export PATH="$HOME/xine/bin:$PATH" - export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/xine/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
-

Now you can unpack tarballs e.g. in ~/xine/src - (mkdir ~/xine/src if necessary) and do a -
./configure --prefix=$HOME/xine - make install
-

You also need to tell frontends using xine-lib, where to find it: -
./configure --prefix=$HOME/xine --with-xine-prefix=$HOME/xine
-

Playback of various stream types

DVD Playback with xine

How do I play back DVDs with xine?

Newer xine (1.0.x) releases come with a full-featured - DVD plugin that should be able to handle any unencrypted, - non-locked DVD with full menu navigation support. No external - plugins are required anymore here. -

To get DVD playback working, first make sure you have - a symlink /dev/dvd pointing to your - DVD device on your system. For example, if your DVD drive - is the master ide drive on the second IDE channel, - /dev/dvd should point to - /dev/hdc. Please note that if you - are using the ide-scsi emulation on your system, it is - likely that your DVD drive got mapped to a scsi device - node even though it is an ide drive. In that case first - check out you boot/kernel logs (or run cdrecord -scanbus) - to find out which device it got mapped to and set the - symlink accordingly (should be something like /dev/scd0, - /dev/scd1, ... in that case). - Also make sure you (as a user) have sufficient (read and write) permissions - on your DVD drive. This could mean you either have to change the device - permissions or add your user to a special group - (e.g. addgroup cdrom username), - depending on your setup and/or distribution. -

It is highly recommended to switch DMA mode on for your DVD drive - (without it even very recent machines will have trouble producing - smooth video output). Use a command like - hdparm -d 1 <device> - on your DVD device. Please note that even if you're using ide-scsi - you will have to set the dma flag on the ide device node (e.g. - /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd - scsi device. -

To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have - libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where - you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means - here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most - likely encrypted. -

To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle - to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world - into eight geographical regions. Have a look at - http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf - if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is - now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced - for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, - you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the - disc is for. -

Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD - region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have - a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives - come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back - any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all - until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use - the regionset utility from - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 - . -

Once you have everything set up, try something like - gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ - to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay - buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately. -

Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay - button or start xine from the command line. -

If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check - shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on - what could be wrong. -

DVD playback works, but it takes a long time until playback starts

This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play - back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, - but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has - to be used to access the DVD. -

You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 - . -

Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 - drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will - stay locked to the region you last set it up for. -

I have problems setting up my RPC-2 drive for the right region!

You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 - . -

Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 - drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will - stay locked to the region you last set it up for. -

Can I watch Video CDs (VCDs)? SVCDS ? CD-i?

xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, - make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing - to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD. -

At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine. -

Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive - and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like - gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ - from the command line. -

Can I watch Quicktime (.mov, .mp4) files using xine?

Quicktime is just a system layer (container format) which can contain various - different audio and video formats. The system layer itself is fully supported - in xine. However, some quicktime audio/video codecs are not natively supported yet. - Luckily, if you are using a x86 compatible machine (any recent PC hardware should do) - you can install and use the original Quicktime DLLs and watch most streams - (trailers) that can be downloaded from the net. -

Possibly the most convenient way to get the Quicktime DLLs is to download - them from the mplayer website - http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ - . - The package is called "QuickTime6 DLLs". Unpack it and move everything you find - inside to /usr/lib/win32 (actually you can place them - anywhere you want, e.g. someplace in your homedirectory, but then you'll - have to set codec.win32_path in your - xine config file accordingly). Restart xine then and you should be - able to watch Quicktime trailers. -

Real Network files/streams

Can I watch Real (.rm, .ram) files using xine?

The situation with real files and streams is pretty similar to the situation - with Quicktime Streams (see above). The newer real audio and video formats - are only supported by using binary-only codecs which are available from - real networks but are not included in xine. -

One way to get these codecs is to download and install RealPlayer from - RealNetworks, for example in /usr/local/RealPlayer8 or - /opt/RealPlayer8. If you installed it in one of these - places, xine should automatically find and use the real binary codecs. - If it doesn't work, try to find out the exact path to where the real codecs - are installed on your system (look for a file named rv30.so.6.0 - which should reside in a directory called Codecs in the - directory where you have installed RealPlayer in) and set - codec.real_codecs_path in your xine config file - accordingly. -

What about (live) network streams (pnm://, rtsp:// style urls)?

xine supports both pnm and rtsp streaming. However, digging out the actual - pnm/rtsp url can be tricky as they're often packed into heavy JavaScript and - HTML code on most websites. You can either use a combination of your - browser's "save source" function and wget or use a xine browser plugin - (currently the gxine frontend comes with a simple mozilla plugin, - for example). When you decided to dig out the url by hand don't get fooled - by the many redirectors that are often placed around the actual url. - Use wget to download any http://-style urls and use less to look inside - the downloaded .ra/.ram files where you will find the actual pnm/rtsp - url which can be opened using xine. -

Can I watch Windows Media (.asf/.wmv/.wma) files using xine?

While the container format (system layer) ASF (wmv is just an alias) - is fully supported in xine, for newer windows media 9 based streams - you'll need to install windows binary codecs (.DLLs). -

Possibly the most convenient way to get the windows DLLs is to download - them from the mplayer website - http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ - . - The package is called "Win32 Codecpack". Unpack it and move everything you find - inside to /usr/lib/win32 (actually you can place them - anywhere you want, e.g. someplace in your homedirectory, but then you'll - have to set codec.win32_path in your - xine config file accordingly). Restart xine then and you should be - able to watch windows media streams. -

Can I watch Digital TV (Digital Video Broadcast) using xine?

At the time of this writing DVB support is a very new and experimental - feature in xine. The number of supported cards is pretty limited at the moment. - See doc/README.dvb (in the xine-lib tarball) for details. -

How do I play streams from STDIN?

Use something like: -
cat stream.mpg | gxine stdin:/
-

How can I watch files with external AVI subtitles?

In xine 0.9.13 this used to be: -
xine foo.avi%bar.sub
-

Latest xine-lib modules (1-beta3 or newer) support external subtitles - for any media file, not only AVI. In order to use it you can pass a - special MRL construction like: -
xine test.mpg#subtitle:file.sub
- The external subtitles support can also be used by any xine - frontend. Currently, just xine-ui implements this feature with a - subtitle selection dialog. -

Running xine

I have a lot of dropped frames - what can I do?

Your hardware might be too slow for xine. Make sure you turn on all - speed optimizing options. A few things you should check (in order of - importance): -

First of all, run the xine-check script included in xine - package (probably already installed in your system). - xine-check will report several of the most common problems - listed here. Sample output from xine-check: -
xine-check - Please be patient, this script may take a while to run... - [ good ] you're using Linux, doing specific tests - [ good ] looks like you have a /proc filesystem mounted. - [ good ] You seem to have a reasonable kernel version (2.4.18) - [ good ] intel compatible processor, checking MTRR support - [ good ] you have MTRR support and there are some ranges set. - [ good ] found the player at /usr/local/bin/xine - [ good ] /usr/local/bin/xine is in your PATH - [ good ] found /usr/local/bin/xine-config in your PATH - [ good ] plugin directory /usr/local/lib/xine/plugins exists. - [ good ] found input plugins - [ good ] found demux plugins - [ good ] found decoder plugins - [ good ] found video_out plugins - [ good ] found audio_out plugins - [ good ] skin directory /usr/local/share/xine/skins exists. - [ good ] found logo in /usr/local/share/xine/skins - [ good ] I even found some skins. - [ good ] /dev/cdrom points to /dev/hdc - [ good ] /dev/dvd points to /dev/hdc - [ good ] DMA is enabled for your DVD drive - [ good ] found xvinfo: X-Video Extension version 2.2 - [ good ] your Xv extension supports YUV overlays (improves MPEG performance) - [ good ] your Xv extension supports packed YUV overlays - [ good ] Xv ports: YUY2 YV12 I420 UYVY
-

Try to use the Xv driver, it greatly improves performance and quality - because your graphics card does image scaling and colorspace conversion. The - video section contains important information - about several Xv drivers. -
If Xv cannot be used for some reason, make sure your display is set up - to 16bpp, not 24 or higher (reduces memory bandwith). Some Xv drivers - may also have better performance with 16bpp. -
Make sure the hard drive (or cdrom/dvd drive) which supplies the - video data is in DMA mode (if supported). -
On most linux-based systems, you can use hdparm to check this: -
hdparm /dev/hda - [...] - using_dma = 1 (on) - [...]
-
You can enable DMA mode with the following command: -
hdparm -d1 device_of_your_drive_that_supplies_video_data
- In some cases where this fails it helps to specify the dma mode - to use, for example: -
hdparm -d1 -X 66 device_of_your_drive_that_supplies_video_data
- In RedHat 8.0 an additional entry in /etc/modules.conf -
options ide-cd dma=1
- should help (reboot for this change to take effect). -
More information about this may be found here: - http://oreilly.linux.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/hdparm.html - . -
Use a recent kernel which is optimized for your hardware. Old kernels - may lack support for accelerated instructions like SSE, for example. -
Close other applications (use a tool like "top" to find out - what applications are using up CPU power). Programs that update the - system clock like ntp should also be disabled. -
Enable MTRR support in your kernel. If you are still using XFree 3.x, - you'll have to tell the kernel yourself where the graphics memory is. - You'll find details about that in the linux dvd howto. -
If you're using XFree 4.x, enabling MTRR support in your kernel should - be enough (use a recent kernel!). -
Try a cat /proc/mtrr - if the file exists and you find an entry - corresponding to the amount of graphics memory you have, everything - should be fine. -
Have your X-server (usually XFree86) running with higher priority. - Most recent linux distributions (like RedHat 8.0 or Mandrake 9.0) should - do that for you, improving not only xine but desktop responsiveness - in general. -
Use the "top" utility and verify under the "NI" column if - the X process has a negative value, this indicates a higher priority. - See "The X Window User HOWTO - Performance considerations" for - further instructions - http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-User-HOWTO/performance.html - . -
Use the latest or a known-good gcc version and build an optimized xine-lib for - your architecture. -
Besides boosting X-server priority, sometimes it's possible to avoid - discarding frames by making xine itself higher priority. This is not - a recommended pratice since it will require to run xine as root, - but you may give it a try if you want: -
nice --5 xine
-
xine needs high speed memory access which depends on your chip set. - Make sure you enable all speed-improving options. -
Especially the via apollo pro chipset is known to be quite weird, - (most of all on my gigabyte board). If you can't configure the ram - access thoroughly using the bios you might want to try some really - nasty tricks, as explained on (for example): - http://www.overclockers.com/tips105/index03.asp - -
This website centers around a windows-tool to tweak the chipset, you - can do the same on FreeBSD with pciconf. - On some linux distributions there are similar tools. -
a nice performance tuning tool can be found here: - http://powertweak.sourceforge.net -
Set up and use raw devices for DVD access. Please note that the - actual performance gain during playback is very small if any, but - since raw devices are bypassing the kernel's buffer cache, Linux - will not try to cache the DVDs you play. This would not be useful, - because xine does its own caching and you usually play DVDs - sequentially, which means you won't reuse anything from the cache. - But the problem would be that Linux throws everything out of the - cache that might be in there. -
Raw devices should be available in linux kernel 2.4.x and there are - patches for older kernels available from: - ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/sct/raw-io/ - -
To use raw devices, first connect a free raw device to your dvd - device, use something like: -
raw /dev/raw1 /dev/dvd
-
Then create a link named "rdvd" pointing to that raw device: -
ln -s raw1 /dev/rdvd
-
For slow / high-latency dvd drives it might help to increase - the number of video buffers xine allocates. Try setting - video.num_buffers:500 - to a higher value (e.g. 1000 or 2500). -

Oki, xine doesn't drop frames now but video output still is not really smooth!

Video output can be further improved by tuning your linux kernel: -

Set HZ to 1000 in - /usr/src/linux/include/asm-i386/param.h -
Try applying scheduler patches, especially the O(1) and the preemptive - patches have proven useful at the time of this writing (spring 2003). -

- Linux 2.5/2.6 will probably have these improvements out of the box. -

Miguel Freitas has written a nice - article about his kernel multimedia experiments - . -

I have problems when using xine on FreeBSD, Solaris, ... !

Check out the the corresponding README files in the directory xine-lib/doc. -

What is aalib? How do I use it in xine?

aalib is an ascii art library. xine comes with an aalib video output - plugin so you can watch movies in your xterm, on the console or on your - old vt100 - very cool ;> ... another nice option is to preview movies - on a remote server in your shell over ssh. -

To use it make sure you have aalib installed correctly before you - configure/build xine-lib and xine-ui. In addition to the xine binary a - binary named aaxine should get built and installed. You can then use - something like: -
aaxine foo.mpg
- to use aalib video output. -

What do all these `~/.xine/config` (`~/.gxine/config`) entries mean?

You can find information about them in - xine-lib/doc/README.config_en. - Frontends may register additional config entries, you may find out more about - them in their documentation. Also the comments in the config file might - help. -

Does xine support my dxr3 / hollywood+ card?

While xine's focus is clearly on software decoding, the dxr3 is supported. -

You can find more information about using xine with the dxr3 - here - (also covers how to do tv output using the dxr3). -

Audio related questions

What audio drivers does xine support? OSS? Alsa? Arts? Esd?

Currently xine support audio output via OSS (kernel audio drivers), - ALSA 0.9.x (ALSA 0.5.x is no longer supported), arts (KDE's sound daemon) - and esound (esd, gnome's sound daemon - not recommended because it has - serious issues with a/v sync). -

When I'm watching a movie, the sound effects are much higher in volume than the voices!

Congratulations, you seem to have an original movie audio track there. -

Uhm. So you don't like it. Well, there are two things you can do: -

You can enable xine's audio compressor. Most frontends have - a settings window and in that you'll find a slider for the - compressor setting. The values are percent values, so a - slider setting of 200 means that xine will double the volume - of silent parts of the movie (loud parts stay the same). -
If your frontend does not have such a compression slider, - you can pass the value with the MRL: -
xine dvd:/#compression:150
-
If you have a dolby digital (AC3) soundtrack, you can try - to enable liba52's dynamic range compression setting - codec.a52_dynrng:1 - in your xine config file (or use some gui config dialog). -

When I play this stream, xine shows video but there's no audio!

If this happens with any video, first try a different audio driver - (gxine -A oss, gxine -A arts, - xine -A alsa ...). -

If this problem only occurs with one specific stream, maybe switching to - a different audio channel (using the gui) helps. Some DVD streams have - audio on strange channels. -

If all this doesn't help, maybe you're missing an audio codec or you found - a bug. If you decide to post your problem on the xine-user mailing list, - make sure to include all console output xine produced and also clearly - state what type of stream you tried to play back or, even better, make - a test stream available somewhere for developers to download and try. -

Can xine produce 4-/5-channel surround audio output?

Yep, it can do that using OSS or ALSA drivers, provided that the driver - supports it. On startup xine tells you what modes are supported by your - audio driver, e.g: -
audio_alsa_out : supported modes are mono stereo (4-channel not enabled in xine config) (5-channel not enabled in xine config) (5.1-channel not enabled in xine config) (a/52 and DTS pass-through not enabled in xine config)
-

On this machine 4-channel surround would be possible. However, since xine - cannot detect if there are actually speakers connected to the additional - channels, you'll have to activate that feature manually. -

You can do this either in the config dialog while xine is running (press - the config button on the xine panel and go to the AUDIO tab) or have it - the complicated way by editing the config file yourself which is located - in your home directory in .gxine or .xine: -
audio.four_channel:1 - audio.five_channel:1 - audio.five_lfe_channel:0
-

What about ac3 output via spdif to an external ac3 decoder?

xine can do that too. Pretty much the same story as for 4-/5-channel - surround (see above). You can either use the config dialog or edit - the config file (~/.xine/config or ~/.gxine/config) - yourself: -
audio.a52_pass_through:1
-

Getting SPDIF output from a SBLive 5.1 using OSS drivers

The following explains how to get the above configuration - going with xine. Some parts of it may applicable to other - configurations (cards that use the EMU10k1 chip) as well. -

Requirements

xine-lib >= 1.x.x
OSS driver
an external decoder
a cable to connect the SBLive to the external decoder

The configuration described was tested using a Soundblaster live 5.1 (rev 7) - with a Yamaha DSP-AX620 external decoder. -

Retrieving the driver

The OSS driver is maintained by creative and can be downloaded at - http://opensource.creative.com/. - The driver package contains documentation on how to install it. - Besides that I'd like to add the following notes. -

In order to compile and install these drivers, you need a valid kernel - configuration file. For RedHat Linux's pre-compiled kernels these - configuration files can be found in - /usr/src/linux/configs. - After you've located the correct config file for your kernel, - you need to copy it to /usr/src/linux/.config - For example, when you run the 2.4.18-i686 kernel do : -
   cp /usr/src/linux/configs/kernel-2.4.18-i686.config /usr/src/linux/.config
- Make sure that the emu10k1 module that is currently installed is - not loaded. To unload the modules: -
   /sbin/modprobe -rv emu10k1.o ac97_codec.o
- If this mentions that the device is busy, some program is - using the driver. Some example could be a mixer application - or sound daemon like artsd. You'll need to close down the - applications before continuing. - At success it should print something like: -
   # delete emu10k1 -   # delete ac97_codec -   # delete soundcore
- Run make in the directory where you unpacked the driver and follow the - instructions printed at the end of each step. - The last step should be: -
   make install-tools
- As the README of the driver package mentions the SPDIF AC3 - output doesn't work by default. In the directory - utils/scripts an emu10k1.conf - file can be found which need to be placed in the default - installation directory (/usr/local/etc). - After this the emu10k1.conf needs to be modified. - The following settings worked fine for me (I don't use the analog - outputs of the card): -
   CARD_IS_5_1=yes -   USE_DIGITAL_OUTPUT=yes -   ENABLE_TONE_CONTROL=yes -   AC3PASSTHROUGH=yes -   ENABLE_LIVEDRIVE_IR=no -   INVERT_REAR=no -   MULTICHANNEL=yes -   ROUTE_ALL_TO_SUB=no -   ANALOG_FRONT_BOOST=no -   SURROUND=no -   PROLOGIC=no -   ENABLE_CD_Spdif=yes -   ENABLE_OPTICAL_SPDIF=no -   ENABLE_LINE2_MIC2=no -   ENABLE_RCA_SPDIF=no -   ENABLE_RCA_AUX=no
- After modifying the emu10k1.conf, - you need to modify your /etc/modules.conf and - make sure the following lines are in there. -
   alias sound-slot-0 emu10k1 -   post-install emu10k1 /usr/local/etc/emu-script
- After saving the changes to modules.conf, run -
   /sbin/depmod -a
- Now, you're ready to load the new modules and set the correct - options for it. To load the modules run: -
   /sbin/modprobe emu10k1
-

Setting up xine for SPDIF (AC3_passthrough) output

You can either use the config dialog of your frontend or edit - the config file (~/.xine/config) yourself: -
audio.a52_pass_through:1
- In case the setting is not in the file you can add it. -

The cable used for the SBLive can easily be self-made - or buy a stereo 3.5mm jack to dual RCA cable.

What you need to make the cable yourself: -

stereo 3.5mm jack plug
RCA plug
shielded cable (video coax 75 Ohm will do)

- Connect them as follows : -

   center pin jackplug ------|----- center pin RCA plug
-                   GND     __|__    GND

In order to test it use a DVD with AC3 or DTS track - start xine and select the right audio track - from user interface or start xine as: -
xine dvd:/1 -a 0
- The external decoder should display something like - "Dolby Digital" in case the selected audio track contains - AC3 data or "DTS" in case the selected audio track - contains DTS data. Of course stereo audio also goes - through the SPDIF output, so the analog outputs of the - SBLive 5.1 are not needed anymore. -

Changing the volume with the GUI control has no effect! What's up!?

Some xine drivers do not support volume changing although the GUI - will show the volume bar. Usually this is not xine's fault: aRts C - API, for example, doesn't offer any volume property to applications. - Similarly, with ac3 pass through it is not possible to set the volume. -

Note that recently we added support to "simulate" volume in aRts by - changing sample values on-the-fly before delivering them to the driver. - Not as good as having access to sound card's mixer but at least users - will not complain about lacking of volume bar anymore! :) -

Audio is stuttering and i see a lot of "metronom: fixing sound card drift by -2115 pts" on the console output

Might be a soundcard problem, if it only comes in longer intervals. - Your soundcard does not keep it's sampling frequency accurately - enough, which results in audio and video - getting out of sync and xine has to compensate. If you see the message - only from time to time, you might remedy it by using the resampling sync - method. You can do this by setting the configuration entry - audio.av_sync_method to resample. -

If you receive the metronom message more often, - maybe switching to different drivers (alsa to oss or vise-versa) - can help here. It has also been reported that setting the configuration - entry audio.force_rate to the native sampling - rate of your soundcard (try 44100 and 48000) helps sometimes. -

Another, whole different possibility is that you have some background - process running which is messing with the clock (like some ntp client - - chronny, ntpd, ...). -

Occasional messages of "fixing sound card drift" may happen on start and - when playing a long stream (like a movie). This is normal behaviour, - nothing to worry about. -

xine seems to lose sound arbitrarily during playback, especially with DVDs

You are using the OSS audio output plugin, right? In order to keep video and audio - in sync, xine regularly queries the audio driver for the amount of delay induced by - the current length of the driver's audio buffer. Unfortunately some OSS drivers seem - to be broken because the can return strange values here. This confuses the xine audio - subsystem and makes it drop audio. -

You should try the various settings of the - configuration entry audio.oss_sync_method. The options - getodelay and getoptr ask the driver and - might therefore show the problem. But chances are that only one is broken and the other - works, so you should try them both first, since they are the most accurate. - The option probebuffer does not ask the driver directly but - tries to determine the buffer length from outside. This should work with any driver - and is the way to go, of the driver dependent methods fail. - softsync is the least accurate and should be used only in - emergency situations. -

Video related questions

I can hear the audio - but I don't see a picture!

Probably your hardware is simply too slow - see above for some - hints on how to speed things up. -

Another possibility is that you using a buggy Xv driver, see the next - question. -

How can I make xine use the Xv extension and what drivers do I need?

xine will normally use Xv by default if it is available. In some cases - you might need to choose Xv playback manually (when the ~/.xine/config - file for some reason says that you want to use XShm): -
xine -V Xv foo.mpg
-

If this doesn't work for you, it may be possible that Xv is not present - on your system. -

First you need to install/use XFree 4.x. Once you got that you have to - make sure the XFree drivers you're using are supporting Xv on your - hardware. Here are some hints for individual gfx chips: -

- 3Dfx: if all you get is a solid black window, upgrade at least to XFree 4.1.0 -
- ATI: if you only get "half a picture", try lowering your resolution - or bit depth, disable DRI (looks like you ran out of video RAM) -
- Trident card: If you see vertical bands jumbled, upgrade to the latest - xfree/experimental trident drivers (for the CyberBlade XP - a driver exists here: - http://www.xfree86.org/~alanh/ ) -
- nVidia: With newer GeForce cards, Xv should work with XFree 4.2.0 or - newer, for older RivaTNT cards use the binary drivers from nvidia - (of course the binary drivers work as well for GeForce cards) -
- Mach64/Rage3D (not Rage128/Radeon) cards/chips get no XVideo with - standard drivers, try - GATOS drivers - instead -
- intel: i815 has Xv support in XFree 4.x, others unknown -
- Permedia 2/3 has Xv support in XFree 4.x -
- Savage: at least some older drivers tend to lock up the whole machine, - try the drivers available from - http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html - . -
- SIS: certain controllers (more info needed!) have Xv support in XFree 4.x -
- Chips and Tech 6555x, 68554, 69000, 69030 have Xv support in XFree 4.x -
- NeoMagic: certain controllers (more info needed!) have Xv support in Xfree 4.x -
- SiliconMotion: certain controllers (more info needed!) have Xv support in Xfree 4.x -
- Matrox: G200 or newer (but not Parhelia) have Xv support in XFree 4.x. - For Parhelia, use the binary only drivers available from matrox' website. -

Some parts of my X Desktop get transparent when xine plays the video!

Looks like some colors on your GUI match the colorkey Xv uses. You can - change the colorkey value to avoid this. There should be a line like: -
video.XV_COLORKEY:2110
- in your ~/.xine/config file where you can change the color that's used - by xine for the video overlay. -

The aspect ratio of the video is wrong!

Try pressing "a" to change the aspect ratio. -

What is the difference between discarded and skipped frames?

Sometimes xine will output a message like that: -
200 frames delivered, XX frames skipped, YY frames discarded
-

The difference between these counters is a little subtle for the non - developer. There are two threads running in order to display video: - the decoder thread will deliver frames to the video output thread. - The later is responsible for scheduling the frames to be displayed at - the right time. -

If your system can't keep up with decoding requirements, decoder will - deliver overdue frames. Imagine if it finished decoding the frame - tagged for displaying at 11:30 but xine clock marks 11:31. When this - situation is detected, xine will try to skip decoding a few frames - to recover. Not every decoder may support this feature. -

When the frame is decoded to be shown somewhere in future but the - output thread doesn't get scheduled in time by the operating system - to complete the operation, the frame is discarded. One cause might - be the disk access operation, which may halt the system for a few - miliseconds without DMA. See performance section tips above. -

Note that if a decoder can't skip frames for some reason, you would - never see frames skipped (they would be all discarded). -

My xine is runing in black and white! / I only get a gray video output!

This frequently happens with new Xv drivers or when switching to a - different video card. Background is that different Xv drivers often - use different ranges for the contrast/brightness/saturation settings. -

To fix this, try opening the xine settings window and try adjusting - the sliders for contrast, brightness and saturation. -

Please note that some frontends save these settings in their config file - so when you have found a working combination, make sure you exit - xine cleanly so the values are saved. -

Which is the best video driver to use?

xine support several video drivers for outputing the image. These will - differ on how the frames are copied to the video card memory, whether - colorspace conversion and scaling is done in software or hardware, among - other things. They may also differ on ease of use and stability. -

Most of the time, Xv should give the users a good trade-off between - quality, compatibility and ease of use. This is why xine tries to use - Xv by default. -

However some users may want to explore better the available hardware - capabilities (eg. syncing frame drawing with monitor refresh). - Also some Xv drivers contain slow copies and accessing the video card - directly may yield performance gains. -

Drivers that access hardware directly includes VIDIX (warning: requires - root priviledges or kernel helper) and SyncFB (requires kernel helper - Matrox only). - User may try one of those, but should be warned that with root access - they can cause the system to crash hard. The support is also limited to - a couple of graphics cards only. -

Graphic workstations like SGI have usually a good support for OpenGL. - In that case, using OpenGL may be a better choice than XShm. However for - most desktop systems the performance of OpenGL will be quite bad. -

Error Messages: What they mean and what you can do

Starting xine fails with complains about audio drivers/devices!

You can select the audio driver using the -A option. So try: -
   xine -A null
- If you have ALSA drivers installed, try: -
   xine -A alsa
- If you run ESD (not recommended), try: -
   xine -A esd
- If you run artsd, try: -
   xine -A arts
-

"no video port found"

You got the Xv extension, but your video card driver doesn't support it. - First try to find a driver that does support Xv on your hardware (check - your graphics card vendor). If your driver has Xv support but you can't - get it working, try at a lower resolution (1024x768 is enough even for - anamorphic DVDs). -

If all that fails, you can still use plain X11/XShm: -
gxine -V XShm foo.vob
-

"Unable to open dvd drive (/dev/dvd)"

You probably don't have /dev/dvd (check that). If so, simply create a - link /dev/dvd that points to your DVD device. Something like... -
ln -s hdc /dev/dvd
- ...should do the job. Also make sure you have read and write access on - the device the symlink points to. - See the dvd playback section - for more information. -

My drive doesn't work and the kernel says "status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }"

This error can be fixed by recompiling your kernel with the option - "Use multi-mode by default" enabled in the IDE settings. -

"demux error! 00 00 00 (should be 0x000001)"

Probably xine can't access your input source. Most commonly this happens - when you're trying to play locked/encrypted DVDs. Remember that xine - can't play such DVDs out-of-the box for legal reasons (see above). -

If it is legal where you live, you can try to install libdvdcss. Once - you have done that and re-start xine, it should automatically detect - and use it to play back encrypted DVDs. -

Another reason could be that your (RPC-2) DVD drive isn't set up - for the right region (see above). -

"audio driver 'oss' failed, using null driver instead"

First of all, make sure that your OSS Audio drivers are working (i.e. - you can play music with other software). Maybe you're using alsa? - If so, try gxine -A alsa to see if this helps. -

The most common reason for oss not working is that some other program is accesing - your audio device. If you're using linux, the command fuser /dev/dsp - should give you the PID of the process. -

If you are using GNOME, chances are that this is caused by ESD. Now you - have two possibilities. Either deactivate ESD (temporarily) by right - clicking on the sound monitor applet and selecting "Place Esound in - standby" or just kill it. Then xine will use OSS audio output. The other - method is to make xine use ESD for audio output with: -
gxine -A esd
- This may result in worse playback - exact syncronization is not possible - with esd, so using oss should be preferred. -

If you are using KDE, there is the possibility that the aRts sound - daemon is currently running and thus blocking your sound device. You - can check that by starting the aRts control (in your KDE menu it should - be under Multimedia). If it is running, you can either use the aRts - audio output plugin: -
gxine -A arts
- Or you suspend the aRts daemon by checking the appropriate option in - your aRts control. (recommended) -

Newer versions of arts have an auto-suspend mode - this can lead to - some nondeterministic behaviour of xine if it is set up to use - the audio device directly. Using arts is recommended in that case, - however you will loose the ability to do four/five channel audio output. -

"video_out: throwing away image with pts xxx because it's too old"

This is a performance related problem. - If you have a fast computer and this message shows from time to - time playing dvd/cdrom, it's very likely that your drive is not - DMA enabled. -

"No video plugin available to decode 'xxxxxx'."

You have tried to play a stream using a unknown or unhandled codec. - Possibly the file uses some obscure proprietary format and no - information is available on how to decode it. -

If you're on an x86 platform (e.g. PC hardware) you might want to - try installing binary-only windows medial, real networks and - quicktime codecs (see above). -

"w32codec: decoder failed to start. Is 'xxxxxx' installed?"

You probably don't have the win32 dll needed to decode this file. -

xine just crashed on me - i didn't get any error message

OK, yes, that shouldn't happen and you're upset. We can understand that. - But, to help you and of course to fix this, we need some information. - So, let's go through the checklist and maybe prepare a nice bug report - for the xine-user mailing list: -

Did xine really crash (segfault) or did it hang (deadlock)? -
Can you reproduce the bug? (e.g. do you remember what you - did and when you do it again it crashes again?) -
Is that a specific media file or format which crashes xine? (Have you - tried other files types?) -
Check the console output (and include it in a bug report), maybe earlier - there is some output that points to the problem. -
Your X server just froze on you? unfortunately that's a known problem - with some chipsets and drivers (most commonly Savage chipsets) when - using Xv. You might want to try running gxine -V XShm - to see if the problem is related to the Xv driver. This will unfortunately - be much slower, as lots of things are now done in software instead of - hardware scaling/colour space conversion. -
Maybe at the time you read this, there's an XFree upgrade which fixes - this for the Savage driver. If that works for you, please notify the xine crew at - <xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net>, so they can update this FAQ! -
Even though we try to make each release as bug free as possible, xine is - still under heavy development (nice excuse, isn't it? *grin*). -
If you write to the xine user mailing list - <xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net> - make sure you include a the above information (when applicable) - and also some information about your machine (operating system, cpu type and - speed, gfx card, sound card, ...) and please use a meaningfull subject - line ("xine bug" is bad, "xine fails to play this quicktime trailer in fullscreen mode" - ist much better). -
Thanks for taking the time to help improve xine. -