Bug 92805 – media-video/mplayer mencoder uses up all memory recording from v4l2 and dropps frames

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED NEEDINFO

[Description Erwin Telser 2005-05-16 10:08:51 UTC]

If I use mencoder from the mplayer-1.0_pre6-r4 package to record a movie from my bttv-878 tuner card, I'm unable to record an AVI File without lots of dropped frames. On the same system, if I compile mplayer-1.0-pre6a myselfe, I can record movies without any dropped frames.

When I observe the memory usage with the Top command, I can see, that the free memory falls rapidly to ~6MB. With my own Mplayer it remains at ~250MB. (See below)

bash-2.05b# emerge info
Portage 2.0.51.19 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.3.5-20050130, glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1, 2.6.11-gentoo-r609-May-2005 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.11-gentoo-r609-May-2005 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz
Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16
Python:              dev-lang/python-2.3.5 [2.3.5 (#1, May 12 2005, 21:20:49)]
dev-lang/python:     2.3.5
sys-apps/sandbox:    [Not Present]
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.59-r6, 2.13
sys-devel/automake:  1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.5, 1.4_p6, 1.6.3, 1.9.5
sys-devel/binutils:  2.15.92.0.2-r7
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.16
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.8.1-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/                 ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/linux/gentoo/"
LINGUAS="de"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 X alsa apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bonobo cdr crypt cups curl dvd emboss encode esd fam foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif gpm gtk2 gtkhtml guile imagemagick imlib ipv6 java jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mp3 mpeg mysql ncurses nlsnptl ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline scanner sdl spell sse sse2 ssl svga tcltk tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts vorbis xinerama xml xml2 xmms xv xvid zlib linguas_de userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc"
Unset:  ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY




Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. USE='media-video/mplayer X alsa arts avi dvd encode esd gif gtk jpeg mad mpeg nls oggvorbis opengl oss png sdl sse sse2 truetype svga v4l2 xinerama xmms xv xvid' emerge mplayer'

2. mencoder -tv driver=v4l2:width=768:height=576 \
     -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=900 \
     -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64 \
     -vf crop=720:544:24:16,pp=lb -o output.avi tv://SE6


Actual Results:  
too bad - dropping audio frame !

video buffer full - dropping frame
Pos:  61.7s   1361f ( 0%)  15fps Trem:   0min   0mb  A-V:0.000 [810:63]
video buffer full - dropping frame


Expected Results:  
clean AVI File without dropped frames

Information from "Top" after 60" of recording "Selfe compiled Mplayer"
Mem:    515332k total,   267280k used,   248052k free,    13312k buffers

Information from "Top" after 60" of recording "Gentoo Mplayer"
Mem:    515332k total,   509432k used,     5900k free,    11708k buffers

[Comment 1 Steve Dibb (RETIRED) 2006-06-21 16:53:52 UTC]

Erwin, any luck with pre8?

Also, you are recording TV video at a high resolution.  Cutting it down even just a little bit will save you a lot of CPU usage.

[Comment 2 Steve Dibb (RETIRED) 2006-06-22 07:56:04 UTC]

Resolving as NEEDINFO .. Erwin, reopen or post a new bug if you're still having problems.  Thanks :)