Hello forum,

I am running CentOS 7 with the Mate desktop and an Intel video chipset. Whenever I use xv for a video output in any of my video players such as mplayer or VLC, my desktop will freeze solid after a few minutes, with no keyboard or mouse functions but if I use these same video players using the openGL (GLX) video output, everything plays perfectly.

Interestingly enough, if I install Compiz over Mate, I can then use the xv video output without any freezups or crashes. Everything will then play perfectly using xv.

But I do not necessarily want to use Compiz just to fix my xv problem, so my question would be, how can I fix this problem without installing Compiz?

I'm hoping somebody will give me a hint or a fix.

Thanks abundantly,
Roy

Just to be clear, you are referring to the X video extension, not the xv image viewer, are you not?

Try using running one of the problem applications from a terminal; perhaps it will throw some useful error messages. If it does, post them here.

Yes, I am referring to the X video extension.

I will not get any errors from a media player started in a terminal due to the fact that the freeze is so sudden and solid that the log files do not have enough time to populate with information.

But I have been Googgling and have read that the Mate desktop is buggy, or at least it is on CentOS. KDE or Gnome installed on CentOS do not have these problems.

Thanks.

Yeah, I've run into that situation too--the freeze freezes everything, including logging. If changing the desktop environment fixes it, let us know. That might help someone else.

I like MATE on Mint and haven't run into any issues, but I know all these spins to other distros are new and new often means buggy.

I have a multi-boot system with several partitions and I have three installations of CentOS installed, one with Mate, one with Gnome3, and one with KDE, and I can vouch for the fact that Mate not only has the xv freeze problem but Mate also will suddenly peg my processor to 100 per cent for hours when it is idle, hogging all of the resources and essentially freezing the system and it seems to be unrelated to the xv freeze. But I appreciate the Linux developers for their free contribution time in what they do for Linux. So I don't like to complain.

Roy

UPDATE

The problem exists in KDE also, though not as often. The solution is as previously stated, substitute xv with gl in all of the video players.

I solved my problem by using a different video acceleration method. By default, Centos uses the the latest accelerator called SNA (Sandybridge's New Acceleration) for Intel based video, but once I replaced SNA with UXA (Unified Acceleration Architecture), I was able to use the xv video output to play videos without any crashes or freezes, and I did not need Compiz for the "fix". Both SNA and UXA are backends for DDX (Device Dependant X).

Above shows how I edited my xorg.conf file.

UPDATE
For those who don't have an xorg.conf file, the same thing can be done this way:

Roy

1 members found this post helpful.

UPDATE

I found a fix for the problem instead of the posted workaround. The "intel_ips" module needs to be loaded. Enable this module to auto-load on boot and the freeze problem goes away, plus you can then use revert back to the default video acceleration method, SNA instead of the slower UXA.

And FYI, ips stands for Intelligent Power Sharing and I think it pertains to the Intel processor, not the Intel video graphics, I'm not sure.


All the best,
Roy