If you read my previous article, MediaBox has switched to the radeonhd driver you would realise that MediaBox is now running using the radeonhd driver instead of the AMD Catalyst fglrx driver. In this article I will explain how to get the radeonhd master source code, apply the HDMI Audio patch from Christian König, build and install the driver and finally edit the xorg.conf to enable HDMI audio. Before I start though I would like to give a big thanks to Christian for his hard work in creating the patch for the open source community.
Edit:
Since writing this article, the HDMI audio patch from Christian has now been merged to master. I have now edited the article so that there is no need to apply any patches.
Follow up:
Many of the steps below have been taken from a guide on Phoronix, so credit to them were due. If you have a clean install of Ubuntu then the first step is to install the required dependencies to checkout git code, and build the driver. So lets begin. Launch a console and type the following
sudo apt-get install build-essential git-core configure-debian automake autoconf xorg-dev libtool xutils-dev wget
Once this step is complete, it is then time to fetch the latest git master for the radeonhd driver, running the following command should achieve this.
git-clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-video-radeonhd
The previous command should have downloaded the sources locally into a directory called xf86-video-radeonhd. We now need to change into that directory by issuing the following command
cd xf86-video-radeonhd
Now let's get on with the build, issuing the following commands will achieve this.
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/; make
Hopefully if all goes well you will see no errors and the driver has been successfully built. If that is the case we can now go ahead and install the driver and it's support files
sudo make install
So that's the building and installing of the driver out of the way, we now need to edit our xorg.conf to enable the radeonhd driver and also enable HDMI audio.
gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Find the section called "Device" and replace the Driver entry from it's current value to "radeonhd", then you need to add two extra options to the Device section to enable HDMI audio, one Option called "Audio" with a value of "on" and another called "HDMI" which specifies which connector to enable the audio on, for example "DVI-I 0" or "DVI-D 0". DVI-I or DVI-D specified the connector type, either integrated (I) or digital (D) and the number is the connector index for multiple DVI outputs. You can also use the "all" value for the HDMI option which enables audio on all DVI compatible connectors. Here is what my Device section of xorg.conf looks like.
Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon HD3200 Driver"
Driver "radeonhd"
Option "Audio" "on"
Option "HDMI" "all"
EndSection
Once you are done, save the file and reboot you machine. Hey presto, you are done. You can now enable HDMI audio the usual way by following a previous article of mine, HOWTO: Audio over HDMI with the HD3200 \ RS780 in Ubuntu.
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As soon as the patch is applied, X drops back to using the VESA driver.
I've had to compile using the xkmbf -a method, as ./autogen.sh gives a:
configure.ac:18: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_DISABLE_STATIC.
I'm using an NC81-LF 780G (HD3200).
fglrx 8.9 works OK-ish, HDMI sound works OK.
That usually means that automake is not installed. Do you have it installed?
But the build error from ./autogen.sh still persists.
I've tried searching all the m4 files: sudo updatedb; grep AC_DISABLE `locate aclocal | grep m4`
But it doesn't exist in any of them... does the name exist in yours?
Do you have libtool installed, you need that too?
And the ./autogen.sh worked correctly :)
Even better, the HDMI sound is also working correctly!
I does say in the article what packages you need to build.
Excellent, glad you got it working. Hopefully you should find radeonhd much smoother that fglrx, except for 3D (which will be coming shortly to radeonhd)
I have built both AMD64 and x86 with those packages, it might be an extra dependency for Intrepid. Thanks for the update, I'll add this information to the post when I get 5 minutes. Did you manage to get the audio working, and what chipset are you using?
Seems there have been some significant commits today, I'll have to wait for a new patch from Christian. For now you will have to get an older version (9th October should do it) to apply the patch.
I have updated the article with details on how to checkout the latest version which did work with the patch
Some would be incorrect in this case :). The radeonhd driver works perfectly well with my onboard GPU, actually better than fglrx in terms of 2D performance. I'm just waiting patiently for accelerated support now (Mainly Xv , which is around the corner).
Hopefully I won't run out of PCI slots though. I want to install 2 tuners for picture-in-picture from my cable service. I was going to get 2 ATSC/HDTV/QAM (im in usa) cards to do my SD now and my HD later. This leaves only a x16 and x1 pci card, so that's why i'm especially concerned about onboard graphics - everyone is saying don't deal with ATI and I was thinking I had to get an nVidia card too. But your blog gives me hope for this mobo config.
Can you give me any other recommendations for IR remote? I don't have the stomach for your IR project, and this mobo doesn't seem to have rs232 which looks to me like what alot of people are using for ir remote.
Thanks!
Phil
Sure, there are plenty of IR options if you don't mind spending the money. The Windows MCE remote is compatible with lirc/mythtv and you can pick one up with the USB receiver for around £20-£30. Check here (http://www.lirc.org/html/table.html#@hw-usb), there are many compatible IR receivers with lirc
It does have a RS232 header on the mobo itself, it just doesn't have one on the back plate. My IR project doesn't use RS232 mind you, only the CD-in port
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14261
Specifically:
"the Radeon HD 3200 that AMD recommends a 1.8GHz link—currently available only with Phenom—to make the most of the graphics core. The 3200's post-processing engine for high-definition video playback actually requires the 1.8GHz HT link that Phenom provides."
Since you are not using a Phenom processor, do you find this to be BS?
I am assuming this is relevant when using UVD (hardware based decoding), but since neither fglrx or radeonhd support UVD (yet) this is not so relevant. But what I will say is that I can play some 1080p content fine with just my CPU, but it fails miserably on other content. It depends on what features from the H.264 codec that it's using. BBC HD for instance is a no go area for me without hardware assisted decoding.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeonhd_122_123&num=1
That post should have been a little more specific. XVideo is only supported on r5xx chip sets, which the RS780 does not fall under unfortunately. But be patient, I'm sure 3D support is coming, which means I would think that XVideo won't be far behind.
What player are you using for DVD playback? Most players will allow you to select which sound device you would like to play sound through, as some seem to ignore your default settings.
TX
You can specify the HDMI audio device for output with mplayer using the -ao parameter. There are details here (http://www.mediaboxblog.co.uk/blog1.php/2008/08/15/howto-audio-over-hdmi-with-the-hd3200-rs) at the bottom on how to do this. Not sure why firefox is not playing sounds mind you though.
MB: gigabyte with HDMI on board.
Processor: AMD low power "e" series
Ubuntu 8.10
Thanks for any ideas where to go from here.
The report is here: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14694. I'd be very thankful if you could suggest something.
This is a common log, it's just saying it doesn't know the specific model of this card (Gigabyte is this case). I get that too, nothing to worry about. Have you followed my guide on selecting HDMI audio for ALSA etc? Also what version is your motherboards BIOS. Try upgrading to the latest.
I have uninstalled and installed flash many times both ver 9 and 10.
Anywhere to go from here?
The only thing I can think of is that the flash plug-in doesn't use the global audio configuration and forces the sound through the first audio device or similar. Have you tried a different flash player, I think there a 3 in total.
If you are playing HD content then yes, this is to be expected since R600 GPU's are not accelerated yet with the radeonhd driver. There is a separate branch already in progress in doing this and should hopefully be merged into master soon.
BTW, MythTV content I tried to play wasn't HD content. I was merely playing DVB-T captured via a Hauppauge NOVA-T-500 card.
Correct, the HD3200 falls within the R600 range of ATI/AMD GPU's. If it wasn't HD content, are you de-interlacing and up scaling to a large display (e.g. 1920x1080), as without acceleration this can also be quite intensive. Other than that, I'm not quite sure what could be causing the issue. Can you try with a different play like VLC or mplayer to see if you get the same result, as both support playing content from a DVB source.
What puzzles me is my old PC which has an nvidia geForce 6 series card plays the same content without any trouble. Xorg only uses about ~10% CPU on average. The resolution is different, its 1280x768 and uses the analogue vga connector to connect to the TV.
I'll try playing the same content via different players and post the results later today..
I am assuming you are using the closed source NV driver which has Xv video acceleration, that may be why you are seeing a difference.
This is usually to do with the zoom mode of your TV. It should be set to Just Scan or 1:1 mapping, once you have done that it should be fine.
What resolution is your video source? If it's HD (Especially 1080p) then this is most likely because you machine doesn't have enough CPU power to decode HD streams. If this is the case then unfortunately until AMD release the Catalyst drivers with XvBA (Hardware decoding of HD streams on your HD3200) then you are going to see this problem.
Well your right with that CPU, you should have no problems decoding. Can you check what your CPU is doing, using top or System Monitor whilst video is playing. Is one core saturated (or both).
Well one of the first things I would do it try to compile version 1.3, 1.24 is nearly a year old now.