[UPDATE] Read here about the latest development of NVIDIA’s vdpau video output driver: Tag: vdpau
NVIDIA’s hardware acceleration for HD (H264) content is now reality since they published their first beta driver, the 180.06 on the 14th of November 2008. I’ve tested these new Beta driver here, and found a few bugs. I skipped the test of the driver 180.08 published 4 days later, but tested the 180.11 version from 2nd December, But before you continue: none of my found bugs were fixed. Only the OpenGL3.0 and other stuff I don’t need atm found their way into the new driver. The list below is short summary of the bugs I’ve found in the last 180.06 driver. All bugs are also present in the new one 180.11 driver. I won’t publish a new test if a new driver will be released, but simple update this section, and will add update comments to it:

My Bugs List:

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• the Sync_to_VBlank is still being ignored -> tearing
• Either Xinerama nor TwinView is working. mplayer just crashes, after coming up with a green screen. I’m using KDE4, but it also crashes with gnome. This is my xorg.conf
• Matroska (.mkv/h264) content still can’t be played back
• AVCHD either form Panasonic nor Canon play back without artifacts/distortion, respectively correct speed.
• Crashes. After trying to play back .mkv the console window is still unusable.
• Crashes: Total freezes: happened only one time, and I can’t reproduce anymore

Quick Installation instructions:

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Important: For a detailed installation instruction please read here. This one below, is for people, who have already installed an NVIDIA driver manually, and met a few prerequisites!

 

• Download the 64bit version here: NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.11-pkg2.run
• and the 32bit version here: NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.11-pkg1.run
  Why there are three different pkgs for the 64bit version and two 32bit versions, I didn’t understand. NVIDIA’s README states:

  The package suffix (‘-pkg#’) is used to distinguish between packages
  containing the same driver, but with different precompiled kernel interfaces.
  The file with the highest package number is suitable for most installations.

• Go into console mode (Ctrl-Alt-F1)and shutdown kdm/gdm: /etc/init.d/kdm stopand run the the driver after making it executable

  chmod 755 NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.11-pkg1.run
  ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.11-pkg1.run

• Download the latest mplayer: mplayer-vdpau-3139462.tar.bz2 and build it:

  tar xvfj mplayer-vdpau-3139462.tar.bz2
  cd mplayer-vdpau-3139462
  ./checkout-patch-build.sh

  If you own a multicore CPU, append the ‘-j2’ or ‘-j4’ to the ‘make’ line accordingly to the number of cores of your CPU in the file checkout-patch-build.sh. This speeds up the compilation very much.

• If you encounter this error below on Fedora 10, look here for patches. This error has been fixed already.

  'INFINITY' undeclared

• Use for Canon AVCHD footage : ‘-fps 50‘ or ‘-fps 60‘ (for NTSC)
• for Panasonic footage: ‘-demuxer lavf‘ or/and ‘-nocorrect-pts‘, or try it without anything (interlacing on/off?)