figured out the installation (sh <file>) but now it is telling me to uninstall the previous installation of fglrx (which I am doing with apt-get remove). But to remove it it is installing a package called :

The following NEW packages will be installed:

  fglrx-amdcccle-updates fglrx-updates

SO should I continue with the installation of 13.12 after the updates are installed?

:-)~MIKE~(-:

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:

okay....  is installed but they are up to version 13.12 . Time for an upgrade. I d/l the new driver butdon't know how to install it. The file is a .run file . './<file name> isn't working and the release notes don't give any indication.  So what do I do?

:-)~MIKE~(-:

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 4:02 PM, Michael Butash <michael@butash.net> wrote:

mb@host:~$  sudo dpkg -l fglrx
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
ii  fglrx          2:13.200-0ub amd64        Video driver for the AMD graphics

Compare that against the active driver sets from AMD's site.

-mb

On 12/26/2013 03:56 PM, Michael Havens wrote:

Hey Mike..... how do I see what the current version of fglrx is? I tried locate and I think it is 9 or 10 as there are a coupke of files.... one is:

/etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx

and the other

/usr/lib/pxpress/lib/10fglrx

or

/usr/src/fglrx-9.000

and then a bunch of files built off of that directory.

.... then I just noticed:

/lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/drivers/char/drm/fglrx.ko

:-)~MIKE~(-:

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 1:08 PM, Michael Butash <michael@butash.net> wrote:

Ok, I think the problem is likely with the format of the video, it doesn't sound like they're being hardware decoded, as I don't even see a blip on the cpu when the gpu is doing the decode.  Basically you don't have enough processing that it's dragging your system down with it.  If VLC, Totem, or whatever all behave the same, it's a system resource issue.

I'd make sure you upgrade your drivers from actual AMD/ATI site, as the ones in repo tend to be old, you might just have some rendering challenges.  They've also steadily added codecs over time for what they can decode, so it might be fixed.  Don't install the radeon driver, just upgrade the fglrx proprietary blob driver.

The other option is change your recording format to something that doesn't kill your cpu.  You can also transcode or reencode the existing videos.  I'd recommend just using straight h.264 as it's all but standard and supported by most gpu's for decode now.  Plenty of info and apps out there to do this, but not my forte to point you at any one.  I never make videos, I just download straight h.264 or xvid videos that give me no grief.

What format *are* these in?  Not just the container (ie. mkv), but the actual codec in use.  VLC will tell you if you look under Tool menu, and Codec Properties when the file is loaded.

Reply to all for the list too, might help someone else out here without me having readd them back in disjointed thread fashion.  :)

-mb

On 12/26/2013 12:13 PM, Michael Havens wrote:

I'm not sure if I need to say this but xbmc videos play with no problem; the problem is with home recorded videos. If I upload the videos to you tube they will play fine. As for the output of: lsmod | egrep 'fgl|rade'

     fglrx                4325524  223 

 I do not seem to have a radeon driver. I did apt-cache search to see I could figure out what to install.... and out of the list that printed up of interest (i think) is: 

     fglrx-updates - Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators

and

     rovclock - utility to control frequency rates of your Radeon card

htop just showed vlc at the top of the list when I started it with cpu usage between 10% and 80%.

I also just tried it with totem (slow video and no sound) and gnome-mplayer (slow video, normal sound which rushes ahead)

:-)~MIKE~(-:

$ apt-cache search radeon

libdrm-radeon1 - Userspace interface to radeon-specific kernel DRM services -- runtime

libdrm-radeon1-dbg - Userspace interface to radeon-specific kernel DRM services -- debugging symbols

radeontool - utility to control ATI Radeon backlight functions on laptops

xserver-xorg-video-ati - X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI display driver wrapper

xserver-xorg-video-ati-dbg - X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI display driver wrapper (debugging symbols)

xserver-xorg-video-radeon - X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI Radeon display driver

xserver-xorg-video-radeon-dbg - X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI Radeon display driver (debugging symbols)

xvba-va-driver - XvBA-based backend for VA API (AMD fglrx implementation)

fglrx - Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators

fglrx-amdcccle - Catalyst Control Center for the AMD graphics accelerators

fglrx-amdcccle-updates - Catalyst Control Center for the AMD graphics accelerators

fglrx-dev - Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators (devel files)

fglrx-updates - Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators

fglrx-updates-dev - Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators (devel files)

mplayer2 - next generation movie player for Unix-like systems

rovclock - utility to control frequency rates of your Radeon card

atitvout - ATI TV Out Support Program

gatos - ATI All-in-Wonder TV capture software