hey.... I found the system monitor. you were correct; the cpu runs at about 50% until I start running a video. At that point usage spikes to 100%. I guess I will need to get a video card with gpu. Can anyone recommend a low-profile card (I think that is what I need).

:-)~MIKE~(-:

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:

yeah? I remember uploading a video that was jumpy to youtube and it played normally. Does that bit of information narrow the problem?

 what is the command to get the monitor up? 'apropos monitor' isn't much help.

:-)~MIKE~(-:

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 6:54 PM, Joseph Sinclair <plug-discussion@stcaz.net> wrote:

Mike,
  There are a few probable sources of the behavior you're experiencing:
1) You may have a video chip that doesn't have good support in Linux, or at least not good enough with respect to video display to handle AVCHD video.
2) Your computer main CPU may not be up to the task of decoding the video in realtime.
3) Your disk may not be able to read fast enough to keep the video buffer full.

All three possibilities would cause frame drops and skips.
The Audio playing clean suggests it's not a disk speed issue, rather the AVCHD decoder isn't able to keep up on your system. (or, as others have suggested, libavcodec might be buggy and need to be updated).

The next thing you might check is that you're running the best available video driver for your hardware, as video playback is very heavily dependent on good support of the GPU hardware.

You might also try running the system monitor while you play a video, and see what ends up taking the most CPU and/or RAM (and which of those resources is most heavily loaded).
If VLC is maxing out your CPU, then it's probably the system unable to keep up or a buggy version of libavcodec.  If X is maxing out the CPU, then it's probably inadequate support for the GPU (X is falling back to swrender too much), and looking for better drivers might help.

Whatever the cause, you might be able to play the video on your current setup if you first transcode it to something easier for your system to handle, perhaps MPEG2 or MPEG4 at 720p.  AVCHD is a pretty dense codec, so it can be difficult for older systems to play at full framerate.

On 01/05/2015 06:21 PM, Michael Havens wrote:
> vlc is playing audio just fine but the video plays a little, stops, jumps
> ahead a few frames to  catch up with the audio then plays a little more,
> then repeats.
>
> To get the errors I ran vlc from the terminal:
>
> bmike1@c521 ~/Pictures/2013/Peru2013 $ vlc 00004.MTS
> VLC media player 2.1.4 Rincewind (revision 2.1.4-0-g2a072be)
> [0x1971118] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc'
> to use vlc without interface.
> "sni-qt/6719" WARN  18:17:00.958 void
> StatusNotifierItemFactory::connectToSnw() Invalid interface to SNW_SERVICE
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> [0x7fbf14001248] main vout display error: Failed to resize display
> [h264 @ 0x7fbf2cc97000] illegal short term buffer state detected
> bmike1@c521 ~/Pictures/2013/Peru2013 $
>
> and I noticed the third line so I ran that as well.
>
> bmike1@c521 ~/Pictures/2013/Peru2013 $ vlc 00004.MTS
> VLC media player 2.1.4 Rincewind (revision 2.1.4-0-g2a072be)
> [0x165b118] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc'
> to use vlc without interface.
> "sni-qt/6649" WARN  18:09:38.641 void
> StatusNotifierItemFactory::connectToSnw() Invalid interface to SNW_SERVICE
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> [0x7f1fc8001248] main vout display error: Failed to resize display
> [h264 @ 0x7f1fdcc96e20] illegal short term buffer state detected
> bmike1@c521 ~/Pictures/2013/Peru2013 $ cvlc 00004.MTS
> VLC media player 2.1.4 Rincewind (revision 2.1.4-0-g2a072be)
> [0x2398e18] dummy interface: using the dummy interface module...
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> [0x7fdb880020e8] main vout display error: Failed to resize display
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb78c97fc0] illegal short term buffer state detected
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
> [0x7fdb78c844b8] main vout display error: Failed to resize display
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb88c28120] illegal short term buffer state detected
> [0x7fdb88c277e8] avcodec decoder error: more than 5 seconds of late video
> -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb88c28120] reference picture missing during reorder
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb88c28120] Missing reference picture
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb88c28120] reference picture missing during reorder
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb88c28120] Missing reference picture
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb88c28120] reference picture missing during reorder
> [h264 @ 0x7fdb88c28120] Missing reference picture
>
> and I see the eighth frame from the bottom. It seems my computer is too
> slow?
>
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 6:04 PM, sean <sean.a.ritzler@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> How about you actually tell us what problem you are having? Errors?
>> On Jan 5, 2015 6:00 PM, "Michael Havens" <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> My google search told me to:
>>>
>>>     sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
>>>
>>> which I did. However immediately after pressing 'enter' remembered
>>> (thinking I did) installing the extras after installing Mint so I
>>> <cntrl-c>ed. What should I do? Should I run that command? Why didn't the
>>> extras install after I first installed Mint?
>>>
>>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Michael Torres <matorres124@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Make sure all the codec are installed
>>>>
>>>> Do a search for your os and vlc codec and ypu should get the yum or
>>>> get-apt install commands
>>>> On Jan 5, 2015 5:20 PM, "Michael Havens" <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I can't run video successfully with vlc. Would someone who knows
>>>>> something about vlc take one of my home videos and help me set vlc up to
>>>>> run correctly?
>>>>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>>>>>
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