Movie Player

Discussion in 'UDOO 101' started by sirrab, Jul 31, 2014.

  1. sirrab

    sirrab UDOOer

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    Has anyone got this to work? I'm trying to play .mkv files from a local server. I can see the movies/server. Sometimes I can play a video, most times I can't. Could be because I don't wait for enough time to pass.... Reflashed the SD card, flashed a SATA HDD. Gotta say after that, the system seems way faster. Have done sudo apt-get update. Removed the old version(2.x.x?) of Movie Player, installed the latest version(3.0.1). I'm trying to play them over the Ethernet. I have a fast switch(it knows both machines have 1 GB speeds). I'm trying with just a low quality(audio) IPS HD monitor. Then try to migrate it to be a play server for my bigger TV with surround sound system.... I'd use wireless keyboard/mouse to command the system. Oh, the movies are all BluRay quality.
     
    sirrab, Jul 31, 2014
    #1
  2. Acomfort

    Acomfort New Member

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    sirrab,

    Sorry I can't help with your movie player issue, but I am curious about something in your post. You mention that the system seems way faster after reflashing the SD and flashing a SATA HDD. Was the system faster with the reflashed SD or the SATA HDD, or both?

    I hope you figure out you movie issue.

    Best regards,

    Acomfort
     
    Acomfort, Aug 3, 2014
    #2
  3. sirrab

    sirrab UDOOer

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    Flashing the SATA drive, I suspect is speed demon unleashed. After flashing both, booted; speedy! Powered down removed SATA drive... no boot. Reinstalled SATA drive, speedy booting again. Now to expand the SATA file system....
     
    sirrab, Aug 4, 2014
    #3
  4. sirrab

    sirrab UDOOer

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    Hmmmmmm maybe using a class 10 micro SD card, instead of the class 4 SD card provided with the starter package, is the key......
     
    sirrab, Aug 5, 2014
    #4
  5. mkopack

    mkopack Member

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    The SATA interface is going to be WAY WAY WAY faster than the SD card. You must use the SD card to start the Uboot process, but if you have the linux filesystem on the SATA drive, then the kernel and everything else will load off that and you'll see significant speed increases.

    Think about it this way - even Class 10 cards usually top out around 20MB/s read, and usually much lower write speed... SATA interface on the other hand is about 15x that fast (theoretical, probably more like 10x in practice with a mechanical drive, better still with a SATA SSD). And remember that EVERYTHING in Linux is done as a file, so you're doing a TON of File IO... The faster your OS's primary drive is in linux, the better your whole system is going to run.

    And the reason it wouldn't boot once you removed the SATA is because the SD card was configured to look for the SATA drive to perform the rest of the boot process. Without the SATA drive it can't find the kernel to continue the load...

    i HIGHLY recommend using a SATA drive whenever possible with the Udoo (or any of these small ARM boards, even if it's just through USB-->Sata adaptor). It's ALWAYS going to outperform the SD card interface...
     
    mkopack, Aug 9, 2014
    #5
  6. fetcher

    fetcher Member

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    Below are some quick performance measurements for SATA HD vs. SD and USB-attached flash on the Udoo, using bulk sequential I/O to the raw block devices to avoid filesystem overhead or caching issues. This is the type of access where a mechanical HD will be at its best. With more random I/O patterns, especially where reads dominate, the SD will benefit from its effectively zero "seek" time, partly compensating for the slow transfer rate (it'll still be slower, but not by quite so huge a margin).

    Note also that SD is much slower writing than reading, whereas on the SATA HD writes are actually faster! It's also on writes where most of the "Class" difference between different grades of SD shows up.

    I use an SD card as my root filesystem nonetheless, usually mounted read-only (transient data going to RAMdisk and periodically sync'ed), since in my application silence and low power consumption are more important, and most binaries/libs/working data from the rootfs ends up cached in RAM soon enough. The SATA HD remains spun down about 95% of the time, but is certainly nice to have when I'm doing something heavier, or in need of extra working space. It's a good place for a swap partition also, on the rare occasions one is needed. Swapping to SD is a bad idea due to both the slowness and limited write-cycle life.

    # # reading from SATA HD - Toshiba 2.5" 5400rpm 1 TB, model MQ01ABD100:

    # dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=2048
    2048+0 records in
    2048+0 records out
    2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 32.2387 s, 66.6 MB/s

    # # writing to SATA HD - same Toshiba 2.5" --

    # time dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 bs=1M count=1024
    1024+0 records in
    1024+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 10.3706 s, 104 MB/s


    # # reading from MicroSD in Udoo's boot slot: Sandisk 32GB class-10:

    # dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=2048
    2048+0 records in
    2048+0 records out
    2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 114.401 s, 18.8 MB/s


    # # reading from MicroSD in secondary slot: G.Skill 32GB class-10:

    # dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=2048
    2048+0 records in
    2048+0 records out
    2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 113.999 s, 18.8 MB/s


    # # reading from SD, unbranded Chinese 8GB - Class 4? --

    # dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=2048
    2048+0 records in
    2048+0 records out
    2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 128.83 s, 16.7 MB/s

    # # writing to SD, same generic 8GB card:

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M count=1024
    1024+0 records in
    1024+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 234.172 s, 4.6 MB/s


    # # reading from SD, generic 2GB card, unmarked class:

    # dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=2048
    1898+0 records in
    1898+0 records out
    1990197248 bytes (2.0 GB) copied, 107.606 s, 18.5 MB/s

    # # writing to SD, generic 2GB card:

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M count=1024
    1024+0 records in
    1024+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 176.36 s, 6.1 MB/s


    # # reading from USB flash stick (Sandisk Cruzer 8GB):

    # dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=2048
    2048+0 records in
    2048+0 records out
    2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 110.638 s, 19.4 MB/s

    # # writing to USB flash (Sandisk Cruzer 8GB):

    # time dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1M count=1024
    1024+0 records in
    1024+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 247.452 s, 4.3 MB/s
     
    fetcher, Aug 11, 2014
    #6
  7. mkopack

    mkopack Member

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    Yeah, and consider that you can pick up a small SSD that hooks up through the SATA port, you can get even faster speeds that you were getting with the mechanical HD... So you get the benefit of no moving parts, faster speed, and probably less power consumption than the mechanical drive (useful when running on battery power for mobile projects)
     
    mkopack, Aug 12, 2014
    #7

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