HOWTO : HD video playback on Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop

Step 1 - Install the official driver and SMPlayer from Ubuntu :



Install the official nVidia or ATi display card driver from the "Hardware drivers" from your Ubuntu 11.04 system. Then, install SMPlayer for the video player.



sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install smplayer



Step 2 - SMPlayer configuration :



(A) Open the SMplayer. Select "Option" -- "Preference".



Go to "General" on the left hand side :



(1) If you have an nVidia display card :

"General" -- "Video" -- "Output driver" : vdpau



(2) If you have an ATi/AMD Radeon display card :

"General" -- "Video" -- "Output driver" : xv (0 - ATI Radeon AVIVO video)



(B) Go to "Performance" on the left hand side :

"Performance" -- "Cache" -- "Local" : 99999 kb

"Performance" -- "Cache" -- "Streaming" : 99999 kb



"Performance" -- "Performance" -- "Allow hard frame drop (can lead to image distortion)" : Enable

"Performance" -- "Performance" -- "H.264" -- select "loop filter (only skip on HD moive)"



If you have dual core CPU -

"Performance" -- "Performance" -- "Decoding thread (only MEG-1/2 and H.264)" : 2



Remarks :



Lenovo ThinkPad X100e, which is equipped with ATi Radeon HD3200 and AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 single processor, can playback HD movies (such as MKV) smoothly.



That's all! See you.