Banana Pi BPI-M4-Zero: Video unusable

Banana Pi SBCs design BPI-M2+/BPI-M2 Zero/BPI-P2 Zero(H3)
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Banana Pi BPI-M4-Zero with Banana Pi Ubuntu image – video unusable. Choppy.

Loaded:

OpenGL: Mesa Mali-G31 (Panfrost) Version 3.1 Mesa 23.0.4-0ubuntu1~22.04.1 Direct Rendering: Yes

I intended to use this as a Media Center, but cannot.

How to fix?

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i guess it would help others when you provide more information. what image did you exactly use (with download link). what does video unusable exactly mean? do you get video output at all? or does playback of some specific content not work?

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OK:

Banana Pi BPI-M4-Zero

Official Ubuntu image from the manufacturer:

https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-M4_Zero#Ubuntu Google Drive: Bpi-m4zero_1.0.0_ubuntu_jammy_desktop_xfce_linux6.1.31.zip - Google Drive

By “choppy video” I mean, when watching a variety of videos in various formats and bitrates (from files either on the local file system or streaming over my local network) the experience is so unsmooth that I would call it, er, choppy. Unwatchable. Something is wrong.

The question is, maybe more concisely:

  • Given the Mali graphics hardware on the device
  • And given the operating system running on that device
  • And given the kernel upon which that operating system is running
  • And given the fact that “gpu” is turned on in banana-config

Why would video be so underperforming and choppy?

And how does one remedy this?

(I suspect there may be specific drivers that I need to install.)

Thanks!

Similar issues: ubuntu mali choppy video - Google Search

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More:

When playing a video file from, say, VLC, there remains plenty of free RAM on the system.

When playing a video file all four CPU cores spike close to 100%.

This leads me to believe the GPU is not being used?

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Just to update this:

Now Video rendering working smoothly. (Don’t know why.)

BUT:

WIFI/Bluetooth card not working. No HDMI audio.

Flaky! Unreliable

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