i've got this strange idea ... what about overcommitting xv port grabbing? i often come into the situation that i am watching a video and want to suspend it for the time i watch tv. unfortunately this just does not work, because only one app can grab a port. i think, as an option, it would be perfectly reasonable to allow multiple apps to "soft-grab" the same port. minimized windows (like in my case, usually) don't conflict, and for conflicting cases the last updated window takes precedence (with some delay, to avoid trashing). in case of conflict one of the following could happen: - the excessive windows just stay empty. this sort of sucks. - the server could project a message like "xv conflict" into the window. this sucks less, but it's still not as helpful, and sounds like a hard thing to implement for little benefit. - software-xv for less priorized windows. sounds like a good plan. the obvious reaction on your side might be "WONTFIX - the apps should handle it", but you can be sure that this won't happen in the general case. and why fix 50 apps, if one can fix one server?
First step to get this implemented would be bug 2635 ("Xvfb/Xvnc have no XVIDEO driver") ... and then the question is whether the applications which use the XVIDEO extension are "smart" enougth to pick a "free" XVIDEO channel...
Xine and mplayer are. They choose the first free xv port they can get. I tested this with the SiS driver that offers two Xv ports, one for the overlay, one for the blitter adaptor. The second invocation of xine/mplayer uses the blitter (automatically).
Sorry about the phenomenal bug spam, guys. Adding xorg-team@ to the QA contact so bugs don't get lost in future.
The Big Three all support textured video in a non-competitive way. You can watch a dozen videos simultaneously if you really so desire. (Admittedly, it's gonna suck on lesser chipsets, but that's life.) Closing as FIXED. I'd recommend opening bugs against individual drivers and/or DDXes at this point.
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