VRDP video performance, fail.

[therp]

I spent a couple of attempts to get good 1600x1200 fullscreen performance out of VRDP video redirection, but failed.

Running
- a windows guest
- on a windows host
- connecting with Win7 builtin rdp client to localhost
- setting bandwidth use to "LAN"

I cannot play fullscreen videos on the guest (=1600x1200). VBox is running at around ~40% cpu time, so no cpu issue. The connection is localhost<->localhost, so there can't be bandwidth issue. The video plays fine in the QT interface without going over RDP.

I am not sure what ruins the show here for me. My intention is to do fullscreen video over gbit network in the long run. Is that feasible? Can someone comment on the numbers and performance levels I should be seeing? (Maybe I just failed to set up redirection properly, any ways to verify that?)

Thanks.

[vbox4me2]

Connect to the guest from rdp to rdp, vrdp is only for guests that don't have anything like rdp buildin, next to that you can edit the rdp connect file and set whatever resolution you want.

[therp]

Thanks vbox4me2 for the suggestion, but that's not what I want to do. I want to use VRDP and the video redirection capabilities built-in as I don't want to stick to windows guests.

[therp]

Actually I was rather hoping to achieve something like that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4DZwYqnyJM

[mikewse]

I'm trying to do much the same thing as you (get decent video performance on a local network with VRDP and the Win7 rdp client) but am also running into a number of issues (hangs, delays, no picture at all, etc). Have you come any further in your investigations?

Best regards
Mike

[vbox4me2]

With what point in mind??? I've seen the video and that can be done with basic RDP set to 32bit color dept or VNC(headless) with the same setting, once a VM is running you can drag their screens to other monitors to the limit a Host supports. This is even doable over WAN by using a simple compressed stunnel which will reach ICA like performance.

[mikewse]

Hi vbox4me2,
The thing that caught my attention in the video is that they are playing a high-def video on one of the monitors. I haven't had the same success with my own attempts but I would be very interested in hearing what you recommend.
The video I'm testing is Flash video so isn't taking advantage of Microsoft's WM video redirection. When I play high res Flash video through standard RDP I get a choppy experience, even when running the headless guest and the RDP client on the same machine.
What would you suggest to get maximum Flash video performance over a LAN with the Windows 7 RDP client on one machine and a VirtualBox 4 headless Windows 7 guest on another?
Thanks
Mike

[vbox4me2]

Did you set the experience level to max for the rdp sessions? did you modify the Guest rdp server to allow 32bit color? have you tried flash inside Firefox? have you tried vnc yet?

[mikewse]

Did you set the experience level to max for the rdp sessions? did you modify the Guest rdp server to allow 32bit color? have you tried flash inside Firefox? have you tried vnc yet?

Experience: Yes, all checkboxes ticked on the Experience tab.

32bit: Hm, do I really need to modify the Guest RDP server when connecting from Windows 7 to Windows 7? The Display tab allows me to specify 32bit and it looks like I'm getting full color. Or what should I do to check/enforce this setting?

Firefox: Yes, I've tried Flash in both IE and FF4 with this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg.

VNC: No, haven't tried. Which VNC server do you recommend installing in the guest OS (and which VNC client to use)?

Thanks
Mike

[vbox4me2]

Look at the display properties when inside RDP what the color depth is. Tinyvnc or whatever, they all work the same way. Also try teamviewer with the local lan option. I can't really remember but what was that tool they used in the YT video? and why isn't that tool a option?

[mikewse]

Look at the display properties when inside RDP what the color depth is.

I tried that but in Windows 7 RDP these properties are not accessible as Windows says "not editable in a remote session". In a VRDP session I can access it and then it says 32bit.

Tinyvnc or whatever, they all work the same way.

Ok, I'll try TightVNC. (I guess this is what you meant?)

I can't really remember but what was that tool they used in the YT video? and why isn't that tool a option?

It's showing a developer snapshot of Qumranet's SPICE product. Qumranet later joined RedHat and SPICE is now a part of their KVM-based virtualization offering. So using SPICE would mean I have to switch my host OS from Windows 7 to RedHat Linux (and switch from VirtualBox to KVM), which isn't ideal for me.

[vbox4me2]

Would these http://spice-space.org/download.html not work? it seems to be independent from any virtualizer.

[mikewse]

Yes I've come across this page before and, apart from all this looking quite "alpha", I understand it as the SPICE Windows drivers etc are only applicable if you are running under the KVM/QEMU hypervisor, as it is only then the corresponding devices are available. But I could be mistaken.
Either way, I sense a world of hurt trying to get this to work, so I much rather use what works for you...

[vbox4me2]

I clearly see a server part. Anyway, there are a few conditions that may effect things like whats the load on 1 vm when displaying a video, does the stream get buffered, is that buffer large enough, can the Host video card handle multiple streams(ea. fast local lan with jumbo frames), a nvidea FX card with a proper on-board processor can make a big difference. Ea. with WMP you can set a huge buffer and also how to optimize the stream, that plays jitter free, flash is cpu hungry and the VM's might need a dedicated core to perform on the Host. Also I see a big improvement using virtio with the Guests. VLC might also be a good option as its more optimized for lan's.

[mikewse]

I clearly see a server part.

I found a newer (draft) user manual for SPICE, and it says:
"Host requirements:
KVM supported by kernel (It should work also without KVM, but it's not being tested as most Linux distrubitions already support KVM.)"
http://taris.luboskocman.com/spice/html ... l#req_host
It seems the SPICE code is Linux-only at the moment (or at least that is what I can make out of it).

Anyway, there are a few conditions that may effect things like whats the load on 1 vm when displaying a video, does the stream get buffered, is that buffer large enough, can the Host video card handle multiple streams(ea. fast local lan with jumbo frames), a nvidea FX card with a proper on-board processor can make a big difference. Ea. with WMP you can set a huge buffer and also how to optimize the stream, that plays jitter free, flash is cpu hungry and the VM's might need a dedicated core to perform on the Host.

For purpose of eliminating network and different computers I'm running tests with the RDP client on the host. The host has a quad-core Q6600 and a Radeon HD3870. Do you see any problems with this setup?

Also I see a big improvement using virtio with the Guests.

Do you install the Fedora virtio-net binaries, or something else?

Thanks
Mike