Intel Core2 T9400 and obs work-around (software GL)

[admalledd]

So yes I know that this CPU is a bit too old to try and use OBS studio without a GPU to do the work, sadly the case is I needed to stream my laptop for a proof-of-concept of something else. This laptop is a bit outdated but still rocks on... (IBM thinkpad T500)

So the issue is that obs-studio likes to have 2.0 shaders and GL 3.1 or better. And although the GM45 (the integrated gpu) has shader-model 2.0 it lacks anything better than GL 2.1. The solution is to use the latest mesa drivers and ask for software rendering (yay! more work for that poor CPU)

glxinfo of the GM45:

admalledd@adm_lap $ glxinfo |grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 10.4.0-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

glxinfo of the software GPU (gallium)

admalledd@adm_lap $ LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 glxinfo |grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.5, 128 bits)
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.4.0-devel
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 10.4.0-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30

obs-studio complains quite the fair amount with "error: glTexParameteri failed, glGetError returned 0x500" and "error: glGetIntegerv(GL_MAX_TEXTURE_ANISOTROPY_MAX) failed, glGetError returned 0x500" And although it is rather laggy, jittery and such I was able to get it working "usable" (in my small use case) with the resolution of 1280x800@10fps broadcasting to our internal nginx server (such that our more powerful computers can mux it in via obs-studio+vlc Xcomposite capture).

Just posting this in case some one else has to stupidly do something similar. This would probably work on any system with enough CPU and recent mesa drivers.

 

[Lain]

Even 800p 10fps is no small task. Crazy that you pulled it off. You're crazy, and that's why you're awesome.

 

[admalledd]

Even 800p 10fps is no small task. Crazy that you pulled it off. You're crazy, and that's why you're awesome.

The only thing I could possibly ask for is a bit better error reporting on the "Cannot initialize video", like what features died a horrible death? I ask because I wonder about doing software rendering of only the missing features (on one GPU I have, I think its only a bit of the shader stuff that is missing.)

And besides, you are the crazy one(s) writing such awesome software :D

 

[matias_pl]

Five years passed and now we can run OBS on an AWS EC2 c5.2xlarge instance in pure software. You can achieve 720p30 in studio mode on such a machine.

I'll get back with the results from beefier (core-wise) instances.