Broadcom crystal hd decoder mint 19 driver help.

[theking497]

Hello everyone! first i'd like to start with saying i'm very green to linux and just installed mint 19 64bit on an old netbook, specifically an acer aspire one d260 1.66ghz atom n450 and 1gb ddr2 ram. it works well for what it is. my intention was to make it a video viewer youtube, anime the occasional movie etc. so i ordered a Broadcom crystal hd decoder to help it with decoding hd video as the atom doesn't support that. however i've just about tried everything i've found on the net to install the drivers for it but i can't get it to work at all so i was hoping to get some help if possible.

[thx-1138]

...there used to exist a crystalhd-dkms in the past that automated such,
but it appears to have been removed since Xenial in 2016...

The driver's sources exists in various incarnations in quite a few repos,
the one which appears to be the currently more updated & still working one is this.

This will build & install the driver...

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apt install git build-essential
git clone https://github.com/dbason/crystalhd
cd crystalhd/driver/linux/
autoconf
./configure
make
sudo make install

Run sudo modprobe crystalhd to load the driver.
echo 'crystalhd' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules , and such should be done automatically after each boot...

To further build the userland library (returned a few warnings here...)
Do also note that this is likely un-needed, apt install libcrystalhd3 will most likely suffice,
as in contrast with the driver above, this appears to still be maintained / included in Ubuntu.

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apt install g++
cd ~/crystalhd/linux_lib/libcrystalhd/
make
make install

In regards to how someone goes to further set-up this thingy, i have no idea.
I see there exists a gstreamer1.0-crystalhd package (apt install gstreamer1.0-crystalhd),
i assume that after having firmware, driver, generic library & the gstreamer lib installed,
then Xplayer (or any other gstreamer-based player) automagically recognizes such.
But you'll have to figure that out yourself...

EDIT: Seems like the firmware for such itself has also been removed in Ubuntu Bionic...
Grab & install the .deb for such from here.

[theking497]

Hello and thank you for your help! i followed your advice and it seems to have installed fine but doesn't seem to work sadly.
Curiously when typing

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sudo modprobe crystalhd

and

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echo 'crystalhd' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

in terminal to load the driver nothing happens, though i guess both the PC and the Decoder are 10 odd years old so perhaps it just isn't sufficient for the job it was design for anymore, the 1gb ram certainly doesn't help. Then again, my incompetens in linux also doesn't help.

[thx-1138]

...wish i could help you more than that, but i'd just resort to googling myself as well.
The git's instructions merely state to check with lsmod & dmesg | grep crystalhd that the driver has loaded...

[theking497]

Sorry for the slow response, but when i type

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dmesg | grep crystalhd

it gives me this

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dmesg | grep crystalhd
[   41.120342] crystalhd: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[   41.120587] crystalhd: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[   41.121797] Loading crystalhd v3.10.0
[   41.121870] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Starting Device:0x1615
[ 2744.655398] crystalhd_hw_resume: Invalid Arguments
[ 2744.655408] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Crystal HD Resume 1
[12171.308875] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Opening new user[0] handle
[12171.412247] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Closing user[0] handle with mode ffffffff
[12171.465114] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Opening new user[0] handle
[12171.568249] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Closing user[0] handle with mode ffffffff
[12171.621398] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Opening new user[0] handle
[12192.008140] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Firmware command T/O
[12192.008154] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: FwCmd Failed.
[12192.109783] crystalhd 0000:03:00.0: Closing user[0] handle via ioctl with mode 1c200 

[thx-1138]

...the best that i can decipher is that it loads fine at start,
but then it's communication with the firmware timeouts (after suspending the netbook or similar?)
Seriously, no idea other than that, never owned such myself...

[thx-1138]

.....................................

...just to add a couple of further simple notes, in case it helps you figuring / sorting this out...
What you really need to do, is to check if media players themselves actually utilize the CrystalHD card.

Xplayer is the default media player in Mint, gstreamer-based.
Run such from a terminal, to have some idea of what it does or not...
xplayer /path/to/some/1080p-hdvideo.mkv
Pretty much the same with VLC. According to the git repo,
someone has to explicitly specify crystalhd as the preferred codec in this case...
vlc --codec=crystalhd /path/to/some/1080p-hdvideo.mkv

Do the above decode hd video files properly? Do they report that crystalhd is in use?
Do they return any warnings / errors, etc etc...That is the part you'd find via trial, error & googling.

Theoritically though, they should work fine, as all the pieces are already in their place above.

In case the crystalhd module misbehaves in it's communication with the firmware per se,
eg. say after suspending the notebook or similar (ie. a bug),
you can always try reloading it manually, & then restart the (whatever) player:
sudo modprobe -r crystalhd && sudo modprobe crystalhd
=============
If the module misbehaves specifically after suspending & resuming the notebook (ie. a bug),
the following will try to reload it automatically:
sudo touch /lib/systemd/system-sleep/reloadcrystalhd (create file...)
xed admin:///lib/systemd/system-sleep/reloadcrystalhd (edit file...)
Add the following there...

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#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
    pre)
        modprobe -r crystalhd
        ;;
    post)
        modprobe crystalhd
        ;;
esac

Save, and then...
sudo chmod +x /lib/systemd/system-sleep/reloadcrystalhd (mark file as executable...)

Don't focus that much on the (of secondary importance) possible glitch with suspend though:
but on whether the players actually utilize the card in question in the first place. Hope that helps.

[theking497]

Xplayer just instantly crashes. that said xxplayer has never worked on this machine to begin with. crystal hd or not.

Vlc media player gives sound, but no video. stating

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[00007f64966ad760] crystalhd decoder: Opened CrystalHD hardware with success
[00007f64966ad760] main decoder error: buffer deadlock prevented
[00007f6484002ca0] gl gl error: shaders not supported, bailing out

Not of the other tips seems to work either, tbh i'm wondering if it's best just to give up on the crystal hd part, i do wanna thank you for your time and help, it is greatly appriciated.

[thx-1138]

...no need to thank me - was also pretty curious myself about it as well.
It's generally stopped being supported since 4-5 yrs now (and already had it's issues before such),
if no one actually tests such as years pass by, all that's left is code that still compiles somehow...
so getting such to actually work is certainly more luck than anything else.

[theking497]

Thought i'd mention it even if this is a Linux forum, but as someone that primarily uses Windows, i went and tired and the drivers install fine on win 10, but doesn't work there either. So i guess the hardware isn't supported anymore on either OS. Sadly as the concept seems like a good one.

[duckfly]

the question is VLC, not Crystal HD.
use lsmod & dmesg commands to make sure crystalhd driver is working fine,
check if the mode of /dev/crystalhd is 0666 (this is achieved by /lib/udev/rules.d/20-crystalhd.rules when you make install driver),
then just install mpv player, play your test movie (format limitation is <= 1080p/i, <=50Mbps, H.264 is accepted.):

mpv --hwdec=crystalhd your-h264-1080p-50Mbps-movie.mkv

after playing, use dmesg to check again, you will see your BCM70012/BCM70015 is working.
I am using it on my thinkpad X61, but then I remove it and use smplayer+mplayer alternatively,
because it play more smoothly then using crystal hd card, which still gets stuck when playing movie.

[-mbmalone-]

None of this is working on Mint 20 either, sadly

[theking497]

Sorry for the necro i just wanted to say i got it working it's not the drivers fault, rather it is that most programs i've tried no long support it. i managed to get it working in Xplayer playing 1080p very smoothly albeit in mint 20.1 xfce.

I may be way off on this but i strongly suspect you could get it working inside of chromium based browsers if someone made an extension for it as it's a utilization issue and not a driver issue.

For those looking to install the driver do this. it worked for me.
Type this into the terminal

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apt install git build-essential
git clone https://github.com/dbason/crystalhd
cd crystalhd/driver/linux/
autoconf
./configure

Now stop and go to the MakeFile.in file in

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~/crystalhd/drive/linux

Add

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CONFIG_MODULE_SIG=n

Above

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KDIR = @KERN_DIR@

And change

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SUBDIRS=$(PWD)

to

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M=$(shell pwd)

Now save and exit the MakeFile.in
And then do

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sudo make
sudo make install

And follow the rest of the directions in this thread. This at least worked for me but only in Xplayer.

[Moem]

Sorry for the necro

If you feel the need to apologize beforehand, that usually means you're about to do something you shouldn't have.
I'm locking this up now.