GStreamer error: no element "h264sparse" when play video on W10 Guest

[Stanley Lim]

Dear All,

I'm trying to build a little VDI solution at home so that various members in my family can share a physical computer. I have created a W10 Guest, The general performance is fine except playing video on the Guest machine. The video is very choppy.

I'm using SPICE and did a debug on the remote-viewer. Among all the debug infos, these lines caught my attention:

...
(remote-viewer.exe:8620): GSpice-DEBUG: ../../src/channel-display-gst.c:297 GStreamer pipeline: appsrc name=src is-live=true format=time max-bytes=0 block=true caps=image/jpeg ! jpegdec ! videoconvert ! appsink name=sink caps=video/x-raw,format=BGRx sync=false drop=false

(remote-viewer.exe:8620): Spice-WARNING **: ../../src/channel-display-gst.c:303:create_pipeline: GStreamer error: no element "jpegdec"
(remote-viewer.exe:8620): GSpice-DEBUG: ../../src/channel-display.c:725 GStreamer does not support the mjpeg codec
(remote-viewer.exe:8620): GSpice-DEBUG: ../../src/channel-display-gst.c:297 GStreamer pipeline: appsrc name=src is-live=true format=time max-bytes=0 block=true caps=video/x-vp8 ! vp8dec ! videoconvert ! appsink name=sink caps=video/x-raw,format=BGRx sync=false drop=false

(remote-viewer.exe:8620): Spice-WARNING **: ../../src/channel-display-gst.c:303:create_pipeline: GStreamer error: no element "vp8dec"
(remote-viewer.exe:8620): GSpice-DEBUG: ../../src/channel-display.c:731 GStreamer does not support the vp8 codec
(remote-viewer.exe:8620): GSpice-DEBUG: ../../src/channel-display-gst.c:297 GStreamer pipeline: appsrc name=src is-live=true format=time max-bytes=0 block=true  ! h264parse ! avdec_h264 ! videoconvert ! appsink name=sink caps=video/x-raw,format=BGRx sync=false drop=false

(remote-viewer.exe:8620): Spice-WARNING **: ../../src/channel-display-gst.c:303:create_pipeline: GStreamer error: no element "h264parse"
(remote-viewer.exe:8620): GSpice-DEBUG: ../../src/channel-display.c:737 GStreamer does not support the h264 codec

Seems like the video compression codec are not working, causing video playback on the Guest machines to be slow. Anyone have any similar experience? Anyone have any idea how to resolve this? Thanks in advance.

 

[Stanley Lim]

Anyone experience similar issue and have any idea how to resolve this problem. I have been google online and found no information on this issue. I have tried to reinstall Proxmox.

Any expert who can point me in the correct direction will be greatly appreciated!

 

[janssensm]

Not an expert on this, but my thoughts:

You don't mention much about your setup (host hardware, guest hardware, Proxmox version and setup)
That makes it very hard to give adequate advice, but I will give it a shot.

Host:
Follow this wiki for best settings:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/SPICE#Windows_10
Your gpu could be the bottleneck.
Make sure you have installed all correct virtio drivers (including qxl).

Network:
Watching video through spice can be pretty demanding on your network connection.
So if the choppyness is only happening when playing video's, I would investigate if there is enough bandwidth available, especially if it's a wireless connection.

Guest:
Looking at your log, I assume you are using a windows guest (remote-viewer.exe)
I hope you installed the latest virt-viewer according to the wiki article.
I can't tell how well virt-viewer works on Windows guests and if your log is normal or not.
My guess is that virt-viewer is best supported in linux distros.

Alternative:
Assuming you have a windows guest, enable a remote desktop session from inside your Windows 10 VM.
Than you can connect via remote desktop client from your guest. Perhaps it will perform better.