1080p playback system requirements?

[brikis98]

My system:

AMD x2 3800 @ 2.0Ghz
Mushkin 2x1GB DDR500
MSI x1900xtx
Seagate 7200.10 16mb cache 320gb
SB Audigy (original)
Sony FW900 24" CRT (1920x1200 Resolution)
Win XP sp2 w/ latest drivers
Quicktime 7.1.3

I went to Apple's website and downloaded some 1080p movie trailers, including Shooter and Rescue Dawn. When I ran them in quicktime, they were slightly twitchy - as in, 95% of the trailer played smoothly, but occasionally it would stutter just a bit. I didn't have anything running in the background and the movies were completely downloaded (not streaming).

So, that got me to wondering the following:

* Is something wrong with my computer? Or do I have some kind of bottleneck? Or does quicktime just suck (in which case, what else can play *.mov)?
* If there's nothing wrong, then what kind of rig do you need for smooth 1080p playback?

Before trying this, I had guess my computer was more than enough to handle it, given that it can render - in real time, at > 70FPS - extremely complicated games at 1920x1200. granted, that's done by specialized/parallelized video card hardware, but I had video acceleration enabled in quicktime, so I wouldn't think decoding video at a lower resolution and much lower frame rate (24) could possibly be more complicated...

 

[imported_harlanpepper]

I'm not sure what the cause is... but you might want to try the Windows Media HD site and see how their 1080p videos do. Also in Windows Media Player (while your media is playing) go to View -> Statistics and in the Advanced tab you can see if any frames are really being skipped.

My 3800+ X2 (@2.6GHz) & 7800GT have no problem playing 1080p, so I think you should be fine, too.

 

[MrWizzard]

A game and a movie are two completely different things. So that comparison does not help you at all, your gameplay has nothing to do capability to play movies if there was true Hardware acc in QT that used the 1900XTX then you would have no problem.

Your rig is barely powerful enough. See
It's all about your CPU power harlanpepper has no problem but he is running a pretty good overclock too. He should say he is running a FX-60 not a 3800+. So that doesn't really help you heh. It's all about your CPU, OC a little or get a new one, or try disabling everything possible in the background.

That being said you should be able to do the 720P. Also QT is quite the processor hog.

Good Luck

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: harlanpepper
I'm not sure what the cause is... but you might want to try the Windows Media HD site and see how their 1080p videos do. Also in Windows Media Player (while your media is playing) go to View -> Statistics and in the Advanced tab you can see if any frames are really being skipped.

My 3800+ X2 (@2.6GHz) & 7800GT have no problem playing 1080p, so I think you should be fine, too.

just tried a few of the Windows Media HD movies (1080p), playing them in windows media player classic. they all ran extremely smoothly... so i guess the quicktime format is just more CPU intensive... i had my CPU OCed to 2.5Ghz for a while, but got rid of it because i wasn't running anything that taxed the CPU enough to warrant the extra heat and (possible) decrease in stability...

 

[Auric]

AVC decode can be demanding even at the relatively low bit rates of those Apple trailers (> 10 Mbps); more so than WMV9. Indeed, even more intensive Advanced Profile flavour of the latter (which those Microsoft clips aren't) is specifically intended to be easy on the decode, in comparison.

If things haven't changed, QT player for Windows just does not perform as well as Media Player Classic -even using the same QT media handlers and decoder. So try that combo if you didn't and then perhaps ffdshow's libavcodec with MPC (change MOV format to DirectShow or add an Other format extension HDMOV and rename files accordingly).

If you really want to do it right though, grab PowerDVD trial and put that Radeon to work with DirectX Video Acceleration -optionally using the CyberLink filters in MPC.