h.264 playback

[Hanpan]

I am a bit perplexed.

h.264 playback sutters at times on the following system

P4 820D
1GB DDR2 667
Nvidia 6600GT

I had tried overclocking the video card substantiually (20%) but no change and neither does memory (adding subtractin etc) make any difference. This leaves only the CPU yet throttlewatch shows maximum usage around 80% of both cores with no throttleing.

This is what has me perplexed. As the 6600GT has no H.264 accelleration all computation falls on the CPU leaving it as the likely culperate, yet if the cpu is to blame, why is it not maxing out. (Again no throttleing is reported)


EDIT suttering is shown as reduced frame rate in Quicktime 7 so it is not the monitor agaik.

File tested in king kong trailer avialable at www.apple.com/trailers

I will try in the next couple of days on a 3800+ and 4200+ X2 system as well as 3800+ SC but this has me genuinley stumped.

 

[Auric]

What player and renderer? QT sound out? Hardware or software audio? Version? 7.02 is a significant improvement over the initial release. Defragged?

I do not know what the framerate is but it seems a bit low until about 17s in when Jack Black is speaking in the cab after which it is fine (3.0E HT @ 3600, QT Alternative 1.62 (7.0.2) DirectDraw, MPC VMR7 windowed, Audigy). Do you see banding in the fog as if it is 16-bit colour?

Ideally, I would want to compare playback on an Apple to eliminate the possibility of encoder errors 'n' such before considering/suspecting configuration and specs of PC hardware (but still knowing the Windows version of the decoder may not be equivalent).

-
Task Mangager CPU Usage chart shows fluctuations betwixt 45-85% on logical 1 with the average about in the middle at 65% while logical 2 tracks roughly the same but about 10% lower.

-
Actually, 7.0.3 is available. Queer that it did not update but QT Alternative 1.63 took care of that.

 

[rbV5]

QT7>View>check "Play all frames".

That pegs it at 100% CPU and slideshow on my rig: King Kong 1080p trailer

 

[Auric]

I installed QT for its player to try that option but all it did was disable the sound and actually reduce the framerate according to its internal counter whereas without that option it could achieve full framerate for most of the trailer except for notably at the beginning same as before and a few times of high action. QT player remains crapalicious compared to MPC.

 

[rbV5]

I guess you have more CPU than mine then because I never saw the frame counter go above 13 FPS either way with KK1080p trailer. Setting it to play every frame pegs the CPU at 100% on mine, but without it checked I get variable CPU utilization >80% but rarely pegged for some reason. In both cases, its a slideshow, but unchecked its a stuttering slideshow, and checked its a SSSSLLLLIIIIDDDDEEEE show.

This is with my AMD643000+ stock clockspeed and playing at full 1920x1080 resolution desktop.

 

[rbV5]

Renaming the *.mov to *.mp4 I can get 20-24fps with ffdshow using VMR9 in Graphedit, almost watchable

 

[Auric]

Mine's scaling down to 1024p thanks to ze panel, so if anything that should hurt performance. Contrary to your experience, fddshow is noticeably worse than QT (both with MPC). Do you have post-processing on? If so, perhaps you can get full frame rate without. Do you see distinct gradation of the fog?

 

[rbV5]

I've not tried QT alt yet so I can't compare in MPC, but ffdshow in Graphedit is much better than QT7 player, no comparison on my rig. I cannot see graduations in the fog, however its too bright in this room to make a proper PQ evaluation, I'll pause a section toward the end (I'm assuming thats where you are talking.

I'm using an unofficial ffdshow-20051009.exe build and no post-processing. I've dowloaded the newest QT alternative , so perhaps I'll give that a go in the latest MPC.

 

[Goi]

How did you get QT Alternative to work with the videos? Everytime I go to apple.com/trailers it tells me that it requires QT to play even though I have QT Alt 1.62 installed

 

[Auric]

I could neither play nor download King Kong via the button earlier. Checking now I can download but cannot play. Not sure why but I do have 1.63 now rather than 1.62 earlier however there have been issues with apple's site before which required working around (particularly the hiding or otherwise denying of 1080 content to Windows users but it seems that has changed now). In any case, it is better to download 'em for testing rather than caching/viewing in the browser. In the case of trouble view the page source and download the little "fake" MOV which does not play with something like TrueDownloader and open it in a text editor to see the real link to the movie. Ergo:

http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/king_kong/king_kong_1080p.mov

reveals the real link to be:

http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/king_kong/king_kong_h1080p.mov

 

[Goi]

So how were you playing it before?

 

[xtknight]

It plays way smoother on this player for me. Almost realtime 1080p decoding on Athlon64 3500+. Just execute mplayer.exe and load up that downloaded king-kong h1080p.mov file. I only had a couple slow downs.

http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer/gui/mplayer-gui-rtm-cvs-20051012.zip

 

[Auric]

I meant won't play in the browser which I gathered was the problem you are having.

Here's a lossless PNG example of the fog banding -it is the coming in December splash but shows the same effect as the ship in the fog however those screenshots were too large to host sans lossy compression.

kong banding

p.s. I was not using graphedit earlier, just fddshow and MPC.

 

[Goi]

OK. I downloaded the King King trailer and it plays under MPC. I think I get the same banding as you. Anyway, the trailer stutters a lot, and is nowhere near 25fps. I wonder what's the point of releasing such trailers when even my A64 2.5GHz system won't play it, and with no current video cards supporting hardware h.264 decoding.

Edit: Just tried it on ZP and it works better, almost real time. Anyway, I'm not sure if QTAlt is being used since the Filters menu was grayed out on both MPC and ZP. The banding problem you have in the PNG is present here too though.

 

[xtknight]

I get lots of this whenever I have frame slowdowns in mplayer. I wonder if there are errors in the file, or it is just telling me it dropped a frame? I can't tell from this. 'Concealing' sounds awfully suspicious though. I get very odd slowdowns. The movie will play good for a while, even switching from a simple to intense scene not too bad, but all of a sudden I'll just get slow downs in the middle of no where and the sound keeps going, and nothing gets out of sync.

Error while decoding frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0088C3A8]concealing 6528 DC, 6528 AC, 6528 MV errors
Error while decoding frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0088C3A8]concealing 6528 DC, 6528 AC, 6528 MV errors
Error while decoding frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0088C3A8]concealing 6528 DC, 6528 AC, 6528 MV errors
Error while decoding frame!
Error while decoding frame!

Any DirectShow player struggles while mplayer does exceptionally well. I wonder why this is. For DS, I'm using ffdshow (no filters enabled).

I think there are a lot of CPU optimizations to be done in this area. If those were indeed just dropped frames instead of errors, I bet an FX-55 CPU could play this clip flawlessly in mplayer.

There are also times when the CPU is about 70%. The ideal decoder would use that spare time to decode frames ahead of the current one.

I get the same 'December' issue, Auric. It might just be effects. Remember, H.264 is lossy compression too.

I'll try compiling mplayer and playing this file in Linux.

 

[Auric]

Presumably they play fine on current Apple gear. It would be nice to compare performance of MP4 encodes done with some other software than Apple's and decoded by a variety of others including fddshow. I have not stumbled upon any equivalent high quality clips though.

It is normal that QT does not show up in the Filters menu. If the file is renamed to MP4 and fddshow is then used for decoding then the Apple A/V handlers show up in Filters.

The banding is baffling. I thought it might be the panel at first but it outputs the same on CRT TV. I suspect a n00b encoding job since the film can't possibly look that cheesy :disgust:

I find MPlayer to perform equivalent to fddshow under MPC.

 

[Goi]

I just tried using ffdshow instead of QTAlt under ZP and it was a lot slower, in that video is lagging audio. I'm not sure if ffdshow is just playing all the frames as fast as it can, but still not being fast enough, and if QTAlt is actually dropping frames to make up for the speed. Anyway, the banding was still apparent with ffdshow.

 

[xtknight]

I get lots of corruption in Linux MPlayer. I think I've seen this with other files though.

 

[xtknight]

Here's another capture of the crappy blockiness:
http://home.comcast.net/~asmatte/crappyblue.png

 

[Goi]

The banding problem occurs with the V is for Vendetta HD trailer too.

 

[rbV5]

Yes, the banding is pretty apparent with the fog particularly and with the test effects between scenes, where its very easy to spot.

 

[meelk]

A dual core will play them perfectly.
my little 3800 runs the hell out of them in quicktime. otherwise, youll need a card that features H.264 acceleration, like ati's new lineup.

 

[rbV5]

OK, using QTalt163 in zoomplayer, I can get the best playback with audio and video sync'd. Its still not acceptable, but closer. The banding is terrible, here is a crop showing the worse spot Kong Ship banding Its bad enough I can't believe I didn't notice yesterday in the brighter room.

 

[xtknight]

I've noticed those banding effects in a lot of H.264 clips.

How does mplayer work for you guys? Media Player Classic and QTAlt is still unbearably slow while mplayer is at the point where only the trained eye would notice the small slow downs in it.

I helped the speed in MPC a little by doing 'System Default' in Output-->Quicktime settings. It's still a lot slower than mplayer though, whether using VMR9 or Overlay.

 

[xtknight]

I love getting to the bottom of things, so here's the CPU/HD/mem log of mplayer (ffmpeg) vs. mplayer classic (DShow).

MPlayerC settings: overlay,'system default','regular offscreen plain surfaces','lock backbuffer'
MPlayer settings: 'directx','dsound'

Quite a startling difference here.

Media Player Classic w/ QTAlt - Backbuffer lock - Usage

Media Player Classic w/ QTAlt - No backbuffer lock - Usage

mplayer-gui - Usage

With backbuffer lock off:
MPlayerC is the most consistent with overall slower/jittery/broken sync display. Also has couple slowdowns at the end.
MPlayer has a lot smoother display but exhibits a couple more slowdowns.