H264 movies are sluggish?

[Majesty]

Hi,

When I run HD quicktime movies, it's often sluggish at 480p and always sluggish at 720p and 1080p. I thought my computer was quite up to date (without being "Da Bomb"...). Is it normal with my configuration or what? I meet the requirements for the 480p size.

Athlon XP-M @ 2.2GHz
PC3200 CAS2-2-2-5
X850 XT PE @ 600/560 (RAM/GPU)

Thanks

 

[Majesty]

Bump.

 

[ForumMaster]

yup. the h.264 is a really complex codec and for example, apple's trailer site with h.264 movies states that the recomended rig for 1080 is atleast a dualcore procesor.

 

[xtknight]

Hmm. 480p should be fine with your machine I'd think. 720p might be fine, but 1080p would kill it.

Go to start menu run, and type this. perfmon.msc Press the + (Add) button on the toolbar, and add some stuff like hard drive counters ("LogicalDisk") and CPU usage ("Processor Time" under "Processor"). Try and identify your bottleneck.

 

[JAG87]

i have the exact same config, athlon xp 3200+, 1GB ram, X850 XT PE

480 renders smooth, 720 renders at 10-20 fps, 1080 renders at 1.5 fps

dont be surprised. We are stuck by single core date cpu. Its not your ram, and its not your video card holding you back (although a card with H264 accelleration like AVIVO for ATi or PureVideo for nVidia would help).

Time for an upgrade for me and you!

 

[zephyrprime]

The problem is that your video card doesn't provide mpeg4 acceleration. It takes a lot of processing power to decode mp4 as you've discovered. If you really need to do it, look into getting one of the new generation cards.

 

[gwag]

The problem seems to be hardware support (or lack of when using quicktime player) not your cpu or video card. Try using nero showtime player I can play 1080(only tied X-men) not dropping frames using it and only 80-90%cpu usage. but it is scaled to fit 1600x1200 so not the full 1920 wide.
but it is night and day, when playing the 720p move 40-80% smooth as butter? quicktime 100% and dropped frames.
System= A-XP @ 2.0 with 4200ti

 

[gwag]

I downloaded and tried VLC.
720p=20% cpu usage
Try it, its free and seems to play back 1080 with no problems for me. (my older version crashed before even playing h264 so get the latest)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
someone else check it out and tell me if I am crazy.....

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: gwag
I downloaded and tried VLC.
720p=20% cpu usage
Try it, its free and seems to play back 1080 with no problems for me. (my older version crashed before even playing h264 so get the latest)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
someone else check it out and tell me if I am crazy.....

I also get varying results from different players and decoders. Since your ti4200 can't hardware accelerate H.264, any improvements are because of the software.

 

[Wag]

VLC is not fast for H.264.

Get K-Lite Media Codec, and use Core AVC and Haali Media Splitter. It should run smoothly.