Software/codecs for optimized DiVX video playback?

[jrichrds]

This is for an AMD X2 system with nVidia 6200LE PCI-E graphics that will primarily be playing back DiVX video content.

I got Media Player Classic and FFDShow. There are a variety of settings under the display output tab (VMR9 mode, Haali Media Splitter, "use texture surfaces and render video in 3d", etc.) that I don't quite understand.

What settings do you guys use that provide the highest image quality while taking advantage of any hardware video acceleration from the graphic scard?

 

[MegaVovaN]

I doubt an average geek here will know what the hell those settings mean...
MPC is an extremely advanced player, but also works "Out of the box", so very few people even know there is a wide array of settings.
Maybe you should ask on MPC forums or read the guides?

That said, I do not think there will be a difference in quality however you play it. Try original DivX Player, compare quality to MPC, but I doubt there will be a difference.

 

[xtknight]

FFDshow (ffmpeg) won't take advantage of the hardware acceleration of your card.

Only PureVideo-based codecs can do this (such as NVIDIA DVD Decoder). Not sure what other ones there are. Maybe some big names like Cyberlink/etc...

Haali Media Splitter is a file splitter (for instance, it would extract video and audio out of a mkv file and send it downstream on the filter chain to other appropriate decoders). File splitters most of the time aren't your performance bottleneck but some of them (specifically, Haali) have adjustable buffer options anyway.

Not really sure what the "texture surfaces" options do.

If you don't have a problem playing it back with CPU then you probably shouldn't worry about it. DIVX (MPEG-4 ASP) shouldn't be a problem for any remotely modern CPU but the problems come in with MPEG-4 AVC. In that case you might want to get PureVideo codecs, or the CoreCodec for H.264 which supports dual core. ffdshow might support dual core H.264 decoding soon also.

VMR9 will render through DirectX. The main advantage of this is being able to take screenshots, and it also supports multi monitors. It can support better color correction as well.

That's in contrast to Overlay which is more primitive. It only lets you show the video on one screen. There's not really a whole lot of difference between the two for most people but VMR9 can be better in corner cases.

 

[dandragonrage]

You don't need hardware acceleration for DivX. It takes very little CPU. Don't use the POS DivX player. Just use FFDShow in software mode; it will be your best option.