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View Full Version : H264(flv), versus WM, versus DivX

Evert
27th December 2008, 09:57
I have already watched a lot of SD/HD videos online, and read a lot about the new H264 technology. But i cant find a comparison between windows media, H264 in flv player mode, and divx, in performance. When i'm playing HD flv H264 content in a online flash player, my computer cpu go to 80%! But when i play HD divx content in the online applet, it go's very smoothly. Also HD content in WMP go's very smoothly. This is because WMP have DXVA.

Is this because the divx webplayer have hardware acceleration (DXVA)?
Does the Flash player / Silverlight have hardware acceleration for decoding?
Dark Shikari
27th December 2008, 12:31
Most "DivX" content is going to be ASP or SP, without qpel or GMC. This is generally going to be little more CPU intensive than MPEG-2, albeit at the cost of vastly decreased compression.

I haven't heard of WMP supporting DXVA though.

Also note Flash player's H.264 decoder (by Mainconcept), while much better than their old FLV decoder, is rather... slow. Even Mainconcept's standalone decoder can't play 1080p in realtime on my Core 2 Duo despite being multithreaded.
Evert
27th December 2008, 15:09
Here is a screenshot from Windows Media player. As you can see it supports hardware acceleration (dxva). So it don;t eat to much cpu because the video decoding is done by the video card.
http://i44.tinypic.com/30w5mqh.jpg

I try playing HD video's from JW flv online player, and WM HD content, and divx HD. Both divx and wm shows very crispy and smooth content at high bitrate, but H264 is eating very much cpu and slow. I wish a online flv player like JW can decode H264 by video card (dxva). But if you compare a SD video with 1500kbps, will H264 or divx, vc1 be the best in quality?
Dark Shikari
27th December 2008, 15:53
Here is a screenshot from Windows Media player. As you can see it supports hardware acceleration (dxva). So it don;t eat to much cpu because the video decoding is done by the video card.I don't think configuration options are proof that anything is actually happening. 1% CPU usage during decoding would be proof.I try playing HD video's from JW flv online player, and WM HD content, and divx HD. Both divx and wm shows very crispy and smooth content at high bitrate, but H264 is eating very much cpu and slow.Upgrade your Pentium 2.will H264 or divx, vc1 be the best in quality?H.264, of course.