Wide Format Playback 12294 x 766

[samuelbenecke]

Hello Everyone,

New to the forum and I haven't been able to find any posts related to this...

(Thanks in advance to anyone who has any helpful suggestions or knows the solution.)

Here is my problem:

I'm trying to see if its possible to make a video for a wall of 9 LCDs X 1 row (9 LCD's in a row, side-by-side).

Hardware I'm using:

QUADCORE Core2Quad @ 3.6Ghz 450Mhz BUS (1800 FSB)
Win 7 x64
8 GIGS PC-2 900Mhz 1:1
500GIG X 2 Raid 0
3870HD 512MB / 4870X2 1024MB (tried back for playback of video - no difference)
2 30" 2560 x 1600 (5120px wide in extended desktop mode)

Software:

After Effects CS3/CS4

Video Players:

MPC HC Version = 1.3.1311.0
VLC Player = 1.05
Quicktime = 7.6.4 (518.35)


So far, what I've made a video in After Effects with the dimension of 12294 x 766 and 6144 x 376 for 10 secs - black background with HELLO scrolling left to right. Here's what happens with the following codecs:


RAW format:

VLC Player
12294 x 766 - Fail (doesn't play)
6144 x 376 - Fail (doesn't play)

MPC HC
12294 x 766 - Fail (doesn't play)
6144 x 376 - Fail (doesn't play)

Quicktime
12294 x 766 - Haven't tried
6144 x 376 - Haven't tried

WMPlayer
12294 x 766 - Works with encoded dimesions - but choppy and slow via hard drive; moved to 4 GIG RAM drive, playback better but not smooth - maybe on DDR 3 it would be better
6144 x 376 - Works with encoded dimesions - but choppy and slow via hard drive; moved to 4 GIG RAM drive, playback better but not smooth - maybe on DDR 3 it would be better


Built in Quicktime Encoder in After Effects:

VLC Player
12294 x 766 - Fail (doesn't play)
6144 x 376 - Fail (doesn't play)

MPC HC
12294 x 766 - Fail (doesn't play)
6144 x 376 - Fail (doesn't play)

Quicktime
12294 x 766 - Works
6144 x 376 - Haven't tried

WMPlayer
12294 x 766 - Works with encoded dimensions and opens at correct dimensions - playback choppy
6144 x 376 - Works with encoded dimensions and opens at correct dimensions - playback choppy


.264 / DIVX/ XVID

VLC Player
12294 x 766 - Encoded dimesions won't expand beyond single screen, even when stretched to second monitor
6144 x 376 - Encoded dimesions won't expand beyond single screen, even when stretched to second monitor

MPC HC
12294 x 766 - Encoded dimesions won't expand beyond single screen, even when stretched to second monitor
6144 x 376 - Encoded dimesions won't expand beyond single screen, even when stretched to second monitor

Quicktime
12294 x 766 - Haven't tried
6144 x 376 - Haven't tried

WMPlayer
12294 x 766 - Encoded dimesions won't expand beyond single screen, even when stretched to second monitor
6144 x 376 - Encoded dimesions won't expand beyond single screen, even when stretched to second monitor


So my question are:

1. What could be my problem - codec or player? Quicktime encoder in After Effects CS3/CS4 works in the encoded dimesions - but playback is choppy. Yet, with the exception of RAW (uncompressed) format that works only WMplayer 10, all the other players will not playback the file at the encoded dimensions.

2. Any recommends on codecs/settings/players?

3. Anything that I'm missing in terms of encoding properties/dimensions?

4. Would Windows XP be a better choice in extended desktop mode? I've read that Windows XP has better support for extended desktop (Treating all monitors as 1 display natively)

Thank you for any help!

[mariush]

I don't know how helpful it would be but here goes anyway... if you can wait until around the middle of March if possible and get a 5870 Eyefinity 6 edition or a 5830. You'll be able to use 6 displays on a single card and they'll appear to the OS as a single big monitor, so you won't have so many incompatibilities. 6 x 1920x1080 would give you 11520 x 1080, which is close enough to your 12294 x whatever.

The first card is supposed to be launched on March 11. Unfortunately, it would probably be also expensive and will come with 6 display port connectors and I'm not sure the card itself will come with six display port -> something adapters.

At such big resolution, I'm not sure what codec to recomment, maybe the plain MPEG2 @ something like 80-100 mbps , a quad core should be able to decode it in real time. Maybe also Motion JPEG or something like that?

[plonk420]

here's some material to contribute to the thread .. i've been trying to help SB with the issue..

http://forgottenwebsites.com/lulz/des-test2.mp4
http://forgottenwebsites.com/lulz/frameranger-test.mp4

(the former is a video i've scaled and cropped to said requirements, the other is a dirty resize; both end results are 6144 x 376)

i'm quite positive it's the decoder or player that's not behaving as it should, not the format.

it won't play in MPC HC in software or hardware for me, nor CoreAVC. it will in vlc, however.

anyone else tried to create a super-wide video wall?

[mariush]

Funny, the second video plays in VLC but if I try to select Zoom 50% or Snapshot, the player crashes. It's v1.0.5 goldeneye. The output is incorrect, I guess - I assume it's something related to optimizations and YV12/YUY2 optimizations : http://savedonthe.net/image/560/vlc.jpg

Even funnier is that MPC-HC decodes it with DXVA but the output is horrible : http://savedonthe.net/image/561/mpc-hc.jpg
With the built in ffmpeg it works like VLC.

[SeeMoreDigital]

By-the-way...

Out of the four quoted resolutions, 6144 is the mod-16 compliant one :eek:

[plonk420]

i can't remember the specifics of the conversation. i recall LCD resolutions of 1366x766

12294x766 was 16.05:1 AR
6144x384 (or 12288x768) was 16:1 AR and MOD16 but i'm not sure how it would align up (if it were necessary, which, now that i think about it, isn't important in this situation)

i couldn't get 12288x768 to play on *anything* however...

[mariush]

It's 1366*768 (16:9). But nowadays LCD screens with native 1920x1080 are cheap, at less than 200$ so why you would use less...

I personally have a suspicion there might also be something related to texture sizes, as in you'd need them to be multiples of 2... so videos up to 8192 x 1024 may work and videos above may not... I don't know... maybe on OS'es like Windows 7 it matters.

[plonk420]

i couldn't get the fullsize (12288 x 752) video @ mod16 to play on anything (vlc, mpc hc + dxva, ffmpeg, coreavc) .. but it was an earlier encode, so i'm not sure if i messed anything up

http://forgottenwebsites.com/lulz/frameranger-test-1b.mp4

[Reimar]

All 3 files seem to work fine for me with
mplayer -vo gl2:yuv=2
(but only with that exact combination, and only the text one runs with reasonable speed on my very slow Atom-based PC).
Depending on video drivers, it should also work with multiple monitors.
However I don't think it will work well, a much better approach is to have one PC per screen and have them synchronize with each other.
There's a patch for MPlayer to do that synchronization via network (UDP), but it's not included yet because it does not even compile on Windows currently.
And then there's also this (similar) approach: http://hardwarebug.org/2010/02/10/1080p-video-on-beagle/

[Delerue]

I have tried all three videos with MPC HC x64 + WinXP x64 + FFDShow x64 (using ffmpeg-mt). The thing is that you'll need a lot of CPU power in order to decode all frames. I have a Core i7 860 running at full 3.5 GHz (turbo mode off) and the numbers are:

des-test2.mp4
Runs pretty well - no frame drop
Average CPU usage 10%
Pick CPU usage 17%

frameranger-test.mp4
Runs pretty well - no frame drop
Average CPU usage 13%
Pick CPU usage 38%

frameranger-test-1b.mp4
Runs pretty well - no frame drop
Average CPU usage 45%
Pick CPU usage 75%

So, specially for the last video, I think that a dual-core won't do the job, unless you overclock it beyond the clouds. :)