Will this work or am I wasting time?

[Rat Killer]

I have encoded several movies with AutoGK using 85% quality setting, AC3 sound and 720 fixed width (anamorphic dvds). They play fine with WinDVD on my P4 laptop but not on my P3 HTPC. Playback is jerky.

Is the P3 1GHz, 512MB just not enough processor for this resolution, 5.1 sound out SPDIF from an Xvid file? DVDs play flawlessly and have for some time since I built this machine. Just thought the Xvid route would enable me to store more movies on the machine. The 85% setting seems to yield about 2GB avi files on average for film based dvds.

If there are a few settings I could make to smooth this out, I am willing to keep trying or am I wasting my time til I upgrade the HTPC platform? I likely will not do that until HD recording/playback from CATV works out.

Few more details if they matter on the HTPC, Intel chipset, Radeon 7500 video, Windows 2k SP3, WinDVD4.

Thanks,

[thoralf]

hi,

on my laptop (p3 450mhz) xvid-encoded videos with ogg audio play reasonably smooth at their original size, but not enlarged.
From my rather clueless point of view, I'd suggest to reduce the resolution (720 width gives quite a lot of data) or to sacrifice the multichannel audio of your movies. I doubt that tweaking xvid's options is the cure: it is quite a complex application and demands a certain amout of processing power. video on dvd, on the other hand, is mpeg-2, which is significantly less compressed than the mpeg 4 family.

hope this helps,
Thoralf.

[Soulhunter]

Originally posted by Rat Killer
Is the P3 1GHz, 512MB just not enough processor for this resolution, 5.1 sound out SPDIF from an Xvid file?
My old P3' 933MHz was able to decode 1024* resolutions !!!

Maybe its just the settings you have used... :rolleyes:

Qpel n' BVOP's are dropping the framerate !!!


Bye

[Rat Killer]

Well if that is the answer I will have to stick with mpeg-2 for now. I am really not interested in loosing video or audio quality in exchange for space.

Can a P4 3GHz reliably handle full resolution mpeg-4 with DD5.1? Guess this will have to wait for more horsepower in a future machine.

Thanks

[Rat Killer]

Originally posted by Soulhunter

Qpel n' BVOP's are dropping the framerate !!!


Bye Could you elaborate just a little. I don't mind doing some research. Are you suggesting I leave AutoGK and go the full fledged Gordian Knot to optimize the encode settings? If so, I have a lot to learn. Can you point me to some information on getting the correct encode/decode settings that might make this work. I gather most folks using Xvid are doing so to reduce dvd to cdrw size and using a reduced resolution to get there. I wish to get the compression possible but keep the resolution and audio tracks of the original dvd. Essentially trade processing time for space savings while holding A/V quality near the original.

Thanks,

[Soulhunter]

Originally posted by Rat Killer
Are you suggesting I leave AutoGK and go the full fledged Gordian Knot to optimize the encode settings? Sure, that would be the best way... :D

Originally posted by Rat Killer
If so, I have a lot to learn.
For me its a hobby/enjoyment, so I spend most of my free time for this stuff... :rolleyes:

Decide for your self how much time you wanna spend on thus stuff !!!

Originally posted by Rat Killer
Can you point me to some information on getting the correct encode/decode settings that might make this work.
Sure... ;)

___________________________________________________

- Official AutoGK FAQ (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72679)

- XviD FAQ (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16935)

- XviD guide (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/xvid.htm)

- The Unofficial XviD FAQ (http://www.vslcatena.nl/~ronald/docs/xvidfaq.html)
___________________________________________________


Bye

[Mnl]

Hi-

I don't think that it is the processing power of your PC that is the problem. A 1 GHz PIII really ought to be enough even at your chosen resolution and bitrate. Maybe you should check which decoder you are using and whether or not you are using any post processing.

As you are using AutoGK you don't have to worry about qpel as this option aren't used with this application. BVOPs (or B-frames) are, though (only one consecutive b-frame), but these don't have too big an impact on the processing power needed to decode your video.

Maybe you could try to use another player instead of WinDVD like Media Player Classic or some similar program.

hth,

Mnl

[Soulhunter]

Sure, Ive totally forgotten to ask for his decoder settings... :D

Try ffdshow... But read the FAQ's also !!!


Bye

[Neo Neko]

Any 5400RMP HD?

[Marcel]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Any 5400RMP HD?

I doubt that would matter...
I've been watching DivX compressed material with 704 pixels width (neither B-Frames nor QPEL nor GMC) on a Celeron 400 (FSB 66) with an ATI Rage 2c, read from a 4GB 5400 RPM HDD. With DivX 5.04, I had full 25FPS (not with FFDShow from one year ago).
And DivX 5 basic will sure deliver better quality per bit than MPEG2.

[Rat Killer]

Well i dought the drive would matter either but it is a 7200rpm Maxtor 120GB and yes Ultra DMA is active.

If the problem is not processor or memory, then it must be in the player or xvid decoder settings. The codec I have loaded came with the AutoGK install, it is just before the 1.0 update. I will try a couple different players including ffdshow. Are there any specific settings I should look for in the decoder? If the codec is the same no matter the player, does the front end really matter that much?

Looks like I have some trial and error to work through. Anyone want to suggest a specific group of software and settings that work well for full 720 resolution on slower processors?

Thanks for the help folks. Took me a while to get 1 to 1 mapping, DD5.1 via spdif out and remote controls working for DVD out to my projector, I will work through this too, just takes time I guess.

Thanks

[manono]

Hi-

My guess is that it's the audio mux settings that AutoGK uses. Try 96/96 ms for the Preload and Interleaving. Or, if you don't know how to remux, test by stripping out the audio and playing the video alone. Bet it plays smooth as silk.

[thoralf]

Try ffdshow... But read the FAQ's also !!!

The latest build didn't yield any improvements compared to the xvid-dshow decoder in my case.

@Ratkiller: with my desktop computer (p4@2.6 gig) cpu usage is around 30% when decoding dvd rips (matroska, multiple ogg, subs, xvid, postprocessing). i'm pretty sure that you're on the safe side with a p4@3 gigs.

kind regards,
Thoralf.

[Rat Killer]

Originally posted by thoralf
i'm pretty sure that you're on the safe side with a p4@3 gigs.

kind regards,
Thoralf.


No, I my HTPC is a P3 at 1Ghz. A p4 would be a new build with current available technology but I am not planning to build a new HTPC until HD recording settles out for the PC. (not currently possible from CATV) Using Xvid rather than VOBs to store my movies on the HTPC is really just to save space and allow a larger number of titles to be stored.

If the P3 @ 1Ghz will not do Xvid at 720 res and AC3 sound then it is not the solution I am looking for. I have not given up yet. Plan to spend some time on decoder settings and trying various players this weekend.

[Asmodian]

One problem might be the overlay settings or video card. I would be very surprised if you couldn't play back that content with Media Player Classic and ffdshow on overlay mode. Having the video card do the YV12/YUV2 to RGB and whatever else is needed for overlay really helps CPU usage.

[Rat Killer]

I intend to try Media Player Classic over the weekend. I was using WinDVD and the video was using the video overlay. Does Media Player Classic somehow handle the data substantially different to the codec and overlay than WinDVD? I would have thought if the codec and overlay were the same the front end would not have mattered much.

I hope MPC works its magic on my system.

[thoralf]

Originally posted by Rat Killer
I hope MPC works its magic on my system.

Please let me know it if did the trick ...

Thank you,
Thoralf.

[Wolfman]

Dont forget to defrag your disk..try bsplayer & divx player (works with xvid I think). Also reboot your machine at least once a week.
I used to playback xvid fine full sreen (with other windows open) on a p3 866 256mb.. jerky playback was always down to a heavily fragmented disk.. (how did that happen?):rolleyes:

[Rat Killer]

Well, Media Player Classic seemed to do the trick. I plays my 720x Xvid files with AC3 audio without hickups and the audio is synced. Really did not set anyting other than defaults except for telling it to use the video overlay so it would go out to my projector.

By default is it using the xvid codec that was already installed? I have a lot of reading to do on setup and optimizing MPC. Any suggestions?

Thanks guys for the help.

[thoralf]

glad it worked for you ... on my laptop, playback is still is somewhat jerky with media player classic (would have suprised me if it wasn't since mpc uses the original xvid decoder).
afaik, mpc uses its own avi-splitter. if you're using avi as your container format, it might be that your direct show configuration is a bit messed up.

with kind regards,
Thoralf.