what are xvid system requirements?

[ou8thisSN]

okay, i have a wierd quirk. I have an xvid encoded file thats encoded at 960 x 540. it refuses to play on my mom's computer smoothly. it plays but almost in slow motion...

The computer has an AMD Athlon 1.2ghz with 512 DDR SDRAM @ 266mhz. The motherboard is a Asus A7M266. The video card is a Nvidia Vanta 16mb PCI card. its a computer I built myself for her about 3 years ago.


it will however play files that are 608 x 366 smoothly. when i try to play the "higher res" file on that computer in WMP10, i checked the system performance, and it runs at around 85%. its not like the system is freezing up or something. I am very perplexed as to what the problem is. I cant believe i'm exceeding the system requirements... am I?

The computer was a fresh install of WinXP SP2, so no real issues there. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

[sysKin]

This computer should handle xvid fine, although this resolution is high. Things to check:
- if you have newest video drivers and directX
- what decoder you use (I recommend ffdshow, it's faster than xvid)
- if postprocessing is off

WMP10 is also a very bad choice for low-end systems, it's doing weird stuff with directshw graph (like building and destroying another copy in background). Try Media Player Classic.

[ou8thisSN]

thanks for the quick response. As I said, its my mom's computer so i havent had a chance to install VLC or some other client. I just tried to test it out on WMPlayer (which i used on my laptop before) and it didnt play well at all. I cant get the latest video drivers from nvidia becuase even though nvidia says that my card is supported, the actual installer says it is not. So i'm using a very old version of the drivers from Nvidia's site.

As far as directx... that I comepletely forgot about updating. I hope when i do that tommorrow, this issue goes away.

[CWR03]

When I've tried to play a video that exceeded a PC's ability, the video would lag badly or freeze completely after a few frames, while the audio would play normally. If your audio and video are both playing at the wrong speed, it's probably a codec issue. If the video is on a CD and the playback is choppy, playing a small bit and freezing, it's probably the drive or the media. I have basically the same setup you described (with half the RAM) serving as a media PC, and it plays similar-sized videos perfectly, even through a network, so I doubt it's a hardware issue.

[ou8thisSN]

i just installed FFDshow, VLC and checked Directx... its the latest 9.0c. Still no good, it maxes out the CPU at 100% and is still choppy in VLC. I also suspect a software issue, somewhere.

After I installed WinXP, i never bothered to update the motherboard chipset drivers, and I cant find the CD... i am hoping if i find that and do a fressh instal that could fix all these issues. if you guys can think of anything else that i should try, please let me know.

Would this be correlated to any other program? the computer is generally "choppy" at loading various things, so i suspect an underlying issue, but i cant pin it down.

[CWR03]

You should be able to get any motherboard chipset drivers you might need at the manufacturer's website instead of reinstalling Windows again (which still won't get you the chipset drivers).

Does your problem match any of the symptoms I described above, or is it completely different?

[ou8thisSN]

the xvid file is saved on the hard disk, so its not a CD ROM issue. and yes, in WMP10, the video will play a few seconds, then freeze. On VLC, it plays fine... mostly but skips a few frames every now and then. I havent tested the audio to see how synched it is or not. in any case, i did re-install windows (i kinda had to after all the wierd things i put on it). anyway, after reinstalling... the CD with the correct drivers, refuses to instal "it says some file is missing" its a BS error, i dont know why its occuring, not that it matters much.

without these drivers, VLC still plays the file, but maxes out the CPU and causes frame skips... it COULD be better, but i cant figure out how to make it seamless.

what are your system specs btw?

[Didée]

>> an xvid encoded file thats encoded at 960 x 540.
>> The video card is a Nvidia Vanta 16mb PCI card

Could be the video card is not able to produce hardware overlay for a file at this resolution.
Simple check: when having loaded the file, pause it, then drag the player's window around. The video usually should lag somewhat behind your dragging movements. If the video plane stays "perfectly glued" to the player window, HW overlay is not active.

- What's the actually set desktop resolution?
- Is there eventually some TV-out configured at the same time?

[ou8thisSN]

the desktop resolution is 1280 x 1024 x 32.
There are no tv outs or anything else on the Vanta.

[clsid]

Install the proper chipset (AMD 760) drivers.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_756_759^871^2336~3226,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_756_759^871^2336~4233,00.html
http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/4in1/VIA_4in1_443v.zip

[ou8thisSN]

hi, i just went downstairs, i am on this computer right now. before I read your last post about updating the AMD 760chipset drivers, I started up the video in WMP9 with the xvid codec, and it plays choppily. I pushed pause, and then moved the window around and Yes the video stays perfectly 'glued' to the window as i move it around. is this that hardware abstraction layer problem or whatever you were talking about? am i getting close to a solution?

Edit: thank you CLSid for those driver links. This time i was able to install the chipset drivers with no errors upon restart. But the video is still choppy and glued to the screen. is this now a videocard issue?

I have a server box that only has a 4mb integrated ATI rage XL mobo video that plays the video just fine. it cant do 32 bit color bit the video plays very smoothly as it should. But it has 2 AMD Athlon MP processors... so i cant figure out if its still a processor or video issue.


EDIT 2: i tried to install the latest drivers from nvidia for the vanta. none of them 'recognize' my video card as a valid product to which the drivers apply. even though under the 'products supported' section, it says the Vanta is a product that should be supported in the release. I tried all the way down to 71.89 of Nvidia's driver releases...
just another update, so no smooth playing video yet.

[CruNcher]

http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html
use this :)