Most lightweight player/codec for playback?

[S3TUP]

I have old Toshiba Satellite 4060CDT laptop with 2.5Mb Trident Cyber 9525 video card with YV12 support. It's Pentium II 333MHz, 64Mb RAM.

All i need is to make it play videos with decent quality and speed.

Till now i tried:
- MPlayer with directx as video renderer (i use DX9). Can't make it use winvidix/cvidix/*vidix because my video card is not supported. Movies become playable at 400x224@15fps DivX6 600kbits, MP3 128kbit/s. Windows 2000.
- MoviX / GeexBox LiveCDs - same results as Windows, a bit slower in VESA renderer.

- BSPlayer + ffdshow - no success - too slow.
- Crystal Player - slower than BSPlayer.
- WMP 6 - same.
- Classic Media Player - even slower than WMP.

Things change when i play videos without sound in MPlayer. I can reach normal playback with 500x300@25fps DivX movies.

- Is there any video players faster than MPlayer?
- Is there any way to encode DivX (XviD, etc) for faster playback?
- Maybe i should try more lightweight codec? Any ideas which one should fit my needs?


Thanks for help!
.... and sorry about my english... :)

[smok3]

maybe good old nandub? (divx3.11)

[neoufo51]

http://www.1337player.com

[foxyshadis]

Divx3.11 takes a lot MORE resources to decode than divx5/6/xvid, not to mention it looks like crap. Sorensen and cinepak decode faster, but again, look like crap. Pretty much every other option than xvid or divx5/6 would look like crap comparatively at playable bitrates & sizes. :p So it sounds as if you've already hit the sweet spot.

I assume gmc and qpel are off on the encodes?

Mplayer and anything based on it is definitely the lightest player. MPC and bsplayer/zoomplayer are probably next, then all the rest of the dshow players. (1337player is just a light ds player like zp.)

Now, it's not for the faint of heart, but you could replace that 333 with a 450 (or do mobiles only go to 400?), and get some extra perf. Tricky business, but there's no warranty to void, and if I could find a k6-3+ to upgrade my crapmobile you can probably still find p2m.

(Ah, memories of a k6-2. Wish mplayer had been around then.)

[Lazarus42]

The fastest video renderer/mixer mode is Overlay.
Have you tried VLC, it's pretty damn fast.

[setarip_old]

@S3TUP

Hi!

Have you tried good ol' reliable MS Windows Media Player v.6.4?

It's available on your system as follows:

Desktop>>Start>>Run Type "MPLAYER2.EXE" (Without quotations marks)

[celtic_druid]

mplayer should run better under some form of linux than windows.

[S3TUP]

Wow, Thanks for help! It took hours to try each suggestion and answer :)


smok3, nandub looks better than regular DivX3.11alpha, but DivX6 is better on low bitrates. (tried it)

neoufo51, 1337Player needs video card's support of Direct3D which i don't have. But it's fast (on loading).

foxyshadis, there is no option for gmc and qpel in DivX6.1 encoder, but i tried disabling them in fddshow encoder using XviD with no much speedup.
By the way, where did you found this upgrade CPU? Sounds interesting, but i don't think i can replace laptop's CPU (at least without soldering work).

Lazarus42, i'll try VLC, but afaik it's based on MPlayer. On the other hand its more compatible with windows than MPlayer (imho).

setarip_old, yes, i tried it, and its pretty fast comparing to others, but still it's slower than MPlayer.

celtic_druid, it did (MoviX, GeexBox) , but not much faster, because my video card is not supported in Linux (no vidix). The best results i got with X renderer.

[Sirber]

TCPMP is the fastest. Next is mPlayer.

[videomixer9]

VMR7 Overlay mode is actually faster than overlay mixer on windows!

VLC uses ffmpeg project as mplayer does too ... easiest is too buy a new laptop, or use linux with console only rendering, like using framebuffer or svgalib ... there is a limit in reducing needed cpu speeds ... and older notebooks with way more performance should be quite cheap.

[falcon2000eg]

TCPMP is the fastest and simplest

[Avish]

Try Crystal Player, Its the lightest player I've came across! & very versatile too!

[roytam1]

TCPMP is the fastest and simplest
I vote for this one.:D

[m99]

A fast player won't help much with a bloated OS. Check http://www.nliteos.com/

[aru]

I think you should encode them to mpeg2, or even cray, mpeg1.
You may play them smoothly.

[Lys]

For some reason VLC is the slowest, followed by WMP6.4, then MPC. For some reason quicktime fails to use Overlays on my system, so it is dog slow.

For DVD playing, for some reason I can play HR XVID at 960x, but it dies on ordinary DVD MPEG2 resolution. (All players except PowerDVD, and it is still noticeable in that)

[check]

VLC isn't known for being a speed demon :P
If you said you can play your video files well without audio, you could always just re-code the audio to a .wav file and see how that works.