Low CPU usage Hidef codec?

[mahsah]

I am capturing some 720p and 1080i mpeg 2 HD streams, but I want to recompress them. However, even though I have an AGP Nvidia 7600 with an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ and 1024 megs of ram, it only does hardware mpeg-2 decoding (If anyone knows a way to get hardware h264 decoding working on AGP/SSE1 setups, please post).

Since I would basicially have to go with software decoding, which would I be able to play at full speed?(with standard ac3 audio, and without resizing).

Heres what codecs I am looking at:

1. x264 (with CoreAVC decoding). I don't want to pay money for coreavc if it won't work though.

2. VC-1/WMV 9. No idea how to encode this, but if the CPU usage is low, then it would be fine.

3. ASP (Divx/Xvid/LMP4). A possibility, anyone know what the fastest ASP decoder is? (xvid, divx, or ffdshow decoder)

4. VP6 or 7 - Don't know much about this.

5. Wierd codecs - Sorenson Video 3(quicktime), Divx 3.11, Cinepak?(lol)

Which codec would I be able to play on my AMD athlon XP 3000+ with 1024 megs of ram?

Thanks.

[check]

you should be able to play most 720p h264 with coreavc on that machine. You will definately be able to play ASP, i'm unsure about VC1.
The rest you can probably ignore :)

[mahsah]

Really? Sweet. Do you know of any 720p AVC samples that I could test?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Make your own. Take any DVD you have, crop and resize it to 1280x720 (don't worry about aspect ratio errors - its just a test), and do some encoding.

ffdshow is getting really fast, you might be able to handle 720p with its avc decoder.

[Turtleggjp]

(If anyone knows a way to get hardware h264 decoding working on AGP/SSE1 setups, please post)

I think a lot of us would like to see this, myself included. :D Most cards these days accelerate MPEG2 HD beautifully, but I don't think we're there yet with H264, despite what some of the card manufacturers claim. :(

Since I would basicially have to go with software decoding, which would I be able to play at full speed?(with standard ac3 audio, and without resizing).

You might want to consider downsizing your 1080i content down to 720p sizes. Space wise, its going to cost you about twice as much, and unless you have a screen capable of reolutions that high (1920x1200 for example), you won't notice a difference. Unless of course you are archiving for maximum quality in case someday such displays are more commonplace...

Heres what codecs I am looking at:

1. x264 (with CoreAVC decoding). I don't want to pay money for coreavc if it won't work though.

2. VC-1/WMV 9. No idea how to encode this, but if the CPU usage is low, then it would be fine.

3. ASP (Divx/Xvid/LMP4). A possibility, anyone know what the fastest ASP decoder is? (xvid, divx, or ffdshow decoder)

4. VP6 or 7 - Don't know much about this.

5. Wierd codecs - Sorenson Video 3(quicktime), Divx 3.11, Cinepak?(lol)

Which codec would I be able to play on my AMD athlon XP 3000+ with 1024 megs of ram?

Thanks.

1. Good luck with this, I found AVC to be a little too complicated for my taste (CoreAVC disaster, High CPU requirements, Couldn't find a way for VirtualDub to read the resulting files).

2. I avoid any and all Microsoft codecs if possible.

3. Xvid is excellent, and currently my codec of choice. Easy installation, encoder and decoder in one installer, VirtualDub support, and best of all... FREE!!!

4. Never heard of them...

5. Ah, Divx 3.11. I was so loyal to that codec, until I hit the HD stuff. That's when I moved to XviD. I did a little experiment between these two. I took the same source, a show I captured at 720x480 @ 29.97 fps (YUY2 uncompressed), and de-interlaced it to 59.94 fps. For XviD, I resized to 720x540, and Divx 3.11 640x480. The XviD came out smaller, yet it still looked better! Oh, quicktime -> only if you have a Mac and don't feel like exploring other codecs. Cinepack -> I agree, lol!

If you wanna see how I do XviD encoding, check out my other post in this forum:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119236

Matt