How come Vista Media Center is much faster compared to other players?

[SveinT]

Hi,

I have been trying both windows media center (on vista) and windows media player (among others) lately. I was wondering, how come media center is about 10% faster than the other players? My assumption is that it uses some
special renderer, but whatever it is doing it's magic, is it possible to use it in other video players to gain the speed advantage? I can watch HD content in MC, but not in other players (smoothly that is). Other than that I don't really need MC because it lacks advanced features many others video players have. If there really is something that could be "exploited" here, many people could get a major speed increase aswell?

Note that this applies no matter codec or format I play. Tried FFDShow and CoreAVC for mkv files. .wmv also plays much better.

Other players I have tried include VLC, MPC, CorePlayer and some others.

Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1.8Ghz, 1,5GB RAM and Radeon 9800Pro, running Vista Ultimate.

Any reply greatly appreciated, been looking all over the net for an answer to this one.

Thanks in advance

[shae]

How do you quantify this 10% increase?

What renderers were used?

Is sound decoded the same?

Maybe MC just handles frame skipping better?

[SveinT]

How do you quantify this 10% increase?

What renderers were used?

Is sound decoded the same?

Maybe MC just handles frame skipping better?

Thanks for the reply.

1. Well, does it really matter? It's kinda taken out of the air I admit. It plays better (fullspeed, no chopping/skipping), while it does not in MPClassic (well, some almost do, depends on the movie).

2. I wouldn't know how to see what renderer is used. Tried all renderers you can select in MPClassic, but nothing gives me what I see in MC.

3. Again, I wouldn't know. Don't notice any difference. How to check?

4. Perhaps. Is there a way to find out?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Most likely because Microsoft's programmers have access to all the "inside" information on how to optimize the performance of multimedia applications.

This will be especially true for Vista. i.e., software designed explicitly (and exclusively) for Vista can take advantage of Vista's new "under-the-hood" features. Third-party media players most likely won't (until they become Vista-aware).

In my own experience, things that improve performance on pre-Vista Windows (such as DirectDraw) can hurt performance on Vista. DirectDraw is the hardware-accelerated framework for 2D graphics. Vista doesn't use it anymore. Instead, all 2D graphics (including display video) is processed by the 3D pipeline - i.e., DirectX 3D.

If an application explicitly uses DirectDraw on Vista, it can suffer. It can also make Vista disable the Aero glass interface.

I've already modified one of our applications to behave "properly" with Vista.

And there's one other area - audio. Media players built on DirectShow will, unless programmed explicitly otherwise, use DirectSound for audio playback. On Vista, that's not a good thing. DirectSound hardware-acceleration has been dropped and all DirectSound processing is emulated in software.

Until third-party media player vendors test their applications on Vista and modify any uses of DirectDraw and DirectSound, the built-in Media Center player will reign.

[SveinT]

Thanks for the reply. You make some good points, however, I find it weird that Microsoft's own media player is just as slow as the other players. Although, they're most likely developed by two different teams.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Thanks for the reply. You make some good points, however, I find it weird that Microsoft's own media player is just as slow as the other players. Although, they're most likely developed by two different teams.

WMP 11 is written to be compatible with pre-Vista versions of Windows, too. Whereas Vista Media Center is for Vista only - hence, Microsoft can take full advantage of the features only Vista provides. (Just my opinion!)

[shae]

1. Well, does it really matter? It's kinda taken out of the air I admit. It plays better (fullspeed, no chopping/skipping), while it does not in MPClassic (well, some almost do, depends on the movie).
Yes, it's the difference between faster decoding/rendering and better skip handling. For example, in the past, Crystal Player would let me play files that would go out of sync in all other players I tried.

3. Again, I wouldn't know. Don't notice any difference. How to check?Try disabling sound in other players and see if it helps. If the player/decoder handles sound with less CPU it might be the little extra needed to be able to keep up with the video.

4. Perhaps. Is there a way to find out?Not sure, besides trying various players (and settings).

Did you try lowering decoding overhead by disabling post processing, etc.?