Duron 800... not enough for QPEL???

[Alxemi]

Here is my problem:

I Code a movie with QPEL and Packet Bitstream enabled:
The movie has micro-stops (and I am the only one that sees them)
Then I post in the forum and Teegedeck (thanks!) suggests me to turn off the packed bitstream option.
I try and it works, no more micro stops, but when i mux the audios i can see that the video is slower than it must to and get lost with the audio...
Then i try to recode again deactivating QPEL, and everything is fine. No micro-stops, no desyncrhonization, and a BIG gain in video code speed. Using YV12 and noQpel, my poors 5-7fps get changed for a good 12-15 fps.

in conclusion: My system is slow to qpel, if i used it, i get desyncrhonization, and the packed bistream option drop some frames to join the audio.

Is that posible? Maybe the Qpel needs processors with more cache... ¿?
800 Mhz is not enough?
I remember that when i used to code in divx i never marked the qpel option because people in the forums said it was useless... Is it now usefull in xvid? can i avoid it whitout much problem?

Thank you very much and excuse my poor english
:rolleyes:

[Mango Madness]

your english is quite good.

Q-pel is very worth it and probably more advanced/refined than divx but this is pure assumption. If you're encoding is going fine but playback is slow, then I would almost certainly point to your player. I know from my own experience with a duron 1.3ghz that playback is a tricky thing. I use zoomplayer with all the xvid goodies enabled and experience about 20-30% CPU usage where WMP 9 runs at 100% and is unplayable. So i would try zoomplayer (3.00 beta 5.5 is the latest i believe?)

[Alxemi]

Thank you for your reply!

I use Bsplayer 494 for playback OGMs, and last alpha ffdshow as filter. Unfortunaly i cannot make more tests now because i deleted my old-problematic-OGMs to free space for the new ones, but i dont think that with zoomplayer the playback would be better. Of course, with WMP7,8,9 or whatever i´m SURE that the playback would be terrible (I hate that players!)

Anyway, i´m afraid that i dont undestand you when you said:

Q-pel is very worth it and probably more advanced/refined than divx but this is pure assumption. If you're encoding is going fine but playback is slow, then I would almost certainly point to your player

I wonder if you could explain it a little bit... what do you mean with worth? why do you say that encoding is going fine? It was very slow.. :confused:

hehe, my english is not so god finally :)

[frodoontop]

For playing back Xvid video on low-end systems you should pay attention to three things. First: Close all the programs running in the background. Second: Use a good player(Zoomplayer for instance). Third: Use no or low post-processing. Keep this things in mind when playing these videos.
There's also one general rule: How higher the resolution of the encode, the harder it is to decode. I have a 800 Athlon myself and I can decode movies with a resolution of 512x384 with medium post-processing at an average of 80% cpu-power. Those encodes got all the new unstable features included.
Hope this will help you out....

[Alxemi]

Thank you very much for your reply, frodoontop :)

The points you give are all truth, but i always have my computer clear of resident programs, VxD devices and death processes, and with no postprocessing.
My player is bsplayer, which is very low in resources... so i think the problem is the micro.
The resolution is 448x336, a little lower than yours, but my micro is a Duron, not an Athlon, and it has very little cache :(

I think i will forget QPEL :cool:

[Koepi]

hmmm - why not forget about the DOS GUIs called win9x/me?

when i switched to win2k on my k6/233 i could instantly watch movies which were far more demanding...

Regards
Koepi

[pkstomak]

Arf, maybe learning to install Linux would be a better thing to do!

[kilg0r3]

i don't think the duron is too slow. what reolution is your movie? what color depth and res is your monitor set at? get a tool to measure your cpu load. how much ram do have? which processes are running in the background? and filter's do you use for playback? which filters are loaded when you play the movie? what gfx board do you use ( also 8, 16, 32, 64mb)? Any dual head functions enabled? Post processing? What about recent drivers and directx versions. which sound _device_ is used on playback?

[Didée]

Originally posted by kilg0r3
i don't think the duron is too slow. what reolution is your movie? what color depth and res is your monitor set at? get a tool to measure your cpu load. how much ram do have? which processes are running in the background? and filter's do you use for playback? which filters are loaded when you play the movie? what gfx board do you use ( also 8, 16, 32, 64mb)? Any dual head functions enabled? Post processing? What about recent drivers and directx versions. which sound _device_ is used on playback? ... and what's the actual moon phase?

Sorry, couldn't resist :)
Each and every of abovequestions is serious, period.

[Valky]

Originally posted by Koepi
hmmm - why not forget about the DOS GUIs called win9x/me?

when i switched to win2k on my k6/233 i could instantly watch movies which were far more demanding...

Regardsru
Koepi

Hmm..this post is actually very frustrating..it does not NOT reveal anything.
I honestly admire everything you do, koepi, but these kind of postings might give an impression that some newbie can actually watch some HQ-movies with their poor k6-2 system that make use of all your little fine features in your codec..

[MaTTeR]

Actually Qpel decoding is very demanding on a system IMHO. My PIII 800Mhz HTPC with 512MB RAM still uses about 60-70% CPU during playback with AC3 over SPDIF(no decoding). My enocdes are either 624 or 640 resolution using YV12 overlays on a GF2/64MB MX video card with various media players. I never use any post-processing or extra features in the filter at all In saying that, it's _very_ clear to me that Qpel is well worth me upgrading the HTPC to an Athlon XP box now, quality is superb :-)

ffdshow uses less CPU (maybe 3-5% less?) to decode Qpel but then you might have a problem with the smearing artifacts.

Surely the K6/233 comment was a typo but for sure Win2K is far superior in all aspects for HTPC use.

[Asmodian]

@Alxemi
I do think you should give zoomplayer a try; it might be better as it's technique for playback differs from bsplayer (try the force overlay option if your video card can do it).

[vorbis]

if you're really stuck you could use movix to play the file. its a mini distro of linux that boots into mplayer. Its supposed to allow less powerful pcs to play divx.