How to encode to play on old laptop

[junglemike]

HI all.
I own an old laptop (Pentium II mobile - 300mhz @66mhz bus, 128mb ram, win2000 dualboot with MDK 9.2.). It also only has 2.5mb video memory.
Unfortunately i cannot play any files. Files like 720x480 will not play whatever.
Regular resolutions like 640x272 may play fine.
I understand that resolution has direct impact on cpu load , and while cpu reaches 100% - i loose a/v sync.

But there are some files with same resolution that can play very smooth (and only 60% cpu usage) and others that don't play or scarcely play.
My question - what settings contribute to more cpu load?
I mostly record tv-series via TV-tuner (on desktop pc) and convert them later to motroska (xvid +ogg).
I know this lap is old, but i'm student, and don't have money for upgrade. I'm stuck with this lap for couple more years.
So what settings would you recommend?
TIA.

[junglemike]

More question reguarding video player.
Trying to get most of my old lap - i tried many video players (mplayer, bsplayer, Core, mpc). mplayer is fastest, but it destors colors , so i stick to next fast one - bsplayer.

I also own a palm pilot device. there is a generally accepted freeware player that is out of the question the best on Palm OS - TCPMP (The Core portable media player).

This player is very smart, for example if i play a file on my palm that has no slightest chance to be decoded in real time - like 640x480@1500kbps (remember, palm pilot devices are very limited) - it simply skips most or all b-frames, but STILL mainains full a/v sync and overall movie watch is pleasant. Even if it skips 25% of all frames - i don't even notice anything wrong.

Why isn't there such smart player for windoews (or linux)??
When i watch some movie, and there is some action (killing , running) - it usually freezes, and looses a/v sync, and I need to stop playback, and ff again.
This just kills me. windows is million time more advanced that palm os. WTF?

[iradic]

mplayer has "framedrop" setting...

−framedrop (also see −hardframedrop)

Skip displaying some frames to maintain A/V sync on slow systems. Video filters are not applied to such frames. For B-frames even decoding is skipped completely.

[gnr]

is there any decoder can decode xvid and drop frames to maintain a/v sync? or any version of ffdshow that has a drop frame option so that ppl wont need to change their favorite player just need to change the decoder.

[hellfred]

Did you compare mplayers performance under linux with mplayer on win32?
On my PIII 550 MHz with a nVidida TNT, the video and audio output slows down mplayer clearly on WinXP SP2, with nVidia driver provided by microsoft. When booting into Win98, where i have a driver from nVidia, the decoding speed increases, but it is still outperformed by mplayer on linux (debain with nVidia driver). I decode typical anime fansups with CPU-load of 20 to 25 % under linux, with 80 % under Win98 and, finally, with dropped frames under WinXP at 100% CPU-load.

Also, on win32, SSE is disabled, as mencoder produces artefacts when encoding.

From my point of view, optimizing mplayers performance should help you to encode and paly back MPEG 4 ASP with every desired resolution up to full PAL/NTSC resolutions.
Have a look at the mplayer documentation for setting up MTRR corecctly (sync is improved) http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/video.html
and play around with different video output driver (xv is the fastest for my card) and some mplayer parameters (-framdrop, -dr, -double, etc.)
See e.g. here (from 2003). (http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/747/)

Hellfred

[Mug Funky]

mplayer is fastest, but it destors colors

huh? in windows it uses Overlay Mixer... meaning it will give the same colours as any other media player that uses overlay (WMP, MPC, etc).

definitely the one to use for maximum speed. so long as framerates aren't too high you'll get very good playback and possibly no frame drops (what extra instructions do p2's have? MMX? iSSE?). just don't use postprocessing...