Re: [OT] Minimum CPU speed for playing DIVX avis?
On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, Viktor Rosenfeld wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I got mplayer (http://mplayer.sourceforge.net) working very nicely, only
> that CPU utilization is constantly at 100% (~ 92% user, 8% system) and
> sound is very broken after 10 seconds playing. The video is fine
> though.
>
> I have a 333MHz Celeron with MMX, use X 3.3.6 from woody, and have a
> very shitty 4MB PCI graphic card.
Don't worry about your processor, it's fast enough for an 810kbps
DivX. Here's what you should do:
* Upgrade to XFree 4
This is the most important item: get Xv support!
* Check that your sound card is not causing you trouble.
I have a P3-600 (with no Xv support unfortunately), but even
when the CPU load is <20% the video is choppy. If I use the '-nosound'
option the choppyness disappears.
* If the above is not enough upgrade your graphics card. Choose a
graphics card that hits it well in Xv mode with XFree, i.e. the graphics
card can do YUV transformation and scaling and whatever else, and all
this is supported by XFree. I have no idea which ones do.
* Finally upgrade your processor if all else failed but you probably
won't get to that unless you play videos with much higher bit rates.
Here's some numbers to 'prove' my claims. A friend of mine
introduced me to mplayer. Our test DivX is a 729kbps 592x288 24bpp
25.01 fps movie.
On his box, a K6-2 233MHz with an ATI Rage, it plays in fullscreen
(-fs) (1280x1024x24) with slightly less than 50% CPU utilization (35%
mplayer, 10% XFree). Scaling had almost no effect on the CPU usage.
On my PII 333MHz with a Permedia2 graphics card (1600x1200x16) and
XFree 3.3.6 (no Xv) it would not play without skipping regularly. With
XFree 4 in x11/shm mode it's better but CPU gives: 50% mplayer and 30%
XFree.
Now, with xv it's much better: 45-50% mplayer and 20% XFree. And with
-xy 2 scaling it's just XFree that takes more CPU, about 35%.
So eventhough I have a faster CPU I just cannot play movies like on
his box. Probably it's possible to make up for the graphics card by
going to a much faster processor but it does not seem like a good
solution.
(If you have an ATI card, look for project Gatos, I'm told they have
XFree drivers for all ATI graphics cards)
--
Francois Gouget fgouget@free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/
In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they're different.
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