[mythtv-users] Need help with playing H.264 videos

[Travis Tabbal]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 7:03 PM, Marc Barrett <mnealbarrett at cox.net> wrote:

> I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 530, with a 2.2Mhz
> core 2 duo.  I downloaded the test videos from the mythtv
> web page on the HD-PVR (the ones called 13.5.mpg and
> 10.mpg).  I was surprised that my system can't play them.
> I expected a 2.2Mhz core 2 duo to be able to do it.
>


As mentioned, that CPU is too slow. And it's Ghz, not Mhz. :)

h264 from an HD-PVR can only use 1 core. The way the video is created
doesn't allow the multithreading capabilities of the player software to be
used. So you have a single core 2.2Ghz machine now as far as playing back
those files is concerned. Even 3Ghz C2Ds have problems with those files in
some cases.

You can buy a monster CPU, or a VDPAU capable video card. The RAM is plenty
fast. If you go with VDPAU, I would suggest the .21-fixes branch that
Jean-Yves has been maintaining. They are quite stable for me in my
production Myth system. You can always remove them and go back if you wish.
So for $40 and some beta software you can get a video card that can get you
running now. I'm using an onboard 8300 chipset and a PCIe 9800GT and they
both work fine. I don't think the 9800 can do VC-1, but that's not that
important to me right now (and I had it sitting around, so why not use it?).
It does, however, work quite well with the advanced deinterlacers. Which is
very helpfull for my 60" when playing 1080i recordings. I'm still fooling
with options, but I'm quite happy with the current results. Jean-Yves
deserves major kudos for providing his "branch" for now untill .22 is
available.

My X2 3800+ CPU is running <10% now when playing back video that it couldn't
play with CPU alone at all before. Amazing stuff.

For CPU only decode, get as fast a CPU as you can find. Dual core is more
than enough cores, a 3 or 4 won't help you at all. And no promisses there
either.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20090212/2c4f84d8/attachment.htm>