HD Playback Reports

Playback of HD content - User Reports

This page is for playback reports regarding High Definition Content. This page will serve as a resource for users in selecting hardware for their MythTV systems.

h.264 samples of various resolutions that are often difficult to play can be found at http://x264.nl/h.264.samples/. Find the file that is most taxing to play while still playing smoothly and run the script on this page with it.

To remove all filtering and turn on any available multithreaded playback, use the following mplayer line:

mplayer -fs -zoom -quiet -vo xv -monitoraspect 16:9 -lavdopts threads=2:fast:skiploopfilter=all -sws 0 %s

How to produce information for this page

Paste the following into a file (eg, hdplayback.sh), chmod +x the file, and run it on a file known to play back perfectly on a given system (eg, ./hdplayback.sh moviefile.mkv). It will produce an output file called hdreport.txt. hdreport.txt is in wiki format. Edit this page, find the most suitable position in the table to place the data (by CPU spec), and paste the output there. Edit the "Comments" section to share any special command line needed to get the program to play smoothly.

This script requires ffmpeg to run properly. For Matroska files, mkvtoolnix is also required. Some types of files do not report accurate information. Check the output for missing fields and fill in as necessary.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Script to generate wiki formatted HD Playback report.  Only
# run this on files that play back smoothly!
#

CPUNAME=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "model name" | sed -e 's/model name\t: //' | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/\t/ /'`
CPUMHZ=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu MHz" | sed -e 's/cpu MHz//' | sed 's/ *//g' | sed 's/\t*://' | head -n 1`
MEMTOTAL=`cat /proc/meminfo |grep MemTotal | sed 's/MemTotal//' | sed 's/ *//g' | sed 's/\t*://' | head -n 1`
KERNEL=`uname -r`
COMMENTS="No Comments."
RESOLUTION=`ffmpeg -i "$1" 2>&1 | grep Video | head -n 1 | awk '{ print $6 }' | sed -e 's/,//'`
FORMAT=`ffmpeg -i "$1" 2>&1 | grep Video | head -n 1 | awk '{ print $4 }' | sed -e 's/,//'`
BITRATE=`ffmpeg -i "$1" 2>&1 | grep bitrate: | awk '{ print $6 }'`
EXTENSION=`basename "$1" | awk -F . '{print $NF}'`
if [ $EXTENSION="mkv" ] 
	then
	MKVSECONDS=`mkvinfo $1 | grep Duration | awk '{ print $4}' | sed 's/s//' | awk -F . '{ print $1 }'`
	MKVSIZE=`mkvinfo "$1" | grep Segment, | awk '{ print $4}'` 
	MKVBITRATE="$[ ( ($MKVSIZE * 8) / ($MKVSECONDS ) / 1000 ) ]"
	BITRATE=$MKVBITRATE
elif [ $EXTENSION="MKV" ] 
	then
        MKVSECONDS=`mkvinfo $1 | grep Duration | awk '{ print $4}' | sed 's/s//' | awk -F . '{ print $1 }'`
        MKVSIZE=`mkvinfo "$1" | grep Segment, | awk '{ print $4}'`
        MKVBITRATE="$[ ( ($MKVSIZE * 8) / ($MKVSECONDS ) / 1000 ) ]"
        BITRATE=$MKVBITRATE

fi
echo -n "Player used to watch video? (Mplayer, Xine, Internal, Other): "
read PLAYER

echo "|-" >> hdreport.txt
echo "| $CPUNAME || $CPUMHZ MHz || $MEMTOTAL || $KERNEL || $FORMAT / $EXTENSION || $RESOLUTION || $BITRATE kb/s || $COMMENTS || $PLAYER" >> hdreport.txt
echo "|-" >> hdreport.txt

echo "Thank you!  Please paste the following into the wiki page at: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php?title=HD_Playback_Reports"
cat hdreport.txt

User Reported Data

Processor Type	Processor Speed	Memory Total	Kernel	Video Codec / Container	Resolution	Bitrate	Comments	Media Player
Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz	2400.000 MHz	4050584kB	2.6.22-14-generic	h264 / m2ts	1920x1080	32469 kb/s	Blu-ray rip of "Casino Royale."	mplayer
Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz	2400.000 MHz	4050584kB	2.6.22-14-generic	mpeg2video / mpg	1920x1080	12403 kb/s	1080i Television Playback.	Internal
Intel Core2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz	2200.000 MHz	3096672kB	2.6.22-14-generic	vc1 / EVO	1920x1080	20546 kb/s	BBC Planet Earth.	mplayer
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz	3400.000 MHz	1035540kB	2.6.20-16-generic	h264 / mkv	1920x800	10112 kb/s	Transformers Blu-ray transcode.	mplayer
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+	2600.000 MHz	1002048kB	2.6.22-14-generic	h264 / mkv	1280x688	N/A kb/s	Skipping forward / backward is difficult because Internal player is unable to properly parse MKV.	Internal
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+	2200.000 MHz	1035636kB	2.6.22-14-generic	h264 / mkv	1280x720	N/A kb/s	Episode of Journeyman	mplayer