HD Playback Reports
Contents
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/bash
#
# 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 $NF}' | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z'`
if [ "$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
}
else echo "Not a Matroska File, continuing."
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
Intel Processors
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 | mpeg2video / m2ts | 1920x1080 | 44332 kb/s | "Click" Blu-ray. | Mplayer |
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 E6750 @ 2.66GHz | 1998.000 MHz | 2066344kB | 2.6.22-14-generic | h264 / mov | 1920x1072 | 9688 kb/s | BBC Blue Earth trailer from Apple | Mplayer |
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 Core2 Duo E4400 @ 2.00GHz | 2000.060 MHz | 1035496kB | 2.6.21-ARCH | x264 / mkv | 1280x720 | 6108 kb/s | Planet Earth rip. ~30-40% average of one core, single threaded. Spiked only once on really complex scene. 1080p MPEG2/WMV works perfectly. | 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 HD-DVD transcode. | mplayer |
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz | 2800.207 MHz | 1554420kB | 2.6.23-ARCH | h264 / mkv | 1280x720 | 7249 kb/s | The Invasion Blu-Ray downsampled to 720p plays good...1080p skips and jumps | gmplayer |
Intel Core2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz | 2133.408 MHz | 2051164kB | 2.6.22-14-generic | 1280x720 | 6357 kb/s | No Comments. | vlc |
AMD Processors
Processor Type | Processor Speed | Memory Total | Kernel | Video Codec / Container | Resolution | Bitrate | Comments | Media Player |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AMD Athlon(tm) X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2400 | 2300.000 MHz | 1814208kB | 2.6.23.12 | h264 / ts | 1920x1088 | 19517 kb/s | premiere-paff.ts from http://x264.nl/h.264.samples/?dir=./ | 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 | 3639 kb/s | Episode of Journeyman | mplayer |
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ | 1000.000 MHz | 1002196kB | 2.6.20-16-generic | h264 / ts | 1440x1080 | 17617 kb/s | Transport stream recorded from BBC HD, DVB-S | mplayer |