HD Playback Reports

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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 h264 / ts 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