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Draneor · 2005-12-26, 18:56

I figured I’d run a few tests just for fun. First off, let me disclaim that I know absolutely nothing about encoding and very little about codecs. Since I’m an editor by trade, I'm hoping that an outsider’s perspective might be useful to this thread. Anyway, here are the specs for my system:

733 PIII, 512 Memory, and a Geforce4 MX 420 for my graphic’s card.
As for codecs, I use Haali Media Spliter (Oct 11) and Ffdshow (installed 11/04/2005).

After restarting my computer, I turned off everything except “explorer.exe.” In past experiments, I had yet to be able to play a h.264 encode. My hypothesis was that it would be no different with Froth-Bite’s Itsudatte My Santa. The following are my results:

VLC 0.8.2: I got a pink screen and audio. Within 8 seconds, the program crashed.
Mplayer (installed 8/02): Crashed upon loading.
MPC 6.4.8.5: It would play but the subtitles were 2 seconds (and gaining) behind the audio and video. 97% CPU usage.
VLC 0.8.4: The video would play normally—both windowed and full screened. It would crash when I attempted to fast-forward, but otherwise it worked fine. 75-90% CPU usage.

After resuming my normal, multitasking activities, I once again tried VLC 0.8.4 and I got the same result. Just to be evil, I attempted to send it to my television, which I use for a second monitor. Strangely enough, it worked. I say this is strange because most non-xvid encodes will not work.

In conclusion, I was able to successfully play a h.264 file on an old and slow system by switching to VLC 0.8.4. Disabling non-critical processes wasn’t even necessary for my computer to play the file. I don’t quite understand the reason, but I can only suspect that the new version uses less of my precious CPU.

2005-12-26, 18:56	Link #83
Draneor Aesop's Fox Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Washington, DC, USA Age: 41	I figured I’d run a few tests just for fun. First off, let me disclaim that I know absolutely nothing about encoding and very little about codecs. Since I’m an editor by trade, I'm hoping that an outsider’s perspective might be useful to this thread. Anyway, here are the specs for my system: 733 PIII, 512 Memory, and a Geforce4 MX 420 for my graphic’s card. As for codecs, I use Haali Media Spliter (Oct 11) and Ffdshow (installed 11/04/2005). After restarting my computer, I turned off everything except “explorer.exe.” In past experiments, I had yet to be able to play a h.264 encode. My hypothesis was that it would be no different with Froth-Bite’s Itsudatte My Santa. The following are my results: VLC 0.8.2: I got a pink screen and audio. Within 8 seconds, the program crashed. Mplayer (installed 8/02): Crashed upon loading. MPC 6.4.8.5: It would play but the subtitles were 2 seconds (and gaining) behind the audio and video. 97% CPU usage. VLC 0.8.4: The video would play normally—both windowed and full screened. It would crash when I attempted to fast-forward, but otherwise it worked fine. 75-90% CPU usage. After resuming my normal, multitasking activities, I once again tried VLC 0.8.4 and I got the same result. Just to be evil, I attempted to send it to my television, which I use for a second monitor. Strangely enough, it worked. I say this is strange because most non-xvid encodes will not work. In conclusion, I was able to successfully play a h.264 file on an old and slow system by switching to VLC 0.8.4. Disabling non-critical processes wasn’t even necessary for my computer to play the file. I don’t quite understand the reason, but I can only suspect that the new version uses less of my precious CPU. Last edited by Draneor; 2005-12-26 at 21:34.