Slow transcoding on AMD cpu

[siddler]

I have an AMD XP 2000+ and P4 2Ghz (400mhz fsb)

When Im trying to trancode a video file in realtime over mmsh I can go for 2000kbit qaulity with the p4 machine smooth as silk
however with the amd machine I cant go over 150kbit before it hangs and stutter

Im using div3 for video. No audio at all since I have no need to further compress it.

is it only me who has this problem?

[markfm]

Using 0.8.1? There were some significant AMD issues with earlier VLC, I thought they were at least mostly OK now.

[siddler]

yep Im using the latest one, are there any older version which is faster?

[markfm]

There are nightly builds, you could try either a newer one or an older one.
http://vthr.via.ecp.fr/~videolan/build/win32/

Just unzip whatever you download into the existing VLC directory space (c:\program files\videolan\vlc), let it overwrite the existing files/directories.

You migth try changing the CPU optimizations, under Settings -- Preferences -- General -- CPU. Check "Advanced options" and I believe you'll see a bunch of optimizations (MMX, SSE, SSE2,...). You might try turning them off 1 by 1, do a Save, close and restart VLC, see if it improves things.

(I use Intel processors -- the AMDs are "close to" the Pentiums, but there are actual differences, and VLC does buckets of matrix math, the kind of thing that is likely to show up these differences)

[siddler]

Okey, Ive spent this evening trying to mess with a lot of what you've said and other settings too

however nothing did really improve the speed

I dont know if there are more peeps here using AMD that can share the same experience.

Could it be the encoders VLC uses which is not optimized right for AMD?
It would be great if I could at least stream video with 512kbit

[siddler]

just to add some more info
video is still choppy when its not even loading 100% from the cpu
to get a smooth stream I need to use lower than 50% cpu

I dont quite get this because with pcmark4 I could encode video at 29fps
the intel system scored 31fps there

[markfm]

Overall, targeting undedr 50% CPU to get smooth results sounds "reasonable" -- remember that Windows is doing task switching, offering other processes a chance to do things if even if they don't need to.

You can try kicking up VLC's priority, Settings -- Preferences -- General -- CPU, I believe, a switch (checkbox). This will change VLC from Normal to Abovce Normal priority in Windows. Otherwise, you can kick the priority up even higher via Task Manager in Windows -- go to the processes tab, right click VLC, select Set Priority. I would NOT suggest you go all the way to the two highest settings.

Just for comparison:
Source = DVD that's locally stored on my disk, previously encoded at 1 Mbps video, 192K audio, 2 channel, 720x480 resolution.
Transcoding to 1 Mbps MP4V, 128K mpga 2 channel, UDP multicast stream.

Processor load = 30 - 40% on an Intel P4 2.4 GHz., Win XP Home Edition. I find that reasonable (a subjective term, absolutely)