How to get better performance when playing HD H.264

[Alexsource]

Hi,

First thanks for developing this software, it's really a good solution for a all-in-one player.

Then, the trouble...

I'm trying to play a 1080p video that seem to be encoded with AVC1 codec.

My hardware configuration is "Core 2 Duo E8400" but running at 4Ghz, and with 4GB RAM.

The task manager says that CPU resources required for playing the video are around 20 an 30 percent (take a look on the screenshot).

But video still have some periodic latency when I play it.
I've tried your "trick" but I think it is just to "relax" the system in order to unload it from to much work (with this high bitrate), and of course, it doesn't work.


Do you have any idea to fix this "issue" ?

EDIT : Played on WMP (Windows Media Player) with Haali codec and AC3filter 1.60b, there is no lag.

This sounds similar to my problem -> viewtopic.php?f=14&t=59824
Do you get video freezes with audio still running and "main warning: late picture skipped " in the messages window? (verbosity set to 2)

[Lotesdelere]

I'm trying to play a 1080p video that seem to be encoded with AVC1 codec.
My hardware configuration is "Core 2 Duo E8400" but running at 4Ghz, and with 4GB RAM.

Please post a sample of the video.
Use DGsplit and read here how to do it:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=57724&p=193335#p193335

[Lotesdelere]

Will my old cpu (Pentium D 2.8ghz duel core) in my dell xps 400 work with my new computer?

I'm afraid this CPU will be a bit short for some 1080p videos. It should be OK for 720p though.
But nowadays you need at the very least a Core2Duo at 2.6 GHz to be able to play 1080p smoothly in software mode. And also a good motherboard

[highstrung667]

Hello,

I am having the same issue with stuttering and sometimes freezing of images. The strange thing is though that on exectly the same system the movie plays out smoothly using Zoom player. Don't they use the same codecs or what can be the difference. Can somebody help me understand?

[kurkosdr]

Just do something about the multicore support, at least for H.264 vids only. You can always provide help to the ffmpeg team, so the codecs become threaded. If you are the devs that bought us x264, you could make an exellent threaded decoder if you cooperated with the ffmpeg team. After all, ffmpeg-mt is almost done.

It may look trivial, but i ve seen fairly powerfull pcs with core 2 duos been brought to their knees due to the single threaded codecs, while other threaded apps cope with less powerfull systems fairly well. Now that HD videos in open source formats like mkv's are everywhere, we need vlc to be able to handle them.

GPU decoding with openCL is also good, but people with multicores are much more, plus it's almost done project. What is preventing ffmpeg-mt going into vlc? i really hope to see threaded codecs on vlc someday soon.

[hallelujahtalon]

Will my old cpu (Pentium D 2.8ghz duel core) in my dell xps 400 work with my new computer?

I'm afraid this CPU will be a bit short for some 1080p videos. It should be OK for 720p though.
But nowadays you need at the very least a Core2Duo at 2.6 GHz to be able to play 1080p smoothly in software mode. And also a good motherboard

Thanks for your info. How about vram? How much I need to paly 1080p?

Thanks again

[kurkosdr]

Will my old cpu (Pentium D 2.8ghz duel core) in my dell xps 400 work with my new computer?

I'm afraid this CPU will be a bit short for some 1080p videos. It should be OK for 720p though.
But nowadays you need at the very least a Core2Duo at 2.6 GHz to be able to play 1080p smoothly in software mode. And also a good motherboard

So, why not make VLC's codecs multicore, so than even the old Pentium D can handle 1080p. The reason you need Core2Duo at 2.6 GHz is because only the one core is actually in use by VLC. I have seen other software perform fine in lower spec computers, because they are multicore.

We want multicore in VLC!

[lzrs21lz]

Same probs here. 1080p freezing/ unable to watch. Do something please ! It's a shame for such a great player to lag behind others

[napx]

I agree ffmpeg-mt will be VLC's performance salvation. IMHO It is even more straightforward for the user than trying to activate DXVA.
For example I have a 8400M GS and it is supposed to be able to do DXVA, but I've had no luck with other players that support that. On the other hand I am getting great results on 1080P from ffmpeg-mt through MPC-HC & ffdshow combination because I have a dual core CPU.
However I would like to have all that performance with VLC's excellent features.
Can we get ffmpeg-mt into VLC PLEASE ?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You will ffmpeg-mt into VLC when ffmpeg-mt gets into ffmpeg?

VLC cannot have two different ffmpeg's.

[kurkosdr]

...Thats UNLTIL multicore support appears on H264 decoder

And... 2 years later, we are still in the dark about that issue.

I don't expect VLC's codecs to go multicore the next day, but a nice briefing about what needs to be done ("where are we now?") and when to expect it to come would be nice.

[napx]

It looks like it basically boils down to waiting for the relevant ffmpeg release (current version is 0.5 released on 2009-03-10).
However their plans for the next version says nothing about what happens to ffmpeg-mt or multithread... http://ffmpeg.org/changelog.html
And then we would need a new VLC release after that.
Looks like a long wait... A pity because this is pretty much THE MOST NEEDED improvement...

[kurkosdr]

It looks like it basically boils down to waiting for the relevant ffmpeg release (current version is 0.5 released on 2009-03-10).
However their plans for the next version says nothing about what happens to ffmpeg-mt or multithread... http://ffmpeg.org/changelog.html
And then we would need a new VLC release after that.
Looks like a long wait... A pity because this is pretty much THE MOST NEEDED improvement...

And why is it so goddamn difficult for the videolan team to compile the next version of VLC with ffmpeg-mt instead of ffmpeg?

Don't believe the fud people are saying on other forums, ffmpeg-mt is bug free. The guys at Mplayer have been using it for months, and with all the people using mplayer, no complaints where heard.

I 'll even go as far as to drop the idea of someone compiling VLC with ffmpeg-mt and make a fork if videolan's weird obsession with plain (non mt) ffmpeg continues...

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

It looks like it basically boils down to waiting for the relevant ffmpeg release (current version is 0.5 released on 2009-03-10).
However their plans for the next version says nothing about what happens to ffmpeg-mt or multithread... http://ffmpeg.org/changelog.html
And then we would need a new VLC release after that.
Looks like a long wait... A pity because this is pretty much THE MOST NEEDED improvement...

And why is it so goddamn difficult for the videolan team to compile the next version of VLC with ffmpeg-mt instead of ffmpeg?

Don't believe the fud people are saying on other forums, ffmpeg-mt is bug free. The guys at Mplayer have been using it for months, and with all the people using mplayer, no complaints where heard.

I 'll even go as far as to drop the idea of someone compiling VLC with ffmpeg-mt and make a fork if videolan's weird obsession with plain (non mt) ffmpeg continues...

Patches for VLC and FFmpeg-mt already exist, but it is NOT bug-free. It has many timestamps problem.

[kurkosdr]

Patches for VLC and FFmpeg-mt already exist, but it is NOT bug-free. It has many timestamps problem.

And the timestamps problem is an ffmpeg-mt bug (aka ffmpeg-mt's problem) or a VLC-specific problem?

If it is VLC's problem, why isn't there a bug for that defect in trac?

[shrikant.tillu]

why in AVIDumux H264 file is not properly played? Also it ask whether' indexing ' is required when H264 file is to be imported.The playback and audio mismatches when replayed the H264 file imported in safe mode.Or let me know whether H264 format not supported by AVIdemux.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Patches for VLC and FFmpeg-mt already exist, but it is NOT bug-free. It has many timestamps problem.

And the timestamps problem is an ffmpeg-mt bug (aka ffmpeg-mt's problem) or a VLC-specific problem?

If it is VLC's problem, why isn't there a bug for that defect in trac?

ffmpeg-mt regression compared to ffmpeg.

[kurkosdr]

ffmpeg-mt regression compared to ffmpeg.

One moe question: Which of the one is true: a) that the regression also appears in other players, like Mplayer? or b) the regression appears only in VLC? If it's the first, then kudos for the videolan team for keeping it safe.

[moviemaniac]

Could anyone tell me how to enable ffmpeg-multithread-decoding in VLC?

Is it enough to build vlc against ffmpeg-mt or do I have to hack something (if so, what?)
I'd love to test this to keep track of ffmpeg-mt's progress.

thanks!

[kurkosdr]

Could anyone tell me how to enable ffmpeg-multithread-decoding in VLC?

Is it enough to build vlc against ffmpeg-mt or do I have to hack something (if so, what?)
I'd love to test this to keep track of ffmpeg-mt's progress.

thanks!

Agreed, a handy guide on how to compile VLC with ffmpeg-mt would be nice for people like me that don't bother risking.

Can someone just compile VLC with ffmpeg-mt, or we have to change something?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You have to patch both.

[jocamero]

You have to patch both.

Are there any instructions on how to accomplish this?

[kurkosdr]

You have to patch both.

Are there any instructions on how to accomplish this?

From j-b's sayings, I suppose you can't just click on a checkbox or add a flag to the compiler and magically make VLC compile with ffmpeg-mt instead of ffmpeg. You may need to do some actual programing to make VLC and ffmpeg-mt bond together. Is that correct?

Anyway, I still can't understand how the guys at Mplayer delivered their player with ffmpeg-mt, since ffmpeg-mt has regressions on H.264 playback. I guess bundling bleeding edge stuff in consumer-oriented packages is the way linux rolls.

PS: Does the 1.0.5 version add any speed to H.264 playback? People say it's faster than 1.0.3 (how much faster?)

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

PS: Does the 1.0.5 version add any speed to H.264 playback? People say it's faster than 1.0.3 (how much faster?)

Yes. Between 5% and 20% faster depending on the sample.

[mrbeanz]

I wanted to simply voice my support for making multithreading the top priority for the VLC Player.

Simply put, when a high definition video reaches a high enough bitrate, a single core simply cannot handle the load. It's not so much that 1080p is a problem, it's when a video is encoded at a high enough bitrate that multithreading becomes a necessity.

I have some clips available which make for a perfect example.

http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/x264clips/

lowbitrate*.mkv is obviously a low bit rate video file.
ironman.mkv and vforvendetta.mkv are 720p files and should be playable on a single core smoothly on any recent CPU.

However, BigBuckBunny.mkv and PlanetEarthBirds.mkv make for a very interesting comparison. They are both in 1080p, however due to the scenes in the videos, they end up being VERY different.

BigBuckBunny ends up being able to stay at a relatively low bitrate, usually peaking around 5kbps to 6kbps. On my dual core laptop, this doesn't push the single core in use by VLC to 100%, of course the other core is completely idle at 0%.

PlanetEarthBirds is an entirely different story. Due to the detail of the scenes being represented, this video pushes EXTREMELY high bitrates. I see bitrates upwards of 20kpbs at times while playing this video, and obviously this completely pegs the single core that VLC will use and the video ends up being very choppy and unwatchable.

Actually, as I type this, and watching this high bitrate video, I am noticing that task manager states that VLC is using sometimes around 60% of the CPU. This means it must be using multithreading to a very minor degree, however it is obviously not enough.

I can play this same video in Media Player Classic, or heck, even Windows Media Player. With full multithreading support, this video plays back perfectly smooth.

I just wanted to bring this to the developers attention along with sample videos for them to test against. These are not my videos by the way, but make for great samples.