1080p60 H.264 is slow

[florinandrei]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+
GeForce 9600 GT
nVidia 257.21 driver
1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz
Windows XP
VLC-1.1.0

New HD camcorders are starting to use the 1080p60 format now, instead of the AVCHD-compliant 1080i60. An example is Panasonic HDC-TM700. I downloaded a file made with that camcorder and I tried to play it on my computer. It's very slow. VLC freezes at the first frame. Sound keeps playing, but video is frozen solid. Tried tweaking a bunch of parameters, hardware acceleration, everything - no change.

By contrast, on the same system, Media Player Classic Home Cinema can sort-of play that file, video seems slower and falls behind audio but at least there's motion.

The thing is, on the same system, I can play 1080i60 files (made with the Canon HF100 camcorder) without any problems. I can even enable deinterlacing. It's played very smooth, there are no hesitations, motion is very fluid.

If you have trouble finding a file made with the 1080p60 camcorder, here's one sample:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29966/1080p60/1 ... 080p60.mts

[LuxZg]

Just to add to this topic, exact same problem.

For more samples of TM700 (raw) videos you can visit http://hdcam.web-pda.info/

Here is my config as well:
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400, @3.2GHz
ATI HD4890 (Catalyst 10.6 vith Avivo, but same was with earlier versions as well)
1920x1080 display
Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit
VLC 1.1.0 (but other versions before it as well)

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

What are the bitrates of the samples?

[LuxZg]

What are the bitrates of the samples?

About 25Mbps average, with peaks up to .. 30 or so. I haven't said that it's "easy" material to play, but other players do it fine even in CPU-only mode (with 85-90% CPU time on my computer, but it works).

[LuxZg]

I just did what you described here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42328

Though options are changed now a little, so here it is for florinandrei and everyone else with the same problem:
- open VLC
- Tools -> Preferences
- Input & Codecs -> "Skip H.264 in-loop deblocking filter" -> set it to "All"
- Save
- restart VLC

or if you go to Advanced tree in Preferences, than:
- Input / Codecs -> FFmpeg -> "Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding" -> set it to "All"

Running much better now, but still skipping on some videos. Maybe this will be enough for others, and it certainly helped a lot to me.

I've also noticed another option in the Advanced settings tree, just above "Skip the loop.." called "Allow speed tricks". I've enabled it and few videos that stuttered without that option now play fine.
I'll need more testing, and playing all the videos, maybe few larger ones when I actually get the cam as well, but these two options made the 60p videos playable for me. Hope this helps others as well!

P.S. My CPU is E4400 @ 3.2GHz, and is running up to 70% load, which is best I've seen so far with any player without hardware decoding.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Well, indeed, VLC cannot decode this with your CPU...

[LuxZg]

Hopefully Cat 10.7 + VLC 1.1.1 will come to rescue Thanks!

[hazydave]

I see the same issues in VLC 1.1.0. But this is NOT a CPU performance issue. I'm running on 64-bit Windows 7, I have DVXA 2.0 enabled in VLC, a nVidia 8800GT GPU, Q9550 CPU. The CPU usage never gets much beyond 34%, but the playback is choppy as hell. The particular video at the moment is playing from a Firewire 800 RAID, but that's plenty fast enough for video.

When I run this video in plain, evil old Windows Media Player, using the MS AVC CODEC, I get perfect, TV-quality, glitch-free playback with 12% CPU. And worse yet, I can play one 1080/60p video in VLC, the other in WMP, and the WMP video is damn near perfect, while the VLC video is just as glitchy as before... but not noticably more-so.

I suspect there's something terribly inefficient in VLC's I/O routines... this isn't a CPU performance issue.

[LuxZg]

I've just read the fist post in that thread where I pointed to - but it says there that VLC is single-threaded, meaning that it's using just 1 core on your quad CPU. That's why you've got ~35% CPU load (25% is one core, rest are probably other unrelated processes). If this is still true, this is the reason for you as well. Try turning off the filters. And, ummm.. maybe try doing it in non-DXVA mode (CPU only)

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

VLC isn't single-threaded.
But most codecs are within VLC.

[LuxZg]

VLC isn't single-threaded.
But most codecs are within VLC.

Yeah, sorry, big difference technically, just not way too much difference to most of end users Thanks for correcting me

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Well, it can explain why you can peak at 35%, with one core peaking (25%) with one thread and other threads are on different cores (10%)

[hazydave]

I've just read the fist post in that thread where I pointed to - but it says there that VLC is single-threaded, meaning that it's using just 1 core on your quad CPU. That's why you've got ~35% CPU load (25% is one core, rest are probably other unrelated processes).

Nope. Before VLC, all cores are essential idle. Start VLC, and they all get busy. The load is not perfectly distributed, but no core is over 50%, even at peak.

And, ummm.. maybe try doing it in non-DXVA mode (CPU only)

No filters were enabled, and obviously, no software-deinterlacing for 60p video. Non-DXVA mode is a complete fail... it's just as bad as the older versions of VLC, which didn't even come close to working. Even in the non-accelerated case, though, VLC couldn't keep the CPUs fully fed... it typically jumped around between 60% and 80% CPU, jerky as hell. This indicates a fundamental flaw in VLC that's not directly related to the CPU/GPU processing. I've seen a few players that fail on slower machines (a well designed player can actually play 1080/60p on the Q9550 machine, though it's taking most of the CPU to do so), but they're always failing due to CPU resources... CPUs pegged at 100% or damn near, and they player can't keep up.

This is something different.

[LuxZg]

Just wanted to say that it seems to be getting worse with v1.1.2 .. Both in software mode and GPU mode (with newest Catalyst on HD4890 card). Too bad, I was looking forward to those updates

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Just wanted to say that it seems to be getting worse with v1.1.2 .. Both in software mode and GPU mode (with newest Catalyst on HD4890 card). Too bad, I was looking forward to those updates

THis isn't normal. Share the logs.

[LuxZg]

Just wanted to say that it seems to be getting worse with v1.1.2 .. Both in software mode and GPU mode (with newest Catalyst on HD4890 card). Too bad, I was looking forward to those updates

THis isn't normal. Share the logs.

Yeah, about the logs... I had no success getting the *.log file to fill earlier with 1.1.0 .. but I'll try again tomorrow. I just won't have time today.

[Steupz]

Just downloaded one of the cam files and it stutters on VLC but plays perfectly on WMP

I have the last VLC nightly build on an ATI 4200 (old drivers; 10.7 didn't work for me)

[LuxZg]

Just wanted to say that it seems to be getting worse with v1.1.2 .. Both in software mode and GPU mode (with newest Catalyst on HD4890 card). Too bad, I was looking forward to those updates

THis isn't normal. Share the logs.

Yeah, about the logs... I had no success getting the *.log file to fill earlier with 1.1.0 .. but I'll try again tomorrow. I just won't have time today.

Sorry.. I'm obviously stupid. I turn on VLC. Go to preferences, to advanced, and to logging.. I set up a txt file on desktop, and pick it for logging. Preference is saved as it's there if I turn on/off aplication several times. Tried running as admin. Just can't get the damn log file to appear. I tried creating file manually, tried without file expecting that app will create it. I'm out of ideas.

Win 7 64bit enterprise.. if anyone had such case pls give me advice, so I can continue troubleshooting playback of 60p files.