Need CPU/MB that's good with High Def/TS streams

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Viperoni
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Need CPU/MB that's good with High Def/TS streams

Post by Viperoni » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:34 am

Currently my Mobile 2500, even when overclocked to 2.4ghz (200x12) with 1gb of ram @ 400, and a Radeon 9600 NP or a Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb couldn't play HD streams smoothly. I'd always get choppiness even @ 2.4ghz.

My friends P4 3.06 (533fsb) played them flawlessly, even though my CPU should have outclassed the P4.

I do a bit of movie compressing from stuff I vidcap, and I need the ability to playback pretty much any HD stream smoothly. Biggest one I have right now is a 5gb clip that's ~11minutes long. Stunning quality, but choppy as heck on my rig.


As I understand, AMD64's with their onboard memory controller have pretty good memory bandwidth, but they're still a good bit slower in raw MHZ than P4's...


So my question is: out of the new CPU's and chipset's, which would be best for my usage?

Thanks guys :)

P.S. whatever I chose, it'll be able to take the ThermalRight XP120, which'll be used with my SilenX 120mm :D

yeha
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Post by yeha » Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:22 am

which playback options have you tried? a player based on libmpeg2 would be your best bet - give the videolan client a try (www.videolan.org).

failing that, both the graphics cards you mention should support hardware decoding features like idct and motion compensation - you just have to find a player that's able to use them. give the old favorites a try - windvd, powerdvd, etc. and you might get lucky.

i'm pretty sure a 2.4ghz k7 has enough horsepower to decode a hd bitstream in realtime, given the right program.

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:25 am

My 2400+ Athlon XP (2.0GHz) appears to be able to play 720p WMV-HD streams.

When my video card comes in tonight, I should be able to record HD streams and we'll see if I can play them back or not.

Viperoni
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Post by Viperoni » Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:31 pm

I tried both PowerDVD XP and WMP10, both skipped.
All 1080i clips would skip, some 720p's wouldn't skip though.


I just tried the VideoLan player, and it's great! :D
No more skipping!

On this one, 1080i clip, bout 10 minutes long and 1.5gb, it's averaging 95% CPU utilization, but no skips :)

Thanks a bunch guys, now I can stretch my upgrade for another little while :)


Do you guys know of any simple programs that can split or combine .ts's?

yeha
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Post by yeha » Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:58 pm

you can try NullPacketStripper for merging .ts streams, not sure about splitting them.

for actually editing them, you could try HDTVtoMPEG2, which can convert the .ts streams into mpeg2 ps (vob i suppose), which can then be edited with standard vob/mpeg2 tools.

this forum may be helpful.

shigaloo
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Post by shigaloo » Fri Mar 18, 2005 2:21 pm

yeha wrote:you can try NullPacketStripper for merging .ts streams, not sure about splitting them.

for actually editing them, you could try HDTVtoMPEG2, which can convert the .ts streams into mpeg2 ps (vob i suppose), which can then be edited with standard vob/mpeg2 tools.

this forum may be helpful.

hdtv2mpeg2 works great for merging .ts streams but dont convert them to mpg just output to one large .ts

some more playback options:

zoomplayer w/ sasem hdtv decoder's use very little cpu (but maybe not the best quality)

nvidia's decoders are pretty efficient (thats what i use)

i have shuttle mn31n with a barton 2600, using the onboard nvidia video last time i checked it decodes all .ts stream well, not overclocked at all - its not my htpc so i dont use it for playback much

mrk22
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Post by mrk22 » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:42 am

I have a P4 @ 2.1GHz. Previously I had problems playing 720p and 1080i mpeg2 clips, but since I've got PureVideo working on my 6600GT with the latest drivers and the NVidia DVD Decoder, those clips play fine.

For xvid at HD resolutions, I was able to obtain smooth playback by switching from the xvid decoder to an SSE2 optimized version of ffdshow.

Beyonder
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Re: Need CPU/MB that's good with High Def/TS streams

Post by Beyonder » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:24 pm

Viperoni wrote:Currently my Mobile 2500, even when overclocked to 2.4ghz (200x12) with 1gb of ram @ 400, and a Radeon 9600 NP or a Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb couldn't play HD streams smoothly. I'd always get choppiness even @ 2.4ghz.

My friends P4 3.06 (533fsb) played them flawlessly, even though my CPU should have outclassed the P4.
Sadly, when it comes to video decoding, the Athlon XP is outclassed by a hyperthreaded P4.

When comparing to an Athlon 64, things are a little more peachy, but the older XPs just don't cut it for video encoding/decoding.
I do a bit of movie compressing from stuff I vidcap, and I need the ability to playback pretty much any HD stream smoothly. Biggest one I have right now is a 5gb clip that's ~11minutes long. Stunning quality, but choppy as heck on my rig.

As I understand, AMD64's with their onboard memory controller have pretty good memory bandwidth, but they're still a good bit slower in raw MHZ than P4's...

So my question is: out of the new CPU's and chipset's, which would be best for my usage?
That's a tough one. In regards to encoding and decoding performance, the P4 is really the best architecture out there, followed by the Athlon 64. However, the Athlon 64 is obviously the easier of the two to cool, given that one could cook an egg on a Prescott.

I'd probably go with an Athlon 64, just because I know you can watch WMV-HD without a problem on it (assuming you have a decent video card), and all in all it's a better performer.

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