x264 +HD Performance

[m0ng00se30]

I've had good luck watching HD, and dvds converted to x264 content on my sage box... streaming from my media server. I've recently tried to watch an x264 encoded HD movie, and get terrible performance from sage. Audio sounds alright, but video shows a frame about every 30 seconds.

*This same file plays great (never misses a frame) from the media server to media player classic on the same machine* So I have it narrowed down to Sage. I upgraded to the latest beta since I saw you could choose Dshow or Sageplayer for MPEG4 playback... thinking this would solve my issue.

Still seeing the same poor playback on this file. Regardless of "MPEG4 use dshow or sageplayer setting"

any ideas or people seeing the same thing?

Mike

[Taddeusz]

Unfortunately I don't believe the X2 3800 is powerful enough to playback full 1080p HD h.264 video. It may be able to do 720p but I'm not sure. I had problems playing 1080p on my X2 4200 so I can imagine it's even worse on there. 720p played fine on it.

I recently upgraded that box to an Intel Core 2 Duo E6550. It has made a world of difference in HD playback. 1080p h.264 is now smooth as silk never dropping a frame.

HD video from broadcast TV is MPEG2. Your converted DVD's are all well within the capability of your X2 3800.

To do HD h.264 you need more horsepower. Plain and simple. A video card that does significant h.264 offload would help out as well. Such as one of the new Radeons (with the exception of their top model).

[m0ng00se30]

well I would believe that same thing too but I can play the exact same file from same location without problems on the same box outside of sage. I watched the entire movie without a single skip or hestitation. So the file has no problem rendering on the box.

I'm not sure how it can be CPU issues when it plays fine on the box from MPC (with sage still running in toolbar), and looks like a slide show when played inside of Sage. Without sage being at least part of the culprit!

Am I some where misguided by my train of thought?

--Mike

I probably should have added this to my inital post, but I get the same skipping trying to run on my PC client using a E6600 and a ATI 1900XT. Another reason I don't believe that its totally the CPUs fault.

[HawgGuy]

Which decoder is sage using for your x264 stuff?

On my machine, using Cyberlink's h264 decoder and an ATI 2600 video card my CPU usage is only around 5% - so your CPU should be able to handle accelerated x264 playback.

[Taddeusz]

The problem you're experiencing may be due to the demuxer that SageTV uses. Sage uses a special demuxer so that it can deal with playing files that are simultaniously being recorded and played back at the same time.

Which version of SageTV are you using? If you're using the beta you can change whether Sage uses it's own program or a DirectX filter to decode h.264.

BTW, none of the cards you have do full h.264 acceleration. Not even the X1900 series.

[m0ng00se30]

Correct I was aware that it wasn't fully accelerated with the X1000 cards... I upgraded to the RC 6.2.7 (before my first post) to try the play MPEG4 with DSHOW or SAGEPLAYER setting and I'm getting the same result. I'm curious if the setting is really working because both settings seem to produce the same results.

I'll keep messing with it... maybe I can figure something out tonight!

Thanks

[sundansx]

Unfortunately I don't believe the X2 3800 is powerful enough to playback full 1080p HD h.264 video. It may be able to do 720p but I'm not sure. I had problems playing 1080p on my X2 4200 so I can imagine it's even worse on there. 720p played fine on it.

This is likely not true. I was able to play 1080p h.264 video using the CoreAVC codecs and the Haali/Matroska splitter in Zoomplayer on my AthlonXP 2800+/6600GT video. It was smooth but dropped a frame here or there with high motion, but overall was pretty good. 720p played back great. Note that this solution cannot play protected content like HDDVD, but then, neither can sage...

[toricred]

And I'm using the exact same processor and it works perfectly with HD h.264.