about quality

[himba]

i would like to know what affects movie that is played from stopping and not playing OK. I have several mobies on my HDD and if I try to play them I get very low performance and motion is not smooth. If I play naother movie everthing is OK, using the same settings for CPU quality, same player, same resolution.

Here are the properties for the movie that plays GREAT!!
640 x 272, 24 b, 129401 frames, 23.976 f/s., 131 KB/s, DIVXMPG4 V3

I it sufficient to encode all other movie at the bit rate, resolution like this one?

Any other suggestion?

Thank you!
himba

[Enchanter]

It depends on what CPU speed you have. Sub-500MHz systems seem to have difficulty playing divx files, esp. the high-resolution ones, which will certainly require more CPU processing power.

Another factor is bad frame. Encountering one during playback often leads to video freeze, which can only be solved by repairing the file or manually skipping the frame for the next one.

If the playback is slow, try lowering the filter (to zero, if needed). Also, you could try using WMP6.4 or the Playa for optimum performance.

[benderman]

Maybe it depends on your graphicscard. Some of them have problems with resolutions that are not a multiple of 16. Dose it only happen in Fullscreen mode? Write more about your system (graphic, cpu, player ...).

[himba]

system conf.

my system is
celeron 433, 64Mb ram, 40Gb HDD, ata 66

i know it is slow, but i watched some movies and they played super, while others just wont go smooth.... any kind fullscreen or window, using microDVD or WMP7.

So the problem must be in the movies!!!

encoding? the movie i watched was encoded by nandub...
others ?!? i don't know

[benderman]

WMP and MicroDVD are not really fast players. Better use Sasami 2000 or The Playa. On an old (?) 433celeron system nearly everything can cause weak playback. Often it is caused by a slow graphic-card or a sound-card that dosen't support 48kHz. I play divx-videos on a 300@337celeron with an good TNT2 and with sasami2000 or the playa it's fast enough for every divx with mp3.

[himba]

while we're here

ok, i will use playa! BUT I can't enable and display subttitles with the movie!!!!

I didn't find any resource that would help me, so that why i'm using microDVD mostly because it can display subtitles...

[Enchanter]

Sasami can display the .smil subtitles, if I remember correctly. You simply need SubConvert or SubSasami if the current subtitle file is not supported by Sasami.

By the way, the WMP I'm referring to is version 6.4, which is still faster and smoother than the bloated 7.x.

[himba]

video card, sound card

i have nVIDIA TNT2 series, 32 Mb ram and on-board audio device somekind of CMIxxxx
i also use 1024x768 screen, true color.

this should problably do it ?!

if not i used to send that not-smooth-working-movie through virtualdub and stripped some framed (frame decimation) and used divx low motion codec 3.11, then it worked somehow, but still it wasn't OK.

[Enchanter]

I don't think you should be stripping the frames off an otherwise perfectly working file (Hey! We're talking about your computer's performance, not a specific corrupted movie file, right?).

Try lowering your colour to 16-bit (High colour). Try playing the movie this time at half the size. Does it go faster?

[himba]

bad movie

what i was asking was:
I have some movies on my HDD. Some play ok, some don't. 'cause i'm not changing my computer for every movie, it must be that some movie is somehow corrupt (or something) 'cause it don't play smooth!

I will try lowering resolution and color depth, but on a video card with 32mb ?!??! sad...

So i was wondering what maker movie , like "not good", aparat from some that play perfect! Codec?, color depth?, player???

So we are actualy talking ybout movie, not computer... But if it helps that I lower resolution, OK, I will do it ...

Thankx for reply...
himba

[benderman]

Bad playback is often caused by an old soundcard or wrong sound-settings. Use a new soundcard or disable all sound-enhancements in the system settings.

[Enchanter]

Some poorly encoded files cause even sub-1GHz systems to stutter (unless you set the filter setting to 0, which will free up a lot of CPU resources). On a Celeron-433, it's guaranteed that you shouldn't be running any of the filters at all for optimum performance. Running the Desktop at 16-bit colour will improve speed too and the normal user rarely sees a difference between 16- and 32-bit.

What are the resolutions (and file sizes) of the movies that play badly, and those that play well on your system? It would help.

[himba]

ragarding filters & sizes

well

about filters... You think the ones that are accesible in WMP and MicroDVD via Properties->... (look at attached jpg file)

sizes:
----This one works Fuc*** OK even on fullscreen:
VIDEO:640 x 272, 24 b, 129401 slik, 23.976 slik/s., 131 KB/s, DIVXMPG4 V3
AUDIO:MPEG Layer-3,138 kBit/s, 44,100 Hz, Stereo
Encoded with nandub

----this one sucks:
VIDEO:640 x 352, 24 b, 102977 slik, 23.976 slik/s., 166 KB/s, DIVXMPG4 V3
AUDIO:MPEG Layer-3,159 kBit/s, 48,000 Hz, Stereo
Encoder unknown.

[benderman]

I still think it's about the audio. Maybe your soundcard (or player) has problems with 48kHz. Use Virtualdub to convert the audio to 44.1kHz mp3 and try again.