System too slow for Playback?

[weaker]

Hi there,

I often have Problems playing DivX movies on my PC. Every player (except The Playa and MiniPlayer) plays a few seconds smoothly then locks up for a moment to go on playing smoothly for a few seconds (and so on).

Using The Playa I get a continuous playback, but with lower framerate than in the smooth parts mentioned above.

With MiniPlayer I can watch them (in 640x480 at nothing more than an acceptable framerate)

My main fear is, that my PC has too little power for playing back DivX movies.

The PC is

AMD K6/2 450 @83MHz FSB
ASUS TX97-XE
160MB RAM
MatroxMilleniumII 8MB
VoodooII 12MB
AWE64gold PnP ISA
AWE32 Pnp ISA
AHA-2940UW
Running Win98SE and Win2000SP2 both with DX8.1

I heared that PII300 Power is enough for Playing back DivX but I cannot believe this anymore.

Any Suggestions, what I can do (except buying a new PC) to speed up DivX playback? Of course I use all the latest drivers/BIOSes/firmwares available.

Is the ISA Soundsystem preventing me from having good playback?

Is it possible (and does it make sense) to use the VoodooII Card for playback?

Thanks

weaker

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Failure isn't an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft Product.

[setarip]

Try lowering your DESKTOP resolution to 800x600. You can also try lowering the DESKTOP color depth to 256 colors.

[Enchanter]

Your system, old and slow by current standard, is not that entirely incapable of playing DivX files. However, you're limited to being able to comfortably play low-resolution video files only, eg. 320x240. If you attempt to play high-resolution files, eg. 640x480, which a lot of movies, I'm afraid, nowadays are, your system will be begging for the torture to end really.

A Voodoo card is only useful for playing 3D games and have no effect whatsoever on DivX decoding. As for your ISA soundcard, if it's already working properly, then don't do anything to make it not work ultimately. As far as I know, the CPU is the main factor in DivX decoding. RAM plays an important factor too, though not as much as the CPU, but you have enough RAM already.

You may try overclocking the system though...

[benderman]

AMD-cpus are not so good for DivX-playback as intels, so 450MHz might bi a bit low. Try using the sasami2K-player, set desktop-resolution to 640x480x16bit, disable all quality-enhancments of the codec/player.

[Batman]

in the properties reduce the quality of the divx to the minimum. (in divx 4 its called something like post-processing level) Try GDIVX and Yeahplayer they are not as cpu-intensive. Change color to 16-bit. I read somewhere that divx needs at least 8 bit to work. Reduce the desktop area to the very minimum like 640x320.

[weaker]

Hi there,

Thank you for your tips. I will try out the mentioned Players soon (when exams are over).

Of course I lowered the desktop resolution. This is what I meant with 640x480.
Reducing the colour depth to 16 bit increased speed (not that much - but a few frames), but the result was not a pleasure to view. So I didn't even dare to look at it with 8 bit

Also had I all the quality enhancements disabled by default.

Although my amount of RAM is enough, you all know (I assume) that the Intel TX has just a cachable area of 64MB. That was the reason why I mentioned my mainboard and RAM size.

And BTW: I installed a supplementary program that Write Allocation and MTRRs are supported correctly (because the BIOS seems to lack it).


@enchanter: Don't you think that 83MHz on a 66MHz Chipset is already a bit of overclocking? (PCI runs with 41,5 MHz). And the K6 tend to get very hot when overclocked...


greetz

weaker


PS: Hey setarip, did you notice that you did your 2000th-posting-jubilee on my thread? It's an honour to me being posted from such a Digital Video Ovelord. *g*

PPS: Hmm, whilst reading other postings from you, I noticed that your counter no longer increases. Some kind of perpetual jubilee

[setarip]

"PS: Hey setarip, did you notice that you did your 2000th-posting-jubilee on my thread? It's an honour to me being posted from such a Digital Video Ovelord. *g*"

I hadn't noticed, but thankyou.

I did, however, notice that you speak of (apparently) lowering the VIDEO color depth to 16 bit color and being disappointed. Have you tried, as I suggested earlier, lowering the number of DESKTOP colors to 256, which will not lower the VIDEO color depth, but will free up resources/overhead? I've used this technique (together with a 640x480 DESKTOP) to effectively run DivX videos on an ancient 266...

[weaker]

too stupid

Hi setarip,

I seem to be too stupid to change desktop bit depth and video bit depth independently. In Control -> Display Settings I changed to 640x480x8bit. But then my video window was of course 8 bit, too (windowed and full screen mode). And the video got dither patterns.
And in my player I didn't find an option that decreases playback color depth.
If you speak of something like a virtual desktop (screen resoulution is lower than total visible area, where the screen does that annoying following to where my mouse goes), I don't use that.
If you don't understand what I mean: I don't know how to describe it in suitable words for I'm not a native English speaker.

So please help me, and tell me how to change desktop color depth but not video color depth.
I normally run 1024x768x32bit @ 100Hz. For video Playback I change this to 640x480x32bit @ 110 Hz and then start my player and switch to fullscreen mode.

Hell, I feel soo stupid. I don't like that.

weaker

[Enchanter]

You may want to decrease your refresh rate as well. 75Hz is still comfortable for a lot of people. If not, you can use 85Hz.