Playing HD content at 1080p...problems.

So I recently bought a shiny new 46" lcd tv, and I don't have a blueray player yet. Figured I'd download some HD content like apples high-def movie trailers and stuff to see the capabilities of my new television.

Well whenever I try to playback the video, it stutters. It's not playing smoothly at all. Is there anything I can do to solve this issue (considering my specs below), or could I possibly upgrade something to play HD content smoothly?

I wish I'd have thought of this sooner as my 1530 will be becoming a media machine now.
Thanks folks!

 

What program and codec are you using to play the videos? And what type of videos are they (.mp4, .wmv, .mkv)?

 

Your laptop is fine. It's a software issue.

If you download Apple Trailers, they are played using Quicktime Player. And quicktime player is on the one hand not optimized for performance and on the other hand doesn't use any hardware acceleration capabilities of your notebook (it uses YUV -> RBG color space conversion if at all any hardware acceleration).

You would need something like PowerDVD 8 Ultra Edition to play back BluRay and other content:
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/compare_1_ENU.html

As far as I know only the Ultra edition comes with a hardware accelerated Codec for HD content.

However there is also a way of playing HD content without buying this software. First of all, you need to install a Codec which decodes MPEG4-AVC (H.264) videos faster than Quicktime does. A free, fast and excellent codec is FFDShow Tryout beta5:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ffdshow-tryout/ffdshow_beta5_rev2033_20080705_clsid.exe


A commercial one (Demo Version available) is this one. It's somewhat faster than FFDShow Tryout.
http://www.coreavc.com/

Both Codecs only use the CPU for decoding and not the GeForce 8x00M. The GeForce graphics card in your laptop can also decode HD without any load on the CPU - however only the PowerDVD Codec does that and to get this one, you need to buy the entire package. Buying just the codec will be sufficient for QuickTime HD Trailes, but not for BlueRay due to it's copy protection:
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/cyberstore/order_77_ENU.html

Now that you have FFDShow installed, you need something which enables .mp4 files in Windows Media Player. This is called a splitter. The name comes from its activity in splitting an .mp4 stream into video, audio tracks and subtitles. Get and install this one (it's free):
http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/MatroskaSplitter.exe

Now rename the Quicktime HD Trailer such that .mov changes to .mp4. Now you should be able to play 1080p content without any stutter on your big screen in Windows Media Player.

Some people will recommend installing a codec pack, which bundles all that in a single download. Some of these are bloated, others come with viruses and spyware. But even if it's this one ( K-Lite):
http://www.codecguide.com/features_standard.htm
I'd still just install them myself and knowing what I've done.

VLC is also a player which has all codecs included. Unfortuantely libraries which VLC uses are rather old and slow. That's why I wouldn't recommend VLC for HD content.

 

Is the 8400M GS powerful enough to output hig-def to that size screen?

I know it's integrated but the Acer in my laptop has an X200M and it struggles when outputting via VGA to a 32" HDTV TV (No HDMI on the Acer of course lol).

Can't wait to get my XPS though and use the HDMI instead!

I think the 8400M GS is powerful enough but just a thought...

 

CoreAVC is a fair bit faster than FFDshow.

I use CCCP for most video-files. That's a pack that includes FFDshow, Haalis mediaplitter, VSfilter and some other tools.

But yaaaay! Finally, there's someone else who actually has a concept of good filters and how video playback works on windows.

 

No problems whatsoever. It's not integrated, though. It's a dedicated GPU.

 

You should be able to output HD content even on your Acer notebook.

I can play 1080p Apple Trailers with low CPU utilization on X3100 intel shared memory graphics, which should be worse than X200M. The CPU utilization can be seen in in first posting (scroll to "H.264 BluRay playback") here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=271764

 

I can't thank you enough for your input. I'm very new to computer HD content and this is a big help. I'm going to apply your suggestions when I get home today. Also relieved to hear that it's not a hardware issue!

Oh and one more question... Can our soundcards send DTS sound through the HDMI cable? I'm thinking of sending the HDMI out to TV...then Optical out from TV to my Audio Receiver. This way I can utilize my 5.1 sound system when using my computer.

Damn I love these gadgets! lol

 

Just an update. I downloaded PowerDVD Ultra on my notebook, and played the Han**** 1080p movie trailer on it. On Quicktime it would jutter, not playing very smoothly at all.
With PowerDVD it plays beautifully....however I now have a new problem. NO AUDIO! Is it because the trailer is a .mov file? Any way around this?

 

My Inspiron E1505 that came with GMA 950(I know...it's terrible) plays 720p mkv great using Media player classic with K-Lite codec and can more often than not play 1080p mkv without too much lag. And this is all on my external Acer 22" monitor through vga. However playing Apple's high def trailers in 1080p is unwatchable. By the way, my E1505's cpu is Intel c2d 1.83ghz T2400.
Another reason I can't wait for my M1530 to be delivered!

 

you can use Media Direct instead of buying PowerDVD.

Media Direct is powered by Cyberlink (which is also same umberalla with PowerDVD...and its free compare to powerDVD ($90++)

 

I'm using MediaDirect 3.3 and this one can't play HD content. Maybe this got indeed updated when they introduced BluRay players in M1530.

Which MediaDirect are you using? 3.5? Does it include BluRay HD support only in the XP embedded MD (that's the one you get into after computer was shut off) or the one included in your host OS, which is Vista. Can you see which decoding DirectShow filter they installed?

I doubt that it works for the XP embedded MD good, since I don't know whether it uses uptodate nvidia drivers. And without those drivers you have to do all that stuff on the CPU.

 

Installing
http://ac3filter.net/projects/ac3filter
should help.

 

MD 3.5
not sure if its XP embedded,

i have AnyDvD installed in my PC since my tv is non HDCP compliant.

i used the higher NVIDIA driver (from laptopvideo2go) but it doesn't recognized by MD and it wont play my BR-movies so i need to used Dell NVIDIA driver version.

 

Yes this is supposed to work. There's an entire thread about that topic:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=199164

And user digerati has running what you intend to do:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3132500#post3132500

Have fun!

 

Gonna give this a crack when I get home. Many thanks once again! The members on this site are seriously awesome.

 

Downloaded ac3filter, but how do I go about applying it to powerdvd? I tried playing the mov file again and still no audio.

 

Anyone.....?

 

You wrote: "I don't have a blueray player yet. Figured I'd download some HD content like apples high-def movie trailers"

There's probably a fix for PowerDVD, but I don't own this software and can't tell.

The instructions I gave in my first posting are for NOT using PowerDVD:
. get + install http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/MatroskaSplitter.exe
. rename .mov -> .mp4
. play in Windows Media Player

should have sound. Otherwise point me to the HD .mov

 

a)

most software (video players, decoders, codec) still work on the CPU for decoding high-res video files..... only high-end video cards(like nVidia's high end cards) have stuff like PureVideo(nvidia) codecs in the hardware

as long as the CPU is within 5 years and u get the right software player(i recommend VLCPlayer, Nero Showtime, less bloatware compared to RealPlayer/WMP)... u'll just get like 99% CPU usage.....