Is 2GHz DualCore +2GB + 8600gt good enough for x264 1080p bluray?

Hi.

I've got a pretty decent laptop and I'm considering playing back some bly-ray content through it's hdmi output.
All is fine on 720p, but on 1080p the playback is really sluggish.

I only tried VLC so far, is it the software's part or is my laptop simply too slow?

I've got 8600gt on board too, but if I remember correctly, it doesn't support HW acceleration of x264 AVC?

 

So, you're trying to play some 1080p content from your laptop onto a television? If that's the case and you're experiencing choppy playback, it's probably got something to do with the way your nVidia drivers are configured. Try enabling Theatre Mode or something, and using Windows Media Player. You can enable WMP to support most common video formats by installing CCCP, http://www.cccp-project.net/

 

if you're not using something that supports hardware acceleration, then it's going to be mainly CPU dependent. Try using something like Nvidia's Purevideo codec or PowerDVD (which includes the codec) to play the video. Nvidia's version only support mpeg2 acceleration whereas the PowerDVD one supports mpeg2 & mpeg4. Of course, if you have enough CPU power, you don't need to bother with this.

 

After downloading CCCP, buy CoreAVC and follow this guide. That should help you out a lot, along with playing everything in Media Player Classic instead of Windows media player.

 

I do not believe Media Player Classic is supported with hardware acceleration under Windows Vista. If that is the case, in order to get good performance, you will have to use another player, such as WMP.

 

CoreAVC is veeery good. You can play 720p stuff no problem on a 1,2GHz C2D, with about 20-30% CPU usage. 1080p plays fine on 1.4GHz. You can also play 720p on a 1,73 GHz P-M, with about 60-ish% cpu usage. And this is with the additional overhead of WMP.

 

I'm not sure how much of a performance boost he will get with the hardware acceleration but if CoreAVC doesn't work in WMP (which it should but I've never been able to take a look as WMP doesn't show you which filters it's using) then it defeats the purpose of buying it to get a 33%+ boost in performance.

 

CoreAVC is pure software, for now. It works with any VFW media player. Mediaplayer Classic's hardware acceleration is not good. I tried it, on XP, with FFDshow. The standard rendering (DX7) was much better.

 

Something you might want to look into is the Output configuration option, if i were you, i might set it to TV and see what happens. I've included a screen shot of the configuration window to give you an idea of what you'll find when you install CoreAVC.

 

I play 1080p content from my laptop.. with integrated geforce 6100 on my 40" Sony Bravia V series.

Perfectly smooth.

I think the problem is with Blue-ray format.

 

As it's a x264, it's not a real blu-ray. The problem is VLC. VLC for H.264/mkv is like QT for h.264= not particularily good.

 

Isn't H.264/mkv made by VideoLan? Or is it now owned by CoreCodec, the makers of CoreAVC?

 

Neither. Mkv, or matroska is an open source developement. <s>As is H.264</s> x264 is a free and open source h.264 encoder. Corecodec just made a very efficent decoder. Videolan made a player that can play almost anything. But matroska support in VLC is horrible.

 

Why didn't the makers of MKV make their own decoder, wouldn't that be the most efficient of them all?

 

Matroska is just a container, like avi. It doesn't need a decoder, it needs a splitter. The best is Haalis media splitter.

And H.264 has a bunch of encoders/decoders, the most popular encoder being x264 (not counting apples horrible version, used in their stuff).

 

I didn't quite get that but alright.

 

No worries. If you want, I can do a better and more thorough explanation.

 

I guess that would help. Thank you.

 

We start with the basics.
A container is like a box. It can contain different streams of media (video/audio/subtitles). .avi, .mkv and .mp4 are all containers, with different functionality.

* Avi is a very old container, from 1992. It doesn't natively support mpeg-4 video, like Divx or xvid, so the format has been hacked for them to work each other. This has left it with an overhead, making files larger than they need to be. It also only supports one video stream and one audio stream. Easy to edit, due to the slew of compatible tools

* MKV is a newer container, from 2002. It can contain any video or sound now available. It supports all the features of said video/audio format. It has little overhead. It can contain multiple video/audio/subtitles streams. It has chapters. It's also designed for future use, so it will support future formats/features. It is still seen as a non-standard format. Editing is hard, due to the nature of muxing streams into a matroska container. Converting to other containers take a long time.

*mp4 is the official mpeg-4 container. It is also a modern container, though not as full featured or future proof as MKV, especially in the apple version. Easier to edit than MKV and Avi.

Anything else you want to know/is unclear?

 

No, that pretty much sums it up very nicely. Thanks Fara.

 

Glad I could help then.

 

DVD/Blu-Ray: PowerDVD Ultra Deluxe 7.3
*.ts /*.mkv MPEG2 1080p: CCCP + PowerDVD
*.mkv MPEG2 720p: CCCP + Vista Media Center
*.ts MPEG4 AVC 720p: CCCP + PowerDVD

I'll test PowerDVD 8 . . .

 

Whats the best player for mkv files?

 

Under Windows it would have to be Media Player Classic with the CCCP.

 

KMP is the best one. KM player.

 

Finaly I tested PowerDVD 8 Deluxe:

MKV MPEG2 1080p: OK
TS MPEG2 1080p: OK
TS MPEG4 AVC 720p: OK
MKV MPEG2 720p: FAIL (I should use CCCP + VMC)

 

Thank you everyone for your answers I finally settled for:
Media Player Classic with the CCCP + CoreAVC on Windows Vista 32bit.

Smooth as butter even in the complex scenes, CPU never goes above 60%.

I am also awaiting some positive development from CoreAVC with regards to GPU support (provided that nVidia is actually bothered to help).

 

Right now, I don't really See the Need for GPU support. Unless you have a fairly modern GPU with a really crappy CPU.

 

My sentiments exactly, even with a very old CPU with CoreAVC it plays HD stuff just fine.

 

what's the difference between CoreAVC and CCCP ?

 

CCCP is just a bunch of Codecs from the web, CoreAVC is not free and there's also standard and Pro version (Pro has SMP support).

 

CCCP uses FFDshow, a filter for displaying most video types, while CoreAVC uses the CoreAVC filter for displaying H.264 files. CoreAVC is frightfully effective.

 

Yes, it is frightfully effective. It's software like this that makes you wonder what the software world would be if everyone worked this hard.

 

The best H.264 software solution I've seen is Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition x86...

It runs better than CoreAVC for me.

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but Media Player Classic is only a GUI and uses whatever codecs are available on the system. Depending on where you got it from it might actually have CoreAVC icluded.

 

I use KMPlayer paired with ace mega codec packs and the combined comunity codec pack(CCCP)...

 

OK !

Software decoders suck! So you should use hardware decoder (DxVA)
If PowerDVD 8 Ultra didn't work, try this:

http://www.overclock.net/other-software/328497-mkv-mpc-hc-cyberlink-h-264-a.html

Also register and see the attachment.
Tell me if it worked

 

It uses FFDShow Tryouts x64 nightly builds as that is an install requirement if I rem. right. But it def. isn't CoreAVC as CoreAVC is slower I find. That might be because it lacks a true 64bit version.

 

Then you likely didn't enable CoreAVC. It is way more efficient than FFDshow.