video playback lagging on h264

hey i'm just wondering why the video playback for the aspireone is laggy. when i checked the cpu usage one core is at 100% and the other is almost 0%. is there a way to evenly distribute the cpu processing power?

model: zG5
os: windows xp media edition (previously linux)
ram: 1gb
cpu: 1.6ghz atom (duh)
ssd: intel, 8gb

all function/drivers are working properly on xp. the video lagging from audio only on h264 codec on 1280*720. the smaller res video does not lag at all.
i tried playing it from a harddrive (usb) to see if it was the ssd restricting speed. but same results. too bad theres no sata external out on the apsire one.
and the codec used to play it is CCCP. 2007 codecs though.

 

one simple answer...slow ssd...doesent matter if you are playing the file from a fast usb stick...the slow ssd is still the bottleneck because all information is passed through it...

 

How about getting the facts straight?
SSD's read speed is around 25mb/sec, the 720p file's datastream is about 6mb/sec or less.

It can't be the slow 1.6GHz Atom which is in 100% usage, NO WAY!

 

What video player are you using vlc?

 

using media player classic. yeah i thought it wasnt the ssd either.. cos i think a small chunk of the video gets copied to cache or something and it plays off that ( dont always see the green hhd or ssd light flashing when playing video. try to play a vid/mp3 off a usb and pull it out while its still playing.. it will still play for a while after its pulled out).

and also with the 1.6 atom.. dont know why.. but even my old laptop with 1.6ghz pentium M can play the h264 video.

i think its the gfx card. 8mb.

heres a picture of the cpu usage

 

mate, its the slow ssd. dunno how to explain it but i got the same problem with you when i was using ssd, after i changed it to hdd, everything went smoothly, even the higher res hd videos encoded in mpeg2. it has nothing to do with your video having 8mb only, go change your ssd with a faster hdd and you can see the difference

 

No. SSD's read speed is around 25mb/sec, the 720p file's datastream is about 6mb/sec or less.

 

oh ok. where did u buy the hdd? online or local stores?

 

FYI: I have an XP 150 and I can play back a Revision3 HD stream without any issue - 1280x720

Oh yea, the screen is 1024x600, so why?

 

what does ur cpu usage look like when playing the HD files?

 

Test Setup:
A1 150 w/ XP SP3 120 gig HDD
WMP w/ CCCP for codecs (FFmpeg)

Some Usage Data For You:
Test Video - "BBC Motion Gallery: Japan" from the Apple Quicktime HD Gallery
h.264 Video at 700x400 - WMP 25% CPU Usage - Looks great, what about on the airplane?
h.264 Video at 1280x720 - WMP 54% CPU Usage - Occasional Stuttering on high bit scenes.
h.264 Video at 1920x1080 - WMP 50% CPU Usage -Unwatchable

Reality Check: 50% usage = 100% usage in the real world. The 50% is from Hyperthreading, which can't help us here.
The Revision3 720p stream is low motion, so it is not the most taxing in the world.

 

I have the a150l, and have no problems with 720p x264 playback under windows using coreavc. 1080p stutters, as you'd expect, but I'm really impressed that this little thing can handle HD stuff. I guess it must be the SSD causing issues?

 

thanks for the info. yeh mines is abouts 54% cpu on 720p for me too except the video is way behind the audio at all times

 

It might be the codec your using. Try it with a different h.264 codec. The ffmpeg codec is, IMHO, faster than Quicktime.

 

I've had problems with some mkv files.

The solution I found is simple - the graphics card is a 'software-based' DX9 card; hence it uses the processor to mimick directx 9 behaviour.
What I did to stop it from trying is this:

I use Mediaplayer classic home cinema, and output to a DX7 (renderless) output.
Furthermore, I use CoreAVC, but ffdshow(ffmpeg)will work as well, to decode the H.264, and disable deblocking etc.. This speeds it up by another 20% I guess, but isn't required.

I am actually considering uninstalling (which is difficult) DX9, since it is rather pointless having it with a card that's only capable of DX7 in hardware.

Bottom line : try to prevent DX9 from slowing the machine down, there's no need for it.

 

Does't the Intel Atom support hardware decoding?

De-interlacing, MC and iDCT seems to work fine with MPEG2

Still haven't figured out a way to get H.264 accelerated
While looking at the video drivers, I saw in igxp32.inf

Futher down you can see:

Code:

[Decode.AddReg]
HKLM,"Software\Intel\Intel Graphics Accelerator\DXVA","SupportedDecodeMode",%REG_DWORD%,0x0; disabling VLD

[Decode.DelReg]
HKLM,"Software\Intel\Intel Graphics Accelerator"

Tried setting it to "1" and rebooting, no go with MPC-HC and Cyberlink's H.264/VC-1 directshow filter

 

The problem is the CPu isn't fast enough to decode the x264 encoded 720P video. In windows Media player, go to the video acceleration section and enable "skip frame to maintain A/V sync" or something similar. It will keeps the Audio and Video sync together.

BTW.. coreAVC is the best x264 codec. FFMPEG is the 2nd best.

 

I had the same issue but tried the CoreAVC plugin with MPC and the 720p file worked well, or at least noticeably better than before. The audio was in sync as well as subtitles. Searching still takes some time, but it actually makes a large difference.

 

It's the codec. It is not multi-threaded, so it can't be evenly distributed to more than one core (virtual or not).

My media center is a Pentium Dual-Core 1.6 GHz, and I had the same issue with HD playback until i played around with codecs and found one that was multi-threaded. One of the core was pegged at 100% (the other was near 0%). This is a TRUE dual-core (not a hyperthreaded virtual core). Once I found the right codec, the cycles were evenly distributed, and I believe total CPU utilization was around 90% (60/30).

So far, Vista Codec Pack is good for me (it's just a name - you can use it on XP). I hate using codec packs before, but I found that installing my codecs of choice seem to conflict with one another, so this pack seem to have them all configured correctly in one install.