trouble with h.264

[tryit]

I am having a lot of trouble getting smooth video from any of the h.264 codecs I have tried. Using Genpix USB, puter is 2.8 GHz P4 w/ 1.5 GB Ram. Codec thats best is the Cyberlink. Starts out ok, then becmes jerky and slows to a stop when buffer overflow causes reset and then it cycles again. HD in mpeg2 is fine as are all SD channels. Nero works, but not as well as the Cyberlink. Can't get FFD to work at all.

Any ideas/suggestions?

TIA

[dmz01]

Few suggestions:

Fast video card that allows h.264 acceleration - currently NVidia does a better job than ATI (I tried Radeon 1900xtx and GeForce 7900GT). Take a look at http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html and pick your choice. In general, I would stick with a card that support the following 4 features:
HD H.264 decoding acceleration
HD MPEG2 decoding acceleration
HD Inverse Telecine (3-2 pulldown removal)
HD Bad Edit Correction
This limits your choices to a few high end cards, but you get what you're paying for.

Faster computer - I use the 4GHz setup that you can build for $700 from the following article: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/06/12/ ... ig_for_720 Take a look at this white paper from ATI: http://www.ati.com/products/pdf/H264_Whitepaper.pdf where there clearly state that today's CPU's are just fine for MPEG2 HD, but not even half way there for H.264 HD decoding. So right now you need both - fast video card with H.264 acceleration and fast computer. H.264 being a much stronger compression than MPEG2 requires a lot more processing power to decode.

[Dreamer]

What video card do you have?

I have the best result with ATI codec, more here.

AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB RAM, ATI RX800 256MB, SB Audigy 2 Value, SkyStar 2 rev.2.3, TechniSat DVB 4.4.0, Windows XP SP2

[tryit]

Thanks for the replies, I have an ATI AIW 9600XT card, perhaps that what needs to be improved. I appreciate the thoughts and will report when i make some progress. I did get the ATI codec to start working, also jerky and cyclic like the others, but better.

[Dreamer]

Thanks for the replies, I have an ATI AIW 9600XT card, perhaps that what needs to be improved. I appreciate the thoughts and will report when i make some progress. I did get the ATI codec to start working, also jerky and cyclic like the others, but better.

Try the latest drivers for everything, graphic card, DirectX, DVB card... It's just small difference between your and mine PC, but maybe it's not enough, how it works with ATI, just small freezing from time to time, or constant freezing?

[dmz01]

FYI it looks like with the latest ATI codec (mentioned above and available as part of the "Complete AVIVO Package" that's available for download from ATI as part of the catalyst 6.6 drivers), ATI took the crown from NVidia.

File H264 decoding:
NVidia 7900GT, Cyberlink Power DVD 7 decoder: 40% CPU, full frame rate
ATI X1900XT, ATI decoder: 20% CPU, full frame rate
DvbDream:
NVidia/Cyberlink: 85% CPU, some frames dropped (barely watchable)
ATI/ATI: 75% CPU, very few frames dropped (watchable)

Any other decoders with the cards mentioned above under DvbDream are not watchable.

In general Cyberlink is the best decoder for NVidia and ATI is the best for ATI.

[jerryt]

ATI/ATI: 75% CPU, very few frames dropped (watchable)

You have a monster system dmz01!!

[dmz01]

Except for video cards, I just followed the dual core 4GHz for $700 article on Tom's hardware guide
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/06/12/ ... ig_for_720