HD Video Sluggish For 720p & Above

[Charan]

I have downloaded a few HD trailer for testing My GFX card. It has MOV extension and the video stream is encoded avc1 coded at a resolution of 1920x800, the source from which I downloaded states that its a 1080p HD . I have a P4 520 Processor ( 2.8 & HT ) and RAM is 768MB , I also have a nVidia 7300GT based card.

Despite having the GFX card the video is very sluggish I cannot get a decent playback. I have even tried 720p Video but the result is same .
480p plays fine but with sluggishness in between

The specs of my GFX card states that

High-Definition H.264, MPEG-2 and WMV Hardware Acceleration
Smoothly playback H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV video—including WMV HD—with minimal CPU usage so the PC is free to do other work.

What could be the reason? or is it that my PC cannot play HD content above 480p ? or is it that we are not supposed to watch HD content in a 17" CRT ?
I have the latest nVidia Drivers installed.

[sai_cool]

Update your GFX card to the latest drivers and check again, if the problem still persists, it could most likely be a software problem, try using VLC player and playin it. if it still fails, then post back, i will come back with a solution soon....

[QwertyManiac]

Weird, might be the player? What player did you use for the MOV? The vanilla QT or .. ?

My old MX4000 could play the 720p (512 MB RAM) and though it lagged a bit then, on my new 7600GT with a gig of RAM it works smooth. 1080p is no way in my hardware's capabilities, I'd definitely need a dual core for smoothness. But 720p should work fine on 512 MB RAM+ with 2.4 GHz and above P4s. Try the MPC and VLC players perhaps.

[aryayush]

Yes, which media player are you using? And where did you download the trailers from?

[Charan]

VLC player is my prefferd player. Power out at my place rite now

[aryayush]

Use QuickTime Player, particularly if you downloaded them from Apple's trailers website. Even if you did not, VLC does have problems playing HD content.

You're a little out of luck actually because goobimama is sick and he is a genius at this.

[gxsaurav]

This config is not enough to play 1080p HD Videos. For a monitor upto 24" 720p is the best resolution while for a monitor upto 17" 480p is the best resolution. Anything over that is not required.

Your graphics card will not decode Quicktime H.264 Videos as Quicktime doesn't support hardware decoding of HD videos in Windows. It only supports hardware decoding on a Mac.

D

espite having the GFX card the video is very sluggish I cannot get a decent playback. I have even tried 720p Video but the result is same .
480p plays fine but with sluggishness in between

The GFX card decodes videos but not completely. In case of nVidia the higher performance the gfx card has, the more better it can decode. For 7300GS, install PureVideo HD decoders & you will be able to decode the 720p videos in Windows Media Player fine. But forget about 1080p videos on that CPU.

You CPU is the main bottleneck. Since you Have a 17" Monitor, don't download anything beyond 720p that too for Windows Media player as quicktime HD movies won't be decoded in hardware.

VLC player's H.264 decoder sux. Try CoreAVC or FFDShow in WMP

[Charan]

Ok... Now it seems that QT was the problem. I realised the CPU hit 100% whenever I tried palying those videos. Apperently all of the videos that I tried to play were encoded in QT format .

I downloaded those videos from various sources. All of them were trailers for evaluating my GFX subsystem. The files were from Apple trailers, Vuzu , and yahoo movies.

I will check again with different codecs as given by GX . GX also I will be connecting my CPU to my 25" TV .

Thanks for the help guys And one more thing I wanted to ask. Please suggest good source for HD Video other than Apple and Vuzu .

EDIT : I have Pure Video Installed , But I think PureVideo HD is not supported for 7xxx series. Please correct me if im wrong.

[gxsaurav]

Originally Posted by charangk

But I think PureVideo HD is not supported for 7xxx series. Please correct me if im wrong.

It is supported.

Uninstall Quicktime player, & play the mov file in WMP with FFDshow decoder

[Third Eye]

@charangk: Try playing in WMP or Media Player Classic.

[aryayush]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

This config is not enough to play 1080p HD Videos. For a monitor upto 24" 720p is the best resolution while for a monitor upto 17" 480p is the best resolution. Anything over that is not required.

I would tend to disagree. Though it is near impossible to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p on my monitor, 720p does look a damn sight better than 480p. Maybe it is the high resolution (though it is not insanely high).

[Charan]

Thankyou guys for your valuable inputs. I tried all the options suggested but failed to get a decent frame rate. I tried it in both XP as well as Vista. Last option for me would me to downgrade the resolution from 1080p to 480p , but how to do that?

[gxsaurav]

Originally Posted by aryayush

720p does look a damn sight better than 480p. Maybe it is the high resolution (though it is not insanely high).

The usual resolution that 17" LCD/CRT go for is 1280X1024, 720p is all u need.

However, even with 480p, u won't miss much of the details.

Originally Posted by charangk

Thankyou guys for your valuable inputs. I tried all the options suggested but failed to get a decent frame rate. I tried it in both XP as well as Vista. Last option for me would me to downgrade the resolution from 1080p to 480p , but how to do that?

Like I said, forget about playing a 1080p video on your config. You cannot downsample. If it is windows Media player then play at 50% size, it might work. From next time make sure u download 720p as anything more on your 17" is not required. 1080p will automatically downsample to 50% on it.

[aryayush]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

The usual resolution that 17" LCD/CRT go for is 1280X1024, 720p is all u need.

Yeah, 720p looks awesome, even on 1680x1050.