New HD clips from MS

[Pradeep]

Think your computer is hot bananas? Try these and see if it can keep up. The 1080p clips are pretty challenging.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx

 

[blakerwry]

yeah, the high def ones run choppy. And even then I still notice jpeggyness.

 

[Bozo]

The "Speed" one was smoth as silk. The others were a little choppy.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Pradeep]

I tried the 1080p of Scooy Doo 2 and it was very choppy, more like a slideshow. Still with a pee4 2.4 with 8MB rage PCI vid, I didn't expect much. Now to wait for the cellphone to recharge so I can dl Coral Reef at 720p.

 

[blakerwry]

I'm using a 2gHz athlonXP with geforce3.. some of the high res videos ran ok (not perfectly smooth), and some ran like a slide show..

I thought the lower res ones looked and played fine. Better than your average DVD, but not spectacular on a good screen.

 

[sechs]

I've watched a few, and found that I didn't have any problems playing the 1080p clips on my Athlon XP 2200+ when I used PowerDVD (instead of WiMP) and ran them at full screen.

To be honest, I can't tell the difference between the two resolutions on my setup.

 

[Pradeep]

Apparently you can get smoother video when using something other than WMP, because then you won't be decoding the multichannel audio.

 

[ddrueding]

ScoobyDoo2 in 1080p chokes my workstation....holy cow.

All the others work great, no choppyness at all. And even better image running MPC instead of WiMP 9.

 

[Fushigi]

Dolphins 1080p plays very nicely using WMP 9 on my XP1700 @ 2800 running W2KSP3 with ATI AIW9600. Source drive is an original X-15. Native screen res is 1920x1440x32bpp.

A couple of dropped frames is all I noticed besides the volume being a tad low. Other running tasks included a couple of IE Windows, Outlook 2000, and the F@H console client.

I'll d/l the others to try later. And thank goodness for the Comcast speed boost recently implemented.

 

[sechs]

Apparently you can get smoother video when using something other than WMP, because then you won't be decoding the multichannel audio.

Why wouldn't I get multichannel audio?

 

[blakerwry]

ah yes, I was playing these in WMP 8.0... media player classic is much smoother... dunno why I didnt have to ahve WMP 9.x to play these. Maybe I ahve the WMP9.x codecs installed from somewhere else.

 

[Pradeep]

Apparently you can get smoother video when using something other than WMP, because then you won't be decoding the multichannel audio.

Why wouldn't I get multichannel audio?

The movies are encoded with WMA 9, 5.1 channels of 25 bit 48kHz audio, I didn't think PowerDVD etc could decode that?

 

[ddrueding]

The performance difference between playing in WiMP9 vs. MPC is amazing. It's hard to believe the difference is just the extra audio being decoded.

 

[sechs]

PowerDVD uses the DirectShow filters, just like WiMP does. Otherwise it wouldn't be able to play them at all.

 

[Santilli]

29% processor use, and, runs crystal clear and fast at 1024. As the Video quality goes up from there, the speed slows down. I strongly suspect it's either Video card limitations, Matrox G550, or ram limitiations, 1 gb.

It isn't the Xeon processors, or the motherboard, nor the disk system.

s

 

[ddrueding]

29% processor use, and, runs crystal clear and fast at 1024. As the Video quality goes up from there, the speed slows down. I strongly suspect it's either Video card limitations, Matrox G550, or ram limitiations, 1 gb.

It isn't the Xeon processors, or the motherboard, nor the disk system.

s

Which clip? The most demanding one I've seen is Scooby Doo.....and did you open it with WiMP 9?

 

[ddrueding]

CPU Usage for me on the aforementioned clip goes to 100%. CPU is an Athlon XP 3200+.

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that this one is the only one of the three that has DRM-crap in it.

 

[Santilli]

I'm an ocean guy. Actually I've opened the dolphins, the MF Into Deep Water, etc. I'm downloading the scooby one, 1028 right now.

Keep in mind, I've got dual Xeon 2.8s, on a supermicro mobo...

s

 

[Santilli]

SD is still about 30% of processor, but, the audio is loud, but when the characters speak, they don't say anything. The music seems in sync, however, and it appears that's the whole idea.


s

 

[Pradeep]

29% processor use, and, runs crystal clear and fast at 1024. As the Video quality goes up from there, the speed slows down. I strongly suspect it's either Video card limitations, Matrox G550, or ram limitiations, 1 gb.

It isn't the Xeon processors, or the motherboard, nor the disk system.

s

What resolution are you running your monitor at? Tho I wouldn't think that would matter because it would have to decode the whole frame before scaling back down to 1024*768 or whatever. Does Task Mangler show 4 processors running? In which case 29% overall could mean that one physical processor is maxxing out, there's no SMP/SMT capability in WMP right now AFAIK.

 

[Santilli]

It runs at an average between 28=33% processor usage. The Third processor runs around 40 percent, with spikes to maybe 60%. The first doesn't do much at all, like 10%.

s

 

[Santilli]

Tried running it at max, which is 1880X1400, and scaled down from there.
It's really noticeably slower, and jerkier at the higher resolutions.

s

 

[Pradeep]

Tried running it at max, which is 1880X1400, and scaled down from there.
It's really noticeably slower, and jerkier at the higher resolutions.

s

Greg, looking at this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=372970&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

looks like video card is a major factor. I don't think the Matrox G550 will cut it for this task. 1GB ram is more than enough. Perhaps when you get your P650 or whatever...

 

[Platform]

29% processor use, and, runs crystal clear and fast at 1024. As the Video quality goes up from there, the speed slows down. I strongly suspect it's either Video card limitations, Matrox G550, or ram limitiations, 1 gb. It isn't the Xeon processors, or the motherboard, nor the disk system.

The clue is the "29%" processor utilisation.

If you could force WMP to use for processor clock ticks or make WMP run as a foreground-only application, then you would suddenly see a normal video at a high resolution. But, with the video playing, you would not be able to do much or anything at all while the video played.

 

[Santilli]

Hi Splash.
What I did was increase priority to real time. This moved up the ram usage by about 30%, and, increased speed. However, it's still pretty obvious it's the video card.

To check this, I tried playing Quake III today, with VM off, and checking processor and ram usage. It used about 500 mb of ram, but, when I turned up all the stuff on the game, even with 30% processor usage, the game was just too slow.

I turn down the game settings, for visual quality, no problems.

Since I just paid for the the Cal Bar, and, another stupid 200 bucks for a teaching test( no child left behind requires I pass subject matter competencey tests, despite my Doctrate degree).

Still, sell a few things, and I'm up for a new, high quality video card.

HD specs suggest you need 128 mb of vram, according to MSFT.

Do you think the Perihelia is up to this?

s

 

[Platform]

Still, sell a few things, and I'm up for a new, high quality video card.

HD specs suggest you need 128 mb of vram, according to MSFT.

Do you think the Perihelia is up to this?

Allegedly! The full-blown Parhelia is marketed primarily as a CAD graphics adaptor. These have either 128 MB or 256 MB of video RAM. The "P" Series (P-650, P750) have 64 MB of video RAM.


http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/home.cfm

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/3dws/mtt.cfm

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/256mb.cfm

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/p_hr256/home.cfm

...HD specs suggest you need 128 mb of vram, according to MSFT...

From some advanced information, the upcoming (2006+) version of Windows called "Longhorn" may *require* a 128 MB video card (!), though I suspect this may turn out to be optional but recommended for "complete functionality."

 

[ddrueding]

Heh, sticking the entire windowing system in VRAM would indeed make for a snappy system

 

[Santilli]

I'm looking at this thread, and the video card thread, and the ATI cards fill at 3 billion pixels, the Nvidia at 4 billion, and the Matrox parahelia, at it's very high price, at, 800 million per sec.????

So, for playing Quake 3, surfing the net, playing HD stuff, and running dual monitors, am I back to an ATI Card???

s

PS: On the mac side, ati has been very near as crystal clear as the pc side cards, meaning matrox.

 

[Santilli]

And, it comes to mind:
People quizing me on why I bought a Supermicro mobo, and dual 2.8 xeons...

It's amazing to me how quickly stuff becomes obselete, requiring ever
increasing computer power. Pretty soon, all the stuff I'm buying will be required for net surfing...

s

 

[blakerwry]

lol

 

[Onomatopoeic]

I'm looking at this thread, and the video card thread, and the ATI cards fill at 3 billion pixels, the Nvidia at 4 billion, and the Matrox parahelia, at it's very high price, at, 800 million per sec.????

Hmmm.... I recall the Parhelia being able to do close to 4 billion texturised pixels per second, which was the fastest available when it was released a year ago.

As for me, I don't care all that much about that specification. DAC bandwidth and accuracy interest me more, not to mention stability.

PS: On the mac side, ati has been very near as crystal clear as the pc side cards, meaning matrox.

Outside of the RT motion video products, Matrox no longer "makes" graphics cards for the Macintosh. However, you can get some of the Matrox video cards for the Macintosh these days from some company (that I can't recall the name of) who writes their own MacOS / OSX drivers and bundles them some Matrox G-series card(s) models, and maybe, now, P-series cards. Me ignorant on this subject!

It's amazing to me how quickly stuff becomes obsolete, requiring ever increasing computer power. Pretty soon, all the stuff I'm buying will be required for net surfing...

It became "obsolete" only because some marketing droid said it was. My current 2.2 GHz / 533 MHz FSB non-hyperthreading P4 system is no more obsolete now than it was the day I bought it in late 2002. I could have purchased a 2.6 GHz-based system that same day but elected to save over $500 instead.

 

[Pradeep]

Greg, have you got AGP fast writes turned on? That should help.

 

[Santilli]

It became "obsolete" only because some marketing droid said it was. My current 2.2 GHz / 533 MHz FSB non-hyperthreading P4 system is no more obsolete now than it was the day I bought it in late 2002. I could have purchased a 2.6 GHz-based system that same day but elected to save over $500 instead.

Splash: When you buy something, I've noticed it stays relatively current for a LONG time. This Supermicro board is going to last a long time, both ram wise, feature wise, processor wise, and, most important for me, pci wise. With PCI-X when the raid cards from LSI finally drop in price, I'll dump the adaptec card, and go with one of their cards, with a giant boot raid. How about 500 mb sec raid zero to boot from, and put the scsi backplane, in, and mirror stuff.

Just got approval from Sonnet to exchange a Trio card, that didn't work with my beige motherboard, and I'll put it in my home workstation.

That gives me USB/firewire/ata 133 on one card.

I could hook up a couple diamond max pluses, 160 gigs, and mirror them, using XP's mirror feature.

So many options, so many ways to do stuff.

Or, I can take the 450 P3 to work, and put a firewire card in it, scan stuff, and use a firewire external to bring it home, or, for that matter, I can use a zip drive.

Have to get some use out of them.

Anyway, I'm dumping the mac side. Had enough. Everytime I buy something for my beige, it's screwed up. Ebay time for it.

s

 

[Santilli]

It became "obsolete" only because some marketing droid said it was. My current 2.2 GHz / 533 MHz FSB non-hyperthreading P4 system is no more obsolete now than it was the day I bought it in late 2002. I could have purchased a 2.6 GHz-based system that same day but elected to save over $500 instead.

Splash: When you buy something, I've noticed it stays relatively current for a LONG time. This Supermicro board is going to last a long time, both ram wise, feature wise, processor wise, and, most important for me, pci wise. With PCI-X when the raid cards from LSI finally drop in price, I'll dump the adaptec card, and go with one of their cards, with a giant boot raid. How about 500 mb sec raid zero to boot from, and put the scsi backplane, in, and mirror stuff.

Just got approval from Sonnet to exchange a Trio card, that didn't work with my beige motherboard, and I'll put it in my home workstation.

That gives me USB/firewire/ata 133 on one card.

I could hook up a couple diamond max pluses, 160 gigs, and mirror them, using XP's mirror feature.

So many options, so many ways to do stuff.

Or, I can take the 450 P3 to work, and put a firewire card in it, scan stuff, and use a firewire external to bring it home, or, for that matter, I can use a zip drive.

Have to get some use out of them.

Anyway, I'm dumping the mac side. Had enough. Everytime I buy something for my beige, it's screwed up. Ebay time for it.

s
Pradeep:
I looked through all the motherboard, and XP settings, and couldn't find AGP fast writes exactly, to turn on. It says something like that in one of the control panels, but it's not the exact phrase.

I did find a custom setting for Hitachi monitors in the Matrox controls, and that made my monitor look even MORE spectacular

COOL :excl:

s

 

[Santilli]

From some advanced information, the upcoming (2006+) version of Windows called "Longhorn" may *require* a 128 MB video card (!), though I suspect this may turn out to be optional but recommended for "complete functionality."

There they go again, copying apple :wink:

OS X requires powerful graphics cards to function correctly. Of couse, to buy one, through apple, they have half the vram of the pc side, cost twice as much, and are truly sucktacular, giving you a mercedes feel, vs. what should be a Viper.

Truly a weird company.

gs

 

[Pradeep]

I looked through all the motherboard, and XP settings, and couldn't find AGP fast writes exactly, to turn on. It says something like that in one of the control panels, but it's not the exact phrase.
s

Should be a setting in the BIOS (but I haven't played with a SuperMicro mobo).

You can't do mirroring (RAID 1) with XP Home or Pro. You need win2k Server or 2003 Server, one of the server editions for soft RAID 1 or RAID 5.

 

[Santilli]

Should be a setting in the BIOS (but I haven't played with a SuperMicro mobo).

Couldn't find it. And I looked.

You can't do mirroring (RAID 1) with XP Home or Pro. You need win2k Server or 2003 Server, one of the server editions for soft RAID 1 or RAID 5.

Sucktacular. Well, maybe I can get the guys to let my put 2003 server on my machine. Any reasons not to buy a copy?

Have XP Pro currently.

s

 

[Pradeep]

I would see if you can get an Action Pack subscription ($200-$300 per year). With that you get almost all the software that MS makes (apart from .Net Studio), including 2003 server and 10 licenses for Office 2003, XP Pro etc

 

[Pradeep]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx

Three new clips available, Dawn of the Dead, Dust to Glory, and True Crime. All in 720p.

 

[mubs]

First, no snide remarks, laughing and poking fun at me. My system is truly “legacy”, but wasn’t when I built it. And if I had the spare cash to build a new one, I would.

Second, I’m no gamer. I’ve never played any of the popular games; strictly Solitaire/Freecell/Minesweeper, usually when I’m on the phone, or in deep thought. Strangely, playing these helps me think better; the games being played mostly on autopilot.

Ok, now my system. Built December 2000. Wasn’t state of the art even then, but certainly hit the sweet spot.

Tyan Tiger 100 S1832DL BX chipset
2 x P3 Coppermine 800/100 running at 900/112
1 GB Micron PC-133 CAS 2 RAM
ATI Radeon 32 MB DDR (one of the early Radeons)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
Viewsonic PT775 17” CRT
Promise Ultra-100 and it’s stuttering drivers
WD 120GB 8MB on Promise Channel 1 (boot/os/progs etc)
WD 80GB 8MB on Promise Channel 2 (data, swap, etc)
Win 2k Pro SP4
Never upgraded the WMP that came with W2k

After reading this thread, I imaged the system partition, downloaded & installed WMP 9 and tried the videos. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t work at all; my system specs are way below the minimum MS lists for these HD videos.

The 1080 versions play, but like slide-shows; 3-4 seconds between frames.

The 720 versions actually play pretty decently (IMHO). The audio is consistently clean; no stutter or breaks. The video is breathtakingly gorgeous. There are video freezes that are clearly there because my system is overwhelmed. But there are many that “appear” to be there on purpose, though I am sure that is not the case. Playing the same clip repeatedly (hoping that it might be in cache) doesn’t help; probably these are choke points in the videos that slay my video card. Overall, CPU usage was between 60 and 70%. That’s one cpu maxed out, and the other hustling to do I/O and memory management, probably.

This experiment taught me a few things. How my poor system, even though rock-solid, is becoming obsolete. A few days ago I read a report somewhere (about the U.N.?) requesting businesses and consumers to use PCs for at least twice as long because of alarmingly large stockpiles of obsolete PCs with toxic substances in them. Fat chance, when the software industry, led by MS, is in a software fast-food meal plan. To further Gary’s point about Longhorn, maybe the MS recommended minimum config will be a 5 GHz proc, 1 GB RAM and 20GB disk space for the OS, and a grapics card with 512MB RAM. Of course, MS is thinking what the heck, every PC will look like that in 3 years.

The other thing I learned is that despite being hopelessly out of spec, my machine did amazingly well (in my opinion).

Now I’m going to restore my system image to wipe out that pox WMP 9.

Thanks for some fun, Pradeep.