one app gives smooth video, one gives jerky

[njem]

I sometimes watch old TV shows off the net (in either firefox or
opera). In small screen (about 1/8th the screen) they manage to run
smooth. In full screen they're jerky. Seemed like it must be a video
card problem. Then I watched a DVD using PowerDVD. Full screen, much
higher resolution than the other stuff, no jerkiness at all. I would
think it was net bandwidth but even videos that buffer up first have
the same problem. And as I say it can run smooth in small screen and
full screen is just small screen data magnified. This would lead me to
conclude PowerDVD is MUCH more efficient than my browsers. True? Is
there some other way to watch net video that is as efficient as
PowerDVD?

Just trying to get smarter about this stuff.
Thanks,
Tom

 

[Andrew E.]

The resolution from the web-based video is probably set for smaller
view,while the dvd can/could be for full screen.Powerdvd has nothing to
do with it.

 

[njem]

  The resolution from the web-based video is probably set for smaller
 view,while the dvd can/could be for full screen.Powerdvd has nothing to
 do with it.

Right. And in that case the web video should have an even easier time
giving non-jerky video.

 

[Paul]

Right. And in that case the web video should have an even easier time
giving non-jerky video.

In an experiment here, if I use Adobe Flash and let it display at
the "normal" resolution, it uses very little processor. Maybe
3 to 5% or so.

If I flip to full screen mode (1280 wide), which is 2.25 times as
many pixels, it uses 40% of my processor.

I've read that Flash can use a hardware scaler in the video card,
to convert the original pixmap to the full screen version. My
video card is old enough, that it seems to be missing that bit.
So the processor is doing the work instead.

DVD playback, has more development effort behind it. Nvidia and
ATI work on movie playback performance enhancements in hardware
(UVD or VP3). PowerDVD and WinDVD tend to use the features, if
they're available on a computer. The situation is better for movie
playback, because more parties are interested in making it work.
PowerDVD and WinDVD make money from end-users, while Adobe Flash
makes money for each copy of developer software they sell.

The Adobe system requirements are listed here, but this page
doesn't go into enough details, as to what video card is
modern enough to help Flash.

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/index.html

Paul

 

[njem]

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/index.html

    Paul

Thanks for the info.

So Flash is the culprit.

It only takes 3-5% on yours? I tried that on mine. Flash takes about
50% in small mode and maybe 60% in full screen. On the other hand
PowerDVD take about 20% regardless of display size.

I use laptops so I'm stuck with my video setup. So on my next system
I'll have to pay attention to what video cards play well with Flash.

What I have now is an ATI Radeon Express 1150. Evidently Flash is not
using it well.

My display info says I have 128M on the vid card but that it is also
using 700M of shared mem. So does that mean if I had 1G on the video
card it wouldn't need to use shared and that might help the problem?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

Thanks for the info.

So Flash is the culprit.

It only takes 3-5% on yours? I tried that on mine. Flash takes about
50% in small mode and maybe 60% in full screen. On the other hand
PowerDVD take about 20% regardless of display size.

I use laptops so I'm stuck with my video setup. So on my next system
I'll have to pay attention to what video cards play well with Flash.

What I have now is an ATI Radeon Express 1150. Evidently Flash is not
using it well.

My display info says I have 128M on the vid card but that it is also
using 700M of shared mem. So does that mean if I had 1G on the video
card it wouldn't need to use shared and that might help the problem?

Thanks,
Tom

Hi Tom,

You don't say what laptop you are using, but on my HP Pavilion
dv8100cto, I can go into the BIOS and turn off the 'shared' memory and
ONLY use the card's onboard VRAM. When I did that my video performance
increased dramatically (especially when using Photoshop CS3).

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)90.net

 

[Paul]

Thanks for the info.

So Flash is the culprit.

It only takes 3-5% on yours? I tried that on mine. Flash takes about
50% in small mode and maybe 60% in full screen. On the other hand
PowerDVD take about 20% regardless of display size.

I use laptops so I'm stuck with my video setup. So on my next system
I'll have to pay attention to what video cards play well with Flash.

What I have now is an ATI Radeon Express 1150. Evidently Flash is not
using it well.

My display info says I have 128M on the vid card but that it is also
using 700M of shared mem. So does that mean if I had 1G on the video
card it wouldn't need to use shared and that might help the problem?

Thanks,
Tom

If you want to try the test I tried, it is here. A 50MB download.
Open the fullScreenSourceRectDemo.html file in a Flash enabled
browser. I found the playback at normal resolution to not
be that taxing at all.

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer9_update/demos/full_screen_demo.zip

After looking through pages of marketing fluff, it looks
like your Xpress 1150 core isn't that much different than the
video card I used for my test. At least, my card has the
same version of vertex and pixel shaders, as your 1150.

I think your GPU uses shared memory for everything. It could be,
that a fixed allocation of 128MB is used for the normal things,
such as frame buffers and the like. If you were to start a 3D
game, it can use more shared memory for textures, up to some
maximum amount that might be determined by the quantity of
system memory installed. That memory would be released when
you exited the game. But the 128MB (or whatever you set for
sharing in the BIOS), might remain that way for as long as
the OS is running. So part of the sharing is static,
and the other part dynamic.

So you might not have that much more for video acceleration
than I have.

The single most important thing for video playback, in
broad terms, is how modern the GPU is. The features here,
might be more concerned with movie playback, but you
never know, some day Flash may catch up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purevideo

Paul

 

[njem]

You don't say what laptop you are using, but on my HP Pavilion
dv8100cto, I can go into the BIOS and turn off the 'shared' memory and
ONLY use the card's onboard VRAM. When I did that my video performance
increased dramatically (especially when using Photoshop CS3).

Mine is a Dell. It does not have that option.

That's interesting. I can see there would be some trade-off in sharing
memory but, in my system, it provides about 6 times the memory. I
guess that also indicates the need for a lot of video memory. If I
can't turn off sharing then I would want it to not need to share any
more then necessary.

Tom

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

Mine is a Dell. It does not have that option.

That's interesting. I can see there would be some trade-off in sharing
memory but, in my system, it provides about 6 times the memory. I
guess that also indicates the need for a lot of video memory. If I
can't turn off sharing then I would want it to not need to share any
more then necessary.

Tom

Hi Tom,

I think that my old Pavilion zd8214 also used an ATI card and you could
set the resources from within the driver screen. If I remember right it
there was an 'Advanced' button on the 'Settings' tab that you clicked to
get to things like resources.

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)90.net

 

[njem]

If you want to try the test I tried, it is here. A 50MB download.

Curious. Mine uses about 25% of processor when viewing that in small
size. It doesn't show any increase in full screen. It is a little
jerkier in full screen though. Very smooth in small.

My bios doesn't give any control of memory sharing.

The single most important thing for video playback, in
broad terms, is how modern the GPU is. The features here,
might be more concerned with movie playback, but you
never know, some day Flash may catch up.

The GPU seems to be good enough if Flash would use it, since Power DVD
does fine with it. I notice one of the links you sent says PowerDVD
makes use of that GPU feature.

If TV over the internet is going to become the standard, and if Flash
is going to continue to be the most common delivery, they'd better
catch up.

If you like the video you linked to you'll like one about skydiving
using a body suit. Kind of like a flying squirrel. They go more
forward than down. Here's some great footage as thanks.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ueli_gegenschatz_extreme_wingsuit_jumping..html