H.264 (HD) Video is jerky

  • Thread starter Thread starter ToddAndMargo
  • Start date Start date
T

ToddAndMargo

Hi All,

I have a customer running a Pentium 4 with
an nVidia Quadro video card (AGP).

When he tried to what H.265 Video disks
(HD), he gets a jerky, Max Headroom output.
It really annoys him.

If this *only* his video card, or does he need
a whole new system with a hot video card?

Many thanks,
-T
 
ToddAndMargo said:
Hi All,

I have a customer running a Pentium 4 with
an nVidia Quadro video card (AGP).

When he tried to what H.265 Video disks
(HD), he gets a jerky, Max Headroom output.
It really annoys him.

If this *only* his video card, or does he need
a whole new system with a hot video card?

Many thanks,
-T
Click to expand...

My guess is, the H.264 video has been resized to "full screen".
On some computers, this ends up being done by the CPU,
and uses a lot of cycles. The user should put up Task
Manager, have it collect CPU utilization information
in the graph, then cause the movie player to go full
screen. Later, return to Task Manager, and see if the
CPU was running flat out at 100% in the graph.

If the movie is played at a lower resolution, in a
window, at its native size, it might play smoother.
And that may hint at the issue being the resize
operation.

There is some kind of hardware support, available
on some video cards, to resize video to full screen
without the CPU being involved. This may reduce the
"Max Headroom" effect.

You might also check the driver situation, and
verify that everything that should have been installed,
is present.

Paul
 
Paul said:
My guess is, the H.264 video has been resized to "full screen".
On some computers, this ends up being done by the CPU,
and uses a lot of cycles. The user should put up Task
Manager, have it collect CPU utilization information
in the graph, then cause the movie player to go full
screen. Later, return to Task Manager, and see if the
CPU was running flat out at 100% in the graph.

If the movie is played at a lower resolution, in a
window, at its native size, it might play smoother.
And that may hint at the issue being the resize
operation.

There is some kind of hardware support, available
on some video cards, to resize video to full screen
without the CPU being involved. This may reduce the
"Max Headroom" effect.

You might also check the driver situation, and
verify that everything that should have been installed,
is present.

Paul
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

Great test. I will have him try it. And, since
he installed his won video card, I bet he never
upgraded from the Microsoft build in driver to
the fancy nVidia drive. Good call on that one too.

Thank you!

-T
 
Paul said:
My guess is, the H.264 video has been resized to "full screen".
On some computers, this ends up being done by the CPU,
and uses a lot of cycles. The user should put up Task
Manager, have it collect CPU utilization information
in the graph, then cause the movie player to go full
screen. Later, return to Task Manager, and see if the
CPU was running flat out at 100% in the graph.

If the movie is played at a lower resolution, in a
window, at its native size, it might play smoother.
And that may hint at the issue being the resize
operation.

There is some kind of hardware support, available
on some video cards, to resize video to full screen
without the CPU being involved. This may reduce the
"Max Headroom" effect.

You might also check the driver situation, and
verify that everything that should have been installed,
is present.

Paul
Click to expand...

The problem turned out to be a really old, really
slow video card and a really old and really slow
procession (333 MHz FSB Pentium 4 before hyperthreading)

-T
 
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