Frame drop for .WMV files?

[kimiraikkonen]

When using "internal renderer overlay" with playing WMV files, for having a 800mhz celeron, 128mb sdram, 8 mb trident shared VGA computer:

Is it normal to have frame drops? I have frame drops when using "internal renderer overlay" with these specs of notebook.
I didn't tested for a higher speed PC.

When i use "overlay mixer", i don't get frame drops.

What are the reasons of that? Probably a CPU inadequacy?

[Tizio]

Not sure, but it can be.. it may also depend from RAM (how much of it is free in your system?), because BS.Player require really small amount of ram, but if it's already fully used...
Plus it can be also the 8MB (shared) of your video card (if you told it to do post processing..or post-processing is done by CPU???)

Anyway I have an Athlon 900 and the WMV files I have play smoothly (but I never took a look at the frame dropped..I'll check). Anyway it may depends also from the bitrate in which those movies are encoded..

Have you also tried to use BS.Player v0.86.501? it uses even smaller footprits than v1 and v2

[kimiraikkonen]

Originally Posted by Tizio

Not sure, but it can be.. it may also depend from RAM (how much of it is free in your system?), because BS.Player require really small amount of ram, but if it's already fully used...
Plus it can be also the 8MB (shared) of your video card (if you told it to do post processing..or post-processing is done by CPU???)

Anyway I have an Athlon 900 and the WMV files I have play smoothly (but I never took a look at the frame dropped..I'll check). Anyway it may depends also from the bitrate in which those movies are encoded..

Have you also tried to use BS.Player v0.86.501? it uses even smaller footprits than v1 and v2

I was using 1.41 build 932, i met by chance when i looked movie infos. If you look you may see frame drops. The frame drops occured for a encoded 370kbps file.

I don't know who makes post processin probably CPU.

Here is is a clue: When you playing a .WMV file with "internal renderer overlay", please click to "Help - ?" button on the BSplayer, then wait until all of credits pass. Then check info out, i see (maybe you will se) dropped frames... (i suspect CPU usage).

Note: BSplayer's video info feature usually makes me sad and suspicious.

[kimiraikkonen]

I tested with celeron 1.1ghz, 184mb ram, trident blade 3d pro media vga, still has too many frame drops when playing WMV files...internal and overlay mixer.

Tizio or anybody have tested?

Thanks...

[adicoto]

Intel Celeron D 3 GHz, 1 GB DDR dual channel.

[Tizio]

Since actually I don't have WMV, I searched with google for trailers in WMV and one of the first link I found is Halo Wars trailer. I tried the first one (Low Bandwidth 360p Stereo .WMV 14.9Mb) on my Athlon 900 with 256MB RAM PC133 and IDE disk (with other software running in background) and I had NO FRAMES DROPPED

Try it and if you haven't them either, then I'll try the one with higher resolution

[Tizio]

Finally I tried also the second trailer (High Bandwidth 720p Stereo .WMV 81.1Mb), I was curious :lol:

This trailer has 720p resolution and a bitrate of 8Mbps, duration 1:36 (min:sec) and at the end of the video I had 250frames dropped (I lost circa 8seconds of video on 96seconds -> ~9%)
It's an high percentage, but my PC is not meant to be used to play HD contents and don't forget that the video is progressive and I have other applications running on the background :D

I'm satisfied by my PC behaviour :o
Probably on adicoto's 3GHz celeron there will be 0frames dropped

P.S.
My VGA is a GeForce4MX

[Ico-man]

With playback of 720p trailer, i had 0 frames dropped on Pentium 4 3.0Ghz and 512 MB of RAM.

BS.Player process was using only 32,4MB of memory during playback.

[adicoto]

As you may see, Tizio, I do have 0 frames dropped.
A 720p wmv requiers a CPU of about 1.6 GHz.

[Tizio]

Originally Posted by adicoto

As you may see, Tizio, I do have 0 frames dropped.
A 720p wmv requiers a CPU of about 1.6 GHz.

I saw your 0 frames dropped window, but I didn't know with which file had you tested it

When I'll be able to shut down all the background applications I'll try to play it on my Athlon anyway :P

[adicoto]

BSPlayer states: Amazing caves_720.wmv in the details window, it's one of Microsoft's sample videos. It can be found, among other HDTV files here
On the main window it's states: resolution 1280x720@ 23,976
It also say 0 frames dropped after playing 53 secs.

[kimiraikkonen]

Yes it depends on CPU usage mainly. My WMV files are small 15fps, 300-400kbit.

Also what is the role of graphics card when playing a movie like that (internal renderer overlay)? I don't think a graphic card does too much think when using internal renderer coz it uses CPU heavily as you know.