[MPlayer-users] Slow DVD video playback, other videos play fine

[R C]

On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 22:08:35 +0100
Julius Schwartzenberg <julius at zgod.cjb.net> wrote:

> Is it normal that DVD videos require much more CPU than an MPEG4 encoded 
> movie for example? I thought that most DVD movies were encoded in MPEG2 
> and that MPEG2 required less CPU than MPEG4 to be decoded.

No, it's not normal.  However, there are a few things that might be causing it.  

If the DVD video is much higher res than the MPEG-4 videos you've been playing, that may account for more CPU usage with MPEG-2, especially with a crappy (onboard) videocard.

If your DVD-ROM doesn't have DMA support enabled (see hdparm), then just reading the DVD would use up significant CPU power.

MPEG-4 is played back with libavcodec by default, and MPEG-2 is played back by libmpeg2 by default...  When playing a DVD, try adding "-vfm ffmpeg" to your command-line, and see if you get better results (if so, file a bugreport).

You really should include much more information about your problem.