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

[D Richard Felker III]

On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 12:03:16PM -0800, R C wrote:
> 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.  

My experience has often been the same. I think the issue is bitrate.
Insane bitrates use insane amounts of cpu time just to parse, much
less decode. Since modern cpus are much faster at computations (e.g.
idct, etc.) than logic and lookups (bitstream reading), often more
advanced codecs actually take less cpu time to decode, just because
the bitrate can be so much lower (at same quality). At least that's my
explanation..

Rich