[MPlayer-users] Why can't I watch HD videos?

[Attila Kinali]

On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 01:13:04 +0100
Pepe <rvm3000 at ya.com> wrote:

> Isn't my computer fast enough to play HD videos? or maybe mplayer (or the 
> codecs) is not optimized enough yet?
> 
> In the other hand I downloaded a couple of sample movs from the apple site, 
> and this time mplayer plays them perfectly, although the resolution was a 
> little lower (960x720 one of them and 1280x532 the other).

You hit here the I/O bandwidth barrier. The resolution is
now getting so high that transfering it to the graphics card
takes too much time. The only workaround for this problem
is to use DMA, but i don't know of any X11 driver that supports
this.

Alternatively, if you would have a second CPU, you could
let it work as "DMA controller" (ie, X will then run on
the second process, in parallel to the MPlayer process)
which gives about 10-20% advantage in speed.


			Attila Kinali

-- 
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But blest in my name forever this stream that stanched my thirst!
                         -- Deed of Morred