[MPlayer-users] too SLOW to play HD file

[Oliver Seitz]

Am 05.04.2009, 09:39 Uhr, schrieb Rilawich Ango <maillisting at gmail.com>:

> Hi all,
> When I use mplayer to play 720p (HD file) movie, it flickers so much
> with the following message.  What to do to make the movie playing
> smoothly? ango
>

It looks like mjpeg codec.

> VIDEO:  [jpeg]  1280x720  24bpp  30.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
> ==========================================================================
> Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
> Selected video codec: [ffmjpeg] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MJPEG decoder)
> ==========================================================================

That in fact is not a video codec, but one still picture after another.  
It's got some advantages to use when cutting and assembling videos, but  
it's not a codec made for smooth playback. Due to the immense data rate  
mjpeg needs, I presume it's just data can not travel through your system  
fast enough. If you have to use mjpeg for playback, go buying several of  
the fastest harddisks (like 10000rpm types) and connect them in RAID0 or  
RAID5 array. That might give bandwith that can cope with mjpeg.

If vou can use other codecs, recode the video to a codec with better  
compression. That is almost any other codec than mjpeg. Look at mpeg4,  
mpeg2 or x264 for a start.

Greets,
Kiste