Thinkpads Forum

I would sorely appreciate some advice after going round in circles.

So I bought a samsung HD handy cam that provides h.264 files. I play these on the T61 (using VLC or media player classic) and of course, slow as a dog. In fact it just stalls.

I read around and get coreavc...hoping I install this and bingo, it all works. Not really, I think there was a speed up but not much. After a few seconds it all just hangs with playing.

So I have concluded the install of coreavc has not worked. I have the 140 nvidia card so I wondered maybe its the hardware, not good enough.

I am running vista...(but seriously thinking of going to windows 7 very soon).

I try setting coreavc to "reset settings" but it makes no difference.

Note, as far as i can see coreavc are some codecs, nothing more, i still use VLC to see the movies.

Picked this up on the web:

It's not related to your cpu power, the problem is in the Matroska splitter. Launch Media Player Classic and go to View->Options, once in options dialog go to Internal filters and there, below source filters, enable Matroska. This solves for me the lag when playing HD mkv files. Now, if you are in Vista or 7 and still experience lag, then go to options again and then to Playback->Output and check if Overlay Mixex*, below DirectShow video, is checked, if it is then change to System Default. I recomend system default under Vista/7 because other renderers show strange behaviors like a green line in the bottom when playing in windowed mode under Haali or VMR 7.

thanks, well, i'll give it a try tonight.

by the week i have spent weeks on this, so did try! i will have to reconsider my abilities to search if you can get this right so quickly.

livejazz wrote:Note, as far as i can see coreavc are some codecs, nothing more, i still use VLC to see the movies.

CoreAVC shouldn't work with VLC, so you still be using the ffmpeg decoders even though CoreAVC is installed - unless they have modified something to make it possible to use CoreAVC or any other custom codec.
I know it works for sure with windows media player, give it ago
By using WMP with the H.264/AVC you should see a logo appearing for the Haali media splitter in the lower right portion of the taskbar. If it also has sound, an "FFa" logo also appears (FFmpeg audio stream)

FWIW I install the Klite codecs pack in my laptop and use Windows Media Player to watch the very few Matroska files I have in my video collection.

Those file types are a pain aren't they???

I'm not sure what other factors would limit playback. I have an anime series that is in mkv format and plays seamlessly. It could be because my LCD res is only 1024X768 so the graphics card doesn't have to work as hard to render the display. Also like Troels I get the usual taskbar icons for the logo for what I think are the Haali splitter and another logo I suppose is for the FFA.

Hope you find some happy medium soon!

emeraldgirl08 wrote:It could be because my LCD res is only 1024X768 so the graphics card doesn't have to work as hard to render the display.

No, that's not it. The stream decoding takes place at its fullest regardless of the output resolution. The last step of scaling to the display/window size is meaningless as far as processing goes.

It is what Troels said, most likely. VLC uses its own proprietary codecs and so does not utilize CoreAVC. Windows Media Player / Media Player Classic / BSPlayer should do the trick.