Thinkpads Forum

I'm trying to make 1080p mkv's play smoothly on my T60. It's a 1.8 GHz 15" with ATI x1400 graphics upgraded with a QXGA panel. I'm using Media Player Classic on Windows 7 x32 with the Radeon drivers from MS update. I've even tried installing a Broadcom Crystal HD in the WLAN slot.
No matter what I do, the video doesn't run smoothly. It's fairly watchable, but whenever there is movement, I notice that the playback is jagged. It's exactly the same problem with other players or codecs.

With the Broadcom, the CPU runs at 10%, so that's not the problem. My guess is that it might be that the ATI is not fast enough at rendering a QXGA signal.

Has anyone a smooth 1080p playback on a QXGA display?

Try playing the video's on an external LCD at something less than QXGA resolution and you can answer your own question.

I formerly owned a T60 with the exact same CPU/GPU tandem as your machine, but with the SXGA+ FlexView. It handled every HD movie I threw at it flawlessly.

I don't know for sure, but I was under the impression that the X1XXX series of ATis do not fully allow for video decoding (i.e. accessing the hardware directly) - that's what the HD2XXX series introduced, but the architecture is nearly the same as the X1XXX GPUs.

What's the bitrate of the mkv?
Have you tried CoreAVC (+Haali Media Splitter) ?

I can't say i recall trying to decode any 1080p material yet, but various 1080i material with bitrates from 15 to 34 Mbits/s play back fine. 45 Mbit/s ruins it though - the CPU can't keep up (Core Duo T2500, 2 GHz).
Interesting you got the Broadcom decoder to work in the minipcie slot. This requires a modified BIOS, right?

CoreAVC comes to mind. It is more CPU-effective than other codecs, you should definitely give it a try.

BTW, can you post links of material your system CANNOT play smoothly? I am in process of testing my new to me T60 and want to know what this machine can and cannot do.

andykrej wrote:I'm trying to make 1080p mkv's play smoothly on my T60. It's a 1.8 GHz 15" with ATI x1400 graphics upgraded with a QXGA panel. I'm using Media Player Classic on Windows 7 x32 with the Radeon drivers from MS update. I've even tried installing a Broadcom Crystal HD in the WLAN slot.
No matter what I do, the video doesn't run smoothly. It's fairly watchable, but whenever there is movement, I notice that the playback is jagged. It's exactly the same problem with other players or codecs.

With the Broadcom, the CPU runs at 10%, so that's not the problem. My guess is that it might be that the ATI is not fast enough at rendering a QXGA signal.

Has anyone a smooth 1080p playback on a QXGA display?

Hi I had the same dilemma and after some trial and error I have reasonably good 1080p playback. I tried coreavc and to make the video card help with decoding, but I did not get good results. What I found to work for me was the multithreader ffmpeg decoder that has recently been released. Give it a try. I can be downloaded from http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

My hardware is more or less the same except the screen is sxga+ and the videocard is x1300.

I hope this helps.

Hello everyone,

I have too had some trouble playing back some 1080p videos. Specifically, startrek-tlr2_h1080p.mov (second trailer for last Star Trek movie), at the beginning, the scene where camera flies from one side of car to the other.

Most smooth playback I get using PowerDVD7 (not sure about later versions, don't have), not sure why, but it seems it's somehow able to get the graphics card to help - however still there's a little choppiness. CoreAVC comes second, almost as good - in MPC using either Haali or Overlay as renderer. Haven't tried ffmpeg-mt yet and the laptop is currently being serviced, so I'll see how it goes when I get it back. All tests done on external 1920x1200 LCD with internal LCD also active (extended mode).

I guess you have made sure PowerPlay isn't active - I've learned that when PowerPlay is enabled, the graphics card is unable to zoom 720p video to fullscreen (CPU usage stays low). At least with Haali, it's able to do so in Overlay.

Decided to download startrek-tlr2_h1080p.mov. Thanks for uploading!
Plays back fine with zero dropped frames in VLC. CoreAVC just as good, but it seems to sync the image to the vsync. 24 Hz with 50 Hz refresh doesn't really get that well along, as VLC shows it at least. Peak and usual CPU usage is 52% and about 35% with CoreAVC and 64%/~45% with VLC.

Are you also setting the system power settings to "Maximum Performance" ?

I'll try downclocking the CPU using PowerPlay settings, but right now it says that another applications prohibits it from changing the core and mem clocks, so it will be after next restart i guess...

Hmm. You're maybe right, the choppiness I see may come from vsync, I do see the same problem on the desktop computer I'm using now, which has no problems with it and indeed VLC reports no drops.

Edit: So I'm sorry, seems the problem is rather with the video somehow. It plays at 30fps (29.97), but it is actually 24fps and every fifth frame is a copy of the fourth - which leads to the choppiness I see. Played it at 10% speed and it was clear.

Thanks for all the good ideas presented here.

I did some more testing. So far I think CoreAVC delivers the smoothest playback. Actually better than the Broadcom Crystal HD!

I have seen this behavior in three different mkv's, so I think it might have to do with vsync. Also playing them on my X61s shows the same choppiness, so it's probably not a GPU problem.

Any thoughts on this possible vsync issue?

BTW, The star trek trailer plays perfectly on the T60. With the Broadcom enabled, it uses around 5% CPU!

I am not sure if this thread is still of any interest, but here is some recent experience I´ve had with 1080p videos (from HDTV). When trying to play those, VLC player caused ridiculously high CPU usage, which resulted in the video being practically unwatchable (lots of sluttering and even some pixelation). So, I installed the full K-lite mega codec pack without Media Player Classic (MPC), but playing the videos in WMP ended the same way. Then, for the sake of the experiment and out of desperation I reinstalled K-lite mega codec pack with MPC included this time. It turned out MPC could play those videos as smoothly as it gets, with the CPU usage staying 'only' at ~50%. Although both WMP and MPC used the same codecs to play the videos, only the latter was able to play them smoothly enough. The moral of the story -> it is not always up to the codecs or the hardware.

This 1080p star trek video plays absolutely nice fullscreen on both vlc and windows media player on my T2400 SXGA+ T60 thinkpad with integrated intel gma 950 and Windows 7. It does not play good with quick time.

Quicktime encoded (MOV) 1080p videos are generally much easier to decode than your average MKV. Even the 6-year old Pentium4 desktop I have plays it without ever needing more than 70% CPU power.

I got T60p wit 256MB FireGL V5200(seen as X1600_, T7200@ 2.00GHz, and 4GB RAM. Nearly all HDD sufrace is encrypted using aes-xts-plain(LUKS).
And I can play two 1080p at once using 64bit mplayer on 64bit PLD-Th(linux distro) and free driver(free driver doesnt support VDPAU or anything like that, plain textured Xv) in UMS mode. Recently it works even under KMS(but I dont got luch with it, in last few months it sometimes worked, but usually even one movie were lagging).
Mine mplayer/fmmpef utilizes only one core!(and not at full), and I am nearly sure 2 movies should play on 1.8Ghz c2d, and even old core duos(32bit) using patched mplayer/ffmpeg splitting processing between cores.

And GL/D3D(if you are using windows) mplayer backend will lag in 1080p probably, use Xv!

evil wrote:I got T60p wit 256MB FireGL V5200(seen as X1600_, T7200@ 2.00GHz, and 4GB RAM. Nearly all HDD sufrace is encrypted using aes-xts-plain(LUKS).
And I can play two 1080p at once using 64bit mplayer on 64bit PLD-Th(linux distro) and free driver(free driver doesnt support VDPAU or anything like that, plain textured Xv) in UMS mode.

Ok, I knew Linux is faster than Windows in many aspects, but I didn´t know that it is in fact that optimized... (especially since HDD encryption reduces performance). Would you mind providing more details as to what free driver (?) you use to play 1080p resp. your video playback setup. Thanks in advance!

evil wrote:Mine mplayer/fmmpef utilizes only one core!(and not at full), and I am nearly sure 2 movies should play on 1.8Ghz c2d, and even old core duos(32bit) using patched mplayer/ffmpeg splitting processing between cores.

OK, granted for 720p, but what you mention about 1080p, is quite impressive as code performance... Ist there gpu acceleration support for the FireGL 5200 under Linux?

The way to play 1080p with low cpu usage in Windows is MPC-HC and ffdshow-mt and Haali splitter. Easiest is to download the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP). It installs all three as a package.

Next, go to MPC-HC options, and make sure H.264 is disabled in Internal filters -> Transform Filters. Then go to ffdshow video filter settings -> Codecs, and make sure ffdshow-mt is selected instead of (default) libvcodec for H.264. This allows multi-core processing. Also in Options -> Output, make sure VMR9 Preset is selected if you're using 7 and VMR9 if using XP.

For 1080p .mkv files I rarely see over 65% cpu load with this setup using a T2500.

vinuneuro wrote:The way to play 1080p with low cpu usage in Windows is MPC-HC and ffdshow-mt and Haali splitter. Easiest is to download the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP). It installs all three as a package.

Next, go to MPC-HC options, and make sure H.264 is disabled in Internal filters -> Transform Filters. Then go to ffdshow video filter settings -> Codecs, and make sure ffdshow-mt is selected instead of (default) libvcodec for H.264. This allows multi-core processing. Also in Options -> Output, make sure VMR9 Preset is selected if you're using 7 and VMR9 if using XP.

I just checked and I have it set up that way, though with K-lite Mega Codec Pack. Dunno if there is much difference between CCCP and K-lite for that matter. Yet, I don´t think my hardware would be able to play 2 1080p at the same time smoothly under Windows. BTW, you probably mean ffmpeg-mt, not ffdshow-mt? Also, I don´t see VMR9 Preset, just VMR9(windowed) and VMR9(renderless) (I have the second one selected).

A more general question about CCCP as I have never used it: does it allow for updating the different components independently to the most recent versions? I am asking this because with K-lite codec pack it seems it has this major disadvantage that even if one downloads the latest version, it does not always include the most recent versions of the codecs. In other words, if one has the time, one is better off with installing the different components from the corresponding web sites, thus making possible for them to update to the latest (most optimized?) release.

Marin85 wrote: Ok, I knew Linux is faster than Windows in many aspects, but I didn´t know that it is in fact that optimized... (especially since HDD encryption reduces performance). Would you mind providing more details as to what free driver (?) you use to play 1080p resp. your video playback setup. Thanks in advance!=

About disk encryption its device mapper, LUKS provided by some cryptsetups, so unlike new TrueCrypt it runs in kernelspace, not userspace(which is [censored] slow, because all data must be copied from kernel space to some userspace process, processed, and then copied back to kernel space), and scheduler isnt tuned for that.

I also installed 32bit mplayer, it run nearly(with two instances) smooth, and probably would work perfectly smooth after disabling BICUBIC filter(in radeon XV driver). And generally sometimes I got DMA/irq problems, dunno if you ever saw powertop and if you were optimizing your system for powersaving eliminating CPU wakeaups per second, but sometimes its worth to run fluxbox/wmaker only, and in any case not start things like firefox/chromium, etc. Sometimes they are causing lags in movies(with not high CPU usage, probably IRQs or processes scheduling related problem)

Theres no GPU acceleration in free radeon driver, and new fglrx doesnt support r500 chips. (and old doesnt work with current Xorg/kernel)