Thinkpads Forum

I'm looking at getting either an x201 or x220 but I wanted to verify if it would be able to play back video clips taken from my video camera. The camera records in 1080p AVCHD format at high bitrates which requires a fairly good video chipset to play back smoothly. Below are 3 sample clips from my camera. Can you test these and see if they play back fine? Please include your laptop model and CPU/GPU info when you reply. Thanks.

http://db.tt/qnO07yzR

http://db.tt/b8H79UJC

http://db.tt/cYkPTx5n

No problems on my X201 (i5-560M 2.67Ghz, first gen Intel HD Graphics, 8GB RAM).

I played using VLC, full screen. Running on Win 8 Pro 64-bit.

Uploaded a video to youtube:
http://youtu.be/pJp5CLU1UkE

I see some small hiccups in the youtube video that weren't there when I played the files.
Also note, this is the AFFS screen mod.

So you are the same user as "catback"?

yak:

Thanks for taking the time to test and upload the video. Good to hear the older x201 is capable of fluid 1080p video playback. When you ran the test, did you stream the video from the net or play them off your drive?

Also, what video chipset is in your x201. If possible, can you run the free HD player Splash Lite and under the video settings tab, see if hardware video acceleration is supported by the x201?


dr_st:

Yes, catback was an older account that I used with a yahoo email account before it became inundated with spam email.

SailingAway wrote:Thanks for taking the time to test and upload the video. Good to hear the older x201 is capable of fluid 1080p video playback. When you ran the test, did you stream the video from the net or play them off your drive?

Also, what video chipset is in your x201. If possible, can you run the free HD player Splash Lite and under the video settings tab, see if hardware video acceleration is supported by the x201?

All files were played directly from SSD (SATA-III capped by X201's SATA-II interface).

All X201 have an "Intel HD Graphics" GPU (first generation) which is integrated into the CPU die.

Sorry, I won't install extra software but I did test the GPU acceleration option in VLC. There's no noticeable difference except for CPU usage (which proves that GPU supports acceleration). When disabled it was around 50% vs 20% when enabled. System idles at around 15% right now. The option was disabled when I made the youtube video.