Re: [Mplayerxp-general] [ANNOUNCE] Busmastering with Mach64 (new test)

[Nick K. <nic...@ma...>]

Hello!

I did some more test and want to notice you about their results!
1. I've tried to playback that movie which caused fork of mplayerxp! ;)

MPEG4 720x480@30fps on Cel1-266 + BM (mach64-based 3DRageIIc)!

I was able to watch it *WITHOUT FRAME DROPPING* and A-V resync!
Of course, smothness was not reachable on my test system and I had
non monotounous playback :( (Means - dynamic scenes cause A-V resync
for 5-10 sec but smooth scenes restore A-V synchronization again).
But during watching of first 30 min I still had synced A-V streams.
Decoding of that movie requires in 2-3 times more cpu resources than
DVD's decoding. Therefore I can suppose that perfect DVD playback is
possible on Cel1-266 class systems. (Of course, frame dropping with
such movies will depend on number of dynamic scenes i.e. in which
proportions we have intra and non-intra frames but before BM
implementation it was impossible even dream about watching of such
movies on relativedly slow PCs).
2. The speed of movie playback will depend on amount of installed
RAM! By default mplayerxp will try to allocate 64 buffers for
decoding ahead. If computer doesn't have enough memory to fit them
within it then system will perform swapping and as effect will
perform dramatical slowdown of decoding. In such situiations only
thing which you may to do it's descrease number of buffers for
decoding ahead through -da_buffs key.
(Yes, in case of BM mplayerxp will allocate buffers in RAM instead
of video memory where worked autolimitation of buffers' usage).
For example my test PC has 32MB of RAM and I was need to limit number
of buffers for decoding ahead as 15. From other side to get SMOOTH
playback of this movie on Cel1-266 we need to have approx:
30fps*10sec = 300 buffers
that will require: 300*720*480*2=197MB of free physical memory!

Resume - BM technology is WORTH to spend your attention and free time
on porting and/or implementing it for your videocards!

Bye all, I'm on vacations! :)

Best regards! Nick