Brake HD video. Let's figure it out together

The live broadcast of the Olympiad, unfortunately, is broadcast at a very inconvenient time, so you have to look in the recordings. And since there is a fast Internet, why not indulge in pleasure and not look in HD? I am surprised at the promptness of the torrent-distribution: almost immediately after the end of the broadcast you can find one or even several HD versions of the competition. Some write an un-coded stream directly from the satellite and post it without clamping. The proposed distribution is very diverse in formats, and sometimes there are quite exotic.

Until yesterday evening, I was absolutely certain that my home computer on a 3 GHz Core 2 Duo E8400 is capable of pulling any format up to 1080p, with any codecs and players. But it turned out that this is not entirely true. Figure skating recorded in 1080i in H.264 format with a stream of only 7897 Kbps was played with terrible brakes.

What is even more surprising is that the familiar KMPlayer did not want to remove the “comb” even with the deinterlace filter turned on. There was little time, I wanted to see figure skating, and not dig into the player’s settings, so I didn’t go into details, watch the processor load, used codecs, etc. I just tried to switch KMPlayer to an external codec, but the brakes did not disappear.
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Then other players went to the course, in particular, SMPlayer , which has no alternative uses only internal codecs and is based on the MPlayer engine. There was no effect - all the same brakes. It seemed very strange, because before that, I calmly watched movies in 1080p.

Media Player Classic for some reason was not remembered when searching for alternatives. Instead, I decided to try VLC Media Player , which I don’t really like the interface, but it is often mentioned in topics where I discuss problems with HD video.

And here it is - absolutely smooth video! After switching on the deinterlace, the comb disappeared and we began to watch the Olympiad. Here, in fact, the background without technical details.

Today I decided to raise the old bookmarks and read, what was the problem after all. It turned out that indeed the speed of even a fast processor may not be enough. In general, the topic of HD video, especially on low-end computers, is very relevant. For example, I still cannot get the Sony VAIO AR11-SR multimedia notebook, which was positioned specifically for HD viewing, to show this HD without brakes! Due to the difficulties of correct settings, a huge number of formats, codecs and players, not everyone can figure this out. And I, frankly, also very poorly possess the subject. But then what is the internet? I will list several articles in which, in my opinion, the topic is disclosed in sufficient detail and, at the same time, is understandable.

For comparison, first look at how difficult everything really is . If the author of the above instructions explained in more detail all these magical actions, it would probably be a little easier. But still, I did not dare to repeat what he proposes, although I can get some advice from there.

Here is what I recommend reading and what I am going to use in the near future:

• Pretty short review article on codecs on Habrahabr
• Which player to choose for HD video to watch any formats
• Details on hardware acceleration DXVA
• Selecting a codec with DXVA support and its proper inclusion in various players

It seems to me that this is enough to solve most performance problems and to understand the point. Be sure to write about the results of the experiments.

Supplement, if something is missed. This is not the only article and even not so much an article, as an attempt to streamline the accumulated information and attract collective intelligence.

Update . The bundle Media Player Classic Home Cinema + DivX 7 proposed in the mentioned articles, as a H.264 decoder, helped a lot. Those videos that are heavily braked on the Sony VAIO, are now shown absolutely smoothly and with excellent quality.