Looking for a good, very lightweight DVD player software

Discuss software and how to tweak more performance out of your system.
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tazwegion
Veteran K6'er
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Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2003 11:13 am
Location: Victoria, Australia

Post by tazwegion »

No worries KingV just nice to know you're still keeping the K6x dream alive :D
jeepster
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Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2009 8:54 pm

Post by jeepster »

I have Power DVD XP 4, and it runs on a K6-3/450.
I tried WinDVD 4, but it used 100% CPU on a K6-2/500 and gave
black lines across the display. I once got it to run with the CPU
at 97%, but forget what tweaking was required.
I haven't got the free VLC to work on a K6 (also pegs out at
100% CPU).
DonPedro
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Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

hello,

I recently got PowerDVD 4 (which is also labelled as PowerDVD-XP) build .1813 (thank you jim) really flying.

depending on what dvd (movie) I play I got a cpu-load of only 30 to 50%, playing most time at 35% in one case and other movies play at 40 to 70% cpu-load, averaging at 55%.

in other words dvd-movies now play REALLY smooth and without any hick-ups. these results I get on both win98se and win2000.

system:
asus p5a 1.03
k6-3+ at 300mhz !!!!!! (which is due to only half fsb-speed of 50mhz because of broken chip on the motherboard)
graphic card: nvidia geforce fx 5900xt
graphics driver: 52.16 (win98), 56.72 (win2000)
agp-driver + ide-driver: versions that come bundled with ali-integrated-driver-file version 1.91 (win2000)
agp-driver (win98): 1.68
ide-driver (win98): 3.56

the MOST important thing to get such low cpu-load is to ensure that

- your DVD-drive runs in DMA-mode (NOT pio-mode)
- video hardware acceleration enabled

for video hardware acceleration you have to tick the according check-box within the power-dvd program's configuration.
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mamba
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Location: Italy

Post by mamba »

For video DVD player, nothing is more important but the VGA card.
The best video card you could use for it is an ATI one, this is for sure.

ATI cards from RAGE128 have hardware motion compensation AND IDCT (inverse discrete cosine transformation).

Other cards, including FX series have hardware motion compensation only.
With a rage 128 PCI you could see a DVD smoothly on a P200MMX.
DonPedro
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Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

andrej,
the so-called hardware acceleration in this context only means using "video overlay". this means, that the output is directly written into the graphics display memory area. it has nothing to do with conversion(computation) of mpeg2-stream or whatever format of the movie.

for it to work you should a) have agp-driver, directx-driver, and video-driver installed correctly and b) "tick" the check box within powerdvd.

see picture ....

also have you verified that your dvd-drive is running in DMA-mode? if it is running in PIO-mode you will never come close to 50% cpu-usage.
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video acceleration powerdvd.png
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DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

andrej,

riva 128 pci DOES support video overlay mode!
you will find informatioin that confirms this when you google "riva 128 pci overlay mode"

for example here:
http://www.ltcom.com/page/FAQ/TV_Tuner.htm
DonPedro
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Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

so then there is no reason why it should perform worse than the fx 5900 card I used. it does not feature idct either and I doubt powerdvd4 which was released in first half of 2002 had any idea about an fx-5900 card and its capabilities ....

HOW do you check that your dvd runs in dma mode? what tool do you use?
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