QuickTime - Slow HD 1080p under Windows

Hi.

Have you guys got the same problem? It's really slow at playing HD (1080) from Apple.com/trailers section on all three of my computers.

My Acer it's slow.
My Sony it's slow.
My Desktop, it's slow.

But they all play the WMD High-Def (1080) fine, the 720p is okay under Quicktime but goes really slow under the 1080 format. I've got a 64-bit AMD2.4Ghz + 1Gb RAM + 7600GT oc'd and its still slow.

It's even slow on a MacBook 2Ghz with 2Gb RAM.

What's up with that?

 

What are the screen resolutions on these monitors? I've actually learned that resizing the feed takes a big chunk out of the CPU alone when playing 1080p on my notebook as well as my 20" LCD.

Another thing, Apple's decoder is "bleh" in terms of performance. I would try downloading a codec pack like ffdshow and playing the files in Windows Media Player. It's a LOT smoother that way.

 

1080p might be overkill for those monitors. You probably wouldn't tell a difference if you went with 720p instead.

 

Well I've got a 15.4" and this laptop is at 13.3" both with 1280x800 resolution.

Desktop 17" at 1600x1200 resolution. But yeh my god the Quicktime thing is crap.

Surely you can't play the .mov files in Media Player? What's that codec or program??

 

Although I haven't noticed any serious lagging with Quicktime running on my e1705, I always use VLC to play my movies. Small footprint and quick as lightning!

Are you running the most current version of QT? Perhaps an upgrade will help speed things up.

 

Yup - latest version, but no help whatever. I've downloaded the Shrek3 trailer (1080) and tried it on all my three Windows PC and went and tried it on a MacBook. They were all slow.

Stupid isn't it? It's even slow on their own product! LOL

 

Ok.... I tried the trailers on my Dell Laptop and it runs perfectly. It even runs fine on my old Toshiba laptop with only a p4 and 512 ram. Do you have the latest drivers?

 

sylonien, did you try using VLC?

 

Yup I've downloaded most latest driver I can find. But having trouble installing the latest nVidia driver - it says its not compatible with my system?

I have downloaded VLC but it didn't play the WMP HD trailers and there's no image or sound.

Strangely enough I tried to play a trailer last night using on-board graphics and it seems to be faster than under nVidia mode!!??

 

Quicktime alternative might work, but I never tested it with HD files. Maybe it would work better for you.

 

What? Quicktime alternative? Is that a program or something?

 

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm

Re: VLC - Yes, it doesn't play WMV HD stuff, but that's the only thing. Use VLC for all other file types, and stick to Media Player for the WMV stuff.

 

I use Media Player Classic and Quicktime Alternative, my 1080p (in both WMV and MOV) videos run fine on my 1920x1200 WUXGA screen on my notebook.

get it here:
http://www.free-codecs.com/

 

I'll give it a shot in a moment - Quicktime Alternative.

But then Gophn - you do have a beast of a machine -> Alienware!

 

First of all, 1080p is overkill for your laptops. If you only have a resolution of 1280x800, you're not seeing all of a 1080p resolution (1900x1080) anyway, nor will your 1600x1200 monitor show that resolution. So really, 720p is fine, because that's actually close to your native resolution. And in fact, WMP may be downscaling the resolution to 720p without you realizing it, whereas Quicktime doesn't, but I can't be sure of that.

That being said, there could be a few problems. Firstly, if you're running these videos in Vista, be aware that the built-in Vista DRM requires that "premium" content be carefully scrutinized and information be relayed back to the OS about every video frame to ensure it's not pirated, which takes massive amounts of processing power (see other threads in this section). However, if it's not running correctly on a Macbook, then I doubt that's the big problem here. Secondly, it could be bad drivers, and seeing as how you say it plays better through the GMA than through the nVidia 7400, that makes sense since nVidia's Vista drivers are said to be sketchy at best. But this still doesn't explain the other two laptops. What's more likely is that it's a Quicktime thing; I've personally found Quicktime to give better picture quality that WMP in the past, so it may be using hardware effects (which are often driven by the GPU) to clear up the picture through de-interlacing and so forth. And given the limited GPUs in the systems you have tested, this may be the cause.

But like I said, you could just go with 720p since that's the highest HD resolution your monitors can actually display anyway.

 

Yup I am going with 720p trailers now cause I can't see the 1080p like you said. So not much point really.

I'm not sure how WMP renders the images, but I find them much sharper and smoother if you ask. I think the Quicktime is just a bti flawed cause I can loads of interlace lines when watching 720p trailers using QT whereas I don't get them with WMP.

And I'm just using the GMA instead now till they can make it supportive under this SZ or Vista. They better release something new sometime. I don't get why the nVidia latest driver won't let me install it on to this laptop! What if they have this "lock/protection" on all the future driver updates from nvidia? That would suck big time.

I've got a ATI x1400 on my other laptop which was slow as well and on my desktop was a 7600GT o'cd which was slow as well.

The only machine that I've experienced that wasn't slow was on a 2.1Gig + x1600 MacBook Pro - that ran the 1080p trailer very smoothly.

 

Well, it's a Mac with OS X and a performance GPU... it's to be expected I guess.