This is my first shot at trying to playback an HDTV file, a 15GB 1080i of Star Wars episode 4 (curious how a movie from 1977 looks in 1080i...). I originally had the .ts packets and used HDTVtoMPEG2 to make it one large file. So I read up on it as much as I could and tried a few different players, two were highly recommended, Zoom Player and The Core player.
Playback is jerky, my resources are not being used, processor stays around 11%, memory around half of my total. My setup, AMD 2500+, 1GB DDR ram with Nvidia GeForce 6800 GS/XT (supports H264, I got purevideo codec for it, where that is I have no clue) with current NForce drivers. I have no other playback issues and have collected a fair amount of codecs due to AVI playback. So I get GSpot and AVicodec 1.2 to tell me what codecs I need, both programs tell me the required codecs are installed (AVI just says 'supported' and GSpot says the combination of Dscaler Mpeg2 decoder and AC3Filter are supposed to work, so I fire up Zoom Player and set the options under options/setup and chose MPEG2 Audio (AC3Filter) and MPEG2 Transport Video (Dscaler) and I hear and see video but its really choppy.
GSpot says its MPEG2, since I used HDTVtoMPEG2, it says
DVD "VOB" format
MPEG-2 Program Stream << { 1 vid, 1 aud }
Sys Bitrate: 153701 kb/s VBR
under the Video section after it processes it says Codec: MPEG2
when I put in the original .ts it says
File Type: MPEG-2 Transport Stream
Mime Type: video/mp2t
and it doesn't process it, so it doesn't say anything in the codec section. I only put H264 because the original filename includes H264, as in:
moviename_h264-mp2_OAR_1080i_DD5.1_448.0135.ts
OAR being the release group
I don't really understand what H264 is, I notice that alot of video cards say they support H264:
"High-Definition H.264, MPEG-2 and WMV Hardware Acceleration2
Smoothly playback H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV video?including WMV HD?with minimal CPU usage so the PC is free to do other work."
So basically the more I read about this stuff the more confused I get about what I need to playback smooth HDTV sources. I thought I would need to rely on my card, then I read that the card only uses the gpu if you are using its own decoder, i.e. Nvidia PureVideo. Then I read that its not necessary, that a decent machine can handle it.
