"You need a super computer"
"Your processor better have some gusto if you wanna play that 1080 HDV footage"
"In order to playback 720p HDV, you better have some real processing power"

we hear this time and time again.

Ok....tell me.....what computer can playback HDV footage without batting an eye?
Is it the Graphics card? is it the Processor? is it the RAM? is it the front side Bus?

What is it.....and more importanly...WHO IS IT? As of Monday January 16th, 2006, what computer can you go purchase this afternoon that will playback HDV .M2T files without sweat???

- ShannonRawls.com

http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=34391

1- According to others, Edius NX (with the hardware acceleration) can play back HDV really well.

2- Sony Vegas 6.0c on a dual core dual Opteron will be able to play back 1080i HDV at 29.97 fps or close to it. I saw this on DSE's machine (it's nice...). The AMD X2 processors should be able to do the same thing, but I haven't checked it out for myself.

And Sony Vegas is a very feature-packed editing program, so I'd probably get that over Edius.

3- The simpler solution is to use an intermediary codec or a proxy. I don't know of any editing system that doesn't support this (with a 3rd party tool if necessary).

4- Dan: Do you know if the Nvidia solution accelerates the decoding of M2T streams?

"Playback" of HDV isn't a problem for any reasonably fast computer with a P-IV 2.4Ghz processor or faster, as long as you have a decent piece of Media Player software.

The "preview playback" of HDV during editing is a problem if you let it get to you, although there's obviously solutions to that as well - although they cost a bit more.

As with many things these days - the use and missuse of the English language doesn't aid in understanding exactly what point is being made.

HDV is essentially the same as broadcast HD. If HDV (which has specs so close to broadcast HD it's basically identical) didn't "playback" easily and fluidly on a reasonably spec'd PC, then DVB-t PCI cards would be providing unwatchable HD to the many, many thousands of people who use them like I do - namely to watch, record and stream 1080i and 720p HD programs from the major broadcast networks.

Believing the naysayers of HDV about it's failings is a symptom of not checking the evidence for and against well enough. Knowing what HDV can and can't do - as well as the advances being made in providing RT Preview "playback" of HDV during editing regardless of the naysayers, is a far more informed and rational base for any decision making regarding it's usefullness or not.

>>"Playback" of HDV isn't a problem for any reasonably fast computer with a P-IV 2.4Ghz processor or faster, as long as you have a decent piece of Media Player software.

What Steve said ... my P4-2.8Ghz with its el-cheapo Radeon FX5200 card plays back .m2t files without sweating.

Interesting.

My Sony Vaio PCG-RX850 2.4ghz P4 "DESKTOP"with 1.5gigs of ram is not giving me full frame rate smooth playing like it does DV.

Me and wifey are building a theater at our house and at the back top row, will be an edit bay. I need to build or buy a super computer, but don't need to spend money I don't need to spend, nawmean?

Just wanted to know what can play a stream of M2T video without problems at full refresh, full frame rates. My 2.4ghz vaio can't if I got other things going on at the same time it seems.

- ShannonRawls.com

I believe the RX850 laptop usually has a 5400rpm harddrive - if so that might be contributing to the problem (versus a 7200rpm or RAID drive).

My Sony Vaio PCG-RX850 2.4ghz P4 with 1.5gigs of ram is not giving me full frame rate smooth playing like it does DV.

2.4 GHz is low end for playing HD resolution video reliably, and the amount of memory in your video card can also make a difference. If you end up building a new computer, the latest entry-level dual core chips from Intel and AMD should work fine, starting at around $300 or so for the processor. If you want a plug-and-play solution, look for the new "Viiv" multimedia computers.

P.S. What, a little short on cash after buying the XL-H1? :-)

My 2.4ghz vaio can't if I got other things going on at the same time it seems.

- ShannonRawls.com

I haven't found any of my machines (P-IV 2.4Ghz, P-IV 3.2Ghz or Toshiba P-IV 3.2Ghz laptop) that can play HD/HDV smoothly with other applications or even other processes happening. The instant you break the memory/processing stream, you run the risk of having playback slow or become 'choppy' as memory and processing power get swapped from one action to another.

I don't know how you intend setting up your home theatre, but to keep expenses down a bit, I opted for a 10/100 hardwired network media player to stream any of the HD material (from recordings off my DVB-t PCI equiped 2.4Ghz machine, to HDV project previewing from the 3.2Ghz machines). My choice was for the Roku HD1000 Photobridge, which was the only HD capable network media Player available at the time.

Now that the Roku's PAL playback issues have been sorted with improved SMB network protocol support, it's easy and comfortable to just browse my network using my HDTV home theatre setup... select the m2t or MPEG2 that I'm after and hit play on the Roku's remote.

Even some projects that play like absolute dogs on any of my PCs (a combined NTSC 720 30p and PAL 1080i 50i project come to mind) play flawlessly via the Roku on the big HDTV screen, and with 5.1 audio added to the final projects as well... it's a much more enjoyable experience.

Despite the Roku being able to now play back PAL HD without it's previous hassles, I'm considering getting an XBox360. There's also the Avel Linkplayer that could provide similar capabilities, with the added bonus of an internal DVD drive for viewing WMV9 HD encoded DVDs...

There's plenty of options available now, as well as coming onto market that allow for greater flexibility in getting HD/HDV material to a HD home theatre screen. There's also the fact that they can also do so cheaper than a dedicated PC which has limited connectivity in itself.

Hope you end up with a cool theatre setup...

My g5 iMac, 2.1Ghz can easily play back PAL 1080i .m2t files, (camera files that is...). On VLC Player I can even set to "bob" de-interlace and get proper 50hz refresh rate (rather than 25hz de-interlace or with interlace jaggies.)

VLC is also available for PC, so a similarly powerful PC would be able to do this easily. I don't know if it's been compiled for the new Intel iMacs. I suspect not.

All of the above methods are inferior to this method:-

1) Get any P4 2GHz or higher.

2) Install PowerDVD 6.

3) Get an LCD Panel with DVI input (ideally the Dell 2405FPW).

4) Get a NVidia Video Card (more info below).

5) Install the latest drivers.

6) Go to "Advanced Timings" and set the refresh rate to 59.94 Hz.

Now see your m2t clips like never before. What you will see is 59.94 PROGESSIVE FRAMES per second! NOT 29.97 with "Bob" or "Weave".

NVidia's Pure Video converts the 59.94 fields into FRAMES. It is truly amazing. There is hardly any aliasing and in my opinion the de-interlacing is better than even a $15,000 Faroudja Scaler.

Now comes the tricky part. Which NVidia video card?

6600GT - Skips a few frames per second. Watchable but not fun.
7800GT - Awesome. Hardly any frames skipped. Just only on complex scenes.
7800GTX - Perfect. Can handle even complex scenes.
7800GTX 512 - Better than perfect :)

6200, 6600, etc - Forget it! No horsepower to de-interlace 1080i, instead it will resort to Bob or Weave and 29.97 Frames per second...

On my PC, I get the best m2t playback using the program Nero Showtime. It glitches once about a half second into the file but otherwise the playback is completely smooth. I can't get smooth playback with any other media player. It will bob deinterlace the playback on the fly (which looks wonderful) and scale the footage down slightly so that it just fills (instead of overshoots) the screen on my 21" monitor. I really like it. My PC is a 3.06 P4 with the older 533 bus.

For smooth playback of cineform codec avi, I just use Windows Media Player, but I have to use this registry playback optimizer:

http://www.cineform.com/downloads/PlaybackControls.zip

There are two options, one gives you full resolution playback that your computer might have trouble playing back, the other gives you smooth half resolution playback. Half resolution HDV looks like standard DV footage, so it makes for a nice way to preview your footage. I have the two registry programs in a folder where I can easily switch between these options.

My laptop with a pentium-m 1.6 Ghz and radeon 9700 plays back all hdv with VLC. It won't handle editing it, but it can play back just fine. 4200 rpm hard drive causes hiccups if i decide to do anything like save a file while playing something.

Do you realize that with Bob De-Interlacing you get not just 29.97 frames per second but also a resolution of only 1920x540 (half). Bob sucks big time...

WOW

do you guys realize for over a year, I have been using WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER (latest versions) to play all my .M2T files. And it has always sucked!

today

just now

I tried an .m2t file with that VLC media player.........they all played back as if I was watching regular TV! lol (shakin' my head) Yes, I feel like an idiot. I should have KNOWN that microsoft's media player wasn't up to snuff for playing HDV footage.

I have an old PCG-RX850 2.4ghz desktop computer, that I will install this VLC on. and I have an old PCG-GRT170 2.8ghz laptop computer that i just played it on. These are my personal babies. I always hire out an editor to cut the projects, and they always create proxy dv files to cut our projects, but now I'm going to hip everybody to this VLC player!

Now for "EDITING" it....vegas still plays it choppy on my desktop like windows media player did. That's why I never bothered to change the media player. I figured it was just a problem with the codec and needed a super computer. I wish vegas played it like the VLC does now! Oh well. I am now going to build my own personal editing super station with all the bells and whistles because I want one at my house that fits in a RACK MOUNT. not that I am going to become an editor, but well, you know....I just want one. *smile*....I will take your suggestions and build to specs above.

Thanks guys!

- ShannonRawls.com

Do you realize that with Bob De-Interlacing you get not just 29.97 frames per second but also a resolution of only 1920x540 (half). Bob sucks big time...

Im not sure that is true with VLC - I loose no resolution and it appears to be doubling it from 50i to 50p not 25p

7800GT - Awesome. Hardly any frames skipped. Just only on complex scenes.
7800GTX - Perfect. Can handle even complex scenes.
7800GTX 512 - Better than perfect :)


Have these boards been phased out? All I'm seeing at my local computer store are the 7900GT, 7900GTX, 8800GTS, and 8800GTX. These (later) graphics cards cost almost as much as an entire core 2 duo PC with 2 GB of ram. Which manufacturer makes the most reliable boards, BFG, Asus, or eVga?

I have a nvidia 7600 gt. I cannot play cineform avi in VLC and mediaplayer shows a horrible flicker if I export in upper field first and a horrible faster motion (almost like a subtle fast forward) if I export in lower field first. I wish I knew what was going on.

WOW - do you guys realize for over a year, I have been using WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER (latest versions) to play all my .M2T files. And it has always sucked!

Shannon, WinMedia player does play HD, that's not the problem. The problem is that it's a huge application, it takes up most of your computer resources just to run, let alone do anything at all. I am using Media Player Classic 6.4.9.0, a sweet little program you don't even need to install (no need for registry support), just put in on your desktop and run it from there, it plays almost everything including DVDs.

Guys, this thread is a year old. Most of the information in it is obsolete. Just to give a few examples...

There were no Intel Macs, they had just been announced at Macworld.

There was no XDCAM HD, they started shipping in late March.

There were no Core2 Duo processors, let alone quad core.

It's likely that the drivers for the graphics boards mentioned have been updated to address any shortcomings. But those boards have probably been superseded by now anyway which is why Marc can't find them.

-gb-

FWIW...

I'm running a core2 duo on an SLI enabled asus mobo. Playback of either m2t or cineform intermediate is seamless, glitchfree. i wouldn't go NEAR WMP with a ten foot boompole. I use Zoomplayer...fully configurable, a wee bit technical, but, that's what makes it great.

Guys, this thread is a year old. Most of the information in it is obsolete.I think we're going to start limiting replies to threads that are less than a year old. Lately some real dinosaurs have been dredged up... I guess it shows that folks are using the Search function!

Time limiting will definitely help, go for it.

I saw the date as "yesterday" and did not check anything above that... sorry...

I have a P4 amd64 3000+(i think is the number hahah) and I have a gig of ram. and I havent had my A1u that long but I have been cutting my footy in Vegas 7 and exporting it out into quicktime movies and the footage looks great me. It plays fine on quicktime and and works good when i send it over the web. is this a wrong move to be exporting to quicktime everyone seems to be using Wmv, or Vlc to play there clip.

When im editing footage I dont seem to have to many problems with play back. Few that I have I tend to blame more on my hard drive that is has never been re formatted since I go this computer in 04.

here is a clip of some video I did for this scion dj event at a club, its very low light but is the quality how it is suppose to be

https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/dacole/public/FINAL2.mov?uniq=-5hqrs2

"You need a super computer"
"Your processor better have some gusto if you wanna play that 1080 HDV footage"
"In order to playback 720p HDV, you better have some real processing power"

we hear this time and time again.

Ok....tell me.....what computer can playback HDV footage without batting an eye?
Is it the Graphics card? is it the Processor? is it the RAM? is it the front side Bus?

What is it.....and more importanly...WHO IS IT? As of Monday January 16th, 2006, what computer can you go purchase this afternoon that will playback HDV .M2T files without sweat???

- ShannonRawls.com

I bought a cheapie Dell 520 a little over a year ago (under $650.00, Nov. 2005). It's a 3Ghz Pentium 4 with 1 Gig of memory, a cheapie Radeon card with 256 meg of memory. I use a Dell 2405 1920 x 1200 LCD monitor ($849.00)... more than the cost of the computer. The new Dell 2407 is a little cheaper now.

VLC player works just fine on my PC, but I usually just rename the M2T files to MPG so they play on Windows Media Player. I downloaded the latest version of WMP 11 and it works fine too.

VLC player is ok but does not have a counter or repeat which irritates me. Windows Media Player just plays them like any other file. There are no glitches with full 1920 x 1080/60i or 1080/24p, except for one about 1 to 2 seconds into the video. This is normal with most files except .wmv files. Nero Showtime also plays the files without a glitch.

Another a great thing you can do if you have a Firewire-enabled TV (and a Mac, even an old one - I use a G4 Mac Mini for this) is to use the FireWire SDK (the AVCBrowser and Virtual DVHS components) to play HiDef transport streams directly into the TV. Not for the faint-hearted and you need to be an Apple ADC member to get the software but the results are awesome. I've played both 720P and 1080i HDV originated .m2ts without a hitch (obviously the TV does the decoding (mine is a Sony XBR960 34" CRT).

The Lumiere plugin for FCP will let you export the .m2ts. or you can export a file that iMovie will swallow, then 'save as a file for camera later. You need to have an HDV camera plugged in and the file it creates, whilst missing the .m2t suffix, is good to go.

wmp is problemmatic. i've always used zoomplayer, which has now evolved to a very dependable and configurable freeware player. Zoomplayer will play native m2t video streams after you download ffdshow. If you install Zoomplayer, it will go out and get the codecs you need. Just my $.02.

I recently bought a 22" WS LCD that has both analog and DVI. I had connected the analog cable as my video card had the adapter already attached (I replaced a 19" LCD second head with the 22").

Attached to my ATi Radeon X800GTO, what's the advantage of DVI over analog, if any?

I think we're going to start limiting replies to threads that are less than a year old. Lately some real dinosaurs have been dredged up... I guess it shows that folks are using the Search function!

I have responded to a few old ones with out checking the date, but usually that was to say "thanks for the info" or something along those lines. But that obviously isn't an important comment so if it helps DVInfo.net run smoother / cleaner, then I'm all for it.

jason