5D MKII PC Playback - Good Solution Found!
 

This may be old news here. My search here didn't come up with anything so if this is a old news, I apologize in advance.

I've had a _lot_ of issues trying to play back my 5D .mov files on my computer systems. Nothing I tried would result in clean playback without stutter (even the Zoombrowser EX - which played the files the best - stuttered a little). I even started transcoding my files using TMPGenc but I am very dissapointed in the resulting files outside of the original 5D files. This is not the right solution long term. I am also very disappointed to read other "media players" have various issues (ok video, no audio, etc.).

I have an HTPC driving my HDTV display setup at 1920x1080 so PC playback has the potential to let me see my material in the best possible untouched resolutions. I have used VLC player for many years and was disappointed (very surprised) it couldn't handle these files.

Well then I found this advice (from: http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php...back-with-vlc/). Hopefully it's ok to re-post the text quoted from the link here:

And now VLC plays back my 5D files clean as a whistle!

Now how to figure out how to do native file editing (no re-encoding except transitions/effects).

Yes, that has been noted before, but it deserves mentioning often. On another forum people posted over and over that there was no way to play the files on their PC. I posted the instructions that you just did over and over again. I finally gave up.

You forgot one important point. They need to pick up the latest copy of VLC. This trick has only worked in the last few versions.

I had 5DII files playing nicely in Media Player Classic by re-installing the latest quicktime but it mysteriously started getting jumpy again. I may try re-installing MPC but for now VLC is working perfectly thanks to your advice. Don't give up on giving good advice. Of course, some of this stuff might be a good sticky post.

With coreavc even a lowly 1.3 ghz subnotebook can handle 5D files relatively smooth :)

I'll give it a try. You can download a free 14 day trial.

Clearly VLC gives up something in quality for the speed up. I am seeing lots of banding in flat areas like blue sky, etc.

FYI, here's coreavc requirements:

1080p video at 24-30 frames per second
CPU - 2.8 GHz or faster Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent AMD processor
RAM - At least 1GB of RAM
GPU - 256MB or greater video card
OS - Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista

Without defining exactly what the bit rate of the 1080p video is those specifications are not a lot of use. For example I know from experience of using CoreAVC that to play H.264 files as transmitted on the BBC HD satellite channel that are 1080p at about 16Mbps that you need a dual core processor. I doubt that Canon 5DII files at 40+Mbps would be any easier to decode.

Both CoreAVC with Media Player Classic and also VLC play 5D2 files fine for me on a significantly old PC.

What does relative mean? It either drops frames or it doesn't. I could make that claim about all my players.

Relatively meaning not 100% real time, but almost. It slows down instead of dropping frames. With the skip deblocking option it manages around 15fps, which is extremely impressive for a notebook that barely keeps up with DV files and can't handle HD vimeo streams. :)

In case you're interested, it's a 1.2ghz pentium M vaio txn17 notebook. No dual cores, intel gma 945 graphics, etc... I was convinced it would never be able to handle any video stream that would take advantage of the very nice 1366 x 768 panel until I tried coreavc. HD vimeo stutters, so does HD youtube, HD wmv and HD quicktime are a slideshow, but with coreavc, it handles almost any h.264 stream I can throw at it.

Fwiw, on a macbook pro 2.3 running winxp it handles real time playback with the processor at around 56% and absolutely no skips.

Rick -

That worked perfectly. Thanks for the helpful information.

Gregory