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H.264 Videos in Watchout 5 running single-threaded


Dr. Zhivago

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As I understand it, Watchout version 4.2 and above is using a MainConcept MPEG4 decoder which is supposed to use multi-threading to decode H.264 encoded videos. Using the AMD System Monitor, I can see that this is not the case in Watchout 5 on some systems I recently built. When playing back certain, large videos with a .mov extension and an H.264 codec, they do not play back smoothly. I can see in the AMD System Monitor, that only 1 Core of the 6 available was doing any real work. It also wasn't pegged at max usage for that core. The same videos rendered using H.264 with .mp4 do play back smoothly. Same frame rate, bit rate, frame size, etc. as the .mov file that does not play properly. Any ideas?

 

System Specs:

 

Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 Motherboard

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T @3.3GHz - 6 Cores 3.7GHz Turbo Boost

8GB DDR3-1600 Dual Channel RAM

AMD HD6870 1GB Video Card w/ 6 Output Capability

2x WD Caviar Black 500GB

Lite-On DVDRW

Cooler Master Sileo Case w/ 500W PSU

Windows 7 64Bit w/ SP1 and all updates, Latest Drivers, etc.

Watchout 5

Quicktime 7.7

 

These are stable boxes that don't have any issues otherwise. It's not a show stopper as there are versions of the videos which do play back properly, I just found it odd that the H.264 Decoder isn't using Multi-Threading.

 

Thanks for reading.

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Hi Dr. Zhivago,

 

How's Omar?...;-)

 

I'm not Dataton, and not able to answer your question, but have a question if you can help me instead.

 

How have you been able to see and monitor the Display PCs? I've tried, but in Online mode, Watchout takes over the monitor and overlays the output over whatever else I have (eg. Windows Task Manager). I can monitor the Production PC, but not the Displays. Pray tell if you know a way. Thanks.

 

Thomas Leong

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Hi Thomas,

 

I just run AMD System Monitor, stretch it out to get a longer trace, then load up Watchout, run some videos, then minimize Watchuot and take a look at the System Monitor history. Since I know only Watchout was running, I can deduce how it was using the system resources.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Dr. Z

 

PS Omar says hi. :)

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