I'm playing the "Honey" movie (both Honey-small and Honey-large) and I notice significant slowdown during periods of lots of motion (when the camera shakes, when the first man hops into bed, when people turn around and approach the camera, etc.). The audio plays smoothly all the time but when there is a lot of motion, the picture freezes and resumes when there's less motion. The CPU usage shoots up during high motion video. I saw this in one of the Creative Commons pieces (the one with the kids running backwards and Prof. Lessig's words and voice in the beginning), but it went away when I played the "small" encoding of the same movie. This suggests to me that I'm playing movies which require a faster machine to play. Is that likely to be correct? Would it be possible to have a player pre-decompress frames in high-motion areas of the movie while playing low-motion areas of the movie and cache them in RAM or on disk so they could be played back at full speed? Or would I be better off re-encoding the movie? I'm just after a way to see the movie smoothly. I'm using Theora 0.99.12 with xine-lib version 1.0.0 (from the FreshRPM packages). I'm running this on Fedora Core 2 GNU/Linux and here are the specs of the machine: $ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 9 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz stepping : 5 cpu MHz : 597.657 cache size : 1024 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe tm2 est bogomips : 1179.64 Any pointers you could provide to help me watch the movies more smoothly would be appreciated. Thanks.
On Friday 18 June 2004 04:17 am, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:> I'm playing the "Honey" movie (both Honey-small and Honey-large) and I > notice significant slowdown during periods of lots of motion (when the > ...... > This suggests to me that I'm playing movies which require a faster machineWhen playing Honey-large.ogg on my machine it's kind of jerky, almost like a slide show. The clarity of each frame is good enough, it's just not smooth video. My machine is a 750 MHz AMD Duron with 128 MBytes of RAM, and running Mandrake 10.0. This release of Mandrake came with Mplayer 9.0, and I could only get the audio for the theora sample files with that version of Mplayer. I used urpmi to install Mplayer 1.0pre4, and then I could see the theora video as well as hear the audio. BTW, I just updated to the beta of RealPlay 10 for Linux, and watched the trailers at http://www.realnetworks.com/products/codecs/realvideo.html The 450 kbps version of Harry Potter 3 plays well and looks pretty good on my machine. That file is 4.5 MBytes and plays for 1 minute 23 seconds, or about 3.25 MB/minute. Some of it is just titles, but that is still a very nice compression. Honey-large.ogg is about 680 MB, and plays for about 88 minutes. That amounts to about 7.7 MB/minute. I would suggest that video that looks as good as in RealPlay 10 on hardware as modest as mine, and with files as small as 5 MB/minute would be a target for theora. Based on what I've seen with this first stable release of theora, I'm encouraged. Regards, John Kintree
<200406181229.17283.jkintree@swbell.net> Message-ID: <40D752ED.2000800@xiph.org> John Kintree wrote:> On Friday 18 June 2004 04:17 am, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote: > >>I'm playing the "Honey" movie (both Honey-small and Honey-large) and I >>notice significant slowdown during periods of lots of motion (when the >>...... >>This suggests to me that I'm playing movies which require a faster machine > > > When playing Honey-large.ogg on my machine it's kind of jerky, almost like a > slide show. The clarity of each frame is good enough, it's just not smooth > video. > > My machine is a 750 MHz AMD Duron with 128 MBytes of RAM, and running Mandrake > 10.0. This release of Mandrake came with Mplayer 9.0, and I could only get > the audio for the theora sample files with that version of Mplayer. I used > urpmi to install Mplayer 1.0pre4, and then I could see the theora video as > well as hear the audio.(Disclosure: I produced the Honey theora files.) I also see significant slowdowns at the 720x480 frame size. I have an Athlon XP 2500+ w/ 512 MB of RAM and a reasonable HD. It looks like a theora decode optimization issue, which will hopefully be worked out soon. So far, I haven't heard a report from anyone yet that could smoothly play the large frame size files. That's interesting to know too, and partially why I wanted to get those files out there for people to test. --- Stan Seibert
<200406181229.17283.jkintree@swbell.net> <40D752ED.2000800@xiph.org> <200406212121.29889.jkintree@swbell.net> Message-ID: <40D79CC0.5000807@mailsnare.net> John Kintree wrote:> On Monday 21 June 2004 04:28 pm, Stan Seibert wrote: > >>(Disclosure: I produced the Honey theora files.) >> >>I also see significant slowdowns at the 720x480 frame size. I have an >>Athlon XP 2500+ w/ 512 MB of RAM and a reasonable HD. It looks like a >>theora decode optimization issue, which will hopefully be worked out soon. > > > Thank you for giving us a sample file to evaluate the current status of the > theora codec. > > Suggestion: while a full-length video (88 minutes) is nice in a way, shorter > samples might actually be better. The download times would be shorter. Even > with BitTorrent improving the efficiency of the download, shorter samples > would be another way to keep the data transfer expense for the server at a > reasonable level.That's what the CC films (2 minutes or less) are more geared toward. The Honey video was more of an experiment in distributing full length movies.> Since a trailer of "Harry Potter 3: The Prisoner of Azkaban" can be seen in > RealVideo 10 format at > http://www.realnetworks.com/products/codecs/realvideo.html > and in VP6 format at: http://www.on2.com/vp6_samples.php3 > the ideal evaluation of theora would be in comparison with those other > formats. > > I don't know where to begin to get permission to distribute that trailer in > theora format, but if no one else is working on getting that permission, I > would be willing to try. If permission is received, is someone prepared to > produce the theora files of that trailer? Stan? > JohnTrailers are a good idea. We are actually working on getting permission to distribute a trailer or two, though aren't going to be blockbuster-grade movies like Harry Potter. (P.S. I have added the list email on the To: header because it appears the list manager isn't setting the Reply To header. Just a word of warning to anyone else getting bitten by this.) --- Stan Seibert
<40D79CC0.5000807@mailsnare.net> Message-ID: <40D7EDB2.3010200@forestfield.org>> (Disclosure: I produced the Honey theora files.)Due to quoting, it's not entirely clear to me who wrote this (Stan Seibert?) but I think I'm missing a part of the conversation. I hope nothing pertinant to learning more about Theora or why "Honey" appears to stutter was discussed. I'd like to learn why that happened to me, even when I play the small encoding of the movie. Thanks for providing us with a copy of "Honey" encoded in Vorbis+Theora. This was most useful (and interesting to watch as well). It was particularly generous to provide them under a CC license so we can share the movies. Stan Seibert wrote:> That's what the CC films (2 minutes or less) are more geared toward. The > Honey video was more of an experiment in distributing full length movies.I'd be curious to learn what you learn what conclusions you draw from this experiment.> Trailers are a good idea. We are actually working on getting permission > to distribute a trailer or two, though aren't going to be > blockbuster-grade movies like Harry Potter.That's fine with me -- I'm most interested in seeing what Theora does with video that hasn't been through any other codec (not transcoded) and I'm not sure that is possible with edited movie ads (which are delivered to the public in some lossy compressed encoding). I'd like to see this because I'm interested in being able to learn (visually) what kinds of video Theora handles well and what it doesn't handle well. I don't know that I could do this with transcoded video because it wouldn't be clear to me whether I was seeing the Theora codec not encode something well or if Theora had accurately encoded what it was handed -- and what it was handed was not encoded well. Is it possible to make this kind of video with consumer-grade equipment? Would transcoding from a Flash animation help illustrate something along these lines? I'd also be interested to see portions of Honey encoded such that it traded away file size for accuracy. A short scene with lots of motion which could be decoded without much computation would be interesting to me because then I could better discern if my computer just isn't fast enough to show Theora movies right now or if what I saw in Honey is the effect of encoder settings.
<40D7EDB2.3010200@forestfield.org> Message-ID: <40D86756.7050300@mailsnare.net> J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:>> (Disclosure: I produced the Honey theora files.) > > > Due to quoting, it's not entirely clear to me who wrote this (Stan > Seibert?) but I think I'm missing a part of the conversation. I hope > nothing pertinant to learning more about Theora or why "Honey" appears > to stutter was discussed. I'd like to learn why that happened to me, > even when I play the small encoding of the movie. > > Thanks for providing us with a copy of "Honey" encoded in > Vorbis+Theora. This was most useful (and interesting to watch as > well). It was particularly generous to provide them under a CC > license so we can share the movies.Ah, maybe I should explain the full story: At the South by Southwest (SXSW) music/film/interactive conference in Austin this past March, I got a chance to see a panel hosted by Creative Commons talking about CC and film. One of the panelists was David Ball, who was working with CC on releasing a film he wrote and directed under a CC license. Later, when we (some people at Xiph.org) were thinking about Theora demo footage, I remembered David and suggested that Manuel Lora (another Xiph.org guy) contacted him. David was really excited by the idea. He agreed to provide us with the final DV cut of his movie (20GB!!) so we could try out Theora on a film that had not been compressed to heavily already. He uploaded the file to my computer, and after some tinkering, I (Stan Seibert) made several theora files with various frame sizes and quality levels. So really, thanks to David Ball is in order. Be sure to check out his website at: http://fourthwall.creativecommons.org>> Trailers are a good idea. We are actually working on getting >> permission to distribute a trailer or two, though aren't going to be >> blockbuster-grade movies like Harry Potter. > > > That's fine with me -- I'm most interested in seeing what Theora does > with video that hasn't been through any other codec (not transcoded) > and I'm not sure that is possible with edited movie ads (which are > delivered to the public in some lossy compressed encoding). I'd like > to see this because I'm interested in being able to learn (visually) > what kinds of video Theora handles well and what it doesn't handle > well. I don't know that I could do this with transcoded video because > it wouldn't be clear to me whether I was seeing the Theora codec not > encode something well or if Theora had accurately encoded what it was > handed -- and what it was handed was not encoded well.Exactly. We had some "source footage" available for people to test video compression on http://media.xiph.org, but because of our temporary hosting situation while our replacement server is fixed, that website is not currently online. Given the enormous size of video, most of the test clips are DV files, which are compressed slightly. (It seems to be about 1/4 the size of raw YUV video.) That's good enough to test compression for Internet distribution, where you are looking at 20:1, 50:1 or higher compression ratios.> Is it possible to make this kind of video with consumer-grade equipment?Sure! DV cameras are pretty popular these days, and with a Firewire cable and $15 Firewire PCI card, you can dump the digital video directly to your PC. Of course, camera quality varies depending upon your budget, but the basics are fairly affordable.> Would transcoding from a Flash animation help illustrate something > along these lines?Perhaps, though I would imagine the sharp color boundaries and solid colors in most Flash animations would tend to be blurred. It would be sort of like testing JPEG compression on Illustrator documents rather than actual photographs. It would be useful for certain things, but wouldn't be a normal test case.> I'd also be interested to see portions of Honey encoded such that it > traded away file size for accuracy. A short scene with lots of motion > which could be decoded without much computation would be interesting > to me because then I could better discern if my computer just isn't > fast enough to show Theora movies right now or if what I saw in Honey > is the effect of encoder settings.The theora encoder has a sliding quality scale just like Vorbis. I created several files using different quality settings, but we only distributed one of them. Honey is a bit long to use for quality comparisons, but I'll see if we can dig up some nice video clips. For the next Theora release we'll try to have a single clip posted with both the DV original, and several theora encodes at different quality settings. We'll also be sure to use a small enough frame size that people's computers can keep up. --- Stan Seibert