- From: Michael A. Puls II <shadow2531@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:03:28 -0400
On 10/15/08, Chris Double <chris.double at double.co.nz> wrote: > On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 7:35 AM, Michael A. Puls II > <shadow2531 at gmail.com> wrote: >> I *think* it has to do with the lack of hardware acceleration (even in >> webkit's implementation). It seems like it's all CPU driving the video >> element. No beefy CPU, no usable video element. > > Yes, this is certainly an issue. A player using hardware acceleration > will outperform a player that doesn't. You won't be able to do things > like overlay HTML over the plugin area, perform effects and > transformations, copy the image of the video frame to canvas, etc with > the plugin as a result. Maybe <video> needs something (currently. maybe not in a few years) like a wmode param where the author can suggest (and the user can ultimately override if necessary) whether it's accelerated or not. Then, a site might provide <video wmode="something"> all by itself on a separate page as an alternative to the normal all-cpu-driven-can-be-overlayed version. Would be something neat to play with to see if it helps. Something like video.mozWmode. >> But, I don't know details. Just know that the videolan >> plugin can play theora videos with very little cpu usage, while the >> *experimental* <video> implementations use 100% cpu, display video at >> like 2fps and play audio like crap, unless you have a fast computer >> where you can't notice. > > Can you provide details of the specs of the computer, operating > system, and the page that you see these issues so I can test and fix > any issues? Sure, no problem. Example hardware that *needs* the acceleration that VideoLan (and whatever flash does) provides: PIII 700MHz + 256MB ram + ATI Rage Mobility + 5400RPM hard drive + ESS Maestro PII 350MHz + 192MB ram + AGP TNT2 + 5400RPM ATA33 hard drive + Diamond sonic impact s90 PIII 733MHz + 320MB ram + PCI GeForce2 MX400 + ata100 7200RPM har drive + Sound blaster audigy 1.3GHz P4 + 256MB PC800 Rambus + ATA100 7200RPM + AGP TNT2 (better, but not perfect) + Sound Blaster live (WinXP, 8Mb net connection, lastest drivers available) To sum it up, if you have a P4 or below, <video> requires something like 1.6GHz (or way higher if ads are on a page I assume) or so, while a PII 350Mhz does well with the videolan plugin. <http://people.opera.com/howcome/2007/video/controls.html> (bad) <http://people.opera.com/howcome/2007/video/wikipedia/macaw.html> (absolutely horrible) <http://tinyvid.tv/show/25tuo4iijnin8> (horrible) <http://tinyvid.tv/show/3m2v1wnodj23i> (even worse. Stops playing if Firefox is focused) In the case of Firefox, <video> performance is less bad if Firefox isn't focused (or if Firefox is done fetching the file). However, even then, it's still using 100% cpu and typing in any other application causes the audio to studder big time. Even when a <video> is paused, Firefox uses 100% cpu. The same type of results are present in webkit and Opera's experimental video builds, so it's not only Firefox. -- Michael
Received on Wednesday, 15 October 2008 21:03:28 UTC