Ubuntu

h264 video playback is skippy and slow

Asked by Nick Lawson

Most video formats on Gutsy are playing back very smoothly (notably most AVI and MOV formats). However, specific formats of video are comparatively very slow, with a lot of frame skip.

I run a dual boot system. The exact same movies played back in Windows (using FFDShow/Media player classic) play very smoothly and only use up about 15% cpu to do so.
The specific container types that are slow: mp4, flv, MKV

It seems that even a tiny (320x200) mp4 file will play back very slowly.
All of the slow-playing files report as being
"MPEG4 Video (H264)"

I doubt its a video driver since much higher resolution AVI files (including super high def stuff) plays full screen without any slowdown.

My environment is absolutely clean install of Gutsy (fresh partition), ubuntu (gnome), just allowing it to auto download whatever codecs it needed.

Is there an alternate playing engine that perhaps works better for this type of video, or is this a bug, or what?

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Gord Allott
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Best Gord Allott (gordallott) said : 		#1

you might want to try using mplayer to open those files, it has a good implimentation of h264. you can find it in the repositorys (don't be put off off by it not looking as good as the default movie player, once you are playing the files its no different :))

Revision history for this message
Nick Lawson (vektuz-gmail) said : 		#2

Thanks for the response... mplayer did work for those files, but brought with it its own crop of problems: Its really, really ugly. It doesn't integrate nicely into the system at all, and seems to use some sort of super-ancient file browser from the dawn of time. I can't seem to find any way to bind it to my media controls / rmedia remote that I need to use to control it. Are there any other suggestions for a media player that'd be able to play (perhaps with the same engine as mplayer has), but with actual hotkey / media button config and stuff?
I'll mark this question as answered, though, and try some more media players out.

Revision history for this message
Nick Lawson (vektuz-gmail) said : 		#3

Thanks Gord Allott, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
shankar (shankar41592213) said : 		#4

Nick, Could you let me know exactly how did you resolve the skippy video issue? I'm having same trouble

Revision history for this message
zsolt.ruszinyák (zsolt-ruszinyak) said : 		#5

In my case gnome-mplayer is ever slower than totem, not speaking about the fact that it fails to move the point which indicates the advance of the playback. I think it uses the same engine. :(