[MPlayer-users] H.264 and advice on new hardware.

[Loren Merritt]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006, Mathieu Monnier wrote:

> It didn't come out as I wanted. I didn't want to say "there are lots of parts 
> that can be mmxed", but "there are lots of parts that must be speeded up". 
> And since I don't believe that speeding up,  let's say, cabac decoding and 
> pixel processing will bring the missing speed ( they are already fast ), and 
> since CoreAvc is so much faster, I can only deduce that the core of the issue 
> lies in the architecture of the decoder.

I agree that more mmx won't make ffh264 2x faster... No single area of 
optimization can. But cabac and pixel munging account for more than 50% 
of our decode time (at any resolution), so CoreAVC must have done 
something to them too.

> So, in the current state, I think Windows is alas mandatory.

BetaBoy has announced plans for a linux release at about the same time as 
the windows release. Windows is only needed if you want to use the alpha.

--Loren Merritt