[MPlayer-users] Optimization for a slow CPU

[Rich Felker]

On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 09:35:46AM -0700, Grant wrote:
> Why wouldn't everyone use -framedrop though?  It seems like if the
> system has enough resources it won't drop any frames, and if it runs
> low, dropped frames are better than stopped audio and/or video.

Dropped frames are unwatchably ugly. If the system is too slow that
means you need to do something like -lavdopts lowres=1, recompiling
with better optimizations or with low quality decoding, improving the
code, or if all else fails reencoding the movie to a simpler (or lower
resolution) format.

On the more practical side, framedrop will immediately drop frames
when there's any situation of insufficient cpu time. Without
framedrop, MPlayer will continue playing and as long as the situation
resolves itself within a second or two it will easily catch back up
without being overly visible in many cases. But this is still ugly.

Also, yet another reason: certain filters will give totally bogus
output if frames have been dropped.

Rich