On Windows, DirectShow is typically much, much faster than Quicktime (which Apple abandoned a while back).  DirectShow takes advantage of multiple cores/CPUs while Quicktime does not. 

You can play a lot of Quicktime files using DS provided you have the right codec installed.  I recommend the ffdshow package which covers all of the MPEGs, JPEGs and so on. 

http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette <matteosistisette@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

With the latest release of Gem pix_film eats about ten or twenty time more CPU than a precompiled binary compiled in August 2006 that I downloaded time ago. And it eats so much cpu after opening a file no matter whether it is playing it or not (I mean even after disconnecting the gemhead from it). That didn't happen in the 2006 version

So I've realised that with the 2006 version of gem, it uses QUICKTIME, while when I use the latest version it uses DIRECTSHOW.

Digging into the patch (which I wrote a couple of years ago for the 2006 version) I notice I opened files with a message like this:
[open myfile.mov 1(

That "1" is undocumented in the current help patches, but iirc I used it in order to force [pix_film] to use quicktime rather than directshow.

Was that feature removed?
If so, is there another way to force gem to use quicktime rather directshow?
I'd like to test with quicktime to figure out whether this absurdly huge cpu consumption is due to the use of DirectShow as opposed to Quicktime, or if it is just a bug introduced in some recent version of Gem.

thanks
m.


--
Matteo Sisti Sette
matteosistisette@gmail.com
http://www.matteosistisette.com

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