Hi Matt,

When I did some comparisons and profiling of Windows video codecs a while back, I was quite surprised by the results:

• the decompression time for most codecs was less than the texture upload

time.

To the degree that the choice of codec didn't affect overall performance very much... this is probably partly due to the fact that VFW codecs are all quite old and were developed for much slower machines than we have now. My machine isn't anything special: 1Ghz PIII.

Disk space and bandwidth become critical tho, particularly if you're working with multiple clips or using the disk for audio streaming or whatever. So you should find a codec that gives the best visual quality at a sustainable data rate.

Visually speaking, Indeo and Cinepak are pretty nasty (although cinepak has a greyscale mode that might be useful for b/w clips). MJPEG is good but I'm not sure if there's a free VFW codec available. The midivid VJ codec is quite a good free option that I've used quite a lot: http://www.midivid.com/codec/download.html

Hopefully I'll roll some more DirectShow stuff into GEM CVS soon which will allow you to use more modern DS codecs (MP4, DivX, DV, etc.) for film loading.

Daniel

----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Nish-Lapidus" mattn-l@rogers.com To: pd-list@iem.kug.ac.at Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 3:56 AM Subject: [PD] GEM codec windows

hi,

i'm trying to play some largish (200mb using indeo codec) video filesin

GEM on winxp... what's the best codec that gives a good balance between picture quality and performance in GEM? i'm not satified with performance or picture using indeo. these are 10 minutes clips at 640x480. lots of gradients and smooth surfaces.

thanks, matt.

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