Cool, precious infos. I'm playing 1024*768 files but photo-jpeg codec but I can't make it work so far (cf thread green split pictures). Would GEM work better than pdp/pidip ? what is the avantage of one on another ? I'm playing the videos onwards (forwards in english ?) and using PD essentially for synchronisation issue. thanks ++ nicolaos.

...

which was ??? (the codec) what did you use ? gem ? pdp ? linux ?

I've been using Pd 0.39 GEM 0.90 with a DV camera and video files on a Debian Linux box for over a year now for several dance and theatre plays without a single crash during a performance.

As of today, I use .mov files with the MJPEG codec , encoded through the MJPEG tools, no sound. My only concern has been the huge amount of CPU needed by Gem to play a mjpeg movie (about 50% for a 640x480@25fps video on an Athlon XP3000+ powered Shuttle, although VLC, Cinelerra or Totem needs at most 10% to play a 1024x768 movie using the same codec). Unfortunately, I need to play videos at random frames, and sometimes even backwards, since that I can solely use a spatial compressor. For "onwards-only" videos, I play .ogg files using theora codec.

Personnally , I guess the whole system stability is strongly related to the OS (Linux/Debian Sid, 2.6.15 kernel tuned by a friend of mine), it's not rare to see the CPU usage jump up to 120% for a while when running too many FXs at the same time. Nevertheless, it never crashes, the machine as well as the patch have lately been running flawlessly for 3 weeks .

a+

Olivier