Vista - AVI too slow in MediaElement

Is the AVI format in the MediaElement still in the early stages of
development or is it almost up to its normal speed?

I need to use the AVI format for frame by frame video (to analyse swimmers)
and play it slowly or normally. Unfortunately it just pauses every half a
second. WMV is no problem, although it is slower when full screen.

My best laptop is a 1.3 Ghz Centrino, 1.25 GB memory, 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000
(DirectX 8.1) and a brand new harddisk. All software is installed this week.

I hope major improvements are possible, because this is not usable.

Rick Beerendonk

Forgot: Feb CTP

Rick

There are MediaElement bugs in Feb CTP, but few, if any, are codec specific.

AVI is a container format that can hold content encoded with different
codecs. Do you know which codec you're using? Also, what is the native size
of the video you are trying to play?

If I understand you correctly, you are getting only a couple of frames per
second. If so, the cause of your problem is likely lack of video memory. Is
the AVI file you are trying to play a higher resolution than the WMV file?
(native video size is what matters most - not what size it's actually
rendered on the screen)

Tom

I get 1 frame per second if I'm lucky. The sound is stops shortly every
second.

Since I use it for sports, it's a digital uncompressed video stream from a
camcorder (miniDV -> FireWire -> AVI with Windows Movie Maker):

Video codec: DV Video Decoder
Video size: 720x576
1 minute of video is about 200 Mb

When I use WMV with the same resolution, the video is not better. Only the
sound will play normally. I think you're right about the video memory. 64 Mb
is not enough (DirectX 8.1)?!

I was thinking about using an ActiveX or WinForms control inside WPF en see
if this improves performance.

Rick

Avalon requires DirectX 9 for hardware acceleration, so you are playing video
in software mode, which is very slow. Please upgrade to DirectX 9.

64 MB of video memory is more than enough to play a 720x576 video, but keep
in mind that video memory is shared across processes and it is not
virtualized, so if you have other processes open that are using video memory,
you may still fall back to software.

Tom

"Rick Beerendonk" wrote:

> I get 1 frame per second if I'm lucky. The sound is stops shortly every
> second.
>
> Since I use it for sports, it's a digital uncompressed video stream from a
> camcorder (miniDV -> FireWire -> AVI with Windows Movie Maker):
>
> Video codec: DV Video Decoder
> Video size: 720x576
> 1 minute of video is about 200 Mb
>
> When I use WMV with the same resolution, the video is not better. Only the
> sound will play normally. I think you're right about the video memory. 64 Mb
> is not enough (DirectX 8.1)?!
>
> I was thinking about using an ActiveX or WinForms control inside WPF en see
> if this improves performance.
>
> Rick
>
>
>

> Avalon requires DirectX 9 for hardware acceleration, so you are playing
> video
> in software mode, which is very slow. Please upgrade to DirectX 9.

Thank you for your answer and explanation.

I am stuck to the ultra small (low voltage) laptops for the purpose and they
don't have DirectX 9 yet. Upgrading is impossible in laptops
(unfortunately). I won't buy a new laptop until Vista is out.

I'll try the ActiveX option to see if that works.

Rick Beerendonk