[Bino-list] My tests: reaching for smooth playback of full-sbs HD video w/ subtitles

[Pedro Silva Pinto]

Hi all,

 

First, congrats on this great program, Martin. I found about it a few days ago and have since then been trying  it out, both on windows and linux.

I’m using Bino to play h264 video (in an MKV container) along with .SRT subtitles. Some videos are half-frame side-by-side (1920x1080) and others are full-frame side-by-side (3840x1080).

 

From the first tests in windows7 x64 with version 1.3.0, it became apparent that Bino has a hard time playing them with lots of frames being dropped. This is even more noticeable when subtitles are being rendered. Also, in some videos, the playback simply freezes in specific parts.

I had to make the same tests in version 1.3.2, but because I don’t have the tools (or knowledge, for that matter) to compile Bino from source in Windows, I compiled it in Linux.

 

To achieve that, used a fresh Ubuntu 11.10 installation (same machine), where I installed the latest x264 and ffmpeg following this guide: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095

Then, I installed the missing needed packages, and equalizer120 (not making use of it, though), before compiling version 1.3.2.

In this test environment, playback is a lot more smooth (and no freezes in those specific parts where version 1.3.0 used to do), surely because of version 1.3.2, but also because of the recent versions of x264 and ffmpeg. There are still some occasional frames being dropped and sometimes the program hangs when I switch to full screen. Nevertheless, I get a much better experience. However, when using subtitles, the frame drop problem continues very bad. I attached the StdErr messages I get from playing a couple of minutes of a half-frame sbs video with and without subtitles. Maybe this can give you some more information.

 

I’m using two 1280x720 projectors connected to a Nvidia graphics board. Ubuntu is using the latest Nvidia driver (couldn’t set up the two projectors with the default drivers). My rig is pretty recent, with plenty of memory (8GB) and processor power (4 cores), so hardware shouldn’t be blamed for any poor performance. Processor load is very low during playback.

 

In conclusion, is there any special reason why playback with subtitles has such a poor performance? Does it happen just to me for some reason, or development hasn’t reached the point yet where these issues will be resolved? I cannot help with programming skills but am available for testing.

 

Just a final question: do you have plans to add subtitle parallax control to the gui, in the future? Am using command line for the moment.

 

Cheers!

 

Pedro

bino_output.txt
Description: Text document

bino_output2.txt
Description: Text document