HD at YouTube slow!

[Demon Cleaner]

Whenever I want to watch any movie on YouTube in HD, it has huge slowdowns. Is this sooo hardware hungry? I have a Radeon X800 Pro GPU.

[Harrison]

Hmm... I'm not sure about that. I would have thought an X800 would have been enough as it does contain some hardware acceleration support for HD video playback.

I'm sure I used to run HD content from youtube on my nVidia 7800GT. When I get time I will boot up my emulation system that is now using that card and run a HD youtube video and let you know how it manages.

Are you sure it wasn't your connection being slow and causing the video to slowdown? Even fast connects can suffer at peek times.

[Demon Cleaner]

Are you sure it wasn't your connection being slow and causing the video to slowdown? Even fast connects can suffer at peek times.Don't think so, as there were no downloads or torrents started, I paused them. Normal videos run fine.

[coze]

I noticed that sometimes too. I though it was buggy flashplayer/browser related. Sometimes my pc slows down on normal vids too when It's been on too long (> two days) and starts using the page file (even though I turned it off). a reboot fixes my problem.

[Vangar]

It has something to do with flash. Flash has never been that great for streaming video on high resolutions (I've worked with these problems since flash MX)

[Bloodwych]

Flash, my number one internet enermy now that popups are mostly blocked in browsers. Remember my rant on here a few years back about it eating CPU cyles and causing global warming? Making laptop fans screem? All for a few animated adds?

Honestly, flash misused is a plague. It's just so inefficient and a huge CPU hog. Flashblock is one of my fav Firefox addons and makes an old PC able to cruise the web at lightening speed! Without it, an old PC on the net is like crawling through mud thanks to flash.

HD content is very CPU intensive due to the high compression, with Flash it's even worse. I don't know your CPU specs Demon Cleaner, but it sounds like it's running completely off your CPU. I think all flash runs mainly off the CPU, with the hardware accelerate option on your vid card meaning simple stuff like scaling - I don't think it uses DXVA.

Take a look at task manager while watching a vid. See if your CPU is pegged at 100%.

[Demon Cleaner]

Take a look at task manager while watching a vid. See if your CPU is pegged at 100%.Will try that, I have an older P4 2.8GHz CPU.

[Bloodwych]

Hmmm. A P4 2.8 should be enough for youtube HD without huge slowdowns so it may be another issue.

[Shoonay]

In a few days things *might* change...

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/09/30/gpu-accelerated-flash-player-in-the-works

... or not, who knows... :lol:

[Harrison]

But such a GPU accelerated accelerator with nVidia behind it would fragment the userbase as in true nVidia fashion they would make it a proprietary technology that would only run on their own hardware architecture and drivers.

Adobe were also working directly with ATi on very similar hardware accelerated GPU solutions, but I'm not sure if they related to Flash Player, for just video production.

The big thing I hate about nVidia is that they buy up technologies such as PhysX and then code them so they are proprietary and will only work with their own hardware. Attempting to monopolise the market with people having to buy they products if they want to use the technology. Very much in the same model as Apple or to a lesser extent these days Microsoft.

ATi's approach is that rather than restrict them to their own cards, they are looking at the best open source solutions based on Havoc and OpenCL. ATi cards have a system called Stream which is very similar to that found on nVidia cards, but if utilised actually is more efficient and better performing, giving faster results. It is sad at the moment however that with the marketing weight nVidia have over ATi that this technology hasn't been allowed to become as mainstream as it should be.

The sooner we ditch proprietary technologies and go open standard so that all hardware regardless of manufacturer can take advantage of it the better. Bring on OpenCL and ditch the proprietary stuff nVidia are trying to monopolise the marketplace with.

[Shoonay]

And Flash Player 10.1 beta is out (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/), yeah! :cool:
I can't see anything that it's for nVidia GPU's only, so could you test it Harry?

For now I've only tested the following (with Firefox 3.6b2):
YouTube - Where the Hell is Matt? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY) (HD)
Flash Element 2 - Tower Defense.net (http://www.towerdefence.net/games-100-Flash_Element_2.php) (highest quality, music, sounds and jibblets on with fast forward action)
Doom Triple Pack (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/470460)
... and all I can say is... PHUNK YEAH! :cool:
I know that some of you might not notice any difference with your i7 quad CPU's, but after giving my good old AMD x2 4200+ a little brake, I sure can. ;)
Well done Adobe! :thumbsup:

[paulpeter]

I am not sure but if there is problem in your Internet speed there is software called video accelerator it works fine with me and don't have to wait for video to buffer it manage everything fine hope your problem got solved..

[Shoonay]

Another one of those "we will speed up your *everything* up to 5000%"? :lol:

There's a big difference between slow buffering and low framerate of those videos.

When watching a vid, it HAS TO buffer itself (AKA download on your computer) and not even a Super Highspeed Video accelerator can do anything about it if your connection is slow (or in some cases a badly configured network), in any case you HAVE TO wait for it to buffer.

A slow framerate of the video usually occurs on slower computers, below 1GHz single-core let's say but we all know how really it's like ;), well, because, basically - Flash sucks.
YES, you will get a better framerate (tho don't expect anything above 30fps, that's usually yt's standard) of most of youtubes (or vimeos, wutever) HD vids when downloaded and played on *ANY* player that understands that format (Media Player Classic Home Cinema with Shark's codecs is my favorite combination), you don't have a Special Only Super Video Accelerator Plus util for that. But if your computer is slow you will get slow framerate on both.

BTW: the newest Flash 10.1 beta 3 is out since Feb 23, along with newest NVidia drivers it speeds up the experience greatly even on my friends single-core 1GHz CPU with some GeForce7 card and he was finally able to see some HD movies.

[Shoonay]

Some interesting tests here: http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

[Shoonay]

Flash 10.2 preview for 64-bit browsers is here: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html :D