On Fri, 28 Apr 2006, Robert Schlabbach wrote:
No, we can stay on-topic here: What makes you think you can play H.264/AVC video on Linux? AFAIK that requires latest-generation video acceleration, which is barely available in Windows, and thus unlikely to have it made to Linux yet (because display adapter makers still tend to think of Windows before they think of Linux). So even if you had a Linux driver for your card, you would still be just where you are right now with Windows... Except that for Windows, hardware-accelerated H.264/AVC decoders are already available, whereas I have yet to hear of such a beast for Linux.
mplayer has had AVC support for a while, using ffmpeg library routines. I assume pretty much all players can use ffmpeg.
You're right that there is no acceleration at the moment. I think I heard something about VIA unichrome chips offering some MPEG4 acceleration, and work is being done for ATI chips. Nvidia has XvMC support for MPEG2. I believe there is a standardised Windows API for acceleration.
A link to a test clip was posted a while back on this list. I'm sure you can also find test files with google. 1920x1088 h.264 video plays with ~90% CPU usage on my system without stuttering. That's on Linux x86_64, AMD 3200+, RV370 based ATI board, using standard XV output, gentoo linux compiled from scratch with -O3. You do need to make sure MTRRs are set up properly.
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