OT: Viewing of AVCHD in a player on notebook

UlfLaursen wrote on 6/18/2009, 10:06 PM

Hi

I just got one of them small net-notebooks with 1.6 GHz intel atom processor. They are small and cheap. I want to use it on-site to transfer my AVCHD files from SDHC cards and roughly choose shots for later editing on my workstation.

I have the Canon imagemixer 3 player to playback both from my Canon and Panasonic cameras. I don't get full FPS playback on this player, which is basicly ok for previewing and choosing clips, and that is of course because the processor is not the 'sharpest tool in the shed' and basicly not ment to do theese tasks - I know that.

I was still wondering if there would be an AVCHD player that would have the possibility to play back at some kind of preview speed to get a little better performance with smaller and less detailed picture.
I tried to install my Panasonic AVCCAM viewer, and it use a lot of time meassuring the systemrescourses, but it only runs at min. 1024 x 768, and my Samsung NC10 is 1024 x 600, so I can not test this program anyway.

Thanks for any input.

/Ulf

Comments

Laurence wrote on 6/18/2009, 11:38 PM

I know that the "Ultra" version of Cyberlink PowerDVD does AVCHD disc playback pretty efficiently. Since the codec is the same as what is used by AVCHD cameras, it might work well for AVCHD clips directly as well.

It might still not be enough though. A lot of the magic from accelerated video playback engines comes from using the GPU which a netbook with integrated graphics does not have.

John_Cline wrote on 6/19/2009, 12:19 AM

I just got a call from a client that wants to view AVCHD on his desktop with a 2.8Ghz Celeron processor, even with PowerDVD v9 he can't play them. It will play the audio, but the video plays at about 5 fps. It is HIGHLY unlikely that a 1.6Ghz Atom processor has the horsepower to play back AVCHD at any resolution.

srode wrote on 6/19/2009, 3:59 AM

Sony Picture motion browswer plays AVCHD at full frame rate 1920x1080 very smoothly - 50% or less CPU utilization on a Q6700 Quad running 3.33ghz - doing rough math on that dual cores probably don't have a chance of running it running smooth at less than 3 Ghz on PMB. Of the player's I've tried, PMB is very capable with AVCHD and more efficiently than others.

UlfLaursen wrote on 6/19/2009, 5:15 AM

Thanks all.

I think you are right John. I have now tried VLC, BSPlayer and K-codec pack for WMP, and the best of all is actually the ImageMixer 3 from pixelan that comes with canon avchd cams. With that I get full audio playback, but aprox. 10 -15 fps on video. For just choosing which clips to keep out of many and see framing etc. it is sufficient for me, so I think I'll stick to that one for now.

If I get very exited on this in my workflow, I can always bring my 15,4" bigger Dell with dualcore.

/Ulf