I am looking for some decent Hi definition material to test my PC with. This should be a video file that is freely available for download. Maybe a film trailer or something similar. I require something that will be hard for my PC (32bit Athlon 2GHz upto 2.65GHz) to decode. I have an nVidia 6800Ultra video card which I wish to try a new beta driver which is supposed to allow hardware assisted decoding of hi definition content (H264). I wish to compare the old driver that I am using at the moment with the new hardware assisted decode driver that I have downloaded.

Can anyone recommend something that will test this well and is not too big? Something in the region of 200MB max would be preferable. Only a smallish clip is required.

Apple's Quicktime website has a good selection of HD movie trailers for download.

It depends what sort of files you're wanting to play. Proper high definition are .ts files. These are normally downloaded from newsgroups.

Microsoft have some content on their pages
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...tShowcase.aspx

You can also download some stuff from here
http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?t=6537

cheers

It is H264 Hi Def video in particular I am looking for as that is the video that has acceleration in the new nVidia beta driver. I want to try the video now and then after I install the new driver to compare the CPU usage. It should be difficult to play without acceleration.

Then you can visit Apple.com at this link and have a heyday! This is all in H.264 HD format and they are pretty cool looking.

This specs are not powerful enough for H.264 progressive material.

The accelleration is actually ONLY for p material, not i.

I saw today that nVidia in their infinate wisdom have decided not to add acceleration to the two most powerful 6 series video cards. All the low end cards have it, including the intergrated but the 6800Ultra and 6800GT do not. Totally crazy. If the lower end cards can do it why not the higher cards? I'm well pissed off

It's possible hardware acceleration isn't necessary for the higher level cards, as the GPU's have enough horsepower to handle the decoding at the driver level. I was a bit miffed too when I learned that ATI only planned on supporting H.264 with the X1000 series, leaving poor X800 series folks to upgrade their 'dated' hardware. My X800 based rig handles playback of content just fine tho, I've yet to see any frame drops or playback issues even with 1080p content.

Well that isn't what I've seen, x86 chips struggle to decode hi def h264 1080p content without hardware acceleration. PowerPC's handle it much better.

I was surprised to see that the nVIDIA 6 series chips were planned on being supported. I now find it is only the lower end cards. :x That cannot be because the high end chips can do it as they cannot unless supported by the driver. Acceleration helps the CPU in all cases.

Yep, I agree that PowerPC's handle it better than x86 chips. Tis a shame Apple dropped them, not really any options for desktop use anymore.

I also agree that acceleration always helps. In my case when I'm playing back H.264 my CPU is pegged with very little margin for error. Again, no dropped frames but nothing going on in the background either. I haven't tested with HT disabled so I don't know how much that helps. I would guess that going dual core would allow for more headroom and decreased cpu utilization.

I guess it's time to start saving for that next upgrade.