Experiments with Digital Video Playback

13 years 8 months ago

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In this paper we describe our experiments on digital video applications, concentrating on the static and dynamic tradeo s involved in video playback. Our results were extracted from a controlled series 272 tests, which we ran in three stages. In the rst stage of 120 tests, we used a simple player-monitor tool to evaluate the e ects of various static parameters: compression type, frame size, digitized rate, spatial quality and keyframe distribution. The tests were carried out on two Apple Macintosh platforms: at the lower end a Quadra 950, and at the higher end, a Power PC 7100/80. Our quantitative metrics included average playback rate, as well as the rate's variance over one-second intervals. The rst set of experiments unveiled several anomalous latencies. To track them down we ran an additional 120 tests, whose analysis led us to nd the locus of the system's bottlenecks. They also let us conclude that a software-only solution was su cient for good video playback on the sys...

Richard Gerber, Ladan Gharai

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