[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Efficiently support several output pixel formats in Cinepak decoder

[u-9iep at aetey.se]

On Fri, Feb 03, 2017 at 11:42:03AM +0100, u-9iep at aetey.se wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 03, 2017 at 11:14:28AM +0100, wm4 wrote:
> > > On a 16-bit-per-pixel output with a CPU-based decoder you will
> > > not find _any_ over 25% of Cinepak speed. Raw video can not compete
> > > either when indata delivery bandwidth si limited.

> > I can't take this seriously, but I won't go and try finding a better
> > codec just to make a point.

Of course any benchmark result makes sense only within a carefully
specified context. It was incautious of me to make a statement in
such a general way.

I have to admit that the number 25% was not measured but extrapolated
from a specific test I made three years ago.
It is impossible to repeat that test (the hardware is gone) and the video
data was a specific sample which may have incurred a bias.

That's why now I have done a new test, with 15 minutes taken from a
(single) random movie as the input, compressed with ffmpeg to mpeg1video
at quality 8 and to cinepak with default quality settings, which in this
case yielded comparable quality.

When I take the user part of the output of
"time mplayer -fps 10000 -vo null -quiet -vf format=fmt=bgr16 -sws 0" [*]

I get the following numbers on two different computers with Intel CPUs
running 32-bit code:  (averaging/rounding after three runs)

mpeg1, yuv420p            23.6     (via the fast bilinear swscaler)
cinepak, rgb24            19.7     (via the fast bilinear swscaler)
cinepak, internal rgb565   6.0

mpeg1, yuv420p            52.1     (via the fast bilinear swscaler)
cinepak, rgb24            43.1     (via the fast bilinear swscaler)
cinepak, internal rgb565  10.3

This corresponds to mpeg1 being for rgb565 output about 4-5 times slower
than cinepak.

I doubt that there is any other applicable codec with a faster decoder.
Tell me if you find it, this will be appreciated.

The "high color" 15-bit VQA was near cinepak in speed but it is
unfortunately not practically usable.

Regards,
Rune

[*] Remarkably, mplayer, an application with tight ties to ffmpeg,
does not seem to choose the appropriate decoder output format itself,
despite the availability of get_format() functionality...
Would you tell me which video player does? or where the bug is?