Would an Acer Predator Helios 300 play this video without lagging?

[Reiko]

I have a video with the following specifications:

Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 1.69 GiB
Duration                                 : 56 min 52 s
Overall bit rate                         : 4 242 kb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-04-02 22:34:37
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v44.0.0 ('Domino') 64-bit
Writing library                          : libebml v1.3.10 + libmatroska v1.5.2

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : CamStudio
Muxing mode                              : zlib
Codec ID                                 : V_MS/VFW/FOURCC / CSCD
Codec ID/Info                            : RenderSoft CamStudio lossless (LZO & GZIP compression)
Duration                                 : 56 min 52 s
Bit rate                                 : 45.5 Mb/s
Width                                    : 2 560 pixels
Height                                   : 2 240 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.143
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 60.000 FPS
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.132
Stream size                              : 18.1 GiB
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Muxing mode                              : zlib
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 56 min 52 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 411.2 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate                               : 5.000 FPS (8820 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 574 MiB (33%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

My laptop doesn't have enough power to run it without lagging, but I'm planning to do an upgrade. The one I plan to buy (mentioned in the title) has an i7-9750H, GTX 1660TI and 16GB of RAM (which I'll be expanding to 32). Will it be powerful enough to run this video flawlessly?

[johns0]

Yup.

[johnmeyer]

You left out a key piece of information: what video player are you using? I have found a massive difference in playback performance between various different players. What's more, no single player provides the best performance with all video.

I must be misreading the report on your video. The overall bitrate is 4,242 kb/s which is 4.2 Mb/s, but the video bitrate is showing as 45.5 Mb/s. The latter is definitely wrong because your one hour video is only 1.69 GB. So, if I throw out that puzzling video bitrate, the rest makes sense, and what you have is a very high-res (6K) file at a high frame rate (60 fps). That definitely can tax the computer.

Before investing in a new computer, I would try VLC, Potplayer, and one or more of the MPC variants (MPC-HC and MPC-BE). There is a good chance that one of these may work.

[Reiko]

@johnmeyer

I use MPC-HC. VLC is out of question since they don't support CSCD. It's been like that for several years and I doubt they'll ever fix it. I remember trying Potplayer sometime ago but didn't have much luck with it either.

Anyway, about the puzzling bitrate, that's because the video was muxed with a recent version of mkv toolnix (v44.0.0). Seems like it got weird about that as of late, and the last version to report things correctly was 12.0.0 (released in 2017).

Here, I muxed the video again with it:

Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 1.69 GiB
Duration                                 : 56 min 52 s
Overall bit rate                         : 4 242 kb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-08-26 00:27:09
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v12.0.0 ('Trust / Lust') 64bit
Writing library                          : libebml v1.3.4 + libmatroska v1.4.5

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : CamStudio
Muxing mode                              : zlib
Codec ID                                 : V_MS/VFW/FOURCC / CSCD
Codec ID/Info                            : RenderSoft CamStudio lossless (LZO & GZIP compression)
Duration                                 : 56 min 52 s
Bit rate                                 : 3 532 kb/s
Width                                    : 2 560 pixels
Height                                   : 2 240 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.143
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 60.000 FPS
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.010
Stream size                              : 1.40 GiB (83%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Muxing mode                              : zlib
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 56 min 52 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 411.2 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate                               : 5.000 FPS (8820 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 288 MiB (17%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Notice how things make a lot more sense now. Maybe I should keep using this old version instead.

About the laptop upgrade, I want to get it for other reasons too, but playing high quality videos like this is one of the main ones. It's not cheap though, so before investing such a large amount of money, I'd like to make sure it'd play things properly. It'd be extremely disappointing otherwise.

[johnmeyer]

What does lack of CSCD support have to do with the problem you posted? Isn't CSCD the Camtasia format? If VLC doesn't support that, just use a player that does have that support when you need to play screen cap videos, and then use VLC (or whatever player works with your video) when you want to play your 6K video.

That's what I'd do.