Playing Ripped versions of files (videos) on home computers

[chaitanya2106]

I often see a movie in various file sizes.
Say a movie of 720p quality is of 4.5 GB size & a ripped version of the same movie is of 700 MB size. Is it advisable to play the 700 MB size ripped version on 4-5 year old computers? I mean to say, does it require more computations to play a ripped version of a video file? I do not promote copyright infringement , I just want to learn more.

[Baldrick]

Rip and convert it to avi divx/xvid in no HD for best compatibility on older computers.

If it's HD with h264 video then can you try video players like Splash.

[chaitanya2106]

Rip and convert it to avi divx/xvid in no HD for best compatibility on older computers.

If it's HD with h264 video then can you try video players like Splash.

Do you mean to say playing HD whether ripped or un-ripped , both require same degree of computations? My VLC player often crashes on some 720p videos ( i don't know whether they are ripped but they are of 400-500 MB size files having 20 Mins duration).

[Hoser Rob]

I suspect there's some confusion of what 'ripped' means ... to rip means to take a dvd or bluray and copy it to your hd, removing the copy protection in the process. Then that is often (not necessarily) encoded into a smaller file. Those 2 things are often combined together as 'ripping' which leads to confusion in newbies here. I often use the term that way but I know the difference.

All the videos you're talking about are ripped and reencoded. The 720p ones are 1080p bluray videos that have been sampled down to 720p. If you want to make a smaller file decreasing the resolution is a very good idea.

Bigger files for the same video time = higher bit rate = more CPU load.

h.264 video (most .mkv files and many .mp4's) also takes more CPU load. That's why baldrick recommended encoding your discs to xvid. If you do encode to h.264 try turning off CABAC. That's where the extra load comes in.

However, I'm not quite sure why vlc is crashing for you that much. Your computer doesn't look that weak to me. Try smplayer, which unlike vlc has proper settings (like file cache especially) that really help on slower hardware. I rarely use vlc anymore.

[chaitanya2106]

So in my first post example, the 700 MB file is the result of reencoding the 4.5 GB file to a lower bitrate? And hence, playing the 700MB file would take less computations to play notwithstanding it's HD?
Converting the files to xvid/divx would reduce the quality to , what, 480p , right?

Thanks for your kind replies.

[ot_welder]

Just thought I would mention that I have had issues playing .mkv files with VLC. The playback is not smooth and the audio is sometimes not in sync with the video. When I try to jump to a scene the picture gets distorted and takes time to work itself out. I've stopped using VLC and went to Pot Player; no problems whatsoever.

[Tom Saurus]

It is possible to tweak some settings in VLC to play .mkv files smoothly. I played a .mkv file on a P4 computer earlier today and it was able to handle it. It wasn't an HD one though. I have VLC Media Player 1.1.5 on my computer, as I didn't upgrade any higher because of all the problems I read about with newer versions.

[chaitanya2106]

Just thought I would mention that I have had issues playing .mkv files with VLC. The playback is not smooth and the audio is sometimes not in sync with the video. When I try to jump to a scene the picture gets distorted and takes time to work itself out. I've stopped using VLC and went to Pot Player; no problems whatsoever.

Exaclty! That is what happens with VLC everynow and then. But I am addicted to its UI , key controls, etc that I am resisting to switch to another

[Steve(MS)]

No need to switch, just add other media players, they are free.
Then use whichever one you want at any given time.

[Hoser Rob]

Smplayer plays video at significantly higher quality than vlc or (expecially) potplayer.

[hello_hello]

Smplayer plays video at significantly higher quality than vlc or (expecially) potplayer.

In what way? I'm not sure I can see a quality difference between them. And definitely nothing "significant".

[Steve(MS)]

Yeah, I don't know of many that are using SMplayer and if it is HQ than the other 2, the burden of proof is in your corner.
I tried Smplayer and it I just plain don't like it.

[hello_hello]

I'll admit after trying SMPlayer a while back I kept it installed as an alternative for testing but as for using it full time..... I can't see that ever happening. I assumed (as I'd not heard of it until recently) it must be a fairly new player, given it's fairly featureless, but after looking I discovered it appears it was first released around 2007.

But yeah.... SMPlayer plays video fine, but I could write a small essay on the features it doesn't have, and it has a few annoyances I couldn't fix ranging from the very minor to the fairly annoying.
Dealbreaker number one: No DXVA (as best as I could tell).
Dealbreaker number two: It doesn't appear to play with ReClock at all. I tried it on two different PCs and ReClock simply wouldn't acknowledge it was playing video. I've never got around to trying to discover why, but for some reason ReClock seems oblivious to SMPlayer's existence.
DealBreaker number three: Inability to use installed "system" codes such as ffdshow. Unless I missed the obvious.
And while it only seems like a very minor thing, not having "time' tooltip on the seek bar bar would drive me nuts very quickly.

Significant quality differences..... well I could argue all the options SMPlayer doesn't have compared to many other players could result in quality differences, but no, basically video played using SMPlayer, VLC an MPC-HC looks the same to me regardless of the player being used.