From owner-freebsd-multimedia Sat Jul 26 14:13:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA20597 for multimedia-outgoing; Sat, 26 Jul 1997 14:13:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from u2.farm.idt.net (root@u2.farm.idt.net [169.132.8.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA20592 for ; Sat, 26 Jul 1997 14:13:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sequoia (ppp-34.ts-1.mlb.idt.net [169.132.71.34]) by u2.farm.idt.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA00361; Sat, 26 Jul 1997 17:12:59 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <33DA685A.446B9B3D@idt.net> Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 17:12:58 -0400 From: "Gary T. Corcoran" X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.1-RELEASE i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Anthony.Kimball@East.Sun.COM CC: multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Software MPEG-2 (Was: Posting prefix) References: <199707242045.PAA03915@compound.east.sun.com> <199707242113.OAA15573@rah.star-gate.com> <199707250502.IAA29406@silver.sms.fi> <199707250706.CAA03136@compound.east.sun.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Tony Kimball wrote: > Is the mpeg2 format documented online? I understand that conventional > wisdom requires hardware assist, but that just represents an > algorithmic challenge.... I heard Intel (first hand) say that a 233MHz MMX Pentium will *almost*, *but not quite* be fast enough for software MPEG-2 decode (they tried it). In other words, while it generally worked, for high complexity/high motion scenes, it hiccuped. So until most of us have 300+ MHz processors, we'll need to use hardware for MPEG-2 decoding. Of course, if you'd like to get a head start and start writing code for future processors, be my guest... ;-) Or maybe you can find a "trick" that Intel didn't think of... ??? Gary Corcoran