DreamScene: WMV = CPU hog. use MPEG

Decoding decoding decoding

Saturday, February 10, 2007 by Frogboy | Discussion: Animated Wallpapers

One thing to be very aware of:

Windows DreamScene uses video for its content. That is fine.  But not all formats are created equal.

.WMV files were designed for being as small as possible while maintaining quality. They use a LOT more CPU power as a result.

.MPEG are somewhat larger in file size but use a fraction of the CPU that WMV uses.

Hence whey MPEG2 was the standard for DVD players years ago - the CPU requirements were much less.  MPEG 4 (which WMV is a derivative of I believe) is superior in all ways other than CPU requirements which do matter for people using them as animated wallpaper.

The .DREAM format supports animated wallpaper made up of either MPEG 2 or WMV or dynamic content (generated on the fly).  Dynamic content will tend to use the least since there's no decoding.

13 Reply 49 Referrals
SuperRob
Reply #1 Tuesday, February 13, 2007 4:46 PM
Hang on a sec ... wouldn't it be more accurate to say that there's a trade-off involved? MPEG decoding isn't free, as your posts (and many other posts) implies. MPEG decoding is handled by another processing chip, and depending on your hardware, may even be a worse option than using WMV.

In my case, my Tablet PC uses a chip on the GPU to decode MPEG2, and while this is lower in CPU usage, the heat and battery reduction caused by the GPU are significant. I'm willing to deal with the drawback, but I think it would be fair to clarify that MPEG2 is a better option in many cases, but is still not free. People with high-end GPUs might complain when their DreamScene or DeskScape causes that dustbuster-like fan to kick in every five seconds.

thomassen
Reply #2 Tuesday, February 13, 2007 5:16 PM
The CPU usage would depend on people's hardware.

evilferretvictim
Reply #3 Tuesday, February 13, 2007 5:50 PM
Using the "vid1337.mpg" file with this preview build, it looks like it's taking up around 30-40% of my CPU at all times. Now, I thought the entire point that made Dreamscene *special* from the rest is that it is supposed to put all of the pressure on your GPU?

There are plenty of apps out there that can let people run video clips in the background, they just aren't widely used because they eat up CPU/resources and bog down your system.... What's going on here? Is this preview build just not very optimized, or did I misunderstand what made Dreamscene so special?

marct68
Reply #4 Tuesday, February 13, 2007 6:05 PM
Remember that it's a preview of dreamscene.

Currently the CPU are getting the shot ...

But i hope it would be only the GPU after dreamscene is final.

Also, maybe they can not achieve all of that since most video card did not release their final driver for Vista yet

CerebroJD
Reply #5 Tuesday, February 13, 2007 6:07 PM
What is your video card, Evil?

xgman
Reply #6 Thursday, February 15, 2007 12:03 PM
On a non high end system DS slows things to an unacceptable crawl. I'll have to try it on my fast home system later, but I don't like what I see so far as far as resources eaten. Even with the understanding that this is still a preview, I think this appl will be short lived if this keeps up.

Anyone tested resources in window vs full screen?

Fuzzy Logic
Reply #7 Thursday, February 15, 2007 1:40 PM

I have 'Nebula' running now - I can't see any resources being used at all.

Athlon 4400+, 2Gb RAM, 2xGeForce 7600GT + 100.64 drivers.


Frogboy
Reply #8 Thursday, February 15, 2007 2:24 PM
It all depends on your video card / video card drivers.

RoodVargas
Reply #9 Thursday, February 15, 2007 2:38 PM
I have dreamscene running and i check the video that came with it and mine has a.mpg extention. Its not a .WMV. i thought dreamscene was only a .WMV only

Island Dog
Reply #10 Thursday, February 15, 2007 3:06 PM

I have dreamscene running and i check the video that came with it and mine has a.mpg extention. Its not a .WMV. i thought dreamscene was only a .WMV only


It can use either .wmv or .mpeg.



_Martin_
Reply #11 Thursday, February 15, 2007 4:43 PM
Could some options be added to Dreamscene to help? For example, Dark Avatar and Vista v3 could actually afford to run slower in my opinion, so if they could be set to run at say 50% or 75%, then they may be smoother?

Also, could some visual masks be applied? I don't know if this is technically possible, but (for example) on Vista v3, it would be cool to either darken the Dream to make it more subtle, or even change the hue?

Don35
Reply #12 Friday, February 16, 2007 6:01 PM
I'm pretty sure (and this is just my opinion which should carry little to no weight) that all of this talk of current CPU usage is moot at this point. If the program were using the minimal amount of CPU right now, they wouldn't have to give us this preview and a wait of what is probably going to be several more months for the final product. It seems hard for me to believe that they would tout this thing so hard if it were so far away from completion. Seems to me that if it were an easy thing to do, it would have been done by now. So I still think there is a chance that this thing may not be possible. (using little to no CPU)

Just my two cents.

CerebroJD
Reply #13 Friday, February 16, 2007 6:41 PM
I think that alot of the CPU usage depends on your video hardware too.  I've just finished building a system with an 8800GTS in it, and I'm getting at the most, 4% usage from the Slylock Red DeskScape.

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