Bad video performance PCoIP

[voodooless]

Hi there,

From what you see in Youtube video's, and other advertising stuff, View 4 with PCoIP should give you full screen HD video on you thin client... That's not exactly what we are looking for. We would like to have lots of small video's on one or even two screens, but all moving video, so the effort vor the PCoIP server should be about the same.

The problem is: I can't get it to run quickly and smoothly. I installed the view server as a VM, and also a XP client VM to act as test machine. We have three different thin clients, of which one only support RDP at the moment. The other two are a real thin client from Liscon (Linux based), and a small Atom PC (nvidia ION) with Windows 7 on it. They are all conttected using 100 Mbit to the switch (and with at least 1 GB to the rest of the network).

On either machine its not possible to run full screen video (not WMV, youtube is even worse). Also, CPU usage on the machine running the View client will be almost 100% when playing video..

When I use the view client on my own machine, it looks a bit better, but It's still not there.. And also here, one of the four CPU's is completely saturated decoding the data. Network bandwidth it not that much, about 10 tot 15 MBits/sec.

This not at all what I was expecting, and I'm rather dissapointed.. Is there anything I did wrong? I just followed the guides during intallation... I guess that should be fine..

[DimkaPhantom]

So am I! I can't say that PCoIP or RDP perfomance is great

I've tried thin client HP t5545, Linux PC with View Open Client and Windows PC with native View Client and I thought that video perfomance would be better.

Then I use my desktop computer and usual RDP connection to TS server I can work comfortable, but then I use VMware View exactly on Thin Client it's awful.

In fact Windows PC woks good, Linux PC normal and ThinClient terrible.

[voodooless]

You'll neet to be "carefull" with RDP on your PC. When playing video, it will only send over the compressed video data. Decoding will be done on the local machine. That's why it's working just fine. Play the same video with VLC, and you'll see it's even worse that PCoIP.

[MicahelMenne]

Try adding a 2nd CPU to your VM.

I've been able to push a full screen 1080p YouTube video from a View VM to my Windows XP Client desktop. There is some slight choppiness, but acceptable considering what I'm doing with it. The XP Client is a Dell Gx260 (P4 2.6 Ghz HT) with Dual DVI nVideo video card and 2GB RAM connected over 100Mb network.

The server is a Dell R710 with 2 x Quad-Core Nehalem 2.66Ghz 48GB RAM, 1033Mhz bus.

The Dell Desktop natively running Windows XP cannot keep up with the same 1080p video even in a window much less full screen.

With Thin Clients, you have to make sure they support MultiMedia Redirection. The consumer View Client for Windows supports this. The open source View Client for Linux/Mac OSX does not. I will be talking to Wyse again tomorrow to determine which of their models integrate MultiMedia Redirection (either via RDP or PCoIP).

[voodooless]

Well, while playing video, CPU on the VM is at only 20 percent, so that should not be a problem. I still added an extra CPU just in case.

Multimedia redirection (RDP only) is fine when you want to play some randon video file with Windows Media player. As I said before, for anything else, it is quite useless. We have custom video survailance applications that will not benefit from multimedia acceleration, and therfore need to use PCoIP. A bit of choppyness is fine, but not at the level we see here.

I also don't get that compressing should be less recourse intensive than decompressing, since the client will almost always run at 100% CPU when playing video...

[gunnarb]

Most videos that show full HD are just showing of PCoIP - NOT View. PCoIP has a hardware to hardware product and frankly running BlueRay through it looks good. As far as doing full HD on a View VM that's a different story. My main workstation is a PCoIP terminal, currently a FX100 but in the past I have used a P20 and next week I'll be using a Samsung NC240. The terminal I use really don't matter because the terminal doens't do any work with regard to video; the host does. View does "host based rendering" search for this in the forums and you should find a great forum where "wponder" explains this.

I posted a while ago about poor video performance within a View VM and the solution is to use 2-CPUs. The fact is you wouldn't try running a full HD video with an old single core processor and expect good results. I'm confused with your posts because in the first post you say your CPU is running at 100% which is true in all of my testing as well, however in your third post you say it's not maxed out and is only running at 20%, which I would believe if this is what happened after you added the second CPU. Read the section "CPU" in my post below:

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/gunnarb/2010/02/15/pcoip-review

Regardless of all of this, if you are doing full screen HD video, good luck. I have not been able to get that to run smoothly. I have considered adding 4 processors to my VM but have not tested this as it's an unrealistic scenario. If you only have a few workstations that need full video for this surveillance thing, I would recommend getting a hardware to hardware solution, or wait a few months as I know for a fact that graphic acceleration is a top priority for Teradici.

-Gunnar

[jonathanryoung]

Hello,

I just had to say my two cents.. I have done everything to try and get the best performance out of View 4. I installed 3 different VM all with two processors Wondows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7. If you are trying to use YouTube it will not work well because of adobe flash. As for watching HD content if you download a video and then watch it on the VM it works ok not the way you have been sold on. I have Called VMware, Teradici and worked with tech support for about 3 hours and the end result is THE PRODUCT IS NOT READY! Now will it work as a replacement for RDP? Yes hands down. but does it work to replace desktops? No.

As for Thin client's I used the Wyse R90 which was all setup for PCoIP and guess what? It's not worth the money. The best way to connect to a VM via PCoIP was to use a old workstation P4 2.6Ghz with 2GB and windows XP Pro. Or get sometype of small new desktop for around $350.00.

As for sound streaming I found this did not work well. The audio would cut out and was not clear.

If anyone from VMware would like to tell me I'm wrong I would love to hear that. I do think this application will one day will work but for now they have some work to do... My goal would be to replace all my desktops and place everything in the datacenter

Thanks,

Jonathan

[MicahelMenne]

Jonathan,

I am suprised at how much this doesn't work for you. I have had nothing but success!! I have run several YouTube FLASH trailers through View with a WinXP client, Win7 client and Wyse P20 Zero Client. I have not experienced any of the issues you are talking about. I've seen some issues on the P20 as far as Audio/Video being out of sync, but it is still very smooth and audio is not choppy at all.

I have a DVD here I am going to try and rip to a file (the P20 only has USB 1.1 and PCoIP won't redirect my local CDROM from my desktop). I'll see what that does.

[gunnarb]

Jonathan,

Every business is different and has unique needs, View is not a 100% desktop replacement software, they still have video/audio/device issues to work through but so does Windows 7. In my environment View can handle 90% of the users which is enough for me to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in support and maintenance costs. So View is ready for me... and I have need for HD Video, works great btw.

-Gunnar

[jonathanryoung]

The best way to explain the issue is try thinking a workstation with a 2MB video card. Thats great to hear you have no problem using YouTube I would love to hear from others who have tryed watching Video's on a VM with PCoIP. I only ask because I think a video would be the most demanding thing a user would do. I do have some users running 2D cals but I can always use a spare server for this task.

My normal user:

Itunes playing

Word

Outlook

opening PDF files

Laserfiche

opening websites

opening a youtube video once in awhile

google earth

High end users:

Running Civil 3D and needing around 8GB of ram So I don't think I can use View with them

[MicahelMenne]

Jonathon,

I think VIew could still be a soltuion for you. Remember that View is NOT the VM. View is a connection broker. For your High end users running Civil 3D and needing 8GB of RAM, Blade PCs with Teradici hardware accelerators would probably be a good fit. Your end user devices can remain the same and you can still run "pools" of desktops.

For your normal users, View connection to a VM running Windows XP, Vista or 7 would still work.

In my experience so far, the VM configuration determines the usability more than the client does. YouTube/flash videos require 2 vCPUs to be effective.

VMware is actively working on View 4.5 and is about ready to go in to beta with it. MS made some stunning announcments today that will require VMware marketing (as well as engineering to some degree) to step up to the plate pretty soon.

[SWCS833]

I just read the announcement. It sounds like, from what marketing is saying, that MS and Citrix will have a more robust multimedia experience in their products. We will have to wait to see if this is true from what they state on paper, but it sounds very promising.

I really do hope that VMWare is going to release 4.5 with better multimedia optimizations to allow for a better, true desktop experiance, especially with Flash. I am still not seeing that great of performance from the server side when it comes to Flash based content or any 2d graphic programs. I started a topic about this, as I work in K-12 which has a lot of multimedia requirements and VDI has to meet these needs if we go down this path. I guess only time will tell.

[gunnarb]

Citrix (XenDesktop) does do much better from a multimedia stand point. Keep in mind here PCoIP for View has been out for what 5 months, Nov 19th was it release. PCoIP by itself (non View hardware to hardware) does full BlueRay Video and rocks, so it's not the protocol that is at fault here, it's VMware's implementation of the protocol as a software solution. This leads me to believe that VMware needs to work with Teradici more to make the software to hardware solution work better. I've met with Teradici and talked to them about this, there are a lot of different angles that could go with this but I personally think VMware/ESX needs to open up the GPU so that the VM coudl take direct advantage of it. Teradici knows of the multimedia issues, again PCoIP outside of View does an excellent job, I think PCoIP gives ICA a run for its money even with HDX, but if you want the best in multimedia performance then XenDesktop is the better solution... for now.

PS View 4.5 Beta is already going, I'm on it, sign up if you want to see what they are working on, I'll talk with you on those forums if you get in on it.

-Gunnar

[SWCS833]

I agree with you Gunnarb and have seen what PCoIP can do outside of View too. I just hope VWMare takes note of what their competitors are doing along with what their customers are seeing and needing with View. Lets just hope they are able to come up with a solution in the near future, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't already have something in the works.

[MicahelMenne]

PCoIP is a big improvement over what VMware had before. I'm in the process of setting up a PoC for HyperV/Xen to test alongside View. I've got a P20 at my desk now and I should be getting a Wyse Windows Embedded device shortly. I'm trying to get on the beta through my sales rep. I'm hoping to get on.

As far a Microsoft's announcements, they are more marketing hype than anything substantive (technology wise). It's clear that they see VDI from VMware as a HUGE competition and they are throwing their weight around. Citrix accomplishes things differently and VMware has a different take.

Here is a blog post that provides what I feel is a fair analysis of the protocols.

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2010/03/08/citrix-releases-report-on-ica-versus...

[ealaqqad]

Just in case some one still pass by this old post. In VMware View 4.6 the performance of PCoIP has improved dramatically even for video playing. I am wondering if any of you complained earlier in this post still has any concern after upgrading.

Please reward points if this help.

Regards,

Eiad Al-Aqqad

Technology Consultant @ VMware

Twitter: @VirtualizationT

b: http://www.VirtualizationTeam.com

b: http://www.TSMGuru.com

b: http://www.Linux2Aix.com

[DEVAXTATOR]

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regards