What codec for HD playback - NEW problem

[hoborg]

Hello. Maybe this can help you: http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/of...rs-htpc-44614/

[Kalf]

een_mq: Your way works better then hoborgs. But none works great. I've tried if it became any better with the file local on the HTPC, but it did'nt make any noticable difference.

Any other ideas on what I could do to make it work seamles? Is'nt the Video Card good enough? What else could it be?

Best regards
Kalf

[een_mq]

Hi,

Yeah there are actually a couple of other things...
Try these:
- remove antivirus and restart (my norton causes so many issues, it's because it's scanning and holding up all the necessary files when MP s used), you can always put it back later if it doesnt make a difference
- make sure you have separate hard drives for windows, timeshift and recording/movies, try playing off external hard drive.I got a feeling somehow your hard drive is too slow? are the movies on the windows drive?
-now when you play the files, try playing MP in windowed mode and look at your task manager to see if CPU is maxed out
- update to the latest directx redistributable... (get it from microsoft website)
-update to the latest beta graphics driver in nvidia.com
- does playing the file using vlc make any difference?

[Kalf]

- remove antivirus and restart
I dont have any.
- make sure you have separate hard drives for windows, timeshift and recording/movies, try playing off external hard drive.I got a feeling somehow your hard drive is too slow? are the movies on the windows drive?
I dont have this, I'm only using one single IDE disc in the HTPC, and I stream the movies over the network. I've tried to put a file on the local disk, but it did'nt make any diference.
-now when you play the files, try playing MP in windowed mode and look at your task manager to see if CPU is maxed out
The CPU is working at 100% when I'm playing HD-content. So I'm guessing that Hardware acceleration do'nt work like it should. (?)
- update to the latest directx redistributable... (get it from microsoft website)
Done
-update to the latest beta graphics driver in nvidia.com
Done
- does playing the file using vlc make any difference?
The only difference is that the image freezes more often.

[Spragleknas]

The Celeron 3 GHz is probably to weak to do SW-decoding, which I think it sometimes must when using your gfx, as it probably does not support DXVA for the HD movie you are trying to play.


You could try CoreAVC

[een_mq]

Spragleknas naled it in the head.
So in summary:
- when you try to play a HD movies, it will stutter
- it stutter because the movie is software encoded and celeron 3.0GHz is too slow for software encoding

Depending on the type of movies that you play, you can accelerate them using your GPU.
You probably want to search the forum on "hardware acceleration" or something similar.
However, hardware acceleration of .mkv files or any other HD movies are very problematic.
Slight variation in encoding technique, and compression etc will disable hardware acceleration.

This is not easy though, I myself do not know how to enable HW acceleration of h264 files on my setup.
It requires the right video card (geforce 8000 and above, or ATI HD36xx and above) the right codecs (powerdvd 8) and the right movie files.
Therefore, I would suggest to go the software encoding path, which is much more trouble free and cheaper too.
My 1.83GHz Core2Duo is good enough to so software encoding of h264 HD movies.

If you check this post:
Minimum CPU for smooth 1080p h.264? [Text View] - AVS Forum

Basically it is saying, anything starting from Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2 4800+ will encode HD movies without any problem (including 1080p which is the highest standard at the moment, also used by bluray)

And also coreavc is the fastest sofware encoder for h264 streams.
However, I think there is a very very tiny chance that your CPU is fast enough to do this, as that forum also mentioned that a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 can not decode HD movies smoothly with any codec.

So, recommendation would be either watch a lower bitrate divx/xvid movies, or get yourself a Core 2 Duo or any of the newer AMD processor to watch HD movies.
A CPU and motherboard combo are not very expensive nowadays..

Hope this helps

Ed