TV Stuttering troubleshooting

[diehard2]

The point of this post is to serve as a repository for information related to stuttering. As new techniques, solutions, or bugs are posted, I will update this list

TV Stuttering is caused by several issues. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are outside of MP's direct control. The main issues are

• An external process is using up CPU. This will be especially problematic if you are on much older hardware
• MP is using up too much CPU. This can possibly happen during imports
• You have a buggy quartz.dll - After any disruption to your CPU, or if you seek, the frames look like they are out of order.
• Video drivers are causing issues

There are several other possibilities, but these are the main ones. To check if the problem is an actual MP problem, please download the MP CPU Monitoring Tool and run it while attempting to reproduce your problem. The log file will be created in the same directory as the tool. From the log, you can see if you have a CPU bottleneck, and whether MP is causing it. A further update may allow you to see what other processes are using CPU, but that is not planned for the immediate future.

Things you can do to eliminate stuttering in order of how much they typically help

1. If you have an English version of XP, download an updated quartz.dll (msoft directshow component)-

   Updated quartz.dll (English XP only )

   If you don't have English XP, you can downgrade to directx9.0b quartz.dll - downgrade directx quartz.dll 9.0c to 9.0b

2. The standard decoders used with MP are not particularly good. They are OK and free. If you want crystal clear pictures with low CPU usage, you will have to spend $20 USD and download the nVidia decoders

   nVidia decoders - for basic TV watching, the $20 version will be just fine

3. Make sure you have an actual video card. If you are using on-board video, your experience will be suboptimal. MP makes extensive use of directx and therefore requires an actual video card. If you are using onboard memory, you will not get any acceleration, and all of the directx work will be done in software. This is very slow. You don't need a top of the line card, but a geforce 6200 (<$100 USD) will go very far in improving your user experience
4. Update the drivers for your TV card. This is especially important if your card is relatively new
5. Change the driver for your video card. As of the NVIDIA 93.71 release, I get terrible stuttering. Using the NVIDIA 91.47 release everything is crystal clear. This may involve some experimentation

Unverified fixes - these have helped other users, but are not obvious or intuitive (or necessarily correct). Until a wider body of information becomes available, these are "use at your own risk" solutions.

1. MS hotfix KB918005 from this thread

[tomoqv]

I tried all of the above, but still had the TV stutter on my system. What finally helped, though, was installing the MS hotfix KB918005 described in http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/sh...92&postcount=8 still keeping the changes from the post above.

I had high CPU usage with fairly regular intervals, but these seem to have disappeared completely after installing the above hotfix. I had stumbled over this hotfix before, but never tried it as it concerned battery power drain on portable computers. I suspect that the laptop power drain comes from the periodically high CPU usage that also caused the TV stutters on my system.

Tomas

[Verbi]

I had problem with EPG which was suggested here (http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/st...de-t19190.html to solve use default antialiasing (8xS) in nVIDIA driver settings (i have 7600GS). OK this solve my issue but MyTV starts suttering after this settin in current resolution. When i turn the AA back to application controled - all works prefectly as before. But I dont wan to have the weird artefacts in EPG so i choosed other way - decrease the resolution. Suttering is gone but also the resoltion is not good now.
So I tried to play little bit with settings of decoder etc. in Terratec TV software that comes with my Cinergy TV board. I see that if i turn AA to 8xS the CPU load is heavy (not like if there is "application controled") but I understand that it could take more CPU. The suttering is in this case unacceptable. In this software is setting not to use VMR9 and if i uncheck this option suttering is gone and also the CPU load is normal while the 8xS AA is still there. I forgot to mention that im using NVIDIA PURE VIDEO/AUDIO decoders always.

So my question is if there is some setting in MP to turn VMR9 off ... ?
I also tried all suggestions mentioned here in this topic and also install the HF like tomoqv without any visible help.

[navster]

I had terrible stuttering when generally browsing around on the menus as well as watching TV. I followed the guide as outlined above, however it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

I then installed the DirectX updates (downloaded from here) and they seem to have worked wonders. Not had a single case of stuttering since.

I'm not sure if its a combination along with everything else, but it's well worth a go if you're having this problem.

[Spragleknas]

Hmm... also:

Audiorenderer: Set to "Default Directsound Device"

... from what I remember.

[Spragleknas]

"If you have an English version of XP, download an updated quartz.dll (msoft directshow component)-

Updated quartz.dll (English XP only )"

Can this be the reason for my mute problem?

Mute (and only the mute-button) seems to do a "double-click". Using MP in window mode confirms this (volume tray shows a mute symbol for a very short time).

When using the MCE remote in windows, this does not occur; one click = mute on/off.

[CHli]

I have another direction to follow if you still encounter stuttering, download this tool and try what they say (disabling drivers one by one) :

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

[diehard2]

Hi Spragleknas,

I would say that it is very unlikely that quartz.dll would cause a problem with mute. Is this only when using the mce remote, or when pressing the mute shortcut key in MP? I imagine (but am not sure) that the mute call is done through windows, and not directshow.

[and-81]

Hey Spragleknas,

The Mute button has a hard coded function with the MCE remote (with the default Microsoft driver).

If MediaPortal is duplicating this function then one would enable mute and the other would disable it. By default MediaPortal ignores that button, but if you're using the MCE Replacement plugin you may need to remove the button mapping for Mute and just let the OS deal with it.

Hope that helps,

[DonBogo]

I would like to add in this list the shared IRQ issue.
I had the DVB card and the integrated graphics card using the same shared IRQ:
not only stuttering and poor performance but a LOT of blue screens.
Moved the DVB card in another PCI slot and....... everything solved !

Cheers,
Daniele