24p not smooth in Mediaportal (1 Viewer)

[flob]

Hello,

just installed my HTPC using the following config :

PC is based on Intel Quad core Q8200, with 4G memory. Video card is a ATI Radeon 4550 based card.

I have installed
- Haali Media Splitter
- Mediaportal 1.1 beta (rev 23491)
- Skin StreamedMP
- SAF 4 from this post : https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/codecs-external-players-55/saf-v4-00rc1-standalone-filters-dxva-ready-mpeg2-h-264-vc-1-a-44614/
- MPC-HC (1.3.1249) for troubleshooting.

I have a buch of MKV H264 files for which I have set the refresh rate to 1080/24p. I use the Automatic refresh rate adjustment in MediaPortal.

Problem : in MediaPortal, my movies are not smooth and oftenly have part of the screen (bottom part) showing saccades.

in MPC-HC, using the 24p resolution on my HTPC settings, the movies are perfectly smooth.

Can someone help me to understand why I see such a difference ?

thanks ahead for your help

Flob

 

[AndrePrins]

Hi Flob, did you ever fix this? I have exactly the same problem in MP. The bottom part shows saccades. When I set my screen to 60hz it's gone, but the video is no longer smooth. In MPC-HC it's perfect. I've tried a lot of things, but have not been able to fix it.

 

[DragonQ]

By saccades do you mean tearing?

What do you see if you press Shift + 1? Take a screenshot and post here please!

 

[AndrePrins]

Hi DragonQ: I've been working on it yesterday and I think I fixed it for 99.99%. The reason for the strange behavior at the bottom of the screen was because I reinstalled my htpc and totally forgot to do the hardware experience, so Aero was not enabled. After that the screen was normal.
One little (video) thing that is still strange is that from time to time the screen is 'hopping' like one frame or so. I don't see it in the diagram as the red line is totally stable, so it's hard to make a screen of this situation. It looks like it's trying to sync or so. I'm using ffdshow dxva and ffdshow audio decoder with passhtrough for AC3/DTS/DTS-HD/TrueHD. My wife calls me crazy, but I'm a perfectionist
On the audio side I have another issue, because I have HDTV material (series like fringe or castle) that don't have DD 5.1 sound, but DD 2.0. I some cases I get weird distortion in the sound. I don't have that with DD 5.1 or any DTS version. I'm using my hdmi for video and audio. I have an ASUS 5450 videocard with 1GB Memory. I use dxva, so the workstion CPU is hardly used.

Besides this everything is working great and I'm really happy with MP.

 

[DragonQ]

Not sure about the sound...

For the video, is the "hopping" regular? Can you time it? If it's every 40 seconds, it's because you're playing 23.976p material at 24 Hz (or your TV doesn't support 23.976p natively). If it's irregular it could be a hardware issue...try looking at CPU and GPU usage whilst playing a film. GPU usage can be seen in nVidia Inspector for nVidia cards, no idea about AMD.

 

[AndrePrins]

Hi DragonQ: It's weird but I can set my htpc to 23hz, but my TV (brand new Samsung UE46d7000) still shows 24hz. Even though I see in MP when I use Dynamic Refresh when I press Shift + 1 that it's using 23.3760000 and I also notice different response when I use 23hz with the Dynamic Refresh. CPU usage during a BR movie is around 23% (with dxva enabled). Like you I don't know how to view GPU usage with my ATI videcard, but it's a 1GB 5450, so I guess that's not the issue. I guess the reason is that it's running 23.376 in 24hz or something like that. I checked, but it's not every 40 seconds, it's more like every 2 minutes or so.
Thanks for all your information and help. I'm going to do some more tests and I'll let you know the result. The sound issue is still something I don't understand. It must be something in combination with my Onkyo 609 that doesn't like the DD 2.0 stream as I don't have it on my laptop.

 

[DragonQ]

My TV just says "24 Hz" when it's in 23.976 Hz mode so yours may be the same. Perhaps your unsmooth video is due to something else, maybe try to copy what this guy did and see if that fixes it?

 

[AndrePrins]

Ok cool, so that's normal. I'm going to do the same as he did. I don't have a lot of plugins in Mp, but it's funny that it's around the same 2 minutes that I have. Maybe something in the background is updating something when I'm watching the movie. I'm going to make an image and start all over. I won't be able to do that today or the next 2 days (starting a new job), so I'll be back after the weekend. Thanks again! Much appreciated!

 

[kilik360]

You don't have to make an image. Just go to Start/programs/team mediaportal/mediaportal/mediaportal debug-mode. It will start MP whithout any plugins. When you press shift+1, what's your meas. rfsh ? If it's close to your 23.376, you should choose 24hz instead of 23 in dynamic refresh rate.

 

[AndrePrins]

And so I'm still learning every day I'll give it a try and let you know. Thanks kilik360!
Yes, it's a bit over 23.376. I thought that 23hz actually is 23.376, right?