Certain Videos Stuttering (Freezing) or Refusing To Play At All (1 Viewer)

[EViS]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1.0
MediaPortal Skin: StreamedMP
Windows Version: Windows 7 x64
CPU Type: Intel Core 2 Duo e6600
HDD: OCZ Vertex 2 SSD (40GB)
Memory: Corsair XMS2 (2 GB)
Motherboard: Asus P5B Deluxe
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5670 (GDDR5 512MB)
Video Card Driver: Catalyst v10.70
Sound Card: M-Audio Rev. 5.1
Sound Card AC3: Coax Out
Sound Card Driver: VIA Envy24 Family v540a
1. TV Card: PEAK DUAL DVB-T Digital TV PCI
1. TV Card Type: DVB-T
MPEG2 Video Codec: SAF v5.00
MPEG2 Audio Codec: SAF v5.00
h.264 Video Codec: SAF v5.00
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case: Antec 180B
Remote: USBUIRT IR Receiver / Harmony 525
TV: LG 50PK350
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

I am experiencing a high level of stutter (freezing for 1 second at a time) when playing a majority (but not all!) of my movies. After a couple of minutes of stuttering, these videos will just exit and MP will return to the GUI. Some videos even refuse to commence playing. I do not have any of these problems when playing in MPC-HC, VLC or GraphStudio or when played on a previous installation of MP on Windows XP (VMR9).

Thinking this may be a Windows 7 EVR issue, I tried all the dshowhelper.dll's, however despite varying levels of stuttering, a large number of movies still either stuttered and/or refused to play at all.

Smooth Video Playback
MPEG2 TV and Recorded TV
MPEG2 (ISO) DVD
x264 (MKV) and DivX (AVI) TV Series Episodes
A small handful of x264 (MKV) Movies

Stuttering Video or Refusing To Play
Most x264 (MKV) Movies

Any ideas what could be causing this? Why would some movies (together with every other media aspect of MP) play smoothly and others not ?

 

[EViS]

Re: Stuttering Video - Certain x264 MKV's Only

Having raised this issue over in the SAF v5.0 thread. Hoborg is convinced this is not a codec issue and lies within MP. Hence, below is some testing I have done which should hopefully assist.

1. Aero is enabled.

2. GraphStudio Screenshots:

Video 01 and 02 are two examples of movies that play (for a couple of minutes) and stutter (freezes for 1 second at a time) in MP. Video 03 is an example of a movie that plays smoothly in MP. All movies play smoothly in MPC-HC, VLC and GraphStudio.

MediaPortal Stuttering Video 01: Here
MediaPortal Stuttering Video 02: Here
MediaPortal Smooth Video 03: Here

MPC-HC Smooth Video 01: Here
MPC-HC Smooth Video 02: Here
MPC-HC Smooth Video 03: Here

3. MediaPortal Diagnostic Screenshots:

MediaPortal Stuttering Video 01: Here
MediaPortal Stuttering Video 02: Here
MediaPortal Smooth Video 03: Here

4. Average CPU Load Whilst Playing Either Videos In MediaPortal: 25% - 35%
Average CPU Load Whilst Playing Either Videos In MPC-HC: 25 - 30%

5. Average GPU Load Whilst Playing Either Videos In MediaPortal: 400 MHz (reported constant by ATI CCC)
Average GPU Load Whilst Playing Either Videos In MPC-HC: 400 MHz (reported constant by ATI CCC)

6. EVR.log and MediaPortal.log which logged MP starting, the movie (Video 01) being played, then it automatically stopping. For the record, I have also tried disabling Refresh Rate Changer, this had no effect.

7. Playing all three videos in GraphStudio, MPC-HC and VLC also reveals stutter-free playback.

8. I am using the latest ATI 10.7 CCC driver.

9. Disabling/Enabling Refresh Rate Changer has no effect.

 

[tourettes]

Is that Core 2 Duo having hyperthreading enabled? Thus making the CPU as quad core when comparing the CPU loads. 35% is much too much for a quad core system if the most of the processing is done in a single thread (video decoding seems to be done on the CPU instead of the GPU since the CPU load is huge for such fast CPU. It should be around 5% if DXVA is really working).

Please test some other H.264 decoder. Based on the EVR log this would be a performance issue. MP is more GPU / CPU hungry than MPC-HC due the fact we need to render UI as well, which requires power even when it is not visible - some extra DirectX stuff needs to be done always.

 

[EViS]

Is that Core 2 Duo having hyperthreading enabled? Thus making the CPU as quad core when comparing the CPU loads. 35% is much too much for a quad core system if the most of the processing is done in a single thread (video decoding seems to be done on the CPU instead of the GPU since the CPU load is huge for such fast CPU. It should be around 5% if DXVA is really working).

Please test some other H.264 decoder. Based on the EVR log this would be a performance issue. MP is more GPU / CPU hungry than MPC-HC due the fact we need to render UI as well, which requires power even when it is not visible - some extra DirectX stuff needs to be done always.

My Core 2 Duo e6600 does not have Hyperthreading.

I have tested with the following decoders set for H.264 under the Video Codecs tab. Graph Studio confirmed they were all being used by MP. All decoders showed stuttering (freezing) and the video crashing out after a couple of minutes back to the MP GUI.

ffdshow DXVA Video Decoder: 25% CPU load (last night was between 30% to 35%)
ffdshow Video Decoder: 5% CPU load
Cyberlink Video Decoder (PDVD10): Average 5% CPU load
Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder: 5% CPU load

The really odd thing is why this doesn't happen on ALL videos?

FYI, I only have SAF v5.0 installed on my system. I experience the same stuttering on another system (Windows 7 x64 laptop) with completely different hardware but the same MP/Codec software installation and versions.

I have just uninstalled SAF v5.0 and installed SAF v4.0 and everything plays with no stutter! Looks like the FFDSHOW DXVA decoder was at fault. The MPC h264 decoder seems to be working.

 

[psykoman]

Are there any news to this problem? I've the exact same problem related with SAF 5.0 and MP 1.1.1 Is this maybe fixed in 1.2.0 Alpha?

 

[tourettes]

Are there any news to this problem? I've the exact same problem related with SAF 5.0 and MP 1.1.1 Is this maybe fixed in 1.2.0 Alpha?

At least based on the previous post it was buggy decoder:

I have just uninstalled SAF v5.0 and installed SAF v4.0 and everything plays with no stutter! Looks like the FFDSHOW DXVA decoder was at fault. The MPC h264 decoder seems to be working.

 

[psykoman]

AW: Certain Videos Stuttering (Freezing) or Refusing To Play At All

hmm in another thread hoborg stated that it isnt SAFs fault and that he won't change ffdshow decoder …*so are all people with stutter stuck with 4.0 ? (i had audio problems with 4.0, these are gone in 5.0 so i can't change back … )
i think i'll give coreavc a try, friends told me thats the best decoder if you haven't got any hardware acceleration …

 

[hoborg]

psykoman:

Test is easy. Try to play your video in Graphstudio (make sure you have SAF installed).
FFDshow DxVA decoder can have highter CPU usage if you have FFDshow DxVA subtitles enabled.

 

[tourettes]

Test is easy. Try to play your video in Graphstudio (make sure you have SAF installed).

Even thou it is a good indication where bug might be it still won't always pinpoint the buggy component. At least it needs to be made sure that EVR is used in graph edit (which wont happen on default) since that is only way to allow DXVA on Vista / W7.

FFDshow DxVA decoder can have highter CPU usage if you have FFDshow DxVA subtitles enabled.

I think there is no point in using the DXVA with FFDshow if subtitles are enabled. The reason for this is that the GPU to system memory copy is really costy operation (bandwidth in that direction is only a small amount when compared to the system memory to GPU). CPU usage will be high and the DXVA decoding is not as robust nor has as complete support for different encodings as the software decoding in ffdshow.

 

[hoborg]

Test is easy. Try to play your video in Graphstudio (make sure you have SAF installed).

Even thou it is a good indication where bug might be it still won't always pinpoint the buggy component. At least it needs to be made sure that EVR is used in graph edit (which wont happen on default) since that is only way to allow DXVA on Vista / W7.

That is why i noted make sure you have SAF installed.
SAF change default video renderer by OS - XP=VMR9, Vista/Win7=EVR.

So opening the video in SAF installed Graphstudio result in correct graph creation with correct video renderer.

And FFDshow DxVA and subtitles? Yes, you are right, but CPU usage is still much lower for DxVA decoding + subtitles then CPU decoding + subtitles.

Big + is thanks to this you can have DxVA + subtitles on all DShow based players.

SAF ask if FFDshow subtitles engine should be enabled durning SAF install.