Codecs Codec assistance needed...Zotac ZBox ID41 (1 Viewer)

[porky996t]

Hi Guys,

I thought I would post in this part of the forum as it seems more relevant than the one it was in.

I have recently bought a Zotac ZBox ID41 to use as a bedroom client. I have installed Win7 Ultimate on it and when using MP, it works great for playing SD TV and SD videos, but the video is in slow motion when watching HD videos and freezes when playing HD TV stream. Now, If I use WMP to play a HD video the playback is flawless. Due to the resolution of the LCD in the bedroom I am running it at 1164 x 622 resolution.

Running a Full HD video in MP (Downton Abbey recorded from TV as a .ts file) the CPU is avg 85%. Network speed is showing as a constant 150kbs. Disk is about 0.3Mb/s and then starts climbing up as video seems to progressively lag further behind the audio stream. The video looks to be in slow motion and is probably due to the number of dropped frames. It is dropping many frames, but I cannot get "Shift & 1" to display at all when playing back HD video.


I used the Nvidia Inspector to see what the Ion 2 card was doing....

When playing the HD file using MP, the 'GPU Load' never goes above 18%, and the Memory Usage never goes above 83%. The 'GPU Load' is at 19% when on the MP Home page running StreamedMP. I would have expected the GPU Load to have been higher when running the HD file. However, when playing the same video file in WMP11 the GPU load is a maximum of 40%, the Memory Usage is a constant 28% and the CPU load varies between 10 and 20% and playback is flawless.

Attached is a screen shot of the Nvidia Inspector that is referred to above. I have also attached logs from trying to run a HD video in MP.

I have tried SAF6.0, although this is locked yet, and the Microsoft DVD-DTV codec, CoreAVC 2.5 and all give the same result.

Any help gratefully appreciated, as this is now getting beyond what I have had to previously do on MP.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Hi porky996t

Might be worthwhile trying saf6 unlocked, just for the PDVD11 h264 codec, just for reference my dualcore is running between 5-10% with cyberlink, the same file using FFDShow DXVA shows 30% cpu.

Regards

 

[Jay_UK]

Hi there,

It looks like you have several issues:

For dropped frames you are getting:

EVR.log
======
08-05-2011 12:43:47.125 [e60]Scheduling sample from the past (20168.39 ms, last call to NotifyWorker: 131.24 ms)
08-05-2011 12:43:47.125 [b38]Dropping frame, behind 20168.48 ms, last sleep time 0.00 ms.
08-05-2011 12:43:47.125 [e60]Scheduling sample from the past (20149.12 ms, last call to NotifyWorker: 131.97 ms)
08-05-2011 12:43:47.126 [b38]Dropping frame, behind 20149.21 ms, last sleep time 0.00 ms.
08-05-2011 12:43:47.249 [e60]Scheduling sample from the past (20252.47 ms, last call to NotifyWorker: 123.21 ms)

TS Reader
========
08-05-2011 12:43:46.615 [e60]Vid/Ref : 395.643, Late ?-frame(00), Compensated = 8.080 ( -19.656 A/V buffers=00/1095), Clk : 27.736294, State 2
08-05-2011 12:43:46.732 [e60]Vid/Ref : 395.663, Late ?-frame(00), Compensated = 8.100 ( -19.753 A/V buffers=00/1102), Clk : 27.853312, State 2
08-05-2011 12:43:46.734 [e60]Vid/Ref : 395.843, Late ?-frame(00), Compensated = 8.280 ( -19.573 A/V buffers=00/1101), Clk : 27.853312, State 2
08-05-2011 12:43:46.864 [e60]Vid/Ref : 395.863, Late ?-frame(00), Compensated = 8.300 ( -19.674 A/V buffers=00/1100), Clk : 27.974476, State 2
08-05-2011 12:43:46.866 [e60]Vid/Ref : 395.763, Late ?-frame(00), Compensated = 8.200 ( -19.790 A/V buffers=00/1099), Clk : 27.990477, State 2

With your GPU utilisation being so low, I would question if you are using DXVA? It looks like you are using ffdshow video decoder (which doesnt support DXVA) - What is graphstudio showing?

Can you copy the TS file locally and try and play it with MePo (to rule out any network issues too - TSReader problem)

Separately you seem to have a mismatch between MePo and the TVServer Client/Plugin:

2011-05-08 12:42:02.829289 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: TvPlugin and TvServer don't have the same version.
TvServer Version: 1.1.2.27219
TvPlugin Version: 1.1.3.0

Cheers,

J.

 

[porky996t]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the info. I'm at work at present, so I am unable to do much.

I know about the mismatch, it is due to the TV Server using Miroslavs Sky EPG grabber and the client using 1.1.3 MP. I'm just awaiting the final version of 1.2 coming out so I can get some consistency.

I'll copy the video file over so I can play it locally and see what is happening. I did rule out the network due to it playing fine with WMP.

I'm not sure which codec is being used. I'll check with Graphstudio this evening and post back.

Is Hoborg the man to see about getting SAF unlocked??


Thank you for your responses. I'm grateful for the input.



M.

 

[rekenaar]

Is Hoborg the man to see about getting SAF unlocked??

Correct

 

[porky996t]

Cheers Rekenaar, I'll PM him now.

 

[porky996t]

Success!!!!

Using unlocked SAF6 I can now get the HD file playing and watchable with MP and the PDVD codec. The GPU is up around 85% and the CPU is around 25%.

Attached is a screen grab whilst displaying Shift & 1. This is from a full HD recorded program - still dropping more frames than it draws though. Live HD TV plays OK and drops around 11% of frames.

 

[Jay_UK]

Hello mate.

11% drop on HD TV is still too high (IMHO)

As for the recording - is that with it local or remote?

What codec is it using? Does the content match screen frequency?

J.

 

[porky996t]

Hi Jay,

I can't do much now as the OH has gone to bed. I won't be able to do anything until tomorrow night now.

The recording was still remote - not had chance to copy over yet.

It is using the PDVD11 codec as I now have SAF6.0 unlocked.

"Does the content match the screen frequency" - How would I find that out? I would expect the TV to be at 50Hz, so I need to find out the what the codec is doing I presume?



M

 

[porky996t]

Hi Guys,

I copied the video file to the local drive and it is still stuttering, perhaps dropping 45% of frames. There is no discernable difference between the networked video and the local one. The frame drop is the same if the file is local or networked.

I have set the codec in MP Config to the PDVD one, but how do I tell if it is using this?

Thanks for advice so far.



M.