Dropped Frames every 100 seconds (3 Viewers)

[kilik360]

You are not alone Jago i'm in the same boat as you are ! I had the same drop in MP1.3, MP1.4 and now in 1.5RC, I think you nailed were the problem were since I use MP !! I cannot say for sure that it repeats at every 100 sec. I'm still digging.

For now I can say that when I erase all my database everything is perfect. As soon as I run MP-TVseries to scan my series, the problem appear in MP videoplayback.

 

[kiwijunglist]

@ltfearme - TV Series causing dropped frames?

 

[Jago]

Hi kilik36,

do you also use a relatively weak system like I do - AMD E350...
Or is this a problem which can also occur on powerful systems? What windows version do you use?
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/members/kilik360.106837/

 

[RoChess]

@kilik360, as @Jago pointed out there is not much that can be done for weak systems. The .NET framework adds a big resource impact for MediaPortal to deal with. Microsoft constantly improves it and the current version of .NET 4.5 is already a year old and works well. MediaPortal however was compiled to run on .NET v3.5, so 4.5 is able to emulate/run most of that, but for optimum performance you need to use/install the framework the software was compiled for.

So it might be as simple as that, or simply wait for the new version of MediaPortal that will drop support for older versions of Windows as new .NET frameworks will not be released for those anymore. I have not confirmed this as I'm still on MePo v1.2 myself with production (don't ask), but I believe MePo v1.5 was scheduled to get a bumb in framework. Considering I have .NET v4.5 installed on an Windows XP system even, there really is not a reason to 'not' update, other then a lot of wasted time on developer side (which explains why nobody likes to do it when something 'works')

Considering the large majority has no problems with skipped frames, we are down to system resources, OS configuration and MediaPortal/Plugin configuration. So there are still a lot of things you can look at, obvious one is disabling import inside MovPic/MP-TVSeries during fullscreen video, look for codec updates (LAV) or a codec replacement (MPC-HC standalone), run diagnostic software in the background such as Windows 8 taskmanager with disk/io enabled or tools such as HWMonitor. Somewhere there is a bottleneck and the key is finding out where, so that when eliminated it will all work perfect. Since the skip happens once every 100 seconds, it is obviously something minor, which can be terrible time consuming to narrow down, but it is not impossible.

PS: Try MPC-HC stand-alone player and configure it as MediaPortal external player. You can then adjust the windows taskscheduler priority of MPC-HC higher or adjust MediaPortal lower even. On low resource systems such as Atom, E350, etc there are a lot of other tricks you can do to squeeze the most performance out. It is usually the CPU if the GPU is able to support DXVA2, but regular harddisks quickly become a bottleneck as well to keep up with providing the data.

 

[kilik360]

do you also use a relatively weak system like I do - AMD E350... Or is this a problem which can also occur on powerful systems? What windows version do you use?

I use the hometheatre-pc from my system specs (Ahtlon II x4 ) with an NvidiaGT 420

@RoChess thanks for your tips, I'll look deeper into .NET and disabling import on fullscreen.

I did more test this evening and I confirm again, when MP-TVseries in enable I get between 7 and 10 drop frames for a 25 mins video. And a flawless 0 Drop from the same 25 mins video when MP-TVSeries is disable.

 

[RoChess]

@klik360, the GT420 is NVidia PureVideo VP4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo)

They significantly increased performance with VP5 per the same article, but VP4 should be enough. However the LAV video codec configuration settings might not make use of it.

Start -> Start button/screen -> All Programs -> LAV Filters -> LAV Video Configuration​

At the top right side, make sure "Hardware Decoder to use:" is not disabled and try both "NVIDIA CUVID" and "DXVA2 (native)". The latter is what I use on AMD GPUs and it gives me the best performance (1080p Blu-Ray high-bitrate Picture-in-Picture is no problem).

This is of course assuming that your MediaPortal codec settings are configused to use LAV, otherwise adjust the correct codec accordingly.

 

[kiwijunglist]

I've been told that DXVA2 native uses less resources, so maybe better for nvidia lowish end card. I initially thought that nvidia couldn't use DXVA2, but I was incorrect it can, and sometimes is best.

 

[Edalex]

Maybe it's TVSeries FilleWatcher? Maybe your files were changing during playback? i.e. downloading, recording.

 

[kilik360]

I took the time to look deeper this past week-end and I apologies for saying that MP TV-series make me drop frames. Unfortunately it IS moving-pictures.

The only way to have perfect playback is to completely uninstall moving-pictures plugin.

Does moving-pictures has some background process I can disable like MP TV-series ?

I think I should open a new thread in moving-pictures plugin.

Again, sorry to MP TV-Series developer, your great plugin isn't the culprit!

 

[Edalex]

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