[no Bug] EVR and Stutter with nVidia ION (1 Viewer)

[joystick]

AW: Re: EVR and Stutter with nVidia ION

Sorry Robyf, the 720p screenshot above was actually taken with the wrong refresh rate as mentioned by tourettes.


Any further thoughts? Can we definitely say that the hardware is simply not up to the task? What makes ION struggle to play standard definition TV, but is absolutely fine when playing HD videos? This doesn't make sense to me, but my understanding of how MP works is not brilliant!

Thanks again.
Si

Edit: Joystick - 1080P is working eh? I see you have a 50" screen and I wonder if the TV size might actually makes any difference to playback?

in this case SIZE DOES NOT MATTER... ...
HD Videos are usually not 1080i but 1080p, especially if they are reencoded.
it's just like jameson_uk said: deinterlacing of 1080i (interlaced) is making the HW struggle, even though this actually is a driver prob. from my perspective, maybe nvidia will improve theirs soon....or sell a new version of ion (I saw a next gen ION description somewhere)

cheers
joystick

 

[Owlsroost]

The TV size is immaterial - it's the display resolution and the refresh rate that you are running at which is important from a performance viewpoint.

Higher display resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher video resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher display & video refresh rates => more work for the GPU to do.

Interlaced video => more work for the GPU to do (if hardware de-interlacing is in use - this is codec dependant)

EVR+Aero desktop (normal MP situation) needs more GPU power than VMR9 - it's just the way it is....it's also partly the reason Aero isn't enabled on the Basic/Starter versions of Vista and Win7 - it's too much of an overhead on things like netbooks with negligable GPU power.

(As an experiment, you could try disabling Aero desktop - you'll probably get video tearing, but it might help with the stuttering)

Tony

 

[jameson_uk]

The TV size is immaterial - it's the display resolution and the refresh rate that you are running at which is important from a performance viewpoint.

Higher display resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher video resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher display & video refresh rates => more work for the GPU to do.

Interlaced video => more work for the GPU to do (if hardware de-interlacing is in use - this is codec dependant)

the one thing here is that video resolution = display resolution then there is no scaling to do so not as much work to do. Again if refresh rate matches input rate there is less overhead as nothing is being converted.

Is the op not talking about 1080i output and not source btw? the extra effort to create a 1080p picture and then turn this into 1080i is what I was saying will be a touch to far. I would have thought that if you have a 1366x768 TV which does not accept this res over HDMI then I would have thought the scaling a 1080p source to 720p is far less work than the interlacing

ION based machines are more than capable of outputting a decent 1080p signal (as long as hardware acceleration is used) even high bitrate blurays.

 

[Andrew H]

From the above images also on 720p you have a lot of dropped frames and this is not normal in my opinion.

As for 1080i/p I've never tried this resolution as I output to a 720p TV but I suspect, as I said in the other thread, that the NVIDIA 9400 is not sufficient in particular for 1080i output (1080p should be OK). It's true that specifications says that it should be sufficient but MediaPortal has a way of rendering video which is more heavy than other softwares.

This has been debated and was the path MP was going until 0002748: Remove ATI flickering hack reverted back under 1.1.0.0 RC2 - or was this repealed? I had been following this issue and posted a summary under 1080i material not deinterlacing under 1.0.1.0 ...

So is MP still using textures (high CPU/GPU utilization) or are we now back to surface writing and no longer requiring a beefier GPU for deinterlacing?

The TV size is immaterial - it's the display resolution and the refresh rate that you are running at which is important from a performance viewpoint.

Higher display resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher video resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher display & video refresh rates => more work for the GPU to do.

Interlaced video => more work for the GPU to do (if hardware de-interlacing is in use - this is codec dependant)

the one thing here is that video resolution = display resolution then there is no scaling to do so not as much work to do. Again if refresh rate matches input rate there is less overhead as nothing is being converted.

Is the op not talking about 1080i output and not source btw? the extra effort to create a 1080p picture and then turn this into 1080i is what I was saying will be a touch to far. I would have thought that if you have a 1366x768 TV which does not accept this res over HDMI then I would have thought the scaling a 1080p source to 720p is far less work than the interlacing

ION based machines are more than capable of outputting a decent 1080p signal (as long as hardware acceleration is used) even high bitrate blurays.

Relative to a native 1366x768 panel I would focus on sending that resolution to it directly (1:1 pixel mapping) to assure the best picture quality by any means possible including DVI and VGA. My experience is that TVs internal scalers often have a lot to be desired and, this HTPC is essentially a display, not a TV.

 

[robyf]

From the above images also on 720p you have a lot of dropped frames and this is not normal in my opinion.

As for 1080i/p I've never tried this resolution as I output to a 720p TV but I suspect, as I said in the other thread, that the NVIDIA 9400 is not sufficient in particular for 1080i output (1080p should be OK). It's true that specifications says that it should be sufficient but MediaPortal has a way of rendering video which is more heavy than other softwares.

This has been debated and was the path MP was going until 0002748: Remove ATI flickering hack reverted back under 1.1.0.0 RC2 - or was this repealed? I had been following this issue and posted a summary under 1080i material not deinterlacing under 1.0.1.0 ...

So is MP still using textures (high CPU/GPU utilization) or are we now back to surface writing and no longer requiring a beefier GPU for deinterlacing?

ATI hack was removed as said by tourettes but as far as I know mediaportal still uses textures for rendering video, so is still a little bit more hungry in terms of GPU. Look here:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...everending-story-80889/index2.html#post606586

Anyway I have not tried other softwares with 1080i video, so it could be that also with them there are problems with 1080i (technical specifications are often optimistic).

 

[Owlsroost]

The TV size is immaterial - it's the display resolution and the refresh rate that you are running at which is important from a performance viewpoint.

Higher display resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher video resolution => more work for the GPU to do.

Higher display & video refresh rates => more work for the GPU to do.

Interlaced video => more work for the GPU to do (if hardware de-interlacing is in use - this is codec dependant)

the one thing here is that video resolution = display resolution then there is no scaling to do so not as much work to do. Again if refresh rate matches input rate there is less overhead as nothing is being converted.

Is the op not talking about 1080i output and not source btw? the extra effort to create a 1080p picture and then turn this into 1080i is what I was saying will be a touch to far. I would have thought that if you have a 1366x768 TV which does not accept this res over HDMI then I would have thought the scaling a 1080p source to 720p is far less work than the interlacing

ION based machines are more than capable of outputting a decent 1080p signal (as long as hardware acceleration is used) even high bitrate blurays.

From the render stats info in the screen caps in the first post, it's interlaced 50Hz video on a 50Hz display (1080p/720p).

I suspect the video scaling isn't a big deal (I think ATI & nVidia have dedicated hardware blocks for this), but hardware de-interlacing is done in the GPU shader hardware and is a big GPU performance hit. Progressive scan video content e.g. 24 fps Blu-ray is much easier to handle since there is no de-interlacing to perform.

Tony

 

[SimondusMaximus]

Many good points - thanks for all your input. Certainly as mentioned, playing 1080p or 720p videos is no problem with my tv set to 1080 @ 50Hz resolution. I'm not really concerned with 1080i to be honest, I just tried it to see how the ION would cope. It didn't!

Also tried disabling Aero as suggested, to no avail.

For all those ION users out there, what version of nVidia drivers are you using? I'm on the latest 197.45, but might it be worth rolling back?

As another test, I was also considering putting XP on the client (but leaving Win 7 on server) and so using VMR9 which I know works perfectly well with my hardware. Any thoughts on that before I rebuild?

Cheers
Si

 

[Dittsche]

AW: EVR and Stutter with nVidia ION

I'm using the nVidia latest 257.15. I think the video quality is smoother than before. But I just made a fresh install of Win7 & MePo, so it's difficult for me to compare. Nevertheless, still every few seconds I got a terrible ripple which causes lots of frame drops and effects both picture & sound. I don't have this effect when comparing it with MCE. No other Software or Codecs are used.

I think there a lots of ATOM/ION-users outside with the same problem. Are there any proven settings on BIOS/nVidia available?

 

[SimondusMaximus]

My driver version of 197.45 seems to be the latest for the ION gpu. 257.15 is for different nVidia hardware I think. Unless I'm wrong. Tried rolling back to older nVidia drivers but no difference, as to be expected.

I've tried a few different BIOS settings but none have improved ION's performance in Mediaportal. It's possible to increase the core speed and shader speed, but with passive cooling in my client, I don't want to risk frying it. The next gen ION as mentioned above has these speeds increased as standard, plus more cores and as such might be better. I see Asus are teasing everyone with a mini-itx mobo with next gen ION but don't think it's released yet - ION-based Motherboards

Any comments on my thoughts to use XP on my client? Will it be compatible with MP 1.1.0 RC3 on a Win 7 server?

I don't want to get into a big XP vs Win 7 debate though...just curious!

Cheers
Si

 

[Kotik]

Any comments on my thoughts to use XP on my client? Will it be compatible with MP 1.1.0 RC3 on a Win 7 server?

I don't want to get into a big XP vs Win 7 debate though...just curious!

Cheers
Si

I am using my ION under windows XP.

EVR uses more CPU than VMR9 does so to simply answer your question:

Try XP and you will see for yourself that playback is more smooth under VRM9 with ION as GPU and Atom as CPU.

P.S. You wont get any better deinterlacing quality under XP. Since i have tried both XP and 7 i came to the conclusion that ION has enough GPU power to do more advanced deinterlacing but wont do it due to drivers limitation. But you will get smooth picture playback under XP.

P.S. Best deinterlacing method that ION will use is Adaptive Deinterlacing and on 1080i material you will notice the picture trembling.