EVR + FFDShow stuttering problems (1 Viewer)

[frankwaan]

Hi there,

I'm currently a bit lost. I've got a 32" full-HD LCD television and a HTPC with MP RC1. Playing H264 content is no issue, because the 1080p's are 1920x1080 natively, so they look very nice.

For my DVD's, I like to use FFDShow for upscaling. My confusion is:

- does my Desktop (Windows) resolution needs to be 1920x1080 (if so, I have to set the font DPI around 150 to make it readable), or can it be switched back to lower resolutions, keeping in mind that we want the upscaled 'thing' when I watch DVD?
- is it reasonable to resize to 1920x1080 in FFDShow or should I use lower resolutions, like 1280x720?

The problem is that the movies tend to stutter a bit during playback, especially during long/fast movements. But Shift+F1 does not indicate jitter / frame drops (jitter is 1 constant, an only increases during fast forward / rewind). My CPU load with upscaling does not exeed 75-80% (I've got an AMD Athlon X2 4850). Has it anything to do with my CPU power or is it a refresh rate / resolution related problem?

Thanks in advance!

TV-Server Version: V1.0 RC2
MediaPortal Version: V1.0 RC2
MediaPortal Skin:
Windows Version: Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit
CPU Type: AMD Athlon X2 4850e
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB
Memory: Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD3200 (intergrated)
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card:
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Terratec Cinergy C
1. TV Card Type: DVB-C
1. TV Card Driver:
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: ffdshow rev 2063
MPEG2 Audio Codec: ffdshow rev 2063
h.264 Video Codec: Cyberlink PowerDVD
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case: Antec Fusion
Cooling: AMD Stock cooler
Power Supply: Antec 430W
Remote: Logitech Harmony 525
TV: Sony KDL40D3500
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

 

[frankwaan]

edit: posted my EVR.log file.
I see a lot of the folowing messages:

18-08-2008 21:40:01.452 [108]Critical lock time for GetFreeSample was 6 ms

If anyone could help me, I would be grateful.

Original post:

OK,

After trying a lot of settings (decoders / FFDShow postprocessing etc. etc.), I got to the conclusion that every desktop resolution in combination with every upscale resolution gives the stuttery playback.
I then tried the VMR renderer once more (I got rid of it after using Mediaportal for 1 day). The playback seemed much more smootly, despite the fact that the jitter shows about 40-50! The jitter, however, drops back during playback of the movie.

So, it seems an EVR issue in my situation. The EVR log shows a lot of critical messages, which I'll post later this day.

Does anyone has a clue what might go wrong here? I've tried the following decoders:

- MPV
- FFDShow (sucks)
- Cyberlink Powerdvd 8 (best performance so far, but also stuttering with upscaling)
- Microsoft MPEG2 (same quality as Powerdvd8, but with poor performance)

I use FFDshow for post processing, where I use denoise / sharpen and resize (to 1920x1080, although resizing to 1280x720 also 'stutters').

My hardware is stated below, I use the AMD780g chipset. For the GPU, I'm using the latest Catalyst.

Frank

Hi there,

I'm currently a bit lost. I've got a 32" full-HD LCD television and a HTPC with MP RC1. Playing H264 content is no issue, because the 1080p's are 1920x1080 natively, so they look very nice.

For my DVD's, I like to use FFDShow for upscaling. My confusion is:

- does my Desktop (Windows) resolution needs to be 1920x1080 (if so, I have to set the font DPI around 150 to make it readable), or can it be switched back to lower resolutions, keeping in mind that we want the upscaled 'thing' when I watch DVD?
- is it reasonable to resize to 1920x1080 in FFDShow?

The problem is that the movies tend to stter a bit during playback, especially during long movements. But Shift+F1 does not indicate jitter / frame drops (jitter is 1 constant, an only increases during fast forward / rewind). My CPU load with upscaling does not exeed 75-80% (I've got an AMD Athlon X2 4850). Has it anything to do with my CPU power or is it a refresh rate / resolution related problem?

Thanks in advance!

TV-Server Version: V1.0 RC2
MediaPortal Version: V1.0 RC2
MediaPortal Skin:
Windows Version: Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit
CPU Type: AMD Athlon X2 4850e
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB
Memory: Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD3200 (intergrated)
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card:
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Terratec Cinergy C
1. TV Card Type: DVB-C
1. TV Card Driver:
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: ffdshow rev 2063
MPEG2 Audio Codec: ffdshow rev 2063
h.264 Video Codec: Cyberlink PowerDVD
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case: Antec Fusion
Cooling: AMD Stock cooler
Power Supply: Antec 430W
Remote: Logitech Harmony 525
TV: Sony KDL40D3500
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

 

[frankwaan]

I now setup the latest Catalyst drivers (8.8), and set the FFDShow resize to 1280x780. The jitter is gone and the movie starts to play nicely, also in EVR.
Also, I found out that the messages EVR gave (evr.log), constantly show up, also with FFDShow disabled.