HELP! Stuttering playback of HD channels (1 Viewer)

[Allan Stevens]

Hi All,

I am a new MP user, switched from Windows Media Center. For the last week I have been pulling my hair out trying to fix my playback hd tv channels. This is something that has always worked well with Media Center. I hope you can help! After seeing what MP can do, I don't want to go back. Especially with DJBlu's sky epg plugin!

My computer details are as follows:

MediaPortal Version: 1.3 beta
MediaPortal Skin: Titan
Windows Version: Windows 7 x64
CPU: Athlon 64 Dual 6000+ 3.10 GHz
HDD: OCZ SSD 60gb (OS) 1TB Samsung SATA (Recorded TV, Movies etc)
Memory: 8GB
Motherboard: ASUS M4A78-E (AMD 790GX/SB750)
Video Card: Integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 3300 GPU
Video Card Driver: CCC 12.6
Tuner Cards: TBS Dual DVB-S2 TBS6981 and Peak PCI Dual DVB-T (221544AGPK)

I am using the latest LAV Filters that are installed with MP for all playback. Although I have tried the Microsoft and ATI codecs installed they result is same or worse experience. My video renderer is set as EVR. LAV Filter is set to DXVA2 (native).

When I play HD live or recorded TV I get major frame drops and stuttering playback. See screenshot1 attached. Playing SD TV plays smoothly, see screenshot2 attached. Nice straight lines!!

I also tested ripped blurays in mkv containers and they play fine. My tv shows also play fine they are sd in divx codec.

Another oddity I find is that sometimes what does play smoothly, sometimes goes doolally, and a stop and start normally fixes this. It shows approximately 1 frame a second, but says no frame drops outs. See screenshot3 attached.

I also find that when I close MP, often it ends with a crash, arh!.

What I have checked/done so far (from a lot of forum reading!)

• CCC forced vsync to be on, no change
• CCC set / disabled enable smooth video, no change (left on)
• CCC set various de interlacing options, no change (left 'use automatic')
• LAV Filter disabled DXVA2, playback was worse and cpu at 70+ (normally runs below 10)
• Run DPC Latency for 5 minutes and all green, below 500us
• Switched to VMR-9. This is interesting, I found that the HD playback was smooth, see screenshot4 attached. But CPU 50%, I would get the odd hiccup, I think due to cpu spiking sometimes. No video hardware decode i guess. Another issue with this was that the AC3 audio would be slightly fast, DTS and PCM fine. I also found that using VMR9 was generally not so stable and ui redraw issues.
• Set automatic refresh, and checked that tv content is always at 50hz, which is was.
• Tried updated dshowhelper (no difference) (see https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/mp-1-3-x-dshowhelper-development.113014/)

I have also attached some logs. I hope someone can help

 

[porky996t]

Hi Allan, and Welcome!

My first thought would be that the HD3300 isn't powerful enough or is on it's limit. I have a mobo with HD3200 and eventually gave up as nothing I did would give me smooth playback. I'm certainly no expert and no doubt others with a more extensive knowledge will be along to give a more definitive answer.

 

[onelegend]

Indeed the onboard gpu isn't upto the job.

I'd go for a gt 620/630 or the amd 6450+

I have a 5450 amd and it is fine but would go for the nvidia due to pixelation issues with h264 content (poor amd drivers)

You can see on your graph that the onboard is only managing 25 fps. The cards above will match your tv's hz of 50/60, be smoother and a better picture quality

 

[SciDoctor]

The onboard gpu doesn't have the power to deal with interlaced broadcast.

For ATI cards the minimum is an HD4650 and above and its equivalent and above in newer ranges.

In LAV you can force all frames as progressive that will unload any deinterlacing from the driver and renderer substantialy reducing load on GPU



Use this as test it will indicate the real power available from your GPU, you will however get interlaced artifacts obvious on horizontal movement so this isn't a fix .

 

[Allan Stevens]

Thanks for all the advice. I was afraid my 4 year old motherboard was not up to the job but was hoping the issue was something else as windows media center seems to handle it fine. As recommended by SciDoctor I set the LAV filter to force progressive and I get no frame drops. But, the picture video does not run very smooth. See screenshot1.


I have been messing about with the new registry settings on the updated dshowhelper and have managed to dramatically reduce the frame drop outs see screenshot2. I set the EnableDWMQueuedMode to '1' and went from 30 fps to 45 fps, not sure what that setting does? Is there a chance with a bit more tweaking I won't need to upgrade?

Any ideas?

 

[SciDoctor]

You can reduce the load on your gpu further by lowering the desk resolution; try 1366x768 or other equivalent HD resolutions for good scaling.

The thread you got the dshowhelper from if you search for my posts there are some recommendations for reg settings for low powered gpu's.

Forcing progressive on interlaced content will produce what you are seeing; it is just a test to show it is your GPU that has not enough power.

 

[Allan Stevens]

Just read through all 17 pages of the dshowhelper post, and have managed to improve the performance a little more, can get a couple more fps. But still now really watchable. I switched hardware decode off and get 70% cpu and a little judder with the odd drops, so still not suitable and worried by other media may struggle.

So for the sake or £30ish, i'll order an amd 6450 and hope this fixes my issues, and my crashes too.

Thanks for all you help.

 

[jmbillings]

Hey - I had *exactly* this problem with a 3200HD onboard. Although WMC was fine, I couldn't get HD working acceptably in MP.
In the end I bought a new cheap card (NVIDIA) - see my thread

 

[Allan Stevens]

Just to put this thread to a close, on advice from posts above. I picked up a amd hd 6450 2gb, installed last night, and fixed the issue!!

Although as a result of the upgrade I got some new issues, now fixed, I hope posting might help others.

First issue was pixilation on the BBC HD channels, I was using the latest drivers from the ASUS website, but that was Dec 2011!! So upgraded the very latest drivers from AMD and have not seen any pixels since (hope it lasts) also i'm sure the picture quality has improved.

The other issue was a little more complicated. I use a hdmi scaler to allow me to have a composite video and splits the sound to toslink. Unfortunately the new card correctly detects that my Samsung TV only supports pcm 2.0, so i don't get the option for ac3, dts, etc. So with a LOT of googling i came across the EDID Override Thread on AVforums. Tulli is a superstar, he created a custom edid override inf for me, and now I have ac3 and dts back!

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1091403/edid-override-thread/2400#post_22836887

 

[kiwijunglist]

If anyone wanted to persist trying to use the onboard HD3300, you could increase (overclock) the HT frequency + vga core frequency which can result in better h264 playback (HT frequency is the most important aspect, since you don't have a phenom CPU the HT freq is quite low, so the onbaord gpu can't access the shared RAM fast enough). However the best option (which you already have done) is to upgrade to a discrete GPU.