Mediaportal bad playback quality: lot of dropped frames (1 Viewer)

[Felipe_Zanon]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1.0.0 RC1
MediaPortal Skin: Blue3wide
Windows Version: Windows 7 RTM
CPU Type: Core2 Duo 1.8GHz
HDD: 1Tb
Memory: 2Gb
Motherboard: XFX9300
Video Card: Geforce9300
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card:
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card:
1. TV Card Type:
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:
MPEG2 Audio Codec:
h.264 Video Codec:
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case:
Cooling:
Power Supply:
Remote:
TV:
TV - HTPC Connection:

Hello guys,

Its been a week that i installed a ISDB TV receiver card on my HTPC to watch the new HDTV here in Brazil. Until that moment i have watched a lot of MKV HD content video and everything was perfect using MPC codec. Image quality was perfect.

However, when i installed this TV card i started to compare the TS playback image quality (offline TS files or live TV) with Totalmedia software that came with the card, and unfortunately Totalmedia was a lot better. The playback on Mediaportal seems to be a little bit lagged. Then, i started to investigate the problem.

I started with recording a few seconds of a HDTV program and used this TS file to perform the tests. The basic idea was to check the graph chain with Graphedit and check the render quality statistics while playing this file. I tested the playback with 2 codecs (MPC and PDVD9) and with 3 "players" (Mediaportal, MPC-HC and Graphedit render window). For playing with Graphedit, i used exactly the same graphs that were used with Mediaportal (saved them while playing with Mediaportal). For my surprise, the playback with Mediaportal result on a lot of dropped frames on render statistics, either with MPC or PDVD9 codecs. On the other side, with MPC-HC and with Graphedit the playback was fine and the dropped frames counter was zero or stopped. Another detail that observed is that when i run Mediaportal in fullscreen mode, the dropped frames increment rate is higher than when using it on window mode.

So, im attaching five screenshots:

1 - TS playback using Mediaportal and MPC codec
2 - TS playback using Mediaportal and PDVD9 codec
3 - TS playback using Graphedit and MPC codec
4 - TS playback using Graphedit and PDVD9 codec
5 - TS playback using MPC

Just another information: i tested the playback of a x264 MKV music show file, and the dropped frames counter was steady (different from zero) and it increments while jumping between chapters. I performed the same test with MPC-HC and it show no dropped frames even jumping from one chapter to another.

So, anybody have an idea of what is wrong here?

Regars,

Felipe.

 

[tourettes]

Most likely a performance issue that will be fixed with RC2. If not then some more troubleshooting is required:

1) logs
2) make sure no power saving options is enabled (use high performance power scheme)

 

[Felipe_Zanon]

Thank you Tourettes. I forgot to attach the logs. Please check it now. I attached the entire log folder.

Regarding the power saving scheme, i tried the high performance setting but unfortunately it not changed the scenario. Also i tried to play with processor affinity and task priority, but got no improvements at all.

Thank you very much.

Felipe.