Switzerland
Windows Version: Vista Home Premium SP1
CPU Type: Intel Core2 Duo E7200 2.53Ghz
Memory: 4GM RAM
Motherboard: Asus P5N-EM HDMI
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro
Although I have been using MP for about 3 years, I realise I am out now out of my depth with my latest MP issues and so am appealing to this community for help...
I came home from a 10-day business trip to a hugely unresponsive MP. I can only guess that windows ran some automatic upgrades while I was away, the net result of which was terrible stuttering on all channels. I spent the best part of my week off fixing MP which has only been partly successful.
Some things were clear early on:
1. I could view all channels perfectly in the TV config viewer, so the issue is with MP and not the satelite feed for the TV signal.
2. I had up to 100% CPU on HD channels, so I started looking at options to reduce the CPU load. Switching from the StreamedMP skin to Blue3Wide made an immediately improvement, which allowed me conclude that the skin can effect performance (correct?). I tested all skins and settled on Black Glass Novo which works well. I was dropping about 15% of frames in StreamedMP, now it is zero.
3. During these tests, I learned about the "!" function in MP which displays some kind of display performance. I don't know exactly what this shows except that, stable lines correspond to a good picture.
4. From hints in these forums pages, I played with all codec options I had. I had discovered in the past that PDVD8 codecs were not good on my system, but of the others I have (standard out-of-the-box codecs?) I don't see a noticable difference. I settled on DivX for HD.
5. Testing demonstrated that BBC HD and BBC One HD were the most difficult channels. HD Suisse and ITV HD usually worked fine.
6. I played with the display resolution on my system, which franckly didn't seem to make any difference.
I am now at a point where I have a (largely) stable system: I can view all TV channels (touch wood - experience suggests this may deteriorate over time). The main issue is that I can't watch HD TV recordings: this usually (not always) crashes MP. As my issues are with HD, this suggest I could have a software (codec) issue or a hardware weakness (CPU or graphics capability).
I searched the forums and found lots of different directions to take to test my setup - trying other codecs, closing down all other unnecessary programs, fiddling with (in my case) the Catalyst CC, graphic card driver updates, new hardware, etc. I got lost in the advice on the forums and can't figure my best next steps. Any I am now in the departure lounge for another 10-day trip...
What I am missing is a basic guide to improving performance and/or diagnosing issues:
1. What are the key variables that effect MP performance? Is it the skin (as I have seen) or plug-ins or other things?
1. What do codecs do? Is there a way beyond trial-and-error to test them? How can you be sure that you are actually testing the codec you ave selected?
2. How can I figure out if I have a hardware bottleneck?(e.g. the solution for me could be a new graphics card, but I'd like to know this with some certainty before buying one)?
Can anyone either post some advice or point me in the direction of pertinant threads?
Yours in desperation, SB.
CPU Type: Intel Core2 Duo E7200 2.53Ghz
Memory: 4GM RAM
Motherboard: Asus P5N-EM HDMI
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro
Although I have been using MP for about 3 years, I realise I am out now out of my depth with my latest MP issues and so am appealing to this community for help...
I came home from a 10-day business trip to a hugely unresponsive MP. I can only guess that windows ran some automatic upgrades while I was away, the net result of which was terrible stuttering on all channels. I spent the best part of my week off fixing MP which has only been partly successful.
Some things were clear early on:
1. I could view all channels perfectly in the TV config viewer, so the issue is with MP and not the satelite feed for the TV signal.
2. I had up to 100% CPU on HD channels, so I started looking at options to reduce the CPU load. Switching from the StreamedMP skin to Blue3Wide made an immediately improvement, which allowed me conclude that the skin can effect performance (correct?). I tested all skins and settled on Black Glass Novo which works well. I was dropping about 15% of frames in StreamedMP, now it is zero.
3. During these tests, I learned about the "!" function in MP which displays some kind of display performance. I don't know exactly what this shows except that, stable lines correspond to a good picture.
4. From hints in these forums pages, I played with all codec options I had. I had discovered in the past that PDVD8 codecs were not good on my system, but of the others I have (standard out-of-the-box codecs?) I don't see a noticable difference. I settled on DivX for HD.
5. Testing demonstrated that BBC HD and BBC One HD were the most difficult channels. HD Suisse and ITV HD usually worked fine.
6. I played with the display resolution on my system, which franckly didn't seem to make any difference.
I am now at a point where I have a (largely) stable system: I can view all TV channels (touch wood - experience suggests this may deteriorate over time). The main issue is that I can't watch HD TV recordings: this usually (not always) crashes MP. As my issues are with HD, this suggest I could have a software (codec) issue or a hardware weakness (CPU or graphics capability).
I searched the forums and found lots of different directions to take to test my setup - trying other codecs, closing down all other unnecessary programs, fiddling with (in my case) the Catalyst CC, graphic card driver updates, new hardware, etc. I got lost in the advice on the forums and can't figure my best next steps. Any I am now in the departure lounge for another 10-day trip...
What I am missing is a basic guide to improving performance and/or diagnosing issues:
1. What are the key variables that effect MP performance? Is it the skin (as I have seen) or plug-ins or other things?
1. What do codecs do? Is there a way beyond trial-and-error to test them? How can you be sure that you are actually testing the codec you ave selected?
2. How can I figure out if I have a hardware bottleneck?(e.g. the solution for me could be a new graphics card, but I'd like to know this with some certainty before buying one)?
Can anyone either post some advice or point me in the direction of pertinant threads?
Yours in desperation, SB.
