MP1 EVR Presenter/dshowhelper community development (2 Viewers)

[Owlsroost]

System specs are now filled.

PS: v86 also stop, Currently testing v85 (no problem for instance but it's a too short test)

So you run a dual-screen system ?

Do both screens run at the same refresh rate ?

Tony

 

[technick]

-Yes
-No but touch screen (60kz) is on the internal 9400 and TV on the GT430 (refresh rate set to the video refresh rate)


Edit :
85 Stop, goes to 84 :-/ (Many stops occurs during looking MKV)
I don't remember had this problem before I used a GT430. After theses tests I think stay to v92 and modify drivers / Drivers setting.

FYI:
Before, I used a Geforce 7600 PCI-E for the touchscreen and the internal 9400 for TV
Now, the Internal 9400 is for the Touchscreen and I put a GT430 PCI-E for the TV

 

[Owlsroost]

What's happening when the video 'stops' (from the logs) is that the supply of video samples (decoded/deinterlaced frames) to dshowhelper isn't fast enough. They are arriving too late to be used, so dshowhelper has to drop them - this is what the "Dropping sample from the past" messages in evr.log mean.

These messages are happening about every 40ms - it looks like something is throttling the sample delivery rate at (or just below) the video frame rate (for some reason), so it can never 'catch up' and the video freezes.

I have a few thoughts about what might be happening, but I suspect the Windows DWM (Aero) is involved in this, because odd things like this mostly seem to happen with dual-screen systems (from what I've seen in logs from users) - especially when the screens are at different refresh rates. I suspect dshowhelper sending more 'running late' quality control messages to Windows might help....

Tony

 

[Owlsroost]

.....The main difference (AFAIK) between v77 and the v8x versions is that a 'repeat render' feature was added for the native Blu-ray player development.

This means that when dshowhelper runs out of data it will just repeatedly render the last good frame - so the MP GUI and the render stats display don't freeze. This might be contributing to the problem, so maybe I need to lower the 'repeat render' frame rate in that situation - it's currently runs at display refresh rate (becuase that was easiest to implement).

Tony

 

[technick]

You'r probably in the right way. The 78 seem to work, the 84 stop.

I need to test now 80 & 81 then validate good results on a more long time.

Edit : 80 stop, so the last working is the 78... I return to 78 for a long test ;-)

 

[vpupkin]

Hi,

I have this really weird problem: after the first time I open MP, videos play just fine, without drops etc - all 3 lines in shift-1 debug screen are relatively flat, and it goes like this (pretty much no drops) for at least half an hour, maybe more. But after a while, if I rewind video to the start, or do stop / start (the same video!), situation starts to deteriorate, I start to see spikes and eventually drops, and these start to show up almost every few seconds, so that on pans I see noticeable judder. Updating to dsh v92 seems to help a bit - spikes started to show up just the same, but it seems that early on they didn't lead to drops, but then it started to drop as well.

This has nothing to do with background processes (outside of MP at least) - this is a simple XviD video, CPU is almost un-utilized, this is dedicated HTPC etc - but the most important reason it is very consistent: if I close MP and re-start it (without any other changes), it plays smoothly.

See attached evr.log:
- at ~20:19 I started playing a new video (right after MP start)
- up until ~20:54 (so, for more than half an hour) there were only 3 drops (not ideal, but tolerable)
- then I did rewind the same video to the beginning (at ~20:55)
- less than 3 minutes later (at ~20:57) it became a drop-ville, with ~70 drops in half an hour
- after I closed and started MP again, and repeated this exercise, it went exactly the same (i.e. smooth 1st time, dropping later; not attached).

What could this be? Help?

 

[Owlsroost]

Hi,

I have this really weird problem: after the first time I open MP, videos play just fine, without drops etc - all 3 lines in shift-1 debug screen are relatively flat, and it goes like this (pretty much no drops) for at least half an hour, maybe more. But after a while, if I rewind video to the start, or do stop / start (the same video!), situation starts to deteriorate, I start to see spikes and eventually drops, and these start to show up almost every few seconds, so that on pans I see noticeable judder. Updating to dsh v92 seems to help a bit - spikes started to show up just the same, but it seems that early on they didn't lead to drops, but then it started to drop as well.

This has nothing to do with background processes (outside of MP at least) - this is a simple XviD video, CPU is almost un-utilized, this is dedicated HTPC etc - but the most important reason it is very consistent: if I close MP and re-start it (without any other changes), it plays smoothly.

See attached evr.log:
- at ~20:19 I started playing a new video (right after MP start)
- up until ~20:54 (so, for more than half an hour) there were only 3 drops (not ideal, but tolerable)
- then I did rewind the same video to the beginning (at ~20:55)
- less than 3 minutes later (at ~20:57) it became a drop-ville, with ~70 drops in half an hour
- after I closed and started MP again, and repeated this exercise, it went exactly the same (i.e. smooth 1st time, dropping later; not attached).

What could this be? Help?

What are your system specs ?

Can you post the full logs please - see Log Files - MediaPortal Wiki

Does it happen if you play the file from a local disk (not from the MAS) ?

Tony

 

[vpupkin]

I have i5 with 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon 57xx, HDMI to receiver for video / audio, SSD system drive, Win7x64, media library is on QNAP NAS RAID (@1Gbit Ethernet) - let me know if there is anything else you need to know.

Will try local playback, but I doubt it will make a difference - network / NAS performance doesn't explain why MP-restart improves things for a while (not to mention that there is more than enough capacity at NAS / LAN for the puny SD encode - I've had judder with 1080p over wifi, but certainly not with this setup).

I'll get debug logs as soon as I can. In the meantime, do you have any ideas on what can cause such behavior? The only thing I can think of is some kind of memory leak / improper playback cleanup somewhere in MP, that would be consistent with restart being helpful...

 

[Owlsroost]

It isn't 'puny SD' when it reaches EVR presenter (from the evr.log):

07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]RenegotiateMediaOutputType
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]Testing media type...
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]Successfully cloned media type
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]Time Per Frame: 20.854 ms
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]Setting MFVideoTransferMatrix_BT709
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]MF_MT_INTERLACE_MODE: 2
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]MF_MT_FRAME_RATE: 47.952 fps
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]Frame size: 2880x1624
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]Aperture size: 0:0, 2880x1624
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]New media type successfully negotiated!
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]Getting aspect ratio 'DirectShow style'
07-02-2012 20:19:19.432 [2f09c]New format: 2880x1624, Ratio: 360:203

...it's 2880x1624 frame size - are you upscaling in FFDShow video decoder ?

If you think it may be memory handling, have you tried running MP in windowed mode with windows Task Manager open at the performance tab - does the memory usage increase with time ?

Is this a single or dual screen system ?

Tony

 

[vpupkin]

It isn't 'puny SD' when it reaches EVR presenter (from the evr.log):
...it's 2880x1624 frame size - are you upscaling in FFDShow video decoder ?

True; I am indeed upscaling in ffdshow (I was referring to NAS / LAN bandwidth which needs to handle only compressed SD). This was the first thing that I tried to disable, and it didn't change situation with drops. Even with upscaling, CPU load is not significant.

If you think it may be memory handling, have you tried running MP in windowed mode with windows Task Manager open at the performance tab - does the memory usage increase with time ?

Is this a single or dual screen system ?

Tried this (more for cpu load purposes), didn't notice anything out of ordinary but will try again when get home.

This is single screen at the moment, desktop runs at 1920x1080.