My guide to elminating juddering/stuttering play back (plus an upscale guide!) (1 Viewer)

[FireAza]

@FireAza: I'll create a small attachment for you with all the AVISynth stuff when I have time plus the the matching ffdshow profiles for you to play with... Might need a few days as I don't have them live and need to dig through my backups...

Thanks! That would also be helpful for others who want to try this, as I can just attach what you're planning to make to my OP.

I spoke too soon ...... the ffdshow profiles were a little resource hungry to run SD profile so I had to disable the filters only leaving the blur filtering, I felt that gave the best results.

TV still is dropping frames, but the picture looks better than it did before the tweaks. There is also some tearing on the very top of the screen. not very noticable but enough to annoy me. I fixed this by using the TV's 16:9 overscan to cut out the tearing.

Previously I was using MC7 and on reflection I was probably having some dropped frame issues on Live TV too. Maybe it is reception or hardware issues?

A few things to try to improve performance:
1) In resize, set it to your TV's resolution
2) Do you have your renderers set to LAV video decoder? Do you have a graphics card that support CUDA/CUVID (is so, set this under "hardware acceleration" in "LAV video settings")?
3) Do you have other programs running while MP is running?
4) Do you have your other monitor turned off?

 

[AlexanderIanHall]

As I've spent many months battling playing blu-ray ISO without stuttering. I've included the results of my investigation and solution below. Having spent countless hours on many forums (MP, AVSForum, TMT etc) I saw many recommendations which seemed odd, or perhaps ill-informed. I can't say my recommendations are necessarily any better however I do get consistent results and have rebuilt my HTPCs multiple times now and every time they have worked well.


I have now played > 50 blu-ray ISOs without any stutter including concurrent blu-ray ISOs to both HTPCs. So from my perspective my setup has passed my stress tests and I'm comfortable having my family/friends/visitors watch Blu-Rays on multiple HTPCs without the dread feeling of 'Is it going to work?'

For clarity - my setup is included below

HTPC-01
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA880GMA-UD2H v2.2
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955
RAM: 4 Dimm 8GB
Hard Drive: 60GB Solid State
GPU: ATI 5570 1GB
MediaPortal 1.2.3 with StreamedMP (Moving Pictures, MyTVSeries)
Arcsoft TMT5.3.x (note: 5.3.x has just been released, although I was working fine with 5.2.xx.119)
DaemonTools Lite (although I was using Virtual Clone Drive)
AMD Catalyst 12.6 - for chipset/ahci
AMD Catalyst 11.4 - for graphics card
Onboard Audio - disabled in BIOS and no drivers installed
OS: Windows 7 64bit Ultimate

HTPC-02
Motherboard: Asus M4A785TD-M-EVO
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955
RAM: 2 Dimm 4GB
Hard Drive: 60GB Solid State
GPU: ATI 5570 1GB
MediaPortal 1.3.0 alpha with StreamedMP (Moving Pictures, MyTVSeries)
Arcsoft TMT5.3.x (note: 5.3.x has just been released, although I was working fine with 5.2.xx.119)
DaemonTools Lite (although I was using Virtual Clone Drive)
AMD Catalyst 12.6 - for chipset/ahci
AMD Catalyst 11.4 - for graphics card
Onboard Audio - disabled in BIOS and no drivers installed
OS: Windows 7 64bit Ultimate

note: The I am using 11.4 of Catalyst for the Graphics Card.

Server Storage:
UnRaid 5.0rc5 plus a few 5400rpm HDDs
note: If you are looking for a good, cheap solution for storing Terrabytes of multimedia then check out UnRaid. I've been running it now for > 1 year and have to say I remain impressed.

Network:
Gigabit wired (including switches - DLink DGS-108

note: I kept thinking it was a network related issue and changed Network Switches, Cables, even switched between Virtual Clone Drive & Daemon Tools Lite. In the end in my circumstance there was no hardware issue causing the stuttering, however from checking the bandwidth usage it was all ok. With my current setup my CPUs are at around 5-6% usage when playing ISOs (using hardware acceleration or around 20% when not)

If you are able to reformat your PC and start again it will provide a consistent baseline, otherwise make sure you make use of CCleaner and other utilities to clear out the old drivers (particularly ATI). There are plenty of instructions on the WWW.

My approach for an AMD/ATI platform:

1. If using HDMI output for audio/video then disable on-board audio for motherboard and don't install the drivers
2. Install Windows 7 and sp1 and update via Windows Update (except for audio/video device drivers)
3. Only install the minimum drivers needed. i.e. AMD AHCI/Chipset (12.6), AMD Catalyst/Vision Control (11.4). Network driver (e.g. Realtek 7.058)
4. Change the following registry key to ensure that Windows (I assume 7) doesn't throttle ISO network throughput as it doesn't recognize ISO as a valid multimedia format
   
   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\]
   "NetworkThrottlingIndex"="FFFFFFFF"​
   You can read more here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948066
5. Once OS installed, with correct drivers, then install TMT and check whether everything is working (i.e. no stutter). If it is working fine then take a backup of the system - I usually use the "Create a System Image" that comes with WIndows 7.
6. note that for TMT you want to have (and note that there are separate settings for TMT standalone and the TMT MCE player):
   a) Hardware Acceleration On
   b) SimHD set to CPU as other it probably will crash - but try and see. SimHD is used for Standard Definition e.g. DVDs
7. The last part of the puzzle is to look at refresh rates. I'm assuming you are outputting to a flatscreen TV - if so then:
   a) open up screen resolution (right click on desktop background), click "Advanced Settings", select "Monitor Tab" - you should see a list of refresh rates in a drop-down combo box
   b) open up catalyst control center and go to the Scaling section (should be under My Digital Flat Panels if you have a TV connected).
   c) Go back to a) and select the first refresh rate in the dropdown - this may be 23; go back to b) and select the scaling to be 0% so the picture is fully taking up the screen. click Apply
   d) repeat c) for each refresh rate - note: You should check your tv manual to ensure the modes listed are supported
8. For now revert back to the default refresh rate (for me this is 60); however you'll be able to play with refresh rate switching later on to ensure that blu-rays are optimized to either 23Hz or 24Hz
9. Once the system image has been created, you can then fiddle to your heart's content, and if you mess it up just revert back to the original system image

note: Do not install codec packs for now e.g. Sharks etc. If you are using TMT then they are not needed. While codec packs work for many people I find they can introduce a lot of unknowns. The only codecs I install by default these days are LAV Filter (v 0.50.5) as they now come with MediaPortal. LAV filter works fine for bitstreaming Hi-Def MSTR audio etc.

In my setup Non blu-ray ISO material (e.g. DVD ISO, mkvs, avis etc) play within the inbuilt MediaPortal player (including 1:1 MKVs of blu-rays e.g. for TV Series which I keep as MKVs rather than ISOs); while Blu-Ray ISO movies play are played in TMT MCE which is launched by MediaPortal.

note: I am also testing MP 1.3 alpha and 2.0 and all seem to work fine without stuttering, including using the inbuilt blu-ray player. I am however using TMT for now as I like my menu's and bonus material.

I'm by no means an expert - however I have now built/rebuilt my HTPCs multiple times and played > 50 blu-ray ISOs in the last few weeks due to family visiting without any stutter. I narrowed down my original issue to drivers/codecs rather than anything hardware related and am pleased it has all been resolved.

hth

Alex

 

[Scythe42]

One thing: make your your Virus Scanner doesn't scan the MP process. This might introduce stutter as the virus scanner scans everything that MP reads from HD or over the Network. Everything a processes received will be scanner. This might introduce stutter depending on your CPU. Or it puts simply too much stress on the system.

Regarding the Avisynth setup: didn't find my setup on my backups anymore. But let it put me this way: there will show something up in Area51 in the next few months that will allows MP to load pixel shaders for video post processing. So you could do all the stuff on the GPU instead of the CPU (ffdshow postprocessing). Or combine it like let ffdshow do basic postprocessing and the final scaling/sharpening with the GPU...

 

[emphatic]

I couldn't used this solution for MediaPortal running 1.2.3. final (lip sync issues galore), but in 1.3.0. alpha it's working very well.

Emph

 

[doveman]

@AlexanderIanHall

I see you use TMT MCE and was wondering if you use Eventghost to be able control it with your remote. If so, I'd be grateful if you could share your EG TMT plugin, as I can't seem to find one, other than for TMT3 and that doesn't work with TMT5.

 

[AlexanderIanHall]

@AlexanderIanHall

I see you use TMT MCE and was wondering if you use Eventghost to be able control it with your remote. If so, I'd be grateful if you could share your EG TMT plugin, as I can't seem to find one, other than for TMT3 and that doesn't work with TMT5.

I just use the standard Windows MCE Remote (and my Harmony also programmed as the MCE Remote). I haven't needed to use Eventghost at all in order to use TMT 5 MCE properly.

What are you trying to do that needs Eventghost?

Alex

 

[doveman]

I just use the standard Windows MCE Remote (and my Harmony also programmed as the MCE Remote). I haven't needed to use Eventghost at all in order to use TMT 5 MCE properly.

What are you trying to do that needs Eventghost?

Alex

My Emprex remote isn't a "real" MCE remote so I have to use EG to control MP, which is easy as there's a plugin for it that works fine in conjunction with Message Plugin.

I've got a list of the keyboard commands for TMT5, so hopefully I can knock up a working plugin for EG but I don't really know what I'm doing which is why I was hoping you already had one

 

[Pat Clark]

Shouldn't the list of rates include one with a frame rate of 30 and a refresh rate of 60? Is that not the basis for 1080i ATSC broadcasts?