[other] Problems with dropping frames with EVR (1 Viewer)

[OnkelChris]

AW: Problems with dropping frames with EVR

here is a new thread for this topic...

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/general-development-no-feature-request-here-48/improving-evr-renderer-playback-quality-77563/

 

[belcom]

Something sounds fundamentally broken with this. The graph was also much crazier @ 23.97hz

I agree...

I spent the whole day with 2 of my friends testing all the different dlls here and in our child thread with a huge matrix of different resolutions, refresh rates, sources, codecs, graphic chips and OS'es.

And I found not a single dll to be "the best" one. I not even found a "worst" one. For one combination of properties dll "A" is the best, but at the same time its the weakest with other properties.

What we tested in almost all combinations:
- WinXP x86, WinVista x86, WinVista x64, Win7 x86 (Aero), Win7 x64 (Aero)
- Cyberlink PDVD8 (h264), Cyberlink PDVD9 (h264), MS DTV, MPC, ffdshow
- Display res. 720x576 (PAL), 1280x720, 1980x1080
- Display fps 24, 25, 50, 60
- Source res 720x576i/p (square and anamorph), 720i/p, 1080i/p and others
- Source fps 24p, 25p, 50i
- Graphic chips: ATI 3870X2, Nvidia 6200, 6600GT, 7600GS, 7800GS, 7900GT, 8400GS, 8600GT, 8800GTS, 8800GTX, 9600GT, GTX260, Intel GMA 950, GMA 3100, GMA X3500, GMA 4500, GMA X4500, GMA X4500HD
- CPU Celeron 440, E3200, C2D E6400, E8800, i5-650
- Chipset G965, G33, Q35, G41, G45, P45, P55

Results with Mediaportal are from more dropped then drawn frames down to few (1%) dropped frames even on fastest HW with SD video.

On the other hand, VLC played 1080p on the weakest HW with <1% dropped frames. And it played it always very very smooth.
Much smoother than the smoothest video MP gave us. (When I talk about smooth I mean only the visual experience, not what stats or logs tell)

As watching videos is my main goal of using Mediaportal I vote for getting this stuff fixed -> whatever it takes!
Even if I need myself to learn c++ or pay a DirectShow guru, I will do it if our community here thinks like me.

I'm powered out for today... bed is calling... going to dream of graphs, logs and screwdrivers...

EDIT: VLC prooved, that HW of LowEnd systems is not the bottleneck!

 

[OnkelChris]

AW: Problems with dropping frames with EVR

to cover all possibilities of hardware combinations is impossible. there are many combinations also with 3rd party software, too many...

don't get me wrong. I think your research was more than anybody could think of (for one person out there). You are right in mentioning all the good and the bad things. The good ones are, that there are combinations, which are good. On the other hand, there are combinations that won't work...

Unfortunately, I think you won't get MP 1 compatible to all combinations of hardware... Think of ATI vs. NVIDIA, 50Hz vs. 60Hz displays...

I hope, that the other thread with the poll will improve things from the last SVN to the final version.. Not only for me or lowend hardware users, but for the majority of the community.

On the other hand, VLC played 1080p on the weakest HW with <1% dropped frames. And it played it always very very smooth.
Much smoother than the smoothest video MP gave us. (When I talk about smooth I mean only the visual experience, not what stats or logs tell)

This is something I can reproduce. But for example, WMP11 plays some videos in funny colors using MPC-HC codecs and 20 seconds later, MP is playing the video fine on the same machine...

As watching videos is my main goal of using Mediaportal I vote for getting this stuff fixed

I totally agree with this! But I think, we all want this (not just for videos)

just my 2 cent

 

[nyt]

There is definitely something wrong here that we're missing. Why I can play the hardest 23.97fps video @ 60hz with no issues, but not at 23.97, is a sure sign that something, somewhere is broken.

 

[OnkelChris]

AW: Problems with dropping frames with EVR

unfortunately, i am not able to test the 24Hz thing at all... Seems to be a reason to buy a new TV

All I can say: I didn't recognize any difference in playing the samples I have in 1:1 or 1:2 fps/Hz (regarding the logs).

please start the sample file, stop it and post you mediaportal.log (for getting the source details of the sample)

 

[jaymode]

...

On the other hand, VLC played 1080p on the weakest HW with <1% dropped frames. And it played it always very very smooth.
Much smoother than the smoothest video MP gave us. (When I talk about smooth I mean only the visual experience, not what stats or logs tell)
...

EDIT: VLC prooved, that HW of LowEnd systems is not the bottleneck!

So there is a little bit of a difference between VLC and MediaPortal; the hardware could technically still be the bottleneck. A situation that could be somewhat analogous is Arcsoft's TMT3. On a GeForce 8200/8300 Arcsoft's TMT3 is able to properly play Blu-Ray content with no issues. However, when you would try to play the same content in Windows Media Center using the Arcsoft plugin, there would be playback issues(stuttering). One possible explanation is that the hardware is not powerful enough to also support Media Center running at the same time.

See this: ArcSoft Forums: Geforce 8200 mainboard

I am wondering if this is also part of the issue in MediaPortal and its playback on "low end" hardware. Obviously since more powerful hardware is also having some problems, there is something that should be changed in the code.

 

[tourettes]

EDIT: VLC prooved, that HW of LowEnd systems is not the bottleneck!

The big difference is that VLC can directly render to the screen It doesn't have any fancy GUI that it would require to be able to mix and therefore causing extra steps for GPU. Also the ATI fix is affecting and causing extra work for GPU.

I'm pretty sure that we cannot get the low end (mainly low memory bandwidth) GPUs to work with 1080 resolution for 1.1.0. There are already few tricks known that could cut down the memory bandwidth requirements on a huge scale, but those aren't possible with 1.1.0. These are:

• Drop XP / Vista support completely from EVR (this allows one less texture copy step to be performed because DWM can access the application provided texture directly in Windows 7, where as Vista is forcing us to do one extra step). For more information please read the whole article in Direct3D 9Ex Improvements (Windows)
• Drop the ATI flickering
• Optimize MP DirectX rendering path in general

Not sure if those are even worth to do in MP1 in general, at least I have no interest at this point (my compiler is already waiting to compile some code for MPII ).

 

[nyt]

EDIT: VLC prooved, that HW of LowEnd systems is not the bottleneck!

The big difference is that VLC can directly render to the screen It doesn't have any fancy GUI that it would require to be able to mix and therefore causing extra steps for GPU. Also the ATI fix is affecting and causing extra work for GPU.

I'm pretty sure that we cannot get the low end (mainly low memory bandwidth) GPUs to work with 1080 resolution for 1.1.0. There are already few tricks known that could cut down the memory bandwidth requirements on a huge scale, but those aren't possible with 1.1.0. These are:

• Drop XP / Vista support completely from EVR (this allows one less texture copy step to be performed because DWM can access the application provided texture directly in Windows 7, where as Vista is forcing us to do one extra step). For more information please read the whole article in Direct3D 9Ex Improvements (Windows)
• Drop the ATI flickering
• Optimize MP DirectX rendering path in general

Not sure if those are even worth to do in MP1 in general, at least I have no interest at this point (my compiler is already waiting to compile some code for MPII ).

I think something is still being missed. Why can I play the same 1080p content perfectly with a 60hz refresh rate, but not as well at its native 23.97 refresh rate? You'd think it'd be the opposite, since at 60hz it's painting more frames and has a shorter sync interval. This would probably be something worth looking into. Also, people are seeing the problems with hardware that isn't exactly low end.

 

[tourettes]

I think something is still being missed. Why can I play the same 1080p content perfectly with a 60hz refresh rate, but not as well at its native 23.97 refresh rate? You'd think it'd be the opposite, since at 60hz it's painting more frames and has a shorter sync interval. This would probably be something worth looking into. Also, people are seeing the problems with hardware that isn't exactly low end.

I think it is still completely related to the performance bottleneck (as with even 60Hz you are getting dropped frames, but not as much). On 60Hz the v-sync period is almost three times smaller than the v-sync time on 23.976Hz. This difference will give an advantage for the 60Hz mode, it will have less waiting for the GPU when it is sitting in the displays v-blank and therefore give more time for GPU to render (EVR renderer doesn't care if the rendering caused v-syncs to be missed or if the rendering takes multiple v-syncs.) Therefore if someone is able to tell how long v-blank periods are taking, we could easialy calculate how much more spare time GPU has in 60Hz mode.

I have no proof on this, but sounds only plausible explanation.

btw. performance issues are easy to rule out. Just use 640x480 resolution on 23.976Hz and re-encode some blu-ray content to same frame size. Does MP still behave badly on that 1:1 case?

 

[gemx]

Just had a look at MPC-HC's evr implementation and from what i saw at first sight (don't have much time currently) is that the measure or know, how long it took to present the last frame, when the next v-sync happens and so on.
I think these are exactly the "things" we need to know to make our EVR impl. really efficient but that leads to "implements MPC-HC's evr method" which won't happen for MP 1.1.0.
I just wanted to state, that we probably have to gather and use these values to really improve things