(*SOLVED) Blu Ray challenge :) (1 Viewer)

[mdbarber]

Ok so decided to treat myself to a slot load blue ray for the bedroom htpc which is a amd 780g chipset with amd 4850e cpu, 2GB ddr2 800Mhz.
Have got mepo 1.2.3 setup and going thru the process for bluray handler all works fine except, just cant get the playback smooth. have tried various decoders (MP, LAV, FFdshow) all same in performance.
As its a winxp home machine i'm using passkey to remove the encryption on the fly and nero incd to allow access to the udf.
now before we all shout hardware not up to it been trying all the major trial versions of windvd pro, powerdvd hd 12, tmt etc and all work fine. figure its just borderline for efficiency of codec?

 

[mm1352000]

...and all work fine. figure its just borderline for efficiency of codec?

Well, I think it probably depends whether MP is utilising the hardware to the fullest potential. For example, when you tried LAV did you enable DXVA? And when you used FFDShow, did you use the DXVA version?

 

[kiwijunglist]

780G chipset is borderline for HD, You need to increased the HT frequency in bios which I think is linked to the FSB. The 780G's ability to do DXVA speed depends on how fast it can access memory, and the HT speed is slower in the AMD 4850e cpu compared with a phenom that runs at a faster HT speed, which means faster access to the shared memory and better DXVA performance when the 780G is paired with a phenom cpu. I'd try increase the HT speed by about 20% , at the same time you could also try increasing the GPU clock speed by 20% as well.

^ All the above is assuming you are using DXVA, I would suggest you monitor your CPU speed during playback, if the CPU is going above 70% and the video is not smooth then it might be that DXVA is not working... If the CPU stays below 40% and the video is not smooth that suggests that the GPU is bottlenecking.

Another reason for video not being smooth is if the Display Hz =/= Video fps.

eg, if your video is 23.976fps or 24fps you should set display to 24hz

You can press ! during video playback (SHIFT Key + 1) and it will tell you if you are dropping frames.

 

[mdbarber]

...and all work fine. figure its just borderline for efficiency of codec?

Well, I think it probably depends whether MP is utilising the hardware to the fullest potential. For example, when you tried LAV did you enable DXVA? And when you used FFDShow, did you use the DXVA version?

yup tried with dxva no difference to be honest, will try and check it's actually kicking in.

780G chipset is borderline for HD, You need to increased the HT frequency in bios which I think is linked to the FSB. The 780G's ability to do DXVA speed depends on how fast it can access memory, and the HT speed is slower in the AMD 4850e cpu compared with a phenom that runs at a faster HT speed, which means faster access to the shared memory and better DXVA performance when the 780G is paired with a phenom cpu. I'd try increase the HT speed by about 20% , at the same time you could also try increasing the GPU clock speed by 20% as well.

^ All the above is assuming you are using DXVA, I would suggest you monitor your CPU speed during playback, if the CPU is going above 70% and the video is not smooth then it might be that DXVA is not working... If the CPU stays below 40% and the video is not smooth that suggests that the GPU is bottlenecking.

Another reason for video not being smooth is if the Display Hz =/= Video fps.

eg, if your video is 23.976fps or 24fps you should set display to 24hz

You can press ! during video playback (SHIFT Key + 1) and it will tell you if you are dropping frames.

as this is a hipermedia case don't really wanna go down the OC route if poss., where the hell can you set the refresh rate, i cant seem to find it apart from in display properties and due to an issue with the drivers that ain't working well with the cheap tv

can't help but wonder how cyberlink, arcsoft and corel all manage to get flawless playback on this hardware?

 

[kiwijunglist]

you can use the refresh rate changer built into mediaportal, goto mp config, it's under general settings.
mediaportal uses up a lot more resources than playing a video in powerdvd/windows media player/media player classic home cinema.[DOUBLEPOST=1350729490][/DOUBLEPOST]also you can
right click desktop -> open catalyst control center -> desktop management -> desktop properties -> refresh rate

 

[mdbarber]

you can use the refresh rate changer built into mediaportal, goto mp config, it's under general settings.
mediaportal uses up a lot more resources than playing a video in powerdvd/windows media player/media player classic home cinema.[DOUBLEPOST=1350729490][/DOUBLEPOST]also you can
right click desktop -> open catalyst control center -> desktop management -> desktop properties -> refresh rate

haha CCC is out of bounds, for some reason it randomly sets the screen to underscan and i cant get anything without great black borders, as i said think its down to the cheapo tv i'm using, CC thinks its a 1920z1200 monitor(incorrectly i might add its only 1080) but i have it set correctly now but it wont change the refresh rate.
as for resource usage i guess thats the point here, what resources and why?

One issue i did notice is TMT played things fine but had difficulty when i introduced the HUD, playback resumed quickly as the HUD was dispensed with, cyberlink was flawless but slow, corel windvdpro was amazingly fast but used huge surges of memory, at one point it surged to 700MB usage...

 

[kiwijunglist]

Mediaportal has OSD's + shit going on in the background etc etc, this is why it uses more resources than a stand alone player. It sounds like your driver/monitor setup is screwed up, so can't really expect MP to run at 100% anyway. You havn't done any sort of trouble shooting, you should run MP in windowed mode and run task manager to monitor cpu useage to see how much it jumps up with HD video, this will give you info as to whether dxva is working, as you may well be just software decoding the hd video.

 

[mdbarber]

have you seen the latest cyberlink player?, talk about shit going on in the background lol.
The driver config is only screwed up as far as panel detection goes, its still works fine as long as i set the parameters manually, nothing else is affected.
As you can see from the previous post i am actually in the middle of trouble shooting this and doing things like monitoring memory usage, why would i do this using the corel product and fail to do it when running media portal?
The whole point of this post was to see if anyone else had come across the issue.

 

[kiwijunglist]

The whole point of this post was to see if anyone else had come across the issue.

yes, do a search[DOUBLEPOST=1350868382][/DOUBLEPOST]

where the hell can you set the refresh rate
.. CCC is out of bounds

Control Panel -> Appearance -> Display -> Screen Resolution -> Advanced Settings -> Monitor -> Screen Refresh Rate[DOUBLEPOST=1350868516][/DOUBLEPOST]

monitoring memory usage

It is very unlikely to be a running out of memory issue. You need to do the things I suggested, there are lots of similar threads already on this forum, and these are the first steps in diagnosing stutter.

 

[mdbarber]

cheers guys but to anyone else finding this issue install the latest (6.13) SAF pack.