Stutter in Moving-Pictures - MP 1.4.0 (1 Viewer)

[AxelSocial]

Hi everyone. I have just upgraded to MP 1.4.0. on Windows 7 - 32 bit.

When using moving-pictures, I am getting stuttering when watching movies. It also happens when scowling through movie listing. All my movies are in .ISO format. Log attached.

In addition, the bar, that is displayed at the bottom of the screen when moving forward or rewarding a movie, shows up with no information. Screen capture attached.

If I disable the moving-pictures plugin and use the default video plugin instead all works fine.

Is it a configuration issue? If so, what should I change?

 

[RoChess]

Video playback is dealt with by MediaPortal itself (unless you rely on the external player setup of MovPic or MePo).

Stuttering is usually caused by the following:

1. Codec are not configured correct
2. The codecs in use are not the right choice
3. System specs are not good enough

The solutions to those can sometimes be as easy as:

1. Check your video codec, video splitter and/or audio codec settings. For example LAV video codec, which is default for MediaPortal does not enable DXVA by default. You have to open the video codec settings and enable them. The "DXVA2 (native)" accelleration is best choice, unless you have an Intel CPU system that supports QuickSync. In that case test yourself to see which one works best. Simply run MediaPortal in windowed mode (ALT+Enter) and run additional test tools at the same time, such as the GPU and CPU widget, so you can see what combination of settings yields the lowest CPU impact.
2. You could simply have too much stuff running at the same time, check your task manager, to see which process is taking up precious CPU cycles while video is stuttering (use windowed mode on MediaPortal). If it is all MediaPortal itself, then you have to investigate which plugin is causing it. Moving-Pictures for example will scan files with MediaInfo, but MediaPortal does the same when playback commences. Multi-thread issues with the wrong splitter/codec can occur then. The MPC-HC standalone codecs are much better mutli-thread aware then the LAV codecs and can deal with interrupts much better, so that at all times the video+audio remain in sync while the system is quickly trying to handle all the other tasks. If any codec forces itself to use 100% of the CPU, then this results in stutterering when the other codec is catching up.
3. Sometimes it is all down to that the system is too slow for what you are trying to do with it, so you need a faster one, or start disabling features.

Report back please on your progress.

More then likely you overlooked the DXVA configuration step.

 

[AxelSocial]

Thank so much RoChess for taking the time to share your expertise and help me.

I, indeed, did not have the DXVA2 enabled. I did enabled it after seeing your post. So far things seem to work when watching a TV series episode in .avi format. I played a movie for a few minutes and i did not notice any stuttering. I hope to be able to watch a full movie at the weekend and I will report back.

The Dell laptop where MediaPortal is running on is a dedicated PC for it. I keep the laptop with minimal apps on it as to minimize the CPU load and have as much HDD space available for media files. So basically, I am running the OS (Windows7), a browser, an antivirus and a firewall and off course mediaportal + Plugins.

Regarding the GPU and CPU widgets, are these the ones you are referring to?
- http://addgadgets.com/gpu_meter/
- http://addgadgets.com/all_cpu_meter/

Regarding the MPC-HC standalone codecs, are you suggesting to use MPC-HC as an external player instead of the MediaPortal own player? Or just install the MPC-HC codecs and tell MediaPortal to use those codes instead of the LAV filters.

Thank you again for your help

 

[RoChess]

Sounds like you already fixed it, I myself use the LAV codec as well eventhough I know how to configure MPC-HC standalone filters which are technically better for me. The issue for me surfaces when I'm RDP-ed into the HTPC while MediaPortal is playing and I simultaniously mess with audio/video codecs. Then I hear the MediaPortal stutter in the livingroom as well.

So instead of switching to MPC-HC standalone codecs/splitters, which does solve the issue, I just avoid doing the tasks that I know cause the issue.

And yes, these are the codecs/splitters I meant, not the stand-alone app of MPC-HC. The latter serves a point when you wish to play with madVR and such, but the codecs work fine on the MediaPortal internal player and are just much better written to deal with concurrency/multi-thread. I'm hoping that eventually LAV will get the code changes to do the same, and the faster the system, the less of a noticable issue it is. When you have like an Atom CPU or Brazos CPU system that is too weak to deal with certain media, then MPC-HC might offer a solution, any modern system should work fine with LAV unless you have specific situations like the one I described for myself.

Those are also indeed the gadgets I was referring to, though for the CPU part I tend to just use the Windows task manager set to the "Performance" tab, but whatever floats your boat.

Keep in mind that a short flash to 100% can cause a stutter to be heared instantly, but its of such a small duration that it might not even register on those CPU charts. But a system that severly suffers from an issue usually clearly shows the issue. With Windows 8 it is real easy to detect the problem, because it uses colors to highlight the offenders inside task manager, so you just look for the dark orange colored tasks.

The GPU gadget is just handy, because that will allow you to see if the videocard is actually being put to work properly. There are many other tools available to do the same, but that GPU gadget from addgadgets.com is the one I prefer due to simplicity. It does not work for every APU or GPU, but that is easy to test.

 

[AxelSocial]

Hi RoChess.

DVAX2 works better for me when in copy-back mode than in native mode. Unfortunately, although playback is better, I still have stuttering issue. The issue seem to be more pronounced when using the moving-pictures plugin than when using the MediaPortal video plugin.

To test the issue, I disabled all plugins and then started to enable them one by one.

What I have noticed is that when moving-pictures is loaded alone without any other plugins, I get no (or not enough visible) stuttering. As soon as I load other plugins, the stuttering is much more noticeable.

CPU and GPU widgets do not show any spikes once mediaPortal is fully loaded and the movie is playing. Both are between 12 to 16% usage.

Additional steps I took was to reduce CPU usage was to:
- turn off WI-FI
- turn off automatic updates for movie and TV series in the MediaPortal plugins

I'll keep tweaking and searching until I find the cause of the issue. I think it is more related to a configuration issue. But I can't tell for certain. With MediaPortal 1.3, I had no issues at all when playing a movie.

The Specs of my laptop are here - http://www.cnet.com/laptops/dell-xps-m1530/4507-3121_7-32778979.html

Thanks for your help.

 

[RoChess]

Rename the MediaInfo.DLL to something else, so that both MediaPortal and Moving-Pictures can not use it.

See MePo does all the playback for MovPic by default (unless u configure an external player) and it uses MediaInfo right before playback to verify some details needed to adjust things. For example if you enable IPC then MePo needs to know if the movie is 24fps, so it can adjust your TV to 24Hz. However MediaInfo then relies on the same codecs/splitter to read the file and get this info when playback is also starting. This then causes a conflict when the codec is not multi-thread compatible, such as LAV. Normally this is not a problem, but it can be, as is the case with you.

Also look into all your plugins as to what tasks they perform in the background. For example MovPic and MP-TVSeries can look for new files and import them while you are playing another movie, or they look for missing artwork. This causes all these 'extra background tasks' that can cause stuttering if they rely on MediaInfo to use the same video codecs.

The MPC-HC standalone codecs/splitters are much better in handling this on weaker computers, so you should otherwise look into that, but first narrow it down to make sure it is MediaInfo.

You do not have any VFD type of display running right? Antec VFD for example is known to install MediaInfo seperate at registry level, which interferes with the MediaInfo DLL that MediaPortal uses. This can also cause severe stuttering that is hard to diagnose, unless you know what to look for. To fix that you have to unregister that older mediainfo.dll from registry via "regsvr32.exe /u mediainfo.dll" (while inside the right path of the 'bad' DLL). Do a mass-scan otherwise on your harddisks to look for any straggling mediainfo.dll's and unregister them.

 

[RoChess]

Ahh the famous GeForce 8800M GS.

That's the one nVidia was taken to court over, because it was faulty and could overheat. Guess since yours is still working you have kept it cool and are not running it very long, or you lucked out and got an updated revision.

Either way, it is a very old GPU that had video/H.264 accelleration support before DXVA was established. So nVidia back then did it their own way and called it PureVideo. This should still work in LAV, but not as DXVA2 native, as it is barely DXVA1. That would explain why you had better experience with the copy back setting.

So I would definatly recommend a different codec then, so search this forum for a post I made way back explaining all the steps to setup MPC-HC standalone codec/splitters up, and you should have a much better experience then.

Did a quick search myself, and found: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/long-delay-before-video-is-showing.104998/#post-836171

That should work for you, but be sure to remove any faulty codec-packs, such as K-Lite, as they will severly interfere with performance.

 

[AxelSocial]

Thank you so much RoChess for your continuous support and detailed replies. Unfortunately, I am still getting stutter.

My NVIDIA card is an NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 8600M GT with 256MB dedicated graphic memory not 8800. Not sure if that makes any difference.

I had no issues I could see with MediaPortal 1.3.0. No special settings neither.

As suggested: I renamed the "mediainfo.dll" to "mediainfo.bak". I also tried to de-register before renaming it, but it would not work.

I checked all codecs installed on the PC via MSINFO32. I don't have K-lite installed.

Then I downloaded the cMPC-HC codec pack from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/files/. Extracted and registered the codes from your post.
- MatroskaSplitter.ax
- FLVSplitter.ax
- MP4Splitter.ax
- MPCVideoDec.ax
- MpaDecFilter.ax

The I changed the Video Codec and DVD Disc/Image codec, from LAV Video Decoder to MPC. Still stuttering with Moving-Pictures or the default video plugin.

Happy to post log files and screen captures if needed.

 

[RoChess]

[2013-06-23 14:11:42,316] [Log	] [29	   ] [DEBUG] - GUITVProgressControl.parseMarkerValues() - parsing markers
[2013-06-23 14:11:42,317] [Error  ] [29	   ] [ERROR] - render exception:System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException(ExceptionArgument argument, ExceptionResource resource)
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException()
   at MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUITVProgressControl.parseMarkerValues(String strStarts, String strEnds)
   at MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUITVProgressControl.Render(Single timePassed)
   at MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUIControl.DoRender(Single timePassed, UInt32 currentTime)
   at MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUIWindow.Render(Single timePassed)

This must be causing the stutter then for you.

Look for an update to v1.4, use MePo v1.3 until they fixed it, or switch to an external player for the time being.

You can also try Deamon Lite vs. VirtualClone Drive as you were mounting ISOs in your debug log, as it might relate to the cause.

 

[kiwijunglist]

DVAX2 works better for me when in copy-back mode than in native mode. Unfortunately, although playback is better, I still have stuttering issue. The issue seem to be more pronounced when using the moving-pictures plugin than when using the MediaPortal video plugin.

I'm not 199% sure but this might suggest you may have some post processing going on, dxva native should be better unless you have post processing or decoding work outside of gpu