Video Stuttering... yet again (1 Viewer)

[g1r2e3g]

D'oh! My rage subsided and of course returned to this post and found out that instead of telling me a what a dodgy troll I was and telling me to $#*& off.... everyone of course was full of suggestions and kind words.... so a few glasses of red wine later... decided to follow the clean install path, which I probably should have tried a year ago and readied myself to write off a few more hours of my life in search of media centre nirvana.

First up, scoured the net to find an .iso of win 7 pro as my original copy was long lost two house moves ago. I still had the original key though which worked thankfully. 1-2 hours down so far.

So here's what I did.....

1. Clean install Win 7
2. Installed latest ATI Catalyst Driver
3. Install Media Portal 1.4 (inc LAV filters)
4. Install Moving Pictures plugin

Somewhere here, after glass 5 I fell asleep while Moving Pictures was scanning media and grabbing pictures and stuff.

Wake up many hours later, heads a bot sore, but I'm determinded to finish off what I started.

5. Install MP TV Series, let it do it's thing.
6. GPU and DRR settings taken from here: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/guide-perfect-playback-display-calibration.119610. I left the DRR rate table unchanged as it looks to match the latest table listed in the setup guide, even though I am not sure my Sony can do 23 hertz...

So there went another 4-6 hours of my life... but after that I threw every video format I could find between my many GBs of TV and Movies and they all worked smooth as oily peanut butter on a warm summers day. Success!! (for now) Haven't setup the live TV server part yet... Might wait until my next delve into the wine cellar before giving that another run... If it all fell apart with this hangover I'm likely to toss the CPU into the pool.

For now, happy again....

Apologies for my rant, I really was just totally fed up with it, I'm usually dead against trolling or unecessary rants on forums, so that can give you an idea how pissed I was!

But years out the lesson is learned... clean install, clean install, clean install...... best advice I've ever had, thanks @kiwijunglist

 

[kiwijunglist]

Yes, clean install and have you tried turning it off and on again solves most problems related to video playback.

For tvsetup all you have to do is choose LAV video codec for that as well. Leave the DRR settings alone its already setup for that. If you get stutter then the solution is to fork out for a discrete graphics card. Either HD6450, HD6570, or HD7750 depending on your budget.

 

[g1r2e3g]

Oh well, spoke too soon. It seems I didn't realise earlier today but I now have a whole new problem. playing movies/tv series adjusts the aspect ratio, and leaves it that way even after you stop watching. so theres a 1 inch blank space around the screen until i restart the box or go to catalyst settings... im sure all movies/series previously filled the whole screen too (except for really old 4:3 recordings). Someone pass me the wine........

 

[kiwijunglist]

The problem is because you have underscan setup in AMD CCC. CCC has a seperate underscan for every refresh rate. go and set overscan/underscan to 0% for all the refresh rates and problem will go away. This aint MP fault, blame AMD.

 

[g1r2e3g]

I already set overscan to 0% in CCC following the earlier posted instructions...

 

[kiwijunglist]

I already set overscan to 0% in CCC following the earlier posted instructions...

Instructions didn't say this, but have you set overscan to 0% in CC x3 or more times?

What is happening I think is that overscan % is jumping when the monitor changes refresh rates.... It's only happening on some refresh rates.

I had this too, set overscan 0% for every refresh rate. If you can't set reresh rate to 23/23.976hz in CCC then in MP Config (as a tempoary stop gap while you investigate) use 24hz instead. May even need a restart for changes to stick.


PS. If this is not the case then it may be that the TV overscan setting is jumping for each refresh rate, you can check this in TV menu, when you have a problem see if view mode has changed to 16:9 or normal or w/e....

 

[g1r2e3g]

Yep, all sorted.. required adjusting refresh/hertz rate and then checking overscan % for each individual hertz setting, something that is not in the 3 or so different sets of published instructions on this topic, just assumed from existing instructions that overscan is not tied to hertz setting at all and was only required to be adjusted once. Thanks again kiwi.

 

[kiwijunglist]

No problem, It is actually written in my setup guide just burried in a wall of text. Although I'm pretty sure in my last install I didn't have to do this at all. I think during my last install with Win7 overscan was 0% by default. It maybe that if you change hz prior to setting overscan then they all get set to the current setting and stay like that unless you change them, however if you change hz after setting overscan to 0% then they all get set to 0%.[DOUBLEPOST=1371891297][/DOUBLEPOST]Also: you see it's not very hard to set thing up or trouble shoot problems, when you follow a guide right from the start rather than randomly changing settings

 

[PrplHaz4]

I feel like part of the problem (in general, not related to g1r2e3g) is the fact that there are multiple codec configuration guides - specifically, the one you linked to before, and the one used for Online Videos. If OV were not such a popular plugin, I would not consider this an issue - but since it has such a high install rate (only one example - I'm sure there are more) , any conflicting instructions should be looked at to keep compatibility at its highest - for someone not entrenched in the MePo forums, getting the right information can be an extremely arduous task. Part of me wants to follow your guide to get a "fresh start", but I'm not having any problems (that I know of), and don't want to break anything (based on all my reading, it's a bit of a fragile system).

Some sources of confusion/potential conflicts:
LAV Splitter
MPUrlSourceSplitter
SAF Filters
LAV Filters
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/codec-setup-to-get-all-online-videos-to-play.58837/
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/guide-perfect-playback-display-calibration.119610/

 

[kiwijunglist]

SAF is just LAV + PDVD + FFDSHOW + Real Media + MPC-HC. you can install saf and then follow my guide, it wont be any different. LAV can play all the online video formats. My guide doesn't actually install anything so there is no way of breaking things, it is just a bunch of settings that you can always change back. The SAF instructions are also 2 years old, if you look at the Video tab it looks a lot different in MP1.3+1.4.