HD Video issues

[crazyhandpuppet]

I got a new laptop for Christmas: Acer Aspire 5517. It has Win 7 Home Premium, an Athlon 64 X2 TK-42 (1.6Ghz), 3GB PC2-6400, and an ATI Radeon HD3200 (RS780M). I've been having a couple of small issues on it and was hoping for a little help.

I'm trying to play HD videos, but the sound seems to slip further and further out of sync as time goes on. So I figure I'm not doing proper hardware acceleration and begin to look into it. I grabbed DXVA Checker and made sure DXVA has enabled. I downloaded the latest drivers from Acer and then the latest from AMD. I tried WMP12 and VLC. Neither played the videos fine. Then I look into other players and found the MPC-hc64 that was highly recommended. It too wont play well. Here's what I get from them while running the Step Into Liquid 1080p WMV HD video:

Player %used by player %CPU Total
WMP12 75% 85%
VLC 60% 70%
MPC-hc 55% 65%

These are averages and there are spikes that go up, but I don't see it hit 100% or anything that would make the audio skip or frames drop.

This leads me to the next thing. When I run GpuZ, it cant detect the speed of the GPU or memory. It shows Memory Type as DDR2, and Memory Size as 256MB. The AMD GPU Clock Tool shows the engine at 24.61 and the Memory Clock at 400. Changing either value at all crashes the PC. I also get no readings from the thermal sensors. I dont know where to go from here. I'm guessing the load is being offloaded to the GPU, but it shouldn't have any problem decoding the video.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.

 

[lopri]

Your laptop is likely on too aggressive a power plan. Can you see where your CPU frequency is at while playing back HD movies? (CPU-Z)

 

[Athadeus]

I'm not even sure that hardware is powerful enough to play 1080p content, but not really sure. So the only problem is the audio synchronization? How many seconds does it get behind/ahead per minute of playback?

I used to work at CCity and had a lot of customers with new laptops from low-even mid range that had playback problems with high bandwidth content. Many didn't seem to be able to be resolved without upgrading. I hope you can figure out a better solution though.

 

[blanketyblank]

try coreAVC. I think they had a trial you could use to see if it improved playback.

 

[alyarb]

it's the mobile equivalent of an AM2 780G system so it should be able to play 1080p, it's just your CPU clock is rather low. coreavc will probably not run well at all since it runs on the CPU and not the GPU. something's got to be wrong with the software config. maybe your GPU 2D idle clock is too low. set your power profile to minimal power management or home/office desk. should give you better clocks.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

I'd imagine you need to set your filters in mpc-hc to use the dxva path only

 

[crazyhandpuppet]

Lopri: I've tried it with the power profile set at High Performance. That doesn't help. The clocks go up to the 1.6Ghz mark when playing the content, so CnQ and the power profile are working properly.

Athadeus: This laptop should be more than capable than playing 1080p. I mean an Atom/ION solution can do it. This laptop is much more powerful than that. What did the users upgrade to fix the problem? As I noted before, using the mpc-hc and VLC, CPU isn't a problem as there are plenty of cycles left. Actually, even WMP had plenty of extra cycles left.

alyarb: I'm thinking along the same lines: Either codecs (which are still the default, no K-Lite or anything) or GPU clock speeds. Using the AMD GPU clock tool, I can see the Engine speed at 24.61 at idle, all the time. When I play the video: With WMP nothing changes, with VLC and MPC, I see it fluctuate between 24.61 and 39 and it occasionally ramps up to the 200-250 range, but doesn't stay. Unfortunately, I don't know what software will allow me to set my clocks in Windows 7. The AMD GPU clock tool just crashes the PC. And most of the bars just don't move inside of AMD Overdrive, even though they aren't grayed out. I've even tried replacing the Acer video drivers with AMD's drivers. Still No Go.

nismotigerwvu: I've followed the directions I found for mpc-hc and set the Directshow video output to EVR Custom. How do I tell it to use the dxva path only? I used DXVACheck to make sure it was enabled, but that's a separate piece of software.


Thanks everyone for taking the time to help. I appreciate it.

 

[blanketyblank]

I know CoreAVC is mostly CPU, but it's like 30%+ more efficient than the free stuff.
This is not their marketing, but from the guys who are distributing the free codecs.
http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=CoreAVC

I've used it on my laptop when I had stuttering problems playing 1080p mkv files and it resolved them. My laptops is a pentium M 1.86 I think with an nvidia Go 6600.

I should also point out that my GPU makes no difference here since the version of CoreAVC I was running at the time did not have GPU acceleration.

 

[crazyhandpuppet]

I don't think there is currently a trial available for CoreAVC. The web site has version 2 on it and the trial has been pushed from Jan 7 to "After Feb 15". I managed to find a 14-day trial of a previous version, but it needs a serial number and they aren't giving those out anymore. They don't host the previous versions anymore.

Edit/ The site blanketyblank linked to has a link to the DivX Decoder. It says its performance is similar to the CoreAVC, but it isn't able to run them well either. /Edit

 

[blanketyblank]

Well you can alway just buy it and get a refund if it doesn't work for you.
Their refund policy says you can get a refund within 30 days. Otherwise Feb 15 isn't too far off if that's when the trial is out.
http://corecodec.com/refund-policy

The site I linked to is the CCCP which is a complete collection of codecs and a media player. It works well for me on my desktop since I've got a core 2, but it needed CoreAVC codec on my laptop. I just linked you to one of their wikis, but you could also give their complete package a try. It's basically the same as using MPC-hc, but they provide you with a complete set of codecs. The link is just:
http://www.cccp-project.net

 

[0roo0roo]

I know CoreAVC is mostly CPU, but it's like 30%+ more efficient than the free stuff.
This is not their marketing, but from the guys who are distributing the free codecs.
http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=CoreAVC

I've used it on my laptop when I had stuttering problems playing 1080p mkv files and it resolved them. My laptops is a pentium M 1.86 I think with an nvidia Go 6600.

I should also point out that my GPU makes no difference here since the version of CoreAVC I was running at the time did not have GPU acceleration.

its not mostly cpu on nvidia, it uses cuda now. it does ridiculous offloading of cpu decode now. you know those "web" 1080p mkv and such, i can even time stretch those at 2x using cuda and it barely registers on my cpu anymore whereas it woulda been stressful to do it with old style cpu decode. i'm not sure about ati accel though.

but with cuda, you can play games like cs:s while a 1080p video is playing on another screen. its quite amazing. a sd avi playing on the second screen actually impacts frame rate quite a bit more in fact.

 

[blanketyblank]

As I said I got it while I was running videos off an nvidia Go 6600 when it had no GPU acceleration and my chip doesn't have CUDA support anyways. Whatever it did I could play 1080p mkv files without skipped frames while before I could not.

I've got an ATI card now and my desktop is plenty fast for video decoding so it's a moot point for me.

 

[Rhoxed]

core avc really does work wonders for slower rigs and HD playback

i have an old p4 3.0 and FX5800XT that can play any HD video... but ONLY using coreAVC codec, i tried 100's of others that just didnt have what it took i guess.

 

[crazyhandpuppet]

Well, I can wait a few days until it comes out. What about tools to manually set my 2D GPU clock speed that works in Windows7? Or a tool that shows my GPU load?

 

[blanketyblank]

You're already using GPU-Z so that should show you GPU load under sensors.
Since it's an onboard GPU though what information you can get may be limited however.
Rivatuner might work for OCing the GPU, but again it's not designed for or recommended to do so on a laptop integrated chip.
btw maybe this is your problem:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33835728

 

[crazyhandpuppet]

Unfortunately, GPU-Z cant read my core or memory speeds. The only program I've found that does is the AMD GPU tool. GPU-z shows what the defaults are, but not the current. And I've tried using RivaTuner, but cant seem to figure it out. Maybe something is missing. I guess there should be some system settings icon on the main page, but I don't have one and I don't have a customize button in Driver Settings.

I'm not concerned with changing my 2D clocks to fix this issue. I'd rather know why they don't increase as they should, but I'll settle for auto adjusting them myself. I am wondering if the inability of any software to readily affect the IGP is being caused by the same affect that is stopping other items from increasing my IGP clocks for the 2D load.

The card works perfectly well under 3D load as I can play WOW and DDO at the proper levels. I'm hoping its just these blasted 2D issues. I thought that these programs looked at the chips themselves and that these chips are supplied by AMD. If that's so, why does it make a difference what vendor I have? Things like GPU-Z shouldn't care, right?

 

[blanketyblank]

You must remember these tools are designed to handle popular desktop cards not integrated chips. Support has to be added for each chipset specifically since not everything can be generalized. Your particular chipset may not have been deemed popular enough to be added. Also integrated products are designed to reduce cost and size so they may also lack some of the sensors in the desktop dedicated cards so it's possible such things as temperature may be missing.

If you're sure 3d is working why not set your player to use that kind of rendering mode. In MPC-HC it's under options you should see it say 3d surfaces in the output section.

 

[crazyhandpuppet]

In MPC Under Output-->VMR 7/9--> Surface it shows 3D surfaces(recommended) already checked. (And greyed out so I cant change it.)

 

[blanketyblank]

In that case try changing to VMR9(renderless) and try one of the other options besides 3d surfaces and see if that makes any difference. In theory it should be slower than 3d surfaces, but try it and see. Also set statistics on under the view menu to see how many dropped frames there are between different settings.
Btw did they ever release the trial or have any extra info on that yet?