Help with choppy videos

[limer]

Dell Inspiron 531

AMD Athlon X2 5000+
Powercolor Radeon HD 4830
Windows XP Professional
On board Realtek ALC888 HD sound (also tried a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz)

ATI Catalyst 9.6

VLC 1.0
MPC HC
Windows Media Player

GPU-Z

I have issues where, when watching videos, especially high resolution
1080p/720p, I get a kind of choppiness where it appears frames are being
dropped every second or two. Although it appears that frames are being
dropped, this doesn't register in the software itself. This "frame
loss" becomes more obvious during camera panning(?).

If I show lost frames at all, it may be one or two of out many many
thousands. I will also have lost buffers, but again we're talking maybe
7 over the course of a half hour's worth of the video. The CPU usage
never goes above 10% at the very most and I never see huge spikes (ie to
100%).

One example is a "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" HQ video I
found floating around. At most all times, there is a general choppiness
to the point I feel the movie is unwatchable. This isn't just LOTR, I
have many others showing the same symptoms. I will provide checksums
for those interested.

This happens in both the usual limited user account I log into as well
as the administrator account. I'm not sure how to go about correcting
this behavior and am open to any suggestions.

Thanks all!

 

[George P Burdell]

VLC and MPC HC will use your CPU to process the H264 video. Unfortunately, while your video card can crunch 1080p HD video without breaking a sweat, your CPU can't.

What you need is a video player like CyberLink PowerDVD, that lets you harness your GPU to process H264. You can also try out a software codec like CoreAVC if you don't feel like buying PowerDVD.

Right now, I'm using MPC HC (which came with the CCCP codec pack) and I've set it up to use the PowerDVD decoder for H264.

 

[California Roll]

MPC HC -> Options -> Playback Output -> EVR Custom Pres. **

Changing this dropped my cpu utilization from 10~65% to 0-8% on all 4 cores on my Q6600 on a 13gb 1080p mkv. Using this even lets me play the same file on my 1.6mhz Dothan laptop. It plays real slow but zero dropouts or pixel smearing. This same file on my laptop is impossible to play with VLC.

 

[0roo0roo]

well no, even a low end dual core cpu will crunch h264 hidef.. assuming multithreading of course!
cccp or klite should sort it out really.

 

[Fayd]

Originally posted by: California Roll
MPC HC -> Options -> Playback Output -> EVR Custom Pres. **

Changing this dropped my cpu utilization from 10~65% to 0-8% on all 4 cores on my Q6600 on a 13gb 1080p mkv. Using this even lets me play the same file on my 1.6mhz Dothan laptop. It plays real slow but zero dropouts or pixel smearing. This same file on my laptop is impossible to play with VLC.

think i could play 720P anime on an atom/gma950 with that?

 

[limer]

Although I didn't mention this earlier, I had come across an article that suggested using MPC HC because it will use DXVA with compatible video cards. Although this isn't that same article, this is very similar:

Ah My Goddess Guide for watching h.264

I followed this guide and still found that videos are choppy, although changing the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 75 Hz seemed to temporarily correct the extreme choppiness in "Yes Man" (x264/MKV).

In any event, I followed the guide and still noticed the cpu consumed around 50% on the Quantum of Solace trailer. I used the DXVA checker and found it blank for my Radeon HD 4830 . . . which was surprising. After uninstalling FFDShow Tryouts, the DXVA checker shows information about the card (although I'm not familiar with exactly what it's showing). Nevertheless, I still have the same issues with the same videos.

I'm beginning to wonder if the LOTR videos may have been bad encodings. I'll report back when I have more info.

 

[0roo0roo]

50%? so its only using 1 core for some reason.

uninstall/reinstall klite?

and no, i doubt it, "online" encodings of um "films" are no more stressful than apple trailers.
i've run them on e2200's and such, low end dual cores with integrated graphics even.

 

[limer]

50% on both cores. I never installed klite or any other codec pack except ffdshow tryouts or whatever MPC HD may have installed.

It's my understanding that some people new to video encoding may not get settings correct and this may result in a video that has issues. I tend to believe it's my machine over badly encoded movies, but didn't want to rule out the possibility that a couple of them may have their own problems.

 

[ZetaEpyon]

Originally posted by: limer
Ah My Goddess Guide for watching h.264

I followed this guide and still found that videos are choppy, although changing the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 75 Hz seemed to temporarily correct the extreme choppiness in "Yes Man" (x264/MKV).

I have used this guide before, too, albeit with nVidia cards and not ATI. I found that getting DXVA working in XP was not nearly as consistent as in Vista and 7.

I know you mentioned that you have Catalyst 9.6, but did you try moving back to 9.4, as that's what's mentioned in the guide. If you followed that guide exactly, and it's still not working, I'd suggest just trying CoreAVC to get faster software decoding.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: limer
50% on both cores. I never installed klite or any other codec pack except ffdshow tryouts or whatever MPC HD may have installed.

It's my understanding that some people new to video encoding may not get settings correct and this may result in a video that has issues. I tend to believe it's my machine over badly encoded movies, but didn't want to rule out the possibility that a couple of them may have their own problems.

no, even if they go wicked insane with reference frames and such a pc can handle it. its low powered devices like the wd tv and such that freak out when such settings are used.