HTPC, 780G, 1080P, MPC-HC, problems

[VirtualLarry]

I finished building my htpc last night. It works great, except for a few things.

Foxconn 7GM-780g mobo
AMD BE-2400 2.3Ghz dual-core
1GB DDR2-800
WD Caviar Green 1TB (system drive)
Some DVD burner (SATA)

It plays back youtube and hulu, although watching betty white's opening monologoue from SNL on Hulu, 480P. full-screen, was choppy. Watching Monk episodes at the same setting was not chippy. Not using the beta of flash yet on this box.

Watching an MKV rip of Planet Earth 1080P HD-DVD, and it plays, sort of.

Streaming it over wireless N (65mbit), from my NAS (10MB/sec), it's choppy during the bird scene, and the audio breaks up often.

Copying the movie from the NAS to the HD first, and then playing it - the audio is smoooth, but the video still skips and hitches, and ends up lagging behind the audio track. Interestingly enough, the whole bird scene is smooth. It's the intro and other scenese that still hitch.


CPU usage during Planet Earth playback is 75-80%, which seems high if the video acceleration were working.

I checked off the Matroska splitter in MPC-HC, and set the output mode to DirectX 9. Are there any other MPC-HC settings that I'm missing?

I can play this same file off of a DVD disc on my Intel E2140 @ 2.8Ghz smooth as silk, and it doesn't have HW accel for the video, at least not to the level of the 780G's capabilities.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

what OS are you using? if it's win7 you should be using EVR custom. i didn't have to mess with filters or install any codecs to get mpc-hc to work, although installation of haali has always been a good option. fwiw, i just switched from mpc to vlc because of an ongoing nvidia driver issue.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm using XP Pro SP3, MPC-HC 1.3.1249.0.

Things I tried:
Adding 1GB of RAM, to make 2GB in dual-channel.
Overclocking, currently @ 2.875 (from 2.3), HT 1000, DDR-960, FSB 250, GFX clock 750 (from 500).
Tried VMR 7, VMR 9, 3d surface, 2d surface, full-screen, windowed.
Tried playing off of my NAS, off of my HD, and off of a DVD.

It's like it's buffering, almost like an online video buffers. Can't figure it out.

Possibilities include bugs in 10.4 video driver, and bugs in MPC-HC.

Edit: Installed MPC-HC 1.1.604.0, and now it plays smooth as silk! It was a software problem!
I noticed that the newer version of MPC-HC, lists in it's internal filters, two H264 decoders, one DXVA, and one FFMPG. I wonder if that was part of the problem somehow.

Edit: still won't stream from the NAS, but I'm sure my slow wireless network is to blame for that. Oh well, can't have everything.

 

[jtvang125]

Make sure you have all the DirectX runtime libraries installed for the latest version of MPC-HC. It should be set to DXVA for gpu acceleration. On my setup the cpu never goes above 15% and this is a lowly stock 1.8ghz core 2 duo.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I did install the latest DirectX runtime. Btw, under MPC-HC 1.1.604, my cpu usage is 50-80% on a AMD BE-2400 @ 2.875Ghz.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Sounds like it is not doing any GPU offloading...

 

[wiretap]

You should be using the EVR Custom Preset option in MPC-HC. Then make sure the MPC decoder is set for ignoring the DXVA compatibility check since you're using ATI.

But.. even streaming over Wireless-N sucks. For HD video, especially 1080p, you should be using a hard wired 100/1000 connection. HD video likes to have a good pre-buffer that wireless (especially with the encryption overhead) can't keep up with during peak bitrate scenes.

 

[Modelworks]

Transfer some files over the network and see what it averages for just a basic copy operation, it should be able to maintain 10MB/sec on a 100 wired connection without dropping the rate during the copy.

In MPC-HC enable stats under view, renderer settings, display stats
That will show frame rate accuracy, delay, buffering, DXVA status and more

That may give some clues as to what is the problem.