Still can't play 1080p x.264 videos smoothly. Why?

[jtvang125]

HTPC specs:

e4300 @ 1.8
2GB DDR2 RAM
8500GT
Striker 7.1 Soundcard
Vista MCE
ffdshow

720p plays perfect but the system still has trouble with 1080p. I'm getting 3-4 second pauses, frame skipping, and audio out of synch. I check the cpu usage and it's hovering at about 50% but I don't see any spikes beyond that. I have the settings in ffdshow to use the built in h.264 decoder and all post processing off. I haven't tried CoreAVC yet because their download page has been down for months.

Any ideas or is 1080p x.264 just too much for my machine to handle?

 

[mzkhadir]

check or disable drivers. High cpu usage is related to bad drivers

 

[erwos]

If it's Vista, it's probably a driver problem. Check your video drivers (160.03 is reported as working pretty well), and your audio drivers.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Could it possibly be a problem with the video player only using one CPU core? You say it hovers at about 50% which could possibly be maxing out one core.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
Could it possibly be a problem with the video player only using one CPU core? You say it hovers at about 50% which could possibly be maxing out one core.

Doubtful. An e4300 with an 8500GT should be flawless with that kind of material.

 

[nullpointerus]

From what I've read, not all 8500GT's have the video decoding acceleration.

OP, what brand/model do you have? The retail box should say HDCP in the features list.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus
From what I've read, not all 8500GT's have the video decoding acceleration.

OP, what brand/model do you have? The retail box should say HDCP in the features list.

HDCP has nothing to do with video decode acceleration. AFAIK, all of them have H.264 acceleration. Not all of them have HDCP.

 

[jtvang125]

Hmm...I'm wondering if this might be the problem. I have the resolution set to a non-standard setting (Can't remember exactly what the setting is) because 1920x1080 will not fit within my hdtv screen. It's like 18** x 9** at the moment to make it fit. Would the system be working double time to scale 1920x1080p into this odd resolution? If I can get the desktop resolution as close to 1080 as possible wouldn't that cut down on the processing needed to display it?

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: nullpointerus
From what I've read, not all 8500GT's have the video decoding acceleration.

OP, what brand/model do you have? The retail box should say HDCP in the features list.

HDCP has nothing to do with video decode acceleration. AFAIK, all of them have H.264 acceleration. Not all of them have HDCP.

That's mostly correct, but it doesn't directly apply to my post. I know the difference between HDCP and video decode acceleration--and never claimed that there was a necessary connection between the two as far as the concepts go.

When the 8500/8600-series cards were initially released, people in the video forum questioned whether all of them had the new video decode acceleration. Then it was determined after some discussion and linking that this capability was optional on the 8500GT and that the way to determine whether a particular vendor's model of 8500GT card supported decode acceleration was to see if it also claimed HDCP as a feature.

I'd post a link to the thread if I could find it.

 

[antillean]

Originally posted by: jtvang125
Hmm...I'm wondering if this might be the problem. I have the resolution set to a non-standard setting (Can't remember exactly what the setting is) because 1920x1080 will not fit within my hdtv screen. It's like 18** x 9** at the moment to make it fit. Would the system be working double time to scale 1920x1080p into this odd resolution? If I can get the desktop resolution as close to 1080 as possible wouldn't that cut down on the processing needed to display it?

You need to set you TV to 1:1 pixel mapping. It's overscanning. Google your TV model and "1:1" and you'll find whether you can do it or not. Yeah, your computer has to scale the video which takes processing power.

 

[Shawn]

It has to be the video drivers. I have a similar system but with a Radeon x1650 and I can play HD-DVDs just fine.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: jtvang125
HTPC specs:

e4300 @ 1.8
2GB DDR2 RAM
8500GT
Striker 7.1 Soundcard
Vista MCE
ffdshow

720p plays perfect but the system still has trouble with 1080p. I'm getting 3-4 second pauses, frame skipping, and audio out of synch. I check the cpu usage and it's hovering at about 50% but I don't see any spikes beyond that. I have the settings in ffdshow to use the built in h.264 decoder and all post processing off. I haven't tried CoreAVC yet because their download page has been down for months.

Any ideas or is 1080p x.264 just too much for my machine to handle?

ffdshow is rather slow at x264, and it's not taking advantage of the nvidia acceleration. The only thing that will is the decoder that comes from nvidia...and I'm not sure that it actually supports x.264, only h.264 from the HDDVD/BR.

CoreAVC is software only as well, but its much faster than ffdshow for x.264.