Vista - HD staggering issues

[Juddog]

Running windows Vista SP1, 64-bit, using dual 8800 GT's (G92 core), with purevideo drivers. Trying to play .TS HD files from my hard drive using any program I have, and the video seems to have a slight stuttering effect that wasn't there in windows XP x86 version.

I have installed the latest Nvidia drivers as of this weekend. I tried enabling vertical sync for the video player under the nvidia control panel. Overclocked / underclocked video card. Checked actual processor usage, running Intel E8500 Penryn / Wolfdale at factory clock w/ 4 GB of RAM. Watching processor usage shows processor at around 30 - 40 % usage on both cores indicating threading seems to be working properly.

So if the cores aren't maxed out, the GPU's don't seem to be maxed out, what gives? This stuttering issue is driving me bananas. Before I upgraded my system I had a Pentium-D @ 2.8 Ghz (a far slower processor) w/ 2 GB of RAM (slower FSB, slower RAM), and a 8800 GTS (G80 core, which is supposed to be a worse core than the G92 for HD playback at 1080P), and the HD played flawlessly.

Has anybody else experienced this? Would this have to do with Aero? I also tried boosting process to realtime. It seems like something is pegging the hard drive while I'm playing the video, which causes the stutter, although I could be wrong about that (one thing I noticed is that Vista keeps hitting up the hard drive when I'm not even doing anything).

 

[Scotteq]

I would ask if this happens at times like changng scenes, or entering new areas in your game...

This sounds like data is being swapped from active memory to the Hard Drive, and you are experiencing a slowdown while it is happening.

To cure/minimise it, you can/should run less items in the background and/or install more RAM.

 

[George P Burdell]

What video player/codec are you using to play the video?

 

[C1]

I had stuttering of video playback whenever I transfered files to or from the C drive (partition on which VISTA was installed). This was not an issue when using WINXP on the same machine. I was never able to solve this issue & it is one of the reasons I decided to use WINXP until further notice. I tried different video drivers, turning off AeroGlass, tweaks, indexing, you name it & it was done. For whatever reason, when VISTA was requested to do significant disk transfer involving C drive, the Video stuttering would occur no matter what media player showing video was being used (eg, Media Player). Apparently this doesnt happen to most people as I have seen only a few complaints about it. I suppose if I had to guess then it is some subtlety involving the video driver(s), VISTA & the hardware unique to the platform on which it is being run.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: Scotteq
I would ask if this happens at times like changng scenes, or entering new areas in your game...

This sounds like data is being swapped from active memory to the Hard Drive, and you are experiencing a slowdown while it is happening.

To cure/minimise it, you can/should run less items in the background and/or install more RAM.

I'm not watching a game, I am watching HD video off of an HD-DVD player that I bought. I already have 4 GB of RAM, and monitoring the RAM during the HD playback I never get above 2.6 GB of that used (so typically have at least 1 GB free).

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: George P Burdell
What video player/codec are you using to play the video?

I tried every codec I could buy or get my hands on. FFDshow, CCCp (combined community codec pack), Haali media splitter, matroska, purevideo platinum and a few others. I have installed everything I could find from AVSforums relating to HD playback. Unfortunately I only have one program that can actually play the EVO files, which is PowerDVD HD-DVD version. The stuttering occurs whether I watch the HD-DVD that I bought or I watch the EVO files that were ripped to my hard drive using Any-DVD (on the non-OS hard drive to make sure that OS activities didn't interfere).

I saw a thread on AVS forums which allow you to create an MKV file from the 1080p EVO files, but it is a very long convoluted process and I was hoping to not have to go through all that just to watch a HD-DVD that I purchased. I suppose I will have to end up going that route if this continues. I watch the HD-DVD using Any-DVD since the monitor I have supports 1080P but doesn't have HDCP (the old school 2405fpw Dell widescreen - great monitor but no HDCP support).

Originally posted by: C1
I had stuttering of video playback whenever I transfered files to or from the C drive (partition on which VISTA was installed). This was not an issue when using WINXP on the same machine. I was never able to solve this issue & it is one of the reasons I decided to use WINXP until further notice. I tried different video drivers, turning off AeroGlass, tweaks, indexing, you name it & it was done. For whatever reason, when VISTA was requested to do significant disk transfer involving C drive, the Video stuttering would occur no matter what media player showing video was being used (eg, Media Player). Apparently this doesnt happen to most people as I have seen only a few complaints about it. I suppose if I had to guess then it is some subtlety involving the video driver(s), VISTA & the hardware unique to the platform on which it is being run.

Yeah I tried disabling the Aero glass too. I figured it may have been something tagging the IO on the hard drive that I'm somehow not seeing. It's really annoying as the 8800 GT (G92 core) is supposed to handle HD-video playback via hardware; I have confirmed it's offloading to the video card as it should be by checking the task manager CPU usage - CPU on both cores typically holds at 30 - 40 % during playback. Vista constantly seems to peg my hard drive for no reason when I first boot up, but I typically don't notice a performance hit while playing games or doing any other activities.

I'm somewhat of a noob when it comes to tweaking out Vista though, to be honest other than trying to install every codec I could get my hands on, and driver tweaking, I haven't really done a whole lot of service / startup / registry optimizations yet as this is my first computer running Home x64 Vista.

I am pondering setting up an XP partition though because this HD video staggering is driving me bonkers, and XP never did it.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Hmm, if you can, see if you can change the renderer in your media player to VMR (or EVR). Zoomplayer and Media Player Classic (HC) can do this.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: ChronoReverse
Hmm, if you can, see if you can change the renderer in your media player to VMR (or EVR). Zoomplayer and Media Player Classic (HC) can do this.

Unfortunately PowerDVD disables the Aero interface which at the same time apparently disables EVR. =( I can't seem to get Zoomplayer or MPC to read the EVO files either.

 

[ChronoReverse]

In that case, there's a good chance that PowerDVD is reverting to a legacy mode for video playback. This means that there's no acceleration available for renderer (not the decoder part) and it's being dumped on the CPU.

See if you can get an updated version of PowerDVD.



Incidentally, I'm pretty sure MPC HC (make sure to get the Home Cinema version) can playback .ts HD files. See if it works out.

 

[George P Burdell]

Originally posted by: ChronoReverse
In that case, there's a good chance that PowerDVD is reverting to a legacy mode for video playback. This means that there's no acceleration available for renderer (not the decoder part) and it's being dumped on the CPU.

See if you can get an updated version of PowerDVD.

What version of PowerDVD are you using? Unlike ffdshow/coreavc/other software based codecs, PowerDVD can harness the GPU to process video, which is what you need.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: George P Burdell

Originally posted by: ChronoReverse
In that case, there's a good chance that PowerDVD is reverting to a legacy mode for video playback. This means that there's no acceleration available for renderer (not the decoder part) and it's being dumped on the CPU.

See if you can get an updated version of PowerDVD.

What version of PowerDVD are you using? Unlike ffdshow/coreavc/other software based codecs, PowerDVD can harness the GPU to process video, which is what you need.

Running PowerDVD 7.1, the HD-DVD version. I have verified that it plays .EVO files correctly with the GPU, as going to process manager my CPU cores are only at 30-40 % usage, and "enable video acceleration" is checkmarked in the configuration.

 

[Juddog]

Update in case anybody else is having the issue:

Figured it out at last. Was randomly digging through the event logs and noticed that there were a few error messages under system. Looked it up, stated that several drivers failed to load due to system incompatibility.

I looked around on google, apparently this had to due with unsigned WHQL drivers that try and re-install themselves upon bootup. Normally the fix is to continually hit F8 and choose to install / load the unsigned drivers, which sounded like a pretty crappy solution.

Dug around some more for boot managers, stumbled upon "Easy BCD". Loaded it up, checkmarked to allow unsigned drivers on boot, rebooted. Noticed the errors were still there in event log, but lo and behold, now the movies play fantastic again!