Topic: Red October HQ Performance (Read 7716 times)

glynor · « **on:** June 07, 2011, 10:03:17 am »

I've been doing all of my testing right now with Red October "vanilla mode". I figure until we get that all completely straightened out, then it would be best to stick to the normal default mode as a tester, rather than adding additional complexity. I also did not install any additional new filters when we started playing with RO. My system is configured basically like it was before... CCCP is installed. CoreAVC 2.0 is installed and selected as the default system H264 filter. Not much else, no MadVR, no LAV. Nothing. The idea is to test what a "novice" user might come to MC with already installed. I also intend to test later on with a completely clean system (no filters at all installed, just MC) once I feel like things have calmed down a bit.

So, this weekend I quickly tested Red October HQ mode, just to see what it looked like. Playback did not really work. It stuttered and dropped frames with reckless abandon, and was completely unusable. Which would make you think that maybe my system isn't powerful enough to handle HQ mode. But...

It is a Core 2 Quad 9550 at 3.5GHz, with 4 GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon HD 6870 GPU. If that system is not powerful enough to handle HQ mode, then basically no one can handle HQ mode. I doubt the point of this feature is only for people with the latest Core i7 machines heavily overclocked and running on LN². So, I suspect something else is going on...

My test file was kind-of a "doozy", but it should work (and works fine in vanilla RO mode): It was a very high bitrate rip of a BluRay disc with TrueHD audio (I don't have it in front of me, but I believe it is a roughly 16mpbs file).

Any ideas?

BryanC · « **Reply #1 on:** June 07, 2011, 10:46:50 am »

1. HQ playback should work without a hitch on your setup. Did you check what filters were being used? I know that CoreAVC caused a lot of my mkv/H.264 files to stutter.

2. Enable deinterlacing in CoreAVC (Bob or single-field)

3. Try disabling DXVA or Avivo in the CoreAVC settings. madVR is going to use the GPU for the rendering work and your system is more than fast enough for software decoding.

4. You could also try disabling videoclock if you aren't bitstreaming.

Matt · « **Reply #2 on:** June 07, 2011, 10:54:47 am »

I guess you need to switch to Crossfire

But seriously, the main difference between Std and HQ is deinterlacing and the usage of madVR.

What does the CPU usage look like during playback?

Could you play with the madVR settings a bit to see if it has some non-default configuration?

As a comparison, I'm using a 7 year old ATI here (X1850) and madVR + Blu-ray + 1080p output works fine.

glynor · « **Reply #3 on:** June 07, 2011, 12:28:33 pm »

Quote from: Bryanhoop on June 07, 2011, 10:46:50 am

1. HQ playback should work without a hitch on your setup. Did you check what filters were being used? I know that CoreAVC caused a lot of my mkv/H.264 files to stutter.

2. Enable deinterlacing in CoreAVC (Bob or single-field)

3. Try disabling DXVA or Avivo in the CoreAVC settings. madVR is going to use the GPU for the rendering work and your system is more than fast enough for software decoding.

4. You could also try disabling videoclock if you aren't bitstreaming.

I was using the "one choice" Red October HQ mode, not an advanced configuration. It was using whatever Red October picks, which I don't think is CoreAVC. Probably FFDSHOW, I'd guess.

I am bitstreaming and videoclock is disabled.

Quote from: Matt on June 07, 2011, 10:54:47 am

But seriously, the main difference between Std and HQ is deinterlacing and the usage of madVR.

What does the CPU usage look like during playback?

Could you play with the madVR settings a bit to see if it has some non-default configuration?

The CPU utilization was actually low/non-existent, which I also found odd. To be clear, I did not have madVR installed myself, or any configuration done. All I did was change the default "regular" RO option to Red October (HQ), and then tried to play a file (a MKV).

I'm happy to check the madVR settings, but they really probably should be whatever you guys put there, since I didn't install it myself or do anything manually. I'm trying to test as hands-off as possible on purpose. Is there something in particular I should look for? Can I even look at or tweak the settings in a non-advanced mode?

Matt · « **Reply #4 on:** June 07, 2011, 12:32:23 pm »

What if you try PCM?

glynor · « **Reply #5 on:** June 07, 2011, 12:38:34 pm »

I can try tonight when I get home.

glynor · « **Reply #6 on:** June 09, 2011, 10:13:22 am »

Quote from: glynor on June 07, 2011, 12:38:34 pm

I can try tonight when I get home.

I didn't get to it, by the way. I'll do it this weekend. Perhaps the more recent changes will have sorted it out anyhow.

glynor · « **Reply #7 on:** June 15, 2011, 08:55:39 pm »

I've managed to narrow it down to just my HD H264 TS files that don't work acceptably in Red October HQ mode, at least now with the current build. This applies to the same types of files that were broken before, so using one of those as a test would be good if you still have one. I don't know if the issues are limited to only the 30% or so of the "broken" ones, though I doubt it. I tried a bunch tonight. If you really think this might be the problem, let me know, and I'll make some known-good test files (by remuxing) and try with them.

I've also been able to narrow it down to madVR as the culprit. I switched over to HQ mode on my HTPC when we had temporarily switched back to EVR. Everything worked perfectly.

Now that we're back on madVR, these TS files don't work right. I'm pretty sure it is better than before, because the file I tested previously was a x264-compressed MKV, and it now seems to work fine (I didn't sit there and actually watch the movie, but I checked it out and didn't see any obvious dropped frames). The overall performance is much better than it was, even with the TS files, but it is still dropping frames and stuttering pretty badly. I tried disabling (and enabling) Exclusive mode, and fiddling with a few other knobs in the madVR configuration dialog, to no avail.

So, as a test, with the current build, I switched over to Red October HQ with Additional Filters, and changed ONLY TS files to use EVR (left everything else at Auto, and added no additional filters other than the J River bitrate thing. The TS files play fine then, and everything else that I tested seems to as well.

I'm on a: Core 2 Quad 9550 @ 3.5GHz, AMD Radeon HD 6870, Catalyst 11.2, 4GB RAM. I am bitstreaming to a Denon AVR, which is then connected to the Panasonic. I haven't tried with PCM mode yet, but I will tonight and will report back.

mojave · « **Reply #8 on:** June 15, 2011, 09:06:21 pm »

Are your files being resized? I have a 1920 x 1200 monitor and madvr maxes out the GPU when trying to play a 1920x1080 file at that size. If I change the video card's output resolution to 1920 x 1080, then it plays fine.

glynor · « **Reply #9 on:** June 15, 2011, 09:08:28 pm »

Quote from: mojave on June 15, 2011, 09:06:21 pm

Are your files being resized? I have a 1920 x 1200 monitor and madvr maxes out the GPU when trying to play a 1920x1080 file at that size. If I change the video card's output resolution to 1920 x 1080, then it plays fine.

Well...

They are 720p files, and the display is 1080p, but it should be able to handle this or it isn't very useful. Especially with a 6870 (see my point about godlike machines above). And, the same thing applies to my MKV files often (though not that one movie I tried, that's a 1080p rip from BluRay), and they seem fine.

I can fire up GPU-Z and see what it is doing too, I suppose.

glynor · « **Reply #10 on:** June 15, 2011, 09:12:25 pm »

PS. You're distorting the image or running the monitor at a non-native resolution??? You'd be MUCH better off running that thing at its native resolution and using a lower-quality mode if you need to... I think I misunderstand what you're doing. Were you really displaying 1080p content at 1900x1200 on a 16:10 monitor? Stretched all silly looking?

glynor · « **Reply #11 on:** June 15, 2011, 09:51:19 pm »

Okay... Further testing done.

1. Bitstreaming on or off makes no difference.

2. My GPU load for MOST files (the ones that work), shown by GPU-Z hovers at or around 0% (sometimes bumps as high as 3%, but is usually at 0%). When I play back the TS files, and it does appear to be all of them, GPU-Z shows my GPU load rocketing to 78-82%. I haven't actually seen it peg at 100%, but it hovers high the whole time. I checked a few of my 1920x800 MKVs (BluRay rips, ~12.8mbps files), and the GPU load on those hovers around 30% and they look good.

3. The dropped frames are MUCH worse in full-screen Display/Detached View. If the display is not full screen, even if it is VERY big, I almost never see them. The GPU load stays high, but does drop consistently by a few percentage points as I make the window smaller. When the playback is happening in the Action Window, GPU load readings are around 35-40% and they play perfectly. Even in the Playing Now window, playback is fine. To see it happen in a non-fullscreen view, I had to use a detached display and scale the window as big as I could make it on my TV (and even then it was nowhere near as bad).

4. In addition to dropped frames, I'm getting tearing occasionally.

5. The dropped frames are weird... Almost regular. It looks like a file that has been badly processed, rather than randomly dropped frames. It isn't a slideshow, but it also isn't really watchable (it is not just that I'm being eagle-eyed, it is blatantly obvious). It almost seems like it is dropping every other frame or something, or maybe even it looks like some kind of crazy deinterlacing filter or something.

6. Speaking of which, I'm using Catalyst 11.3 (I can't go to the latest because there is a bug with Firefox 4), ~~and I have Deinterlacing set to Vector Adaptive with Pulldown Detection in the drivers.~~ (Doesn't appear relevant. I just tried it with it set to Automatic with Pulldown on, the default, and Auto with Pulldown Detection OFF, and it made no difference.)

Fabricio · « **Reply #12 on:** June 16, 2011, 06:14:22 am »

My PC not work verygood whit Red October Stardand. It stutter.

My system: is a Mobile Intel Celeron 540, 1866 MHz (14 x 133), 1 GB of Ram, SiS Mirage 3 Graphics (128 MB, GPU).

Without Red October, all ok.

Red October: Minimum requirements?

Fabricio, from Brazil.

mojave · « **Reply #13 on:** June 16, 2011, 01:19:11 pm »

Quote from: glynor on June 15, 2011, 09:12:25 pm

PS. You're distorting the image or running the monitor at a non-native resolution??? You'd be MUCH better off running that thing at its native resolution and using a lower-quality mode if you need to... I think I misunderstand what you're doing. Were you really displaying 1080p content at 1900x1200 on a 16:10 monitor? Stretched all silly looking?

No, the image isn't stretched. You just have thicker black bars at the top/bottom of your screen. When run at 1080p, my monitor correctly displays the image in the 1920x1080 space on the screen so it is still one to one pixel matching. At 1920x1200 the renderer (I assume) adds 60 lines of extra black pixels above and below 1080 to fill out to 1200. The actual movie is still the same size (it maintains the correct aspect ratio).

mojave · « **Reply #14 on:** June 16, 2011, 01:19:26 pm »

Edit: I've been having a lot of trouble posting this week. It hangs and says my post timed out. This time I ended up with a double post.

glynor · « **Reply #15 on:** June 16, 2011, 01:27:12 pm »

Quote from: mojave on June 16, 2011, 01:19:11 pm

No, the image isn't stretched. You just have thicker black bars at the top/bottom of your screen. When run at 1080p, my monitor correctly displays the image in the 1920x1080 space on the screen so it is still one to one pixel matching. At 1920x1200 the renderer (I assume) adds 60 lines of extra black pixels above and below 1080 to fill out to 1200. The actual movie is still the same size (it maintains the correct aspect ratio).

Okay.... That makes sense. Then it isn't really scaling the image, though. Just letterboxing, which is standard. The fact that you said "scaling" is what confused me.

No, I do NOT have that trouble. I can run 1080p clips on a 1900x1200 monitor, letterboxed, without issue even on a much lower-powered system in HQ mode. My issue is limited to specific media types (basically, those high-bitrate TS files).

Oh, and I didn't mention it before, but those TS files are ~16 mbps (the best quality the HD-PVR can do).

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #16 on:** June 16, 2011, 04:21:26 pm »

I have tried and tried, and since .110, everything involving madVR give slideshow rather than movie. I have tried posting in a couple of other threads with no luck. Could someone please help me to track down this problem, as it seems to be related to my setup (no others seems to have the same issue)?

My system is:
-AMD Phenom 8750 triple core
-8 GB RAM
-Win7 Pro Service pack 1
-nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
-usually h264 or VC1 rips in mkv containers with flac audio tracks

When I use LAV splitter og latest madVR in earlier MC builds (like .087), everything works fine.
In builds .110 and .111:

Red October standard - OK playback, CPU usage ~40%, GPU usage around 1%
Red October HQ: Massive frame drops and delays, CPU ~50%, GPU less than 10%
Red October standard with additional filters (source filter automatic, madVR and ffdshow audio decoder): Crashes sometimes when starting playback (black screen), or playback with massive frame drops. CPU ~50%, GPU less than 10%
Red October standard with additional filters (source filter automatic, renderer automatic and ffdshow audio decoder): Crashes sometimes when starting playback (black screen), or playback with massive frame drops. CPU ~50%, GPU less than 10%

I have tried Haali instead of LAVsplitter, no difference. Problem seems to be with madVR.
I have tried all possible madVR settings, and it makes no difference if I use demanding or nearest neighbour up/downscalers.

What could be the problem? My impatience?

vairulez · « **Reply #17 on:** June 17, 2011, 01:13:58 am »

this is my first post on the forum and I'm still trying media center.
I also have troubles with the 16.111, everything worked fine with 16.110 and october HQ, but since 111 my avi files do not work at all (black screen).
I guess the pb comes from madVR but I haven't found a way to change the renderer to EVR, so I guess i'll switch back to 110.

jmone · « **Reply #18 on:** June 17, 2011, 04:25:41 am »

Trumpetguy / vairulez,

I think there is a bug with one of the registry settings for the number of cores being used by FFDSHOW (it has been reported to the devs). If you are comfortable with regedit then find "Theadsnum" under a key like HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow\JR_DecodeVideo_PlaybackPCM and change it from "1" to say "4" and see if it helps (or wait till the bug is addressed).

FYI - The difference between RO Std and RO HQ is the use of madVR over EVR/VMR and the use of YADIF Deinterlacing in FFDSHOW and as such the power of your CPU really comes into play. For example, I have a Q6600 (passmark around 3,000) and while it is good on most media it is NOT powerful enough to handle my 1920x1080/50 or 60i x264 material in RO HQ mode, in which it stutters and drops frames. My choice will be to OC the Q6600, get a beter CPU, use RO Std, or tweak the filters.

In comparison, the AMD Phenom 9750 has a passmark of around 2,000 so you are going to struggle with a wider range of material.

Thanks
Nathan

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #19 on:** June 17, 2011, 04:33:12 am »

Quote from: jmone on June 17, 2011, 04:25:41 am

Trumpetguy / vairulez,

I think there is a bug with one of the registry settings for the number of cores being used by FFDSHOW (it has been reported to the devs). If you are comfortable with regedit then find "Theadsnum" under a key like HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow\JR_DecodeVideo_PlaybackPCM and change it from "1" to say "4" and see if it helps (or wait till the bug is addressed).

Thanks, I'll try the regedit thing tonight and report back. I am not too optimistic, though. I have been using the same ffdshow version for a long time without problems.

Quote from: jmone on June 17, 2011, 04:25:41 am

FYI - The difference between RO Std and RO HQ is the use of madVR over EVR/VMR and the use of YADIF Deinterlacing in FFDSHOW and as such the power of your CPU really comes into play. For example, I have a Q6600 (passmark around 3,000) and while it is good on most media it is NOT powerful enough to handle my 1920x1080/50 or 60i x264 material in RO HQ mode, in which it stutters and drops frames. My choice will be to OC the Q6600, get a beter CPU, use RO Std, or tweak the filters.

In comparison, the AMD Phenom 9750 has a passmark of around 2,000 so you are going to struggle with a wider range of material.

I have no problems using Yadif and madVR in earlier versions of MC, so I really think my system is powerful enough for the files I usually play. One example is a h264 rip of a bluray playing at 31kbps (25GB mkv). Works just fine in earlier versions, just not in .110 and .111.
There may be other material which I have not tried yet though.

jmone · « **Reply #20 on:** June 17, 2011, 06:09:50 am »

In that case I recon you will find that FFDSHOW's "Theadsnum" value for RO is set to 1 which is trying to do all the processing in 1 core. Your overall CPU performance is calculated by the average of all cores, so with one core you will be maxing it out and causing the drops. See how you go.

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #21 on:** June 17, 2011, 06:20:56 am »

Quote from: jmone on June 17, 2011, 06:09:50 am

In that case I recon you will find that FFDSHOW's "Theadsnum" value for RO is set to 1 which is trying to do all the processing in 1 core. Your overall CPU performance is calculated by the average of all cores, so with one core you will be maxing it out and causing the drops. See how you go.

I think you are right. Average CPU is 50%, but I observe that at least one CPU is usually at 90% and above while other(s) are low. Excited to try this tonight (which is some hours from now, I live in Norway).

jmone · « **Reply #22 on:** June 17, 2011, 07:37:22 am »

See how you go. FYI - I just gave my Q6600 a light 10% "dynamic" overclock, so it peaks at around 2.6/2.7 insread of stock 2.4ghz and it now plays everthing I have with RO HQ

at around 80% on all four cores.

vairulez · « **Reply #23 on:** June 17, 2011, 08:53:13 am »

Quote from: jmone on June 17, 2011, 04:25:41 am

Trumpetguy / vairulez,

I think there is a bug with one of the registry settings for the number of cores being used by FFDSHOW (it has been reported to the devs). If you are comfortable with regedit then find "Theadsnum" under a key like HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow\JR_DecodeVideo_PlaybackPCM and change it from "1" to say "4" and see if it helps (or wait till the bug is addressed).

i tried the Theadsnum setting at 4, still black screen and at 2 (my number of physical cores) and now media center crashes ...
Going back to red october normal fixes it.

glynor · « **Reply #24 on:** June 17, 2011, 09:28:02 am »

Quote from: jmone on June 17, 2011, 07:37:22 am

See how you go. FYI - I just gave my Q6600 a light 10% "dynamic" overclock, so it peaks at around 2.6/2.7 insread of stock 2.4ghz and it now plays everthing I have with RO HQ at around 80% on all four cores.

Come on, Nathan. You can do better than that. The Q6600 was a bad-ass overclocking chip. Nothing better until the Q9550 came out (which is what I'm running).

You should be able to hit 3.0-3.3 with EASE on that. Bump the base clock up, but turn down the memory divider to keep your RAM sticks running in spec. It'll go. You might need to bump up the CPU core voltage a tad, but not much. Everything else should be fine, so long as you have a 1/2-way decent air cooler.

UPDATE: For reference... My Q9550 boots to Windows fine at 4.0GHz (I do have a serious CPU cooler though). To hit that, I did have to bump the voltage more than I'd like for full-time use, and to get it 100% stable I would have had to go in and play with timings and esoteric settings that I don't fully understand, so I pulled back to 3.5 GHz. It's been rock-solid at that for a LONG time. The Q9550 and the Q6600 are very similar (basically the Q9550 is the newer version of the Q6600).

UPDATE AGAIN: One other thing to do, if you're having trouble, is manually set the major timings on your RAM to the settings recommended by the manufacturer. Sometimes with motherboards set on Auto, they are a bit aggressive on the timings, so it helps to force it to use the proper ones. You really only need to worry about the "big 4" timings, and you can leave everything else on auto. If you look your RAM up online using the part/model number, you should be able to find recommended timings that'll look like this: 4-4-4-12. That corresponds to the different memory timing settings (which will be labeled differently depending on your motherboard vendor, but are relatively easy to look up). Leave everything else at auto.

Also, the Q6600 specs allow for VID (cpu core) voltages up to 1.5V. Don't go above that. You shouldn't need to go above 1.35V to hit 3.0GHz, especially if you have a later stepping CPU (likely if you didn't buy it right when it came out). You might not have to touch the voltages at all, honestly. That thing just WANTED to be overclocked.

I'd target 3.0 GHz (so a base clock of 333 MHz with the 9x multiplier) and see how you can do.

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #25 on:** June 17, 2011, 12:28:20 pm »

I set the THREADSNUM in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow\JR_DecodeVideo_PlaybackPCM to 3 (three CPUs) and everything seems fine! GPU is up to 20% and CPU is acutally up to 60%, but with equal load on all the CPUs. I tried 2 and 4 also, both worked fine, with a bit different load-distributions on the CPUs it seems.

Conclusion: Playback with madVR is juuuuust fine. And it's Friday. Perfect combination. Thanks a lot jmone!

glynor · « **Reply #26 on:** June 17, 2011, 12:37:03 pm »

Quote from: Trumpetguy on June 17, 2011, 12:28:20 pm

I set the THREADSNUM in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow\JR_DecodeVideo_PlaybackPCM to 3 (three CPUs) and everything seems fine! GPU is up to 20% and CPU is acutally up to 60%, but with equal load on all the CPUs. I tried 2 and 4 also, both worked fine, with a bit different load-distributions on the CPUs it seems.

Conclusion: Playback with madVR is juuuuust fine. And it's Friday. Perfect combination. Thanks a lot jmone!

This is a good sign. This will be enabled tonight to see if it solves my TS playback problem.

MC should really detect the number of CPU cores and set this setting properly on install. Or, at least, expose a setting for it in Options -> Video.

jmone · « **Reply #27 on:** June 17, 2011, 04:08:18 pm »

Sorry to Hijack the thread....but....

Glynor - I am going to call on your knowledge re OC'ing the Q6600 as I'm a complete Noob on this (I'm not sure you are even speaking English I understand so little!). FYI an issue may be that I'm using a Shuttle SG45H7 as the rig for my HTPC which (wait for it) has a Passive CPU Cooler! My Aim is to bump the CPU up enough that everthing plays perfectly without any heat/stability/noise issues.

Last night (not knowing what I was doing), I went into the BIOS and changed
1) CPU Clock from 266 to 300Mhz and
2) Enabled the "CPU Clock Ration Unlock

Attached is a shot of all my options - I see now I had a "Dynamic OC" Option that was further down the page, should I turn it on instead of manually tweaking stuff?

Thanks
Nathan

**EDIT - I did just try turning off my other changes and turning on Dynamic Over Clocking - CPU DOC Set to 10% (the max): It seems to be a little less powerful than what I did before if that helps.

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #28 on:** June 17, 2011, 04:13:45 pm »

Bummer. A bit too hasty on the conclusion earlier. Another bd rip (18 to 32 Mbps), h264 mkv, maxes all three CPUs at 98-99% causing dropped frames. The strange thing is still that this is not a problem with earlier builds with otherwise same config (madVR 0.65), and where CPU load is below 60% and playback just fine.

Is the MC 16.111 implementation of the video renderer buggy or suboptimal?

jmone · « **Reply #29 on:** June 17, 2011, 04:17:31 pm »

It really depends what the format of the content is, eg if it is a Interlaced (say 60i) x264 these are much more demanding on the CPU with RO HQ settings and this is why I'm having to bump up my Q6600 (the YADIF deinterlacer being used in HQ mode eats CPU Cycles). What is the disc that is giving you issues now? Also JR have found and fixed the bug in an upcoming release so it may also help.

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #30 on:** June 17, 2011, 04:51:41 pm »

We are on to something here. Two h264 rips behave totally different (sorry, this is a bit new to me), both around 30Mbps:
1) The Troll Hunter (bizarre Norwegian movie) bluray rip: Maxing CPU
2) Tron bluray rip: Acceptable CPU (40 to 50%%), perfect playback

Then I swithced to Red October Standard with Additional filters, and "The Troll Hunter" plays at 70-80% CPU and smooth playback. Is the only difference no deinterlacing with Yadif? I do not see any difference in the picture quality, so I guess this movie is not interlaced material, right? (again, I do not have in-depth knowledge of these things)

BryanC · « **Reply #31 on:** June 17, 2011, 04:54:54 pm »

Quote from: Trumpetguy on June 17, 2011, 04:51:41 pm

We are on to something here. Two h264 rips behave totally different (sorry, this is a bit new to me), both around 30Mbps:
1) The Troll Hunter (bizarre Norwegian movie) bluray rip: Maxing CPU
2) Tron bluray rip: Acceptable CPU (40 to 50%%), perfect playback

Then I swithced to Red October Standard with Additional filters, and "The Troll Hunter" plays at 70-80% CPU and smooth playback. Is the only difference no deinterlacing with Yadif? I do not see any difference in the picture quality, so I guess this movie is not interlaced material, right? (again, I do not have in-depth knowledge of these things)

Do you have an nVidia card? If so, could you try using LAV CUVID? That way we could narrow it down to ffdshow...

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #32 on:** June 17, 2011, 05:27:17 pm »

Yes I have a GeForece GX 560Ti

Two solutions that works well (it seems)
1) LAV Cuvid 0.8 (and DirectVobSub for subs), CPU 40%
2) CoreAVC decoder (and DirectVobSub for subs), CPU 30% (I could have saved $13 by trying LAV CUVID first....)

smooth playback with both of them. And - using either of these together with directvobsub solved a problem with disappearing subs as well

Are there any particular issues with any of these? I noticed that CoreAVC cannot decode VC-1.

glynor · « **Reply #33 on:** June 17, 2011, 07:31:51 pm »

Quote from: glynor on June 17, 2011, 12:37:03 pm

This is a good sign. This will be enabled tonight to see if it solves my TS playback problem.

The new build (which purportedly fixes this) didn't fix my TS playback problem. I still have to revert back to EVR for them to work correctly.

jmone · « **Reply #34 on:** June 18, 2011, 02:02:45 am »

Quote from: Trumpetguy on June 17, 2011, 04:51:41 pm

Then I switched to Red October Standard with Additional filters, and "The Troll Hunter" plays at 70-80% CPU and smooth playback. Is the only difference no deinterlacing with Yadif? I do not see any difference in the picture quality, so I guess this movie is not interlaced material, right? (again, I do not have in-depth knowledge of these things)

If you don't see any difference on your setup, with your media then there is not need to use RO HQ mode at all, just use RO and be happy!

Also YADIF is the "highest quality" deinterlacer in FFDSHOW, but it is only used with Interlaced Material (it has no visual or CPU impact on Progressive Material).

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #35 on:** June 18, 2011, 09:56:53 am »

Quote from: jmone on June 18, 2011, 02:02:45 am

If you don't see any difference on your setup, with your media then there is not need to use RO HQ mode at all, just use RO and be happy!

Also YADIF is the "highest quality" deinterlacer in FFDSHOW, but it is only used with Interlaced Material (it has no visual or CPU impact on Progressive Material).

If being rational and want to make life simple for myself - I agree. But that is not why I replaced my standalone bluray player and receiver with MC and a rack of power amplifiers... My point is that I want to know what is going on, and to specify once more:
In .87 I can easily run ffdshow with yadif deinterlacer, madvr and LAVsplitter in my own DirectShow setup. In .110/.111 with RO HQ this is not the case any longer. That is why I wonder what is the config difference.

jmone · « **Reply #36 on:** June 18, 2011, 04:19:33 pm »

Quote from: Trumpetguy on June 18, 2011, 09:56:53 am

If being rational and want to make life simple for myself - I agree.

Quote

But that is not why I replaced my standalone bluray player and receiver with MC and a rack of power amplifiers... My point is that I want to know what is going on, and to specify once more:
In .87 I can easily run ffdshow with yadif deinterlacer, madvr and LAVsplitter in my own DirectShow setup. In .110/.111 with RO HQ this is not the case any longer. That is why I wonder what is the config difference.

Install and configure (if you have not already) ffdshow, madvr, LAVSplitter an run in RO HQ with Additional Filters and select these three. How does it play? You can now also go into the FFDSHOW config and compare the Default profile (the one presumably you are using) and the settings being used for JR_DecodeVideo_PlaybackPCM . The next thing to try is if that all looks OK to you is the Version of FFDSHOW being used by MC. Take the files from you "good" FFDSHOW install and copy them over those in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 16\Plugins for FFDSHOW, then test. Also keep an eye on THREADSNUM in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow\JR_DecodeVideo_PlaybackPCM = 3 as at one point it defaulted to 1 on me again (this bug has now been verified and fixed by JR).

Let us know how you go as if you find a better setting/version etc then we should roll it into RO.

Thanks
Nathan

PS - I did the manual FFDSHOW versions change to test and resolve a crash issue I was having.
PSS - Glynor has been helping me OC my Q6600 but while I can bump the Q6000 to 3ghz and it will then "just" play the x264 1920x1080/50i material in RP HQ mode it is not very stable. I'll give it another go today but it may be a CPU Upgrade for me yet!

jmone · « **Reply #37 on:** June 18, 2011, 06:58:58 pm »

I'm guessing but I bet you find that under YADIF "Double Frame Rate" being checked with RO HQ is ON and it is OFF with your own FFDSHOW Install.

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #38 on:** June 19, 2011, 01:06:47 am »

Thanks a lot for taking the time to spoon-feed me

I will try this as soon as I can and report back.
And - I am also looking at a CPU upgrade. My motherboard will accept a AMD Phenom II X6 3.3GHz.

jmone · « **Reply #39 on:** June 19, 2011, 01:34:51 am »

It can not hurt - I'm looking at an upgrade to an i7 HTPC rig.... Even with Glynors help on OCing my Q6600 I think it is just asking too much. I really have to push it to get to a point where my interlaced HD x264 material will not to drop frames under RO HQ (madVR + yadif/double frame rate), but it is just not stable and temp pass the thermal limit (95C+). I tried a mild 10% OC going but I just got a OS crash and even then it is still not enough grunt as I can watch all four cores hit 100%! On my std i7 920 box the 8 threads hang around to up to 80% and while it plays smoothly in Exclusive mode, I will still drop frames in Windowed Mode.... so I think an upgrade to the gruntiest Phenom II X6 will be a good one!

The Mastermind · « **Reply #40 on:** June 19, 2011, 05:50:33 am »

ROHQ has jerky playback when I'm watching TV. Any suggestions? Is it a framerate issue caused by my Australian location?

All other formats work fine, including high quality 1080p mt2s and 1080i MKV.

jmone · « **Reply #41 on:** June 19, 2011, 06:00:32 am »

Try with Timeshifting ON (this then buffers the stream to a file and plays the file). If you still have issues what happens if after playing for a bit you seek back a bit then play from there?

glynor · « **Reply #42 on:** June 19, 2011, 10:05:42 am »

I don't know how much you have to spend, Nathan... But, one way to accomplish your upgrade would be:

Intel Core i5-2400 (Sandy Bridge, quad core, 3.1GHz, locked multiplier) - $189 US

OR, Intel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge, quad core, 3.3GHz, unlocked multiplier, better graphics) - $220 US

OR, if you want, Intel Core i7-2600K (Sandy Bridge, quad core, 3.8GHz, unlocked multiplier, better graphics, hyperthreading) - $315 US

ASUS P8H67-M Pro (Intel H67 chipset, HDMI and DVI out, USB3/SATA6, MicroATX size) - $120 US

SilverStone GD05B HTPC Case - $100 US

Then, you should be able to reuse the Power Supply, hard drives, and video card out of your existing rig (the motherboard also does use on-board Sandy Bridge graphics, but if you want something better, the board does have a fully functioning PCIe 2.0 x16 slot).

Those are just examples, of course. There are, of course, a range of different MicroATX motherboards and cases available. That SilverStone is nice though. For SandyBridge motherboards, I'd look at ASUS right now, as they have the best BIOS setup currently.

The main difference between the quad-core i5s and quad-core i7s is Hyperthreading (the i7s show as 8 virtual cores). The new version of hyperthreading does work better than the old Pentium 4 version, but it is still a mixed bag. Often you gain a few percent in average workloads. Some workloads scale well (are threaded poorly) and gain more. Some workloads (usually ones that are heavily threaded) perform badly with hyperthreading and it actually works against you. The i7s also have a bit more cache, but this has been shown to have a minimal impact in everyday use. If it were me? I'd get the i5-2500K no question. The Core i5-2500K has an unlocked multiplier (that's for overclocking, instead of raising the base clock, which is hard on sandy bridge, you can just raise the multiplier, which is easy).

The other thing to look at with Sandy Bridge chips is the type of graphics logic included. There are two: the "2000" model, and the "3000" model. The i5-2500K I linked above, and the i7s, have the 3000 model. This doesn't matter AT ALL if you'll be using discreet graphics anyway. However, if you think you might want to use the onboard graphics, the 3000 model is MUCH better, but still pretty crappy by discreet standards.

Also, I forgot to include RAM above. You'll need some DDR3 sticks. Don't buy fancy ones.

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #43 on:** June 19, 2011, 02:23:40 pm »

Quote from: jmone on June 18, 2011, 06:58:58 pm

I'm guessing but I bet you find that under YADIF "Double Frame Rate" being checked with RO HQ is ON and it is OFF with your own FFDSHOW Install.

I have found the difference between .086 and .0110/.111 configs. In .086 I had left decoder in auto, and MC was using Microsoft DTV-DVD decoder. When I replaced this with ffdshow (my Default was configured same as JR-DecodVideo_PlaybackPCM, including doubling of framerate in yadif), I got the same jerky playback also in this older MC build. The effect is thus reproducable, the deinterlacer is causing my problems.
This is what happens when comparing apples and oranges - confusion.

So - with my aging Phenom X3 I will need to use LAV CUVID or CoreAVC decoders. Any suggestions on which deinterlacing algorithm to be preferred in LAV CUVID (None (Weave), Bob, Adaptive) or CoreAVC (None (Weave), Single Field, Bob, Hardware and with or without Aggressive setting)?

I really appreciate the help and efforts from you guys! And now I even have a fit for purpose media center!

jmone · « **Reply #44 on:** June 19, 2011, 04:06:44 pm »

Trumpetguy --> Adaptaive

Glynor --> thanks for the info (FYI the reason for the Shuttle is that it's front profile fits exactly into the space I have). If I go this route I'm looking at the Corei7-2600K (A$320), Shuttle SH67H3 (A$320), and 4GB DDR3 (under $100). As suggested by SamuriHL/yesgrey since my issue is the lack of horsepower for deinterlacing HD content, a change from my ATI to a nVidia (450) and the use of LAV CUVID may be a worthwhile try at $100 over the $750 the i7-2600K rig would cost.....

Trumpetguy · « **Reply #45 on:** June 19, 2011, 04:44:59 pm »

Thanks jmone, and I am sorry for the extra work because of me being asleep when comparing versions. On the bright side - there may be others that have done something similar...

jmone · « **Reply #46 on:** June 19, 2011, 05:08:44 pm »

No Probs - it was always going to me YADIF+Double Frame rate - it eats cycles.

The Mastermind · « **Reply #47 on:** June 20, 2011, 03:53:29 am »

Quote from: jmone on June 19, 2011, 06:00:32 am

Try with Timeshifting ON (this then buffers the stream to a file and plays the file). If you still have issues what happens if after playing for a bit you seek back a bit then play from there?

Tried it, but it didn't seem to fix the problem. It may have reduced it but I don't feel absolutely certain about that.

jmone · « **Reply #48 on:** June 20, 2011, 04:01:47 am »

Try RO Std to see if the limit is your CPU/GPU (what is your HW config?)

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