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[CountryBumkin]

I was trying to watch a ripped BD (m2ts format) on my bedroom set and the picture and sound was stuttering horribly. I had something like 2,700 dropped frames in the first few minutes. I normally have this computer set up to run RO+HQ with LAV CUVID. The computer is a ASrock H67 with intel i3-2100 and an nVidia GT440 (DDR5). This always works very good at RO=HQ.

Next I switched to RO (standard). I tried a different BD movie - but same results. Then I tried DVD movie (EVR) which played without stutter but picture was blocky and not like usual perfect MC picture. Then I played the same movie on my Family Room set and it played perfectly. I opened Task Manager>Performance Monitor while movie was playing (this means switching from Exclusive to Windowed mode). My CPU was round 19-20%, Network load was under 1%, and memory used was well under my available (4GB). What else should I check to help narrow this down?

Something was going wrong last night. One factor to consider is that I had to setup this computer as a "stand-alone" using its own MC Library (becasue my TV Tuner won't record on a Client computer in MC). I hope to switch back to server-client once the TV Tuner issue is fixed. Maybe something got screwed up in the configuration - perhaps with Importing or file sharing. Perviously I was setup on this computer as a client to my Server computer. Although most of the MC settigns are the same with either setup - and I am still streaming the movie over a wired network with either setup.

[Matt]

You might start with a reboot.

[CountryBumkin]

I'll try again when I get home - maybe problem just a fluke.

Funny thing is - I only have issues when wife is watching. She says I spend too much time on this stuff. Then I tell her it's a hobby and come look at how great HTPC is and what this thing can do. That's when soemthing goes wrong. If she's not looking the system works flawlessly.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Funny thing is - I only have issues when wife is watching. She says I spend too much time on this stuff. Then I tell her it's a hobby and come look at how great HTPC is and what this thing can do. That's when soemthing goes wrong. If she's not looking the system works flawlessly.

LOL! This exactly happened to me a few weeks ago. I had everything tuned up, with as little frame drops in MadVR as I could possibly get, everything working perfectly, UNTIL I sat down with the other half to watch a movie. Lo and behold, mega stuttering as soon as the movie starts to get going! Sometimes so much stuttering that MadVR or MC completely crashed needing a task manager sortout! Boy was I in trouble!

I was a bit lost as to the cause at first, and why it would *only* happen with the other half watching too. I figured out that if I twiddled the mouse as soon as it started to stutter that it would be OK for a while again, but start to stutter badly a while later again. I figured it out to be the Norton antivirus 'idle time' stuff. Now why it thinks it is idle time when a movie is playing and even the screensaver isn't coming on I do not know. It seems it senses its own interrupts rather than the windows ones. It is just a pain in the a$$.

I now have the idle time delay on max ( only 1/2 hour unfortunately). But turn on 'silent mode' whenever I watch a movie. That seems to have sorted it.

As to why it only happened with the other half watching? Well, I figured out that I fiddle so much with the settings and the mouse when I'm watching stuff on my own that the idle time stuff never kicked in! A sure way to prevent this would be for Matt to program in an inert key press into the keyboard buffer (eg. Alt or Shift) every 9.5 minutes whilst playing a movie! I don't think it will happen somehow!

Sorry, I seem to have droned on a while. Hope you figure out why it's happening for you and your wife!

Cheers,

SBR

Edit: note that the system resource use was minimal in task manager when it stuttered, so it wasn't a CPU problem. I reckon that the Norton stuff just had so much random disc access that it caused the movie to stutter.

Edit2: fixed idle time problems with Norton by adding Media Center 16.exe to the list of programs in the Norton settings for disabling idle time

[lhwidget]

I know this sounds reckless, but I haven't run any anti virus software on any of my PCs for two years now.

I use Malwarebytes to scan my systems late at night while I'm sleeping.  I don't know if any other AV programs can be installed as only a scanner,  It seems they all want to load real time scanning programs, and I never found one that didn't slow my PC noticeably during normal use.

For dedicated HTPCs that aren't used for browsing the web or email, this really isn't much of an issue. 

I use Windows Home Server & have viable system images of all of my PCs backed up.  It only takes 20 minutes to recover an infected PC to its state the night before.  (This is my primary defense if I loose a PC to a virus attack.)

I keep all of my data on my server.  My PCs operate like everyone else's, they just save my data files to a mapped drive on the server (no exceptions).

For my main PC, well, I guess I'm just careful, in two years, I've only been infected once.  I jacked around for a couple of hours trying to save it, then restored the back-up image and I really couldn't tell something bad had happened.  WHS's back-up system works that well.

[mbagge]

I do not know if it will help you, but I will share my similar experience.

I did some experimenting with the FPS tag (Frames Per Second) and the settings in Video, Display Settings.
Filling in this tag with values from the mediainfo in the video file and selecting native screen resolutions in Display Setting, I was able to avoid having MC to transcode. My PC did not have the power to do that on the fly.

I now can play DVDs and BDs without stuttering and lost frames to my and the wife's great delight.

[CountryBumkin]

I think you are right on target. The FPS setting for the movie was wrong. I'm surprised this had any effect, but I chaged it to 23.97 and it seems to have cleared up the stuttering. i also rebooted so I can't say for sure which one actually fixed the problem, but I think it was the FPS since it was set at 60 and none of my other BD movies are at 60.