Topic: Slow-downs - BD playback [RO STD issues on underpowered hardware] (Read 12703 times)

ldoodle · « **on:** January 31, 2014, 02:23:30 pm »

DVDs are fine, but Blu's seem to show what I can only describe as panning slow downs - when the camera moves fast. What's the correct terminology?

And how do I fix it?

CPU is AMD 250 X2 and GPU is AMD 5450HD.

Hendrik · « **Reply #1 on:** January 31, 2014, 02:30:59 pm »

Go to the Video settings in MC, and select "Red October Standard".
Additionally, enabling "Hardware video acceleration" on the same options page can help, if your system is otherwise not fast enough to play it.

JimH · « **Reply #2 on:** January 31, 2014, 02:33:51 pm »

Are the files on a local drive?

ldoodle · « **Reply #3 on:** January 31, 2014, 04:19:33 pm »

Already on RO Std and enable hardware acceleration is on.

Jim, media is on a (fast) NAS. If you understand raid on ZFS systems, it's 2x 6 drive RAID-Z2's, striped...!

ldoodle · « **Reply #4 on:** January 31, 2014, 04:22:35 pm »

Is it refresh rates? I don't have the Display Settings option ticked, and reading this (http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Video_Playback_Options#Display_Settings) I can't do the recommendations (I only have 25, 29 and 30 FPS for 1920x1080x32).

My desktop default is 720p/60Hz

JimH · « **Reply #5 on:** January 31, 2014, 04:25:19 pm »

Try hardware acceleration off.

Try playing from a local drive.

ldoodle · « **Reply #6 on:** January 31, 2014, 04:29:26 pm »

Have tried HA off. I turned it on to see if would improve.

Will try from a local drive tomorrow, although my NAS is cabled, not WiFi.

2 BD films I've watched recently are Jack Reacher and Looper. Exactly the same 'problem' on both.

Zhillsguy · « **Reply #7 on:** January 31, 2014, 09:41:59 pm »

Make sure your video drivers are up to date from AMD's website.
If you are running Vista or Win7 make sure an Aero Desktop Theme is enabled.

jmone · « **Reply #8 on:** January 31, 2014, 09:55:27 pm »

Check your CPU utilisation in Task Mgr when playing these BD and see if it is peaking over 90%

glynor · « **Reply #9 on:** January 31, 2014, 10:53:56 pm »

That X2 isn't the zippiest CPU on the block. It was a decidedly low-end part with zero MB of L3 cache (and that AMD architecture really needed its L3 cache). It also suffers from the notorious AMD C1E bug, so hopefully your motherboard manufacturer fixed support for that in the BIOS (or you should disable Cool-N-Quiet in your BIOS).

But, we're talking about a chip that is the rough equal of an old Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 (not even quite that good in most tests). That's one of those "Pentium" branded low-end chips from the Core 2 Duo era. So, it would be somewhere south of performance of a 2.8GHz or so Core2Duo.

As I said, I've long-since pulled my old Core2Quad Q9550 out of service, but it couldn't quite handle full quality BluRay rips in ROHQ back then. The situation is different now, so it may not compare, but the Q9550 (which I also had overclocked to high-heaven) was a substantially more powerful CPU than that X2. I'd wouldn't be surprised if that CPU just can't handle full quality BluRay decode in software without working hardware acceleration, perhaps even in ROST. That is from an era where low-end chips just couldn't quite push 1080p playback. The behavior (again, in ROHQ on the Q9550) was much as you described. In "slow" scenes (dialog with not much happening on screen, etc) it would play fine. But if stuff started zipping around the screen like an action sequence, it would drop frames and stutter with reckless abandon. It was unwatchable.

Still, you also mentioned slow pans. These are also difficult to compress, so are a pain point with underperforming hardware. However, it can also indicate you might be seeing the effects of refresh rate judder. In fact, that was my initial instinct, but then I read your specs and...

I'm not so sure that can do ROST. Especially if data rates from disk are limited, perhaps. But, it could be judder, or something broken.

glynor · « **Reply #10 on:** January 31, 2014, 11:10:34 pm »

I should add, if you didn't see it...

AMD GPU acceleration has been a bit flaky lately.

Make sure you have the latest build, and see if the Hardware Acceleration works or not.

ldoodle · « **Reply #11 on:** February 01, 2014, 10:16:23 am »

Watching Looper again now as a test (not in full screen) with the Performance tab from Task Manager open -

CPU - sits around 30% but has spiked upto about 60%
Memory - 1.0/4.0 (25%)
Disk 0 (C:) - 0% (media on NAS)
Ethernet - S: 0.5 R: sits around 30% but has spiked up to 50-60%

I was under the impression the 5450 could more than comfortably handle Blu-ray content without needing a beefy CPU. That said the 6450 is only about £30 in my region - would this card be worth it? I want one with HD audio bitstreaming (hence my choice of the 5450). I've actually been thinking about this thing in general as might introduce some light gaming on my HTPC.

I've actually been looking at getting a Kaveri based motherboard/APU platform - any experiences?

jmone · « **Reply #12 on:** February 01, 2014, 11:26:31 pm »

Try turning off bitstreaming (let JR decode the audio) to see if it is an Audio/Video sync issue.

6233638 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 02, 2014, 01:29:05 am »

Quote from: ldoodle on January 31, 2014, 04:22:35 pm

I only have 25, 29 and 30 FPS for 1920x1080x32

This may be causing you problems - 25/29/30Hz are all interlaced outputs. (1080i, not 1080p)

What is your display? It sounds like it's a 720p native screen, and you could likely be seeing cadence detection errors from the interlaced output.

Your output needs to be 24/50/60Hz for it to be progressive.

I would also suggest that you try ROHQ, but set it to the lowest quality output - Bilinear scaling for all settings, and enable all the "trade quality for performance options - check the guide linked at the bottom of my post for how to do this.

The reason I'm suggesting this, is that ROHQ will let you press CTRL+J to view stats on whether you're seeing dropped or repeated frames during playback, which is an indicator of your hardware possibly not being up to the task.

ldoodle · « **Reply #14 on:** February 02, 2014, 02:28:25 am »

My display is a 1080i Panasonic TH-42PH9. Windows resolution is set to 720p ad 1080i makes everything too small!

If I was to upgrade the GPU, and AMD HA is flaky, what's NVIDIA's equivalent of the Radeon HD6450?

6233638 · « **Reply #15 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:17:55 am »

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 02:28:25 am

My display is a 1080i Panasonic TH-42PH9. Windows resolution is set to 720p ad 1080i makes everything too small!

There is no such thing as a "1080i display". (OK, technically HD CRTs and ALiS plasmas—but neither of those apply here)
You have a 1024x768 native plasma display. You should not be sending it 1080i, and ideally, you would be sending it a 1:1 mapped 1024x768 signal with video playback—though you will have to override the aspect ratio as that's a 16:9 display.
This is found under Tools → Options → Video → Advanced → Aspect Ratio Correction: 1.33 (4:3) output to 1.78 (16:9)

While I am not certain, I think that some of the professional Panasonic displays may be able to sync to 72Hz for judder-free film playback if you have the right input board and set up a custom output. (I have no idea how to do this with AMD cards—it's built into the Nvidia drivers)

720p is probably best on the desktop still, as I don't believe Windows supports aspect ratio correction.

ldoodle · « **Reply #16 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:26:08 am »

Yeah what I meant is that it supports upto 1080i resolution, not 1080p.

6233638 · « **Reply #17 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:26:56 am »

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 03:26:08 am

Yeah what I meant is that it supports upto 1080i resolution, not 1080p.

Do you still have this problem if you are outputting 1024x768 rather than 1080i? (1920x1080x32 @ 25/29/30)

ldoodle · « **Reply #18 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:32:30 am »

Going to try now. Am I setting this in the Display Settings section?

ldoodle · « **Reply #19 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:50:12 am »

I can't be 100% sure, but it does seem to be a bit better when set to 1024x768, but it's still there.

Yep - still there. Watching Jack Reacher again as a test. If I use ROHQ everything is unwatchable, so I guess the 5450 is not upto the job?

Hendrik · « **Reply #20 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:54:19 am »

Default ROHQ settings in MC require a decent GPU, the 5450 can't do that.
With that GPU/CPU combination the best setup is probably RO Standard with Hardware accelerated video decoding on.

6233638 · « **Reply #21 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:58:47 am »

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 03:50:12 am

Yep - still there. Watching Jack Reacher again as a test. If I use ROHQ everything is unwatchable, so I guess the 5450 is not upto the job?

As I said, be sure to set everything to the lowest quality madVR settings, as your system will not be able to handle the defaults.

It might be able to handle madVR at the lowest settings though, and that includes information which would be useful in troubleshooting your problem. (whether frames are being dropped/repeated, or if it's something else causing the slowdown)

ldoodle · « **Reply #22 on:** February 02, 2014, 04:07:52 am »

ROHQ dropped/delayed frames attached.

Can you only get these stats in ROHQ?

ldoodle · « **Reply #23 on:** February 02, 2014, 04:11:02 am »

How do I set MadVR to the lowest settings?

ldoodle · « **Reply #24 on:** February 02, 2014, 04:30:10 am »

Thinking about (watching a DVD now) surely if it's only a problem with Blu's, it must be performance related, no?

If it was something more sinister, it would show in everything. The problems I have are a lesser version of what I get with ROHQ (dropped and/or delayed frames).

So if was to upgrade the GPU, what would be recommended? I'd prefer passive ones for noise reasons which I guess rules out ROHQ anyway?

6233638 · « **Reply #25 on:** February 02, 2014, 04:40:02 am »

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 04:11:02 am

How do I set MadVR to the lowest settings?

When a video is playing (or paused) right-click the image and select DirectShow Filters → madVR

Set all the scaling options to Bilinear, and enable all the "Trade quality for performance" options.
There are full details of all the madVR settings in the guide linked at the bottom of my post.

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 04:30:10 am

If it was something more sinister, it would show in everything. The problems I have are a lesser version of what I get with ROHQ (dropped and/or delayed frames).

It's possible that you're simply seeing judder from outputting at 60Hz. (film is 24fps)

If your display will sync at 72Hz (24x3) it should eliminate the judder.
But without proper stats, it's difficult to say if what you're seeing is judder or simply framerate drops.

Hopefully at the lowest quality settings you will be able to have smooth playback without dropped frames (note: there may be a small number of dropped frames at the beginning of playback, which can be reset with CTRL+R - what you don't want is a constantly increasing number of dropped frames)

While ROHQ may require a more powerful GPU, ROSTD should not.

Reuben.F · « **Reply #26 on:** February 02, 2014, 05:41:19 am »

If you want to Play blu-ray on a low power system I can fully recommend the broadcom crystal hd mini pcie card, this tiny card does a great job with everything i have tried, dvd and Blu-ray rips and also iTunes video.

My cpu is a 35w Pentium G2100T 2.6ghz, 1gb of memory running win 7.

6233638 · « **Reply #27 on:** February 02, 2014, 07:14:01 am »

Quote from: Reuben.F on February 02, 2014, 05:41:19 am

If you want to Play blu-ray on a low power system I can fully recommend the broadcom crystal hd mini pcie card, this tiny card does a great job with everything i have tried, dvd and Blu-ray rips and also iTunes video.

It doesn't seem like this is a decoding problem, as the decoder queue is at 9-12/12.

ldoodle · « **Reply #28 on:** February 02, 2014, 07:41:18 am »

Quote from: 6233638 on February 02, 2014, 04:40:02 am

When a video is playing (or paused) right-click the image and select DirectShow Filters → madVR

Set all the scaling options to Bilinear, and enable all the "Trade quality for performance" options.
There are full details of all the madVR settings in the guide linked at the bottom of my post.

I'm going to keep an eye on it, but for now: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Started Jack Reacher again on ROHQ and had a zillion dropped/delayed frames. Set madVR to how you said and since hitting reply (and pressing Ctrl+R to reset the bad frame counters) they're both at a big fat zero.

Except my PC has just gone on to screen saver which caused both dropped and delayed frames - is that normal?

And finally, can I tweak madVR (step it back up again) to improve things or is how it is now still better than ROSTD?

ldoodle · « **Reply #29 on:** February 02, 2014, 07:45:02 am »

To confirm, I have these settings:

Bitstreaming on
HDMI audio WASAPI
VideoClock off
HA on
ROHQ (with custom madVR settings)
Aspect ratio correction: 1.33 to 1.78
Windows desktop at 1024x768 (which I think is easier to read than 720p, so display settings in MC is unticked (as I assume it uses whatever the desktop resolution is set to?

Hendrik · « **Reply #30 on:** February 02, 2014, 07:46:10 am »

If ROHQ in lowest settings works, and RO Standard did not, I might suspect some post-processing options in the ATI/AMD Catalyst Control Panel are active, and messing with the video.

We should really get a guide up how to disable these video processing options on various GPUs, since they like to mess with many people. Still hate AMD and Intel for turning them on by default.

JimH · « **Reply #31 on:** February 02, 2014, 07:56:23 am »

Could we offer to turn them off on the first install?

Hendrik · « **Reply #32 on:** February 02, 2014, 08:47:54 am »

Maybe. Need to research a bit on the issue. Also got some other ideas to improve the setup experience of video for the future.

6233638 · « **Reply #33 on:** February 02, 2014, 01:09:03 pm »

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 07:41:18 am

I'm going to keep an eye on it, but for now: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

You're welcome. Hopefully that has sorted it then.

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 07:41:18 am

Except my PC has just gone on to screen saver which caused both dropped and delayed frames - is that normal?

It's not normal for the screensaver to show up if the video was playing. (rather than paused)
There is a "Disable display from turning off" option under Tools > Options > Audio which might fix this.

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 07:41:18 am

And finally, can I tweak madVR (step it back up again) to improve things or is how it is now still better than ROSTD?

As long as playback is smooth and the queues are full, you should be able to gradually start turning things back on in the "trade quality for performance" options, to the point at which the queues stop being close to full.
You may also be able to turn up the scaling quality if playback is still smooth with those options disabled.

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 07:45:02 am

Bitstreaming on
HDMI audio WASAPI
VideoClock off

Bitstreaming rather than using VideoClock should use less resources, but may introduce dropped/repeated frames during playback. (the madVR OSD will give you an estimate of how frequently it might happen)

Quote from: ldoodle on February 02, 2014, 07:45:02 am

Windows desktop at 1024x768 (which I think is easier to read than 720p, so display settings in MC is unticked (as I assume it uses whatever the desktop resolution is set to?

Yes, it should use the desktop resolution if you aren't using the display mode switcher.
The madVR OSD will list this as "target rectangle" if you're fullscreen. In your previous screenshot, it's 0, 0, 1024, 768. (technically it's just the output size of the video - but if you're fullscreen that should match your resolution)

6233638 · « **Reply #34 on:** February 02, 2014, 01:29:10 pm »

Thinking about it some more, it might easiest to reset the madVR settings to their defaults rather than enabling options one-by-one. I think some of the newer "trade quality for performance" options are actually enabled by default, because they don't affect image quality much (if at all) but may introduce a big performance hit on some hardware.

To do this, run:
"%APPDATA%\J River\Media Center 19\Plugins\madvr\restore default settings.bat"

You will probably still have to turn down the scaler settings, but it might save you some time.
If playback is smooth, you might be able to increase the quality, if it is not, enable the "trade quality…" options one at a time, working from the top down.

ldoodle · « **Reply #35 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:03:20 pm »

Quote from: JimH on February 02, 2014, 07:56:23 am

Could we offer to turn them off on the first install?

Would it be better to try and work out what GPU is installed and configure MC/madVR to suit. I.e. we now know that for the ATI 5450 (mine is the 512MB version by the way), ROHQ on low settings in madVR is better than ROSTD.

Maybe you could detect the installed GPU and then make available different options based on hardware (as in only show ones that will work). If less than xxx only show ROSTD and if more than xxx only show ROHQ, but with different levels:

ROHQ Low Quality
ROHQ Medium Quality
ROHQ High Quality
ROHQ Super High Quality

To save manual configuration. It's only because I'm a tinkerer that I've persisted here, whereas countelss others would have moved on to other software.

The fact that ROHQ can be tweaked and more importantly show stats, would it make sense to completely remove ROSTD? The use can at least then see what's happening when using the various ROHQ quality levels and modify to suit..

Hendrik · « **Reply #36 on:** February 02, 2014, 03:10:03 pm »

A database of GPUs to automatically select a performance profile is probably a bit too much (but who knows!), but I do hope we can provide better profiles in the future, so you don't have to go into the madVR configuration to select a ROHQ "Low" profile.

In theory RO STD should always just work, because it just lets the GPU handle all that, in practice however it can get screwed up by settings in the Graphics Control Panel in the OS, which is a really sad state for the vendors of the graphics card to produce such broken default settings.

If you're feeling adventurous, go into the "AMD Catalyst Control Center" (probably in the start menu somewhere), find the "Video" branch, and turn off all the settings in the various sub-menus of the Video branch (primarily in "Color" and "Quality"). Except for "Deinterlacing" in the Quality part, leave that on "Use automatic setting".
Then try RO STD again. If I'm right, it should work better now.

I'm also looking to expand my range of available test systems, may get a 5450 for a couple of bucks to test a real low-end card, and see if I can reproduce your troubles and do some magic to make it better.

ldoodle · « **Reply #37 on:** February 03, 2014, 04:21:42 am »

I'll give it a go tonight Hendrik and report back.

I came across this yesterday - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4263/amds-radeon-hd-6450-uvd3-meets-htpc/3 - which states

"the 6450 is now able to run all of AMD’s post-processing features at full speed—that is they all work with Enforce Smooth Video Playback enabled and without dropping any frames in the process".

which is saying the 5450 cannot, which is maybe the problem (for me). From recollection, 'Enforce Smooth Video Playback' is turned on by default - I'll check.

ldoodle · « **Reply #38 on:** February 03, 2014, 08:52:43 am »

Quote from: 6233638 on February 02, 2014, 01:09:03 pm

It's not normal for the screensaver to show up if the video was playing. (rather than paused)
There is a "Disable display from turning off" option under Tools > Options > Audio which might fix this.

I have that set already, but I think it was because I had it in window-mode so I could monitor CPU usage at the time, rather than full-screen.

There is a setting for Theater View that disables the screen saver. Maybe that needs to be changed so when any view is playing any media (video, audio, images etc.), it disables the screen saver. Not just when in Theater View.

kstuart · « **Reply #39 on:** February 03, 2014, 01:06:21 pm »

Just FYI:

I'm using the 240 X2 and it will decode blu-ray just fine without the GPU, so it should also be fine with your 250 X2, and so you should turn off hardware acceleration in order to take load away from the GPU.

However, I have a native 1080p display, so MC19 does not have to downscale for blu-ray. But, when you play a blu-ray on your 768p display, it is always downscaling using the GPU.

That is why lowering the quality settings on madVR was working for you, and it does indicate that the 5450 is marginal, especially if your display is not 1080p.

ldoodle · « **Reply #40 on:** February 28, 2014, 01:28:17 pm »

Quote from: Hendrik on February 02, 2014, 07:46:10 am

If ROHQ in lowest settings works, and RO Standard did not, I might suspect some post-processing options in the ATI/AMD Catalyst Control Panel are active, and messing with the video.

We should really get a guide up how to disable these video processing options on various GPUs, since they like to mess with many people. Still hate AMD and Intel for turning them on by default.

Having just 'upgraded' (inherited) a 6450, I'd like to give it go. Done a clean install of 8.1 and MC 117 so no conflicts with previous GPU.

What exactly am I disabling in the Catalyst Control Center?

Thanks

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Author Topic: Slow-downs - BD playback [RO STD issues on underpowered hardware] (Read 12703 times)