PC lagging with 1080p video

L

l3ender

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jan 1, 2007
Messages
5,337
I have a media PC with the following specs:

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H
AMD Athlon X2 4850e
2GB RAM

The motherboard is supposed to play 1080p out. When I play 1080p, however, sometimes the framerate isn't the best. It's not on all movies and it's not horrible. However, I'm wondering what in my system is bottlenecking the rest. Is it the video on the motherboard (and in that case I could pick up a cheap graphics card) or the CPU?

If you need more information about the build, please let me know. Thanks.
 
You left out the 2 most important factors.

1. What type of video? (codec and container)

2. What player?
 
criccio said:
1. What type of video? (codec and container)
Click to expand...

Container doesn't matter. What matters is the the decoder, the format and the bitrate (but if you want to be technical, in the case of, say, H.264, whether CABAC was used or not, but who wants to be that technical?).
 
Snowknight26 said:
Container doesn't matter. What matters is the the decoder, the format and the bitrate (but if you want to be technical, in the case of, say, H.264, whether CABAC was used or not, but who wants to be that technical?).
Click to expand...

Clearly you do... :p
 
Ahh, it's been too long since I've been on this forum. I forget simple technical information to provide. Sorry!

Anyway I'm playing mostly H.264 videos in the Matroska container. I'm using ffdshow and ac3filter for decoding. I use MediaPortal as my front-end but I tried the same in Media Player Classic and I get the same results. Also, I'm running Windows 7, 32-bit.

Hopefully that information helps. Thanks!
 
Ehh, I don't know jack about MediaPortal, someone else can take that.

As for just using a player, MPC-HC (vanilla MPC is dead) will play that stuff fine and use your Mobo's chipset to accelerate it. Current MPC-HC builds can be found here.

MPC-HC has everything built in so you can ditch ffdshow and ac3filter.
 
If DXVA doesn't kick in, I'd suggest using ffdshow in MPC-HC (or MediaPortal for that matter) for H.264 decoding as it's had a better multi-threaded H.264 decoder, ffmpeg-mt, than libavcodec (the one that MPC-HC's decoder is based off) for a while now.

And yes, ditch AC3Filter. ffdshow contains all the functionality of it so it's redundant to have both.
 
In MPC-HC, you will have to make some modification to get DXVA running.
 
Ah. I didn't realize that. I will be sure to check that russian site for the latest versions now.

edit: Oh and sorry for the sort of threadjack OP....:)
 
So I guess my original question was about if my hardware was good enough to easily handle 1080p...but I don't know if I've received an answer. Are you guys are saying that using a different decoder would free me of my problems?
 
l3ender said:
So I guess my original question was about if my hardware was good enough to easily handle 1080p...but I don't know if I've received an answer. Are you guys are saying that using a different decoder would free me of my problems?
Click to expand...

Your system, if properly setup, is more than enough for HD content. There are a bunch of stickied guides right here in the HTPC subforum as to how to properly set up a HTPC software wise.
 
l3ender said:
So I guess my original question was about if my hardware was good enough to easily handle 1080p...but I don't know if I've received an answer. Are you guys are saying that using a different decoder would free me of my problems?
Click to expand...

It could be your decoder or it can be a dozen other things. Stuttering/choppiness is easily the most difficult problem to track down. Where did the offending files come from? Did you encode them yourself or download them? Are they stored on your local machine? A NAS? Over a network? Off a WHS? What does your resource meter look like when you are having trouble? What type of display is connected to your HTPC? How is it connected? Are you using an VGA, HDMI or DVI/HDMI cable? What refresh rate are you using? Have you tried switching refresh rates during playback? Which version of CCC are you using? I could go on with the questions, but you get the point.

Your best bet is to just be methodical and work through the most common solutions. Load up your worst offending file and start making changes until you can get it to play at an acceptable level. Start with the decoders and go through the sticky one by one and see if any of them help. If you try them all with no improvement, move on to the GPU. Try changing the refresh rates, pulldown schemes and any other obvious settings. If you don't have any luck there, move on to your display. Check google and AVSforum to see if there are any known issues with it. Check if it does 1080p on all inputs. See if there are any EDID issues. It's not fun, but it is the only logical way to approach it. And you never know, you may get lucky and the first new decoder you try will fix you up good as new. Good luck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top