Poor performance playing 1080p on my computer

[juarez]

I am having problems playing 1080p mp4 videos on my computer, and I can't figure out what the cause might be. I have not yet tested other video formats yet, but plan to in the next couple of days.

This is my machine:
OS: Vista x64
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 - 3.1 GHz Dual Core
Video Card: HD 5770 - 1GB
Memory: 8GB RAM
Disk Drive: Western Digital - 2TB w/ 64MB Cache - SATA 3.0 Gb/s

...WHAT I HAVE TRIED SO FAR...
FIRST TRY: When I first tried playing the video, I was playing it on Windows Media Player (latest version, no updates available) using the K Lite Codec pack. The video had some visual artifacting and it kept lagging and skipping (audio seemed to play forward at a regular speed while the video played back in a disjointed and slow manner). Looking at system performance in task manager showed that the CPU was pegging, with Windows Media Player using up as much of the CPU as it could (the rest being used by other open apps, of which there were only a few). Memory usage wasn't very high, but the CPU was bouncing around between 80% and 90+% usage. Even after I tried closing the other apps, the playback remained the same.

SECOND TRY: I uninstalled K Lite and installed VLC. This was worse. The CPU pegged and the video basically froze, playing back audio but only intermittent, broken pictures that looked like negatives.

THIRD TRY: I uninstalled VLC and installed DivX. Same as VLC.

FOURTH TRY: I uninstalled DivX and installed haali media splitter and ffdshow. Then I tried running it in Windows Media Player again (since that was the player that gave me the best performance so far). It seemed to be the same as the first attempt: minor visual artifacting with slow and jerky playback.

I would think my machine would be enough to run 1080p videos, but something is clearly not working right. Does anyone have
any suggestions? Thanks!

[davexnet]

Try MPCHC and see if you can get DXVA to work. To a certain extent the player configures itself for best results.
Be aware that acceleration will not work with all 1080p files, depends on the options used when it was encoded.

[Steve(MS)]

If for some reason MPCHC doesn't get it for you, try PotPlayer or Splash,either use low resources.
Did you try the latest 64 bit VLC? It seems to work better for me than previous versions.

[nic2k4]

CODEC packs on Vista and Win7 are a bad idea and most times they don't uninstall cleanly. Go to Microsoft Fixit and run the Media player fix. I've had worse issues than you; playing media files in Win7 would lock up the PC. WMP is the only player that works, but I had to update the video card driver. A player that doesn't need external CODECs (VLC and MPCHC) should work too (not so well for me though).

Get the lastest driver (from AMD/ATI), or get it from the card manufacturer.

And check out this post.

[jagabo]

I am having problems playing 1080p mp4 videos on my computer

What frame rate? 1080p60 can be hard on any computer.

[juarez]

Thank you all for your replies. I will try some of these suggestions out when I get home from work, and I will post my results.

What frame rate? 1080p60 can be hard on any computer.

jagabo, this is a great question, and I have no idea what the frame rate is. I googled for a way to check this, and found that "GSpot" might tell me. Is that the way you would suggest finding the frame rate?

CODEC packs on Vista and Win7 are a bad idea and most times they don't uninstall cleanly.

nic2k4, you say that CODEC packs are a bad idea on Vista and Win7, but WMP won't play the mp4 file without a CODEC install. Can you tell me more about why they are bad, or how to get WMP to play an mp4 file without a CODEC?

[Ai Haibara]

Use MediaInfo, rather than GSpot. GSpot's support for video containers other than AVI/.divx and MPEG is a bit limited.

You can install codecs; it's just that you probably should install the individual codecs you need, rather than an all-in-one codec pack.

[davexnet]

FFDshow, along with the Haali spliter, is a leaner alternative than the packs and is
quite often recommended here.

[ranchhand]

CPU was bouncing around between 80% and 90+% usage

That is telling you that the work load of playing the video at HD is falling on the CPU and it isn't handling it. I have been through this a lot and I finally gave up and installed an Nvidia card with Cuda. Suddenly all my HD "hiccuping" stopped and even AVCHD played smooth as silk at 1080p. I will guess that if you run a video at lower res everything smooths out.

[jagabo]

Not all h.264 features are supported by DXVA (Microsoft's hardware video decoding application interface). Players that use DXVA may choke on videos that exceed DXVA specs.

[Abas-Avara]

Try mediainfo to inspect the files. We need details about what kind of video's you are trying to play. Because yes some files plays on all computers very hard like jagabo said.

In case it should have been able to play,
If you give VLC another try, here is a topic about how getting better performance playing HD files. Look at last page too about enabling GPU acceleration
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42328

But your computer specs are nice. I never had problems playing 1080p in VLC or with MPC + CCCP codecs pack.
Maybe you need to reinstall.

[juarez]

Thanks again for all the help, everyone.

I used MediaInfo to check the file out. Maximum frame rate of 30, video encoded with AVC. Before cleaning anything out and starting over, I tried VLC again, enabling hardware acceleration. That was better than the first attempt with VLC, but still not great. Then I tried MPC, and found that DXVA was already enabled.

MediaInfo sent me to the QuickTime download page for a player to play the file, and for the driver. So I downloaded QuickTime and tried that. It was okay, but still not great.

THEN, I googled for players that play AVC, and Splash Lite came up. So I finally tried that (remembering that Steve had suggested that), and it was perfect. Just no hassle at all. Like a dream.

One day, when I get some time, I would love to go back and try more of these suggestions; try and get some of these other players to play the video better. I clearly don't understand this topic that well, but all of your help was much appreciated and got me where I wanted to go. Many thanks!

[nic2k4]

...you say that CODEC packs are a bad idea on Vista and Win7, but WMP won't play the mp4 file without a CODEC install. Can you tell me more about why they are bad, or how to get WMP to play an mp4 file without a CODEC?

Glad you found something that works. To answer your question, well Ai answered it, but just to add that normally WMP will try to go to the net and find the CODECs it's missing.