MPC appears to downscale 720p video

[LVLLN]

Hi, I'm not completely sure if there is a problem, but when I play back 720p video (from gametrailers.com, I think encoded in h264) in Media Player Classic, and I go to file->properties, it tells me under the Details tab that the Video Size is 640x360. However, in that little box in the same tab, it says, "Video: Windows Media Video 9 1280x720 29.97fps 3072Kbps [Raw Video 1]." Now, not having too much experience with HD video, I'm not completely sure if MPC is indeed downscaling the video resulting in a loss of quality, but my eyes are at least telling me that it isn't 720p.

I was wondering if anyone knew anything about this problem and how to solve it.


Also, kinda on-topic, I'm having extremely poor performance in 720p video playback, whether it be h264 or WMVHD. When using the Haali Video Renderer, I have to pause every few seconds, or else the video starts stuttering and sound starts skipping. Any other renderer, and even pausing does nothing to stop the skipping and stuttering. What's odd is that I recently went to my mother's computer, which is slower than mine, yet all videos played perfectly using VMR9, which tells me that there's some software problem, not that my hardware is too slow. If anyone could help me with this, it would be most appreciated.

I have a Sempron 3100+, 1.5gigs of RAM, and a Geforce6800xt.

[Baldrick]

If you play WMV with windows media player do you notice any difference than playing with mpc?

and
Try play H264 with VLC, it has it own builtin codecs.
Try reinstall windows media player 10/11 for WMV.
Test h264 playback with timecodec, http://nwgat.net/timecodec/

[Krispy Kritter]

Are you playing the files from your HD or streaming/downloading? If they are on your HD, then you are having a software/codec issue. If you are streaming, then you are just seeing a difference in download speeds.

[LVLLN]

They're on my HDD.

I notice when I use Windows Media Player (11 Beta), some 720p videos play back relatively well (1/2 to 2/3 of the actual framerate), while others become slideshows. This is in contrast to with MPC, where all videos become slideshows after about 5-10 seconds, but as long as I pause and wait, I can get 5-10 seconds of perfect playback each time.

I also recently upgraded to WMP11 from 10 for the very reason.

I tried playing some of the Gametrailers videos (they say h264 in the filename, so I'm assuming that that's the encoding) with VLC player, but the performance was far worse than either MPC or WMP. I think I got 1 frame in the first 10 seconds.

After looking at some 720p vids compared to smaller sized ones, I do think MPC isn't downscaling. It's just giving me the wrong info, which is still strange. Has anyone else at least had the phenomenon where MPC has the incorrect Video Size?

[LVLLN]

I tried changing the Output Directshow from Haali's to something else, which gave the correct resolution the properties, so it seems that the problem was in Haali's renderer. Still getting very poor 720p playback, though.

[Krispy Kritter]

I expect you are then having hardware issues. It could be another process(s) is using up cpu cycles (you can monitor the cpu using Task Manager). It could be corrupt or conflicting codecs, a fragmented HD, too many processes running and not enough RAM (which would cause your player to buffer in the swap file....which would cause your pc to thrash your HD reading the data twice), or just old/corrupt drivers (MB and/or video).

Task Manager would be a good place to check first as it may point to one of the many other things that could be wrong. Just open (ctrl/alt/delete and choose Task Manager) Task Manager, choose the Processes tab, sort by cpu (which will put the highest used process at the top - should be System Idle Process), then play one of your videos and watch to see which process(s) use the most cpu time.

[LVLLN]

Thanks, but I think I found the major source of the problem: I had underclocked my RAM; they were PC3200 chips, but for some reason, I had them running at 100x2 MHz. When I got them up to their actual speed, 720p playback became nearly perfect with Windows Media Player.

Most videos play fine, although some still have a lot of trouble, which makes me think I might still have some software issues, but the situation is a lot better now.