[SOLVED] 720p60 video stutters when playing

[white_snake]

I've tried a lot of different things to make the 720p60 footage coming from my Hauppauge HD-PVR play smoothly on my computer, but none worked. I use MPC-HC and K-Lite Codec Pack, but I get slightly better results with Torrent Stream Player (aka TS Player, improved version of VLC).

Here is a 12 seconds clip: http://www.mediafire.com/download/77rynpb41ivns6t/2013_12_7_20_40_41.mkv


Can someone play it smoothly?

Edit:
SOLUTION

In MPC-HC: Options → Output → Check "D3D Fullscreen".

[DB83]

Sure can

Smooth as a baby's b..... and using vlc

I certainly do not use ANY codec pack.

[davexnet]

Likewise - Perhaps something about the OP's PC specs?

On my modest-spec PC, (AMD64 X2 2.2GHz x 2) it uses ~40% CPU in WMP 11 (non-accelerated), and about 3 %
in mpc-hc (DXVA accelerated). In either case it plays perfectly. Nice clip, by the way.

[jagabo]

The video is 25 fps progressive with 3:2:3:2:2 pulldown. It won't be glassy smooth unless you use motion interpolation techniques. But that often leads to weird artifacts. It's probably best to just make it 25p. If you really need 60p just use a smart bob. Here's thre result from Interleave(TFM(field=1), TFM(field=0)) in AviSynth (720p60, still really 25p with duplicate frames).

[hello_hello]

jagabo,
I'm confused. The sample linked to in the original post and the sample you uploaded appear to be two unrelated videos. Am I missing something? Losing the plot?

Anyway, the video linked to in the OP plays nice and smoothly for me. MPC-HC, 8600GT video card. DXVA decoding. Even when switching to CPU decoding it plays smoothly using this old E6750 dual core (CPU usage around 40%).

[jagabo]

jagabo,
I'm confused. The sample linked to in the original post and the sample you uploaded appear to be two unrelated videos. Am I missing something? Losing the plot?

Sorry, I was the one that was confused. The video I posted, and the post itself, was for another thread.

The video in the first post here plays fine in MPCHC and KMPlayer It stutter a little when it first starts in VLC but smooths out after the first half second or so.

[white_snake]

What I mean is I can play it smoothly for most of the time (let's say 10 seconds out of 12), but every now and then it stutters (is that what is called a frame drop?). Does it constantly play smoothly for you guys?

I don't think there's anything wrong with my PC specs (i7 2630QM processor and Intel Graphics 3000; I don't really know if I can get any player to use my GT555M NVIDIA card). DXVA or not doesn't really make a difference in this case for me and VLC just uses about 8% CPU.

Nice clip, by the way.

Thanks.

[vhelp]

sounds like a decoder issue on white_snake's system.

i take it that this is from some game system that you captured off from ?

and, that you captured and re-encoded it with x264 ?

what was the x264 params that you used ? show that, maybe someone can confirm or give a better tip and you can re-encode it and post again. i think it may work find on others systems, (due to onboard hardware processing vs software and settings) but not on yours due to the way you encoded it, that your system / codec version can't handle well, dispite the cpu speed you have.

[white_snake]

sounds like a decoder issue on white_snake's system.

i take it that this is from some game system that you captured off from ?

and, that you captured and re-encoded it with x264 ?

what was the x264 params that you used ? show that, maybe someone can confirm or give a better tip and you can re-encode it and post again. i think it may work find on others systems, (due to onboard hardware processing vs software and settings) but not on yours due to the way you encoded it, that your system / codec version can't handle well, dispite the cpu speed you have.

Thanks for your help.

Yes, I captured the footage from my Xbox 360 using my Hauppauge HD-PVR (via component), but I did not re-encode it. I just cut that sample with mkvmerge, that's why the sample's got a matroska container.

[jagabo]

The problem may be a combination of the TS reader/splitter and h.264 decoder. Try switching those components in MPCHC. View -> Options -> Internal Filters ->...

[vhelp]

that is odd since the hdpvr does not go up to 20Mbps.

anyway, i knew it had to be some detail you weren't giving us. if what jagabo's suggestion doesn't work out, then maybe try remuxing it with a different tool, and repackage it again, or play around with different muxing/packaging scenarios. i'd be curious to know whether or not your issue resolved.

[vhelp]

hmm, i forget about mpc-be, just checked it, it is playing smooth as silk on my far slower system than yours, amd dual core x2 3600+ 2gig ram.

i wonder what is the difference in this case, between mpc-be and vlc/ffplay/kmplayer/smplayer,etc.

vlc, ffplay studder badly
kmplayer plays it as 29.970 fps, so not as (fluid) smoothness but still good
smplayer plays it as 59.94 fps, very fluid smoothness.
mpc-be plays it as 59.94 fps, very fluid smoothness.

[jagabo]

that is odd since the hdpvr does not go up to 20Mbps.

The header may say it's 20 Mb/s but it's ~14 Mb/s.

[white_snake]

The problem may be a combination of the TS reader/splitter and h.264 decoder. Try switching those components in MPCHC. View -> Options -> Internal Filters ->...

I've tried all of the four decoders available, but they give pretty much the same results. I guess I will try various combinations inside the LAV Splitter settings.

that is odd since the hdpvr does not go up to 20Mbps.

anyway, i knew it had to be some detail you weren't giving us. if what jagabo's suggestion doesn't work out, then maybe try remuxing it with a different tool, and repackage it again, or play around with different muxing/packaging scenarios. i'd be curious to know whether or not your issue resolved.

MediaInfo gives 13.6 Mbps as "Overall bit rate" (which is fine since I recorded at constant 13.5), but gives 20 Mbps as "Maximum bit rate", I don't know why.

hmm, i forget about mpc-be, just checked it, it is playing smooth as silk on my far slower system than yours, amd dual core x2 3600+ 2gig ram.

i wonder what is the difference in this case, between mpc-be and vlc/ffplay/kmplayer/smplayer,etc.

vlc, ffplay studder badly
kmplayer plays it as 29.970 fps, so not as (fluid) smoothness but still good
smplayer plays it as 59.94 fps, very fluid smoothness.
mpc-be plays it as 59.94 fps, very fluid smoothness.

I just tried MPC-BE, but it gives pretty much the same results as MPC-HC.
Besides, I've also tried to play the video with Fraps running. Except for the very first part, Fraps indicates a constant 60, but the video actually stutters.

[sheppaul]

I've just tried it, but every player seems good.

KMPlayer, 59.94 with internal or lav decoder (DxVA)
Potplayer, 59.94 with internal DxVA
MPC-BE (DxVA), MPC-HC (DxVA), SMPlayer, VLC are all good too.

[vhelp]

i don't know. my mediainfo and bitrate viewer both reports 9.7Mbps for my hdpvr for clips i recorded at 13Mbps. not sure what ver your medinainfo.dll is. i can't tell on my system at this time since i don't install it, i just use the .dll in my custom utility. i'll just d/l the latest now and see if i get the correct reading.

[Brad]

CTRL+J in MPC-HC may give you some idea of what's going on. (Setup info here if it doesn't display stats right away.)

[white_snake]

I followed vaporeon800's suggestion and used Fraps to record the sample playing on MPC-HC with the stats on (then re-encoded with MeGUI). It should show the stuttering. Here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/download/qq15a4fm1o7goto/mpc-hc+2013-12-26-muxed.mp4

[DB83]

You still do not get it do you.

There is nothing amiss with your video - it still plays quite smooth. Your system (or part of it) is not good enough. (My CPU is lower rated than yours AFAIK but the graphics, I believe, are better)

[Brad]

Try setting your refresh rate to "59Hz" instead of 60Hz, but I don't know whether that will fix it. I've got smoothness issues I haven't been able to resolve either.

[Hoser Rob]

Torrent Stream Player is an improved version of VLC? LMFAO.

[white_snake]

You still do not get it do you.

There is nothing amiss with your video - it still plays quite smooth. Your system (or part of it) is not good enough. (My CPU is lower rated than yours AFAIK but the graphics, I believe, are better)

NVIDIA has apparently blocked famous players from being run by the NVIDIA card in systems like mine (iGPU and dGPU with the NVIDIA card being the dGPU), as confirmed here by NVIDIA users.
I actually found out two ways to get my NVIDIA card to be the render device for my videos. The first one is playing my videos on an external monitor through HDMI, because everything going through HDMI is handled by the NVIDIA card in my system. The second one is described in the thread I linked and is about making a copy of mpc-hc.exe with a different name, thus making the NVIDIA software believe it's a different player than MPC-HC.

Having said that, I don't know exactly what your graphics are but I frankly doubt they can be better than my GT 555M. Now, being able to use my NVIDIA card, I somehow managed to get satisfying results with the best combination being MPC-HC + madVR + fullscreen. Haali plays good as well, while EVR-CP doesn't perform as good as I'd expect it to.

The thing is: it sounds odd to me that I have to pick precise combinations to get that sample to play smoothly on i7 2630QM+GT 555M. I'm willing to bet there's still something wrong somewhere, but probably not willing to find out anymore.

Try setting your refresh rate to "59Hz" instead of 60Hz, but I don't know whether that will fix it. I've got smoothness issues I haven't been able to resolve either.

Could't set my refresh rate to anything different than 60Hz on my internal display. Did it on an external display, but didn't get better results.

Torrent Stream Player is an improved version of VLC? LMFAO.

TS Player is not a famous player, so it isn't blocked by the NVIDIA software, that's why it gave me better results than the other players (when I ran it with the NVIDIA card) and led me to think it's an improved version of VLC in general, while it's just an improved version as far as concerns live streaming.

[DB83]

I could not access that link about Nvidia - website security certificate issue - but why oh why would a graphics company block software players. And more importantly how can they ?

I read you system details but did not go beyond 'Intel HD Graphics 3000'. I may be mistaken but in my eyes you have two graphics systems installed and that itself could cause conflicts. I have an Ati HD 4670 plus hdmi to a HD monitor. You said earlier that the clip starts smooth but then chokes. Have you monitored playback in Task Manager since it does appear that CPU maxes out durimg this short time.

So there is, stating the obvious, a conflict somewhere in your system.

[jagabo]

Your CPU and integrated graphics are fine for 720p60. The i7 2630QM processor is good enough for CPU decoding, and the Intel HD Graphics 3000 is good enough for GPU decoding (DXVA). The problem is the combination of filters being used. I seem to recall LAV filters causing similar problems in the past. Try switching to Haali. Or use ffdshow for decoding.

I'm running an i5 2500K (same GPU, higher clocked but fewer thread CPU) and not having any problems.

[vood007]

Try using VMR9 as renderer in MPCHC instead of EVR-CP. Looks like current nightly of MPC is buggy.

[hello_hello]

A while back I had stuttering problems playing 1080p video with MPC-HC and pretty much any video with srt subtitles. MPC-BE played the same video without stuttering (or most of them... I can't remember exactly). I prefer MPC-HC myself but it might be worth a shot.
For reasons I don't understand, at the time MPC-HC with LAV filters and Nvidia CUVID worked the CPU a lot harder than MPC-HC with ffdshow and DXVA. Either way the video still stuttered though.

In my case the "fix" turned out to be either disabling overclocking (this PC has an old E6750 dual core which is slightly overclocked), or manually adjusting the PCI Express speed/frequency (however it's labelled, I can't remember) in the BIOS a little. I'll probably die without ever understanding the "why", but regardless of the decoding method (CPU or GPU) the stuttering problem went away and CPU usage with Nvidia CUVID decoding dropped back down to a few percent as it was for ffdshow/DXVA decoding.

My little story above probably won't help you though.... computers seem so often to do impossible things. And considering I have a second PC with the same MB, the same 8600GT video card, the same image of Windows and installed programs, and yet it never suffered from the same problem, that seems to make it all a little more impossible. The main difference between my two PCs is the second one has a quad core CPU, but the dual core PC stuttered playing video while CPU usage was still well under 100%.

If you're using the latest version of MPC-HC, try a pre LAV Filters version to see if that makes a difference.

[white_snake]

I could not access that link about Nvidia - website security certificate issue - but why oh why would a graphics company block software players. And more importantly how can they ?

I read you system details but did not go beyond 'Intel HD Graphics 3000'. I may be mistaken but in my eyes you have two graphics systems installed and that itself could cause conflicts. I have an Ati HD 4670 plus hdmi to a HD monitor. You said earlier that the clip starts smooth but then chokes. Have you monitored playback in Task Manager since it does appear that CPU maxes out durimg this short time.

So there is, stating the obvious, a conflict somewhere in your system.

Here's the full link: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/513313/media-player-classic-homecinema-forced...on-integrated/ (apparently the site forces https, so that might be related to your problem). The thread's name is "Media Player Classic Homecinema Forced on integrated".

Why would NVIDIA do that? The only thing I can think of is that they want to force people to use the integrated graphics in order to preserve battery life or something like that.

The "how" is actually very simple. There's a control over the executables name, in fact, as I said before, you just need to rename the executables (or more cautiously, make a copy of them) to fool the NVIDIA software into thinking that they are a different player. Luckily, the K-Lite guys have (recently) become aware of this (there is a poll at the bottom of their homepage that reads "Change MPC-HC filename to allow GPU choice in NVIDIA optimus settings"). I just did a clean installation of the K-Lite Codec Pack and now my MPC-HC's executable is named "mpc-hc_nvo.exe" instead of "mpc-hc.exe". I'm now able to use NVIDIA CUVID as hardware decoder, oddly enough I couldn't before.

A conflict between the two graphics is possible, but would be odd since my laptop was built to have two graphics. My CPU never maxes out during playback, it's stable around 14% with Intel Graphics+MPC-HC+Haali+ffdshow.

Your CPU and integrated graphics are fine for 720p60. The i7 2630QM processor is good enough for CPU decoding, and the Intel HD Graphics 3000 is good enough for GPU decoding (DXVA). The problem is the combination of filters being used. I seem to recall LAV filters causing similar problems in the past. Try switching to Haali. Or use ffdshow for decoding.

I'm running an i5 2500K (same GPU, higher clocked but fewer thread CPU) and not having any problems.

That's exactly what I was trying to say before: I was able to get that sample play almost flawlessly with a certain combination of hardware and software, but it's just too weird that my system is struggling that much to get good results.


I've tried ffdshow in place of the LAV decoder, but that didn't make a difference. Playback is not good enough as long as I use EVR. It gets good if I use my NVIDIA card (for instance with Haali), and it gets better if I use my NVIDIA card along with madVR. The latter combination satisfies me.

Try using VMR9 as renderer in MPCHC instead of EVR-CP. Looks like current nightly of MPC is buggy.

I had already tried it, but couldn't get good results.

[DB83]

re the above, I first ran the clips under vlc with no issue.

Today, I tried the second clip in my not-so-latest version of MPCHC and that played fine as well. I do recall installing the haali splitter some time ago.

One thing I did notice, which really should not affect playback but you never know, is that your capture is reported to be 1280*720 whereas the encoded version is reported to be 1488*720 !!!

[DB83]

Well you appear to have solved your problem or atleast partially solved it to give a 'satisfied' result.

One thing tho. A name is just that. A name. You should not need a codec pack to give you that. And codec packs are known to screw systems up. The recc on here is only to install, separately and not part of a pack, those codecs, filters and players that you need and not all the additional junk in a pack.

[hello_hello]

Thinking about it, I recall K-Lite installs a stripped down/modified version of MPC-HC. Maybe that's changed now MPC-HC LAV filters internally (at one stange I'm pretty sure most of MPC-HC's internal filters were removed), but just in case..... if you're using the K-Lite version of MPC-HC it might be worth downloading the non-K-Lite version to see if things improve. If you do it might also pay to go into it's options and reset eveything in case it picks up K-Lite specific settings from the registry etc.