Potplayer won't play 4K. Help with filter settings?

[Michael Linder]

I've trial numerous combinations of PotPlayer's filter settings, but have yet to find the sweet spot that will enable playback of 4096 x 2160 video. Following hints from other forum posts, I've tried playing my files (all of them less than 4 GB) from various hard drives and SSDs without success, though the same clips play perfectly in VLC, and edit successfully in Premiere Pro CC 2017.

Potplayer starts playing the clips with a black screen, then the clip plays back in stop-motion after hitting stop and play. It drops ~20 frames at a time and repeats one frame every 40 seconds, according to Control+J.

Here is PotPlayer's analysis of one of these clips as it attempted to play through my latest attempt at finding the perfect combination of settings. In this case using my video card's CUDA decoder with DXVA enabled, AVC inspection skipped, DXVA2 Copy-Back disabled. I'm using an Nvidia GTX 720 with 2 G of memory and 512 CUDA cores with an Intel i7 series hyperthreaded quad-core CPU.

Any suggestions? I'd be most grateful.

Thanks!

General
Complete name: D:\DJI_0018.MP4
Format: MPEG-4
Format profile: JVT
Codec ID: avc1 (avc1/isom)
File size: 3.81 GiB
Duration: 9 min 6 s
Overall bit rate mode: Variable
Overall bit rate: 59.9 Mb/s
Comment: 0.9.142
©xyz: +35.450187-118.912515+59.600
©xsp: +4.00
©ysp: +9.20
©zsp: +0.00
©fpt: -8.50
©fyw: +66.00
©fr: +0.00
©gpt: +0.00
©gyw: +66.30
©grl: +0.00

Video
ID: 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info: Advanced Video Codec
Format profile: High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC: Yes
Format settings, ReFrames: 1 frame
Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=8
Codec ID: avc1
Codec ID/Info Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 9 min 6 s
Bit rate mode: Variable
Bit rate: 60.0 Mb/s
Width: 4 096 pixels
Height: 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio: 1.896
Frame rate mode: Constant
Frame rate: 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space: YUV
Chroma subsampling: 4:2:0
Bit depth: 8 bits
Scan type: Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame): 0.283
Stream size : 3.81 GiB (100%)
Title: DJI.AVC
Language: English
Color range: Limited
Color primaries: BT.709
Transfer characteristics: BT.709
Matrix coefficients: BT.709

[sneaker]

Try pure software decoding.

[Michael Linder]

Hey, sneaker. Thank you for your suggestion, but I'm not sure what that means beyond disabling DXVA and all graphic cards acceleration functions. After a Google search, I tried the "high-performance software decoding" tactics involving LAV filter re-jiggering mentioned by this guy...

http://wp.me/PrgSo-gQ

...but it didn't help despite my system's bettering of his minimum requirements. Have you solved a similar problem with 4K material? If so, what am I missing?

[sneaker]

Make a screenshot of the ctrl+j OSD. Which i7 do you have?

[Michael Linder]

Here it is.
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3400 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

[sheppaul]

1. Use x64 version of potplayer


2. Reset potplayer in preferences and don't touch anything (Do not use madVR and LAV). I bet it's enough.

[Michael Linder]

SOLVED!

Thank you, Sheppaul!

The issue was the LAV filters. Despite my disabling them, Potplayer wasn't happy until I completely uninstalled them from my PC. I concur.

Best,

[sheppaul]

Actually, it should not be an issue of LAV, madVR or Potplayer itself. Comparing VLC with Potplayer is totally incorrect too as madVR is resource hungry renderer requiring a power GPU and there is no madVR like renderer in VLC. Wrong configuration, wrong comparison, wrong usage for sure. As I said, if you're frequently going to play 4K contents, do not use madVR in your system with any player. Using lav with potplayer is useless if you don't have any playback problem with built-in features. However, there should be no problem with LAV if properly configured. I have LAV on my desktop as a backup & other usage but it does not conflict with potplayer.

[sneaker]

The issue was the LAV filters.

Glad you got it solved but from the screenshot you posted LAV should not have been the issue. It shows the decoder queue being full. So the problem would have rather been with the renderer/scaling, i.e. madvr. Like sheppaul said it can be very resource hungry depending on the configuration (like scaling algo). Esp. with 4K video ram can also start to play a role and make it necessary to reduce queue lengths in madvr settings. I believe in this case it might have been sufficient to use the madvr default settings which include lower queue sizes and Bicubic instead of Jinc for downscaling. GT 720 is not very powerful.

[Michael Linder]

Thanks for the refinements, guys,

MadVR was installed on my system inside a LAV codecs folder, the result of online advice from months ago. I uninstalled and reinstalled madVR without LAV, refined its settings and have greatly reduced stress on the various queues which now stabilize at 1-2/16 and /8 once the video has played for ~20 seconds, decreasing from 14-16/16 on playback start, and with no dropped frames. My last screenshot was taken with Potplayer paused. I realize now that this overstated queue numbers since the queues apparently fill to max when Potplayer is paused. My bad! Learning curve stuff.

I'm using a GTX 750 with 2GB of memory — a typo in my earlier post. Potplayer is currently using my card's CUDA Decoder with DXVA, full H.264 compatibility inspection and the FFMpeg DXVA option checked. In madVR settings, I'm using 10-bit choma and image buffers instead of 16-bit, and I've passed on its CPU-intensive refinements while keeping Error Diffusion 1 and its options.

I admit that many of these settings are guesswork as I trial-and-error my way through. For me, much of it is rocket science!

[sneaker]

refined its settings and have greatly reduced stress on the various queues which now stabilize at 1-2/16 and /8 once the video has played for ~20 seconds, decreasing from 14-16/16 on playback start, and with no dropped frames. My last screenshot was taken with Potplayer paused. I realize now that this overstated queue numbers since the queues apparently fill to max when Potplayer is paused.

Just to be sure: you do realize the queues are supposed to be as full as possible? For example 0-2/16 is very bad, 16/16 is perfect.

[Michael Linder]

Duh! Actually, I was clueless that the higher the buffer is better. Still, I brought that under control.

Fresh install of Potplayer x64 and its out-of-the box filter settings look great, though I switched over to madVR just to see what Ctrl+J had to say. Here's the verdict: Queues very nearly fill.

madVR remains virtually untouched with a few exceptions — Downscaling and Upscaling are DXVA 2, no rendering options other than Error Diffusion Option 1 and its sub-options. I may get the hang of these settings yet. Law school can't be too much tougher.

[ConverterCrazy]

Hello,

I am not able to play this 4K video https://anime.my/download/8th-test-video-lg-4k-garden-demo-clip/ in PotPlayer.

Here is the file info:

General
Complete name : C:\Users\…\Downloads\PotPlayer Setup for Hi Q Performance\4k lg uhdtv garden demo.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42 (isom/mp42)
File size : 2.69 GiB
Duration : 3 min 4 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 125 Mb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2012-12-31 19:20:50
Tagged date : UTC 2012-12-31 19:20:50

Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.1
Format settings : CABAC / 5 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference fra : 5 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=33
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 3 min 4 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 125 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (23976/1000) FPS
Original frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.629
Stream size : 2.69 GiB (100%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2012-12-31 19:20:52
Tagged date : UTC 2012-12-31 19:20:52
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Codec configuration box : avcC

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : mp4a-40-2
Duration : 3 min 4 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 157 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 293 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 3.45 MiB (0%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2012-12-31 19:20:51
Tagged date : UTC 2012-12-31 19:20:51




How do I understand this issue.. that My PotPlayer settings are wrong or my hardware is outdated?

Thanks.