Random Stutter issue with Movie Playback - Please help! (1 Viewer)

[LordX]

Hey guys - I have finally gotten my HTPC and Projector to play nice together - and I have movie playback at 99% perfect! It is that 1 little percent which is going to drive me bonkers. Steps already done: Verified FPS on video playback @ 23.976 Set Nvidia card output to 23Hz (which is 23.976 from what i have read) Turned off 'frame creation' on my Projector (Panasonic AE-4000U) These steps have literally eliminated panning judder - and I can enjoy my movies truly the way they were meant to be seen. However, randomly while watching - I get a stutter. Get this - it is usually during a SLOW scene in the movie - NOT an action intense sequence which I would expect. After all of my judder issues - I watch panning scenes and action scenes like a HAWK to make sure they are playing right - I never notice this random stutter during those scenes. My normal thinking would be that if I had a hardware deficiency - this would show during the intense scenes. My only other thought is that no movie plays at perfect FPS so after 10-15mins I will get this random stutter due to this fact. Anyone else have anything similar? Any ideas to try? I will not use ReClock because I output my digital audio to the receiver via spdif (optical)- and reclock doesn't like this and has to re-encode blah blah - I refuse to sacrifice audio quality. PS - System Specs: C2D 8400 CPU - (25-30% max usage during playback) 2GB DDR2 ram @ 1000mhz - only 200-300mb ram utilized during playback (and nothing else running on this system - dedicated HTPC) NVIDIA GTS 450 1GB Video card Sound Blaster X-Fi w/optical out Win 7 Home Premium 64bit

 

[mattCR]

What decoder software are you using?

 

[LordX]

MPC-HC latest - MadVR latest

 

[mattCR]

And you're watching using MPC-HC or WMC, XBMC, etc?

 

[LordX]

Watching using MPC-HC 1080p MKV Files Forgot to mention that I have ffdshow latest as well.

 

[mattCR]

Are you using DXVA enabled or disabled? Any post filters?

 

[LordX]

I dont know if MadVR uses DXVA or not. And by post filters do you mean like LAV filters? I do not use LAV filters - but is there a reason I should?

 

[mattCR]

Originally Posted by LordX

I dont know if MadVR uses DXVA or not.
And by post filters do you mean like LAV filters? I do not use LAV filters - but is there a reason I should?

No, LAV is a different decoder. My gut is to tell you to bump the ram. It's very cheap. And while you only see X% used during playback, it doesn't mean that it passes all the way through to a cache hit (disc transaction) that creates the stutter. That's really my best guess, too many other variables in here, but a disc transaction would be amongst my most likely

 

[LordX]

Someone else suggested I try increasing the priority of MPC-HC.exe in task manager. What do you think about that?

 

[mattCR]

Originally Posted by LordX

Someone else suggested I try increasing the priority of MPC-HC.exe in task manager. What do you think about that?

Impact should be minimal; increasing the task priority should not have any impact, as it won't really respond to priority management, it's already a threaded app

 

[LordX]

Ok - so only suggestion would be to increase ram? not an issue - I already ordered it. My board does both DDR2 and DDR3 - so I bought an 8GB DDR3 kit.... So not only will I have more ram - it will be faster ram.

 

[mattCR]

Smart move, and it's so damn cheap now. More ram means more buffers to it as opposed to reading from disc

 

[LordX]

Seems like a HZ thing is causing the issue. I have my HTPC outputting at 23HZ (on nvidia cards that is supposed to be 23.976). It is really outputting at 23.9777xx So every 15 mins or so it has to 'catch up'. I custom set the refresh - and the closest I got was 23.974. IMO dropping a frame every now and then shouldn't glitch like having to 'catch up' does. So having a slightly lower refresh is better than a slightly higher. Any thoughts on this?