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unable to get smooth playback


spon

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Hello all,

 

I'm hoping someone can help me with this problem. I am unable to get smooth playback in Theater no matter what combination of settings I try. This holds true for any HD (720p) video. I am able to play all the videos, including 1080p 3D SBS, in both MBC-HT and XBMC with no problems at all, however I am not able to achieve anything approaching smooth playback in Theater. I have tried all of the hardware acceleration settings including none (I believe I should be using DXVA2Copyback), with and without "change refresh rate" enabled, and with and without MadVR enabled. 

 

I have an AMD A6-6400 processor, AMD Radeon HD 8470D, 4GB RAM. I know it's not the fastest machine around, but it should be able to play 1080p video and certainly 720p. 

 

Has anyone else had issues with video tearing? Ideally I would love to be able to use MadVR, which I love in MPC-HT, but I'm ok without it. I know that I could use an external player, but I don't want to lose the resume state info. We switch rooms during movies all the time.

 

Thanks for any advice!

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I honestly cannot get dxva working with amd using mbt, from what I was told auto should be dxva. Xbmc dxva 2 works smooth, i also tried mpc-hc + Evr + Dxva2 native (essentially what I believe mbt is using when using the native player without madvr and hardware accel set to auto) but it just does not work smoothly in mbt, yet works fantastic in mpc-hc.

I think its going to take a dev with amd to figure this one out. 

 

Lucky for me disabled still works fine. 

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I think you need a reasonably good system to use copyback, dxva 2 however i have no idea why i cant get it to work smoothly in mbt.

 

I do think if mbt had dxva 2 hardware acceleration working for low power systems we would see alot less stutter posts.

Edited by Ghostm
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My AMD A8 3870K w 6550D graphics uses DXVACopyback just fine it seems. The only time I have seen "tearing" is when I use a remote desktop application like RealVNC or Teamviewer via my laptop and forget to disconnect from my HTPC

 

One issue I have had though is sometimes when switching refresh rates, the movie will stutter....but while the movie is playing, if I open a folder such as my documents or my computer, all of a sudden the movie starts playing smooth....I can't tell you why. I should probably get a video of this cause im sure most will think im crazy.

 

I don't think DXVA is the culprit or will make it play any smoother. My machine plays just fine with Hardware Acceleration disabled, according to MBT. 

 

- Are you using MadVR smooth playback by chance? That can cause very bad video playback if you video is not able to handle it. There has been issues trying to keep it off in past, you had to edit a config file for MBT to turn it off.

 

Post the log file from MBT. maybe someone can see something in there.

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I had an interesting development, I disabled custom presenter in the xml and set hardware acceleration to disabled and this is the smoothest i have seen it. From what I understand from babgvant disabling custom presenter will turn off dxva, so maybe dxva is working just not smoothly with mbt. Somethings not quite right with my auto setting though, im getting similar results on auto as i do with quick sync and as far as i know quicksync is for intel users. He is going to add some extra logging for me to test i think. 

 

 

I just find it hard to believe xbmc with dxva2, and mpc-hc with custom evr and dxva2 results in hardly any cpu usage and smooth playback, and with an auto (dxva2) setting in mbt my cpu usage is around 23 and i get stutter.

 

Of course it seems to vary from system to system, me and A8  seem to have similar systems and i cannot use copyback.

 

Meanwhile my desktop with an amd 5770 plays everything flawlessly, i was running madvr with highsettings, copyback, at 23hz with no dropped frames. 

 

A8 I do think you have mentioned you overclocked your system? Yours might have a bit more juice then mine, i know you had at one point said you ran madvr on low settings. I could never do that. For heat and power reasons i actually have bios automatic overclock disabled and its running at 3.8ghz if memory serves me, it actually came with it enabled and running at 4.2

 

Actually A8 mentioned he gets smooth playback even with it not overclocked, i dont know what the difference maybe. 

Edited by Ghostm
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@@spon, I don't think it's your system. Mine is a lot lower spec and it's always smooth regardless of the file specs. Here are my settings: 54103eb0c578d_MBT_Video.png54103ec48832b_MadVR.png54103ed627f22_LAV_Video.png

 

Good luck.

 

Jordy

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I'm not really sure about MadVr. I just think its a MBT setting only as I've never installed MadVR as a separate program. So you should probably disregard that.

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Enable smooth motion is a madvr setting as far as i know.

 

The fact you can use it on your system and get smooth playback is very impressive.

Edited by Ghostm
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I only overclockef the gpu and not the cpu. Even after setting gpu to stock core speed 686mhz, i still had smooth playback with or without hardware acceleration.

 

Download GPU-Z and u can monitor ur gpu performance. If ur gpu spikes when playing a movie then hardware acceleration is active. If it stays mostly idle with some spike then its deactivated.

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@@Ghostm, so you are saying If MadVR was not installed I would not see this setting in MBT. Does MadVR get installed by default with MBT? I thought only LAV did. I have installed MBT (from scratch to fix errors) several times on this laptop and have never seen anything to do with MadVR installation and I've never downloaded and installed any MadVR files either so i'm a little sceptical... Perhaps one of the devs can confirm.

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I only overclockef the gpu and not the cpu. Even after setting gpu to stock core speed 686mhz, i still had smooth playback with or without hardware acceleration.

 

Download GPU-Z and u can monitor ur gpu performance. If ur gpu spikes when playing a movie then hardware acceleration is active. If it stays mostly idle with some spike then its deactivated.

 

I was using cpu-z i will try gpu-z as well, the clock never really changes for me with dxva enabled or disabled yet on my desktop it does. Hardware acceleration i have confirmed with babgvant is working perfect on my desktop (cpu usage was as low as 6% with dxva) yet my htpc it is not, the cpu usage does not change with it disabled or enabled really, and neither does the gpu as far as i can tell. Yet for xbmc or mpc-hc i can clearly see a difference in cpu usage and gpu. Hes adding some extra logging to see if i find anything, other then that Im at a dead end. Luckely it works fine with custom presenter disabled and dxva off, and i plan to get an r9 270 soon so it wont be an issue but i thought i could maybe help some users with amd and stutter on here.

 

 

 

Jordy, i thought you had madvr installed, i must be imaging that due to the picture posted. If its not installed no I dont think it would do anything, babgvant could confirm but i dont see how it would work. 

Edited by Ghostm
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You CPU shouldn't be working much at all no matter if you have hardware acceleration on or off. Your GPU is what will do all the hardware acceleration. I know it can be confusing with our AMD APUs but the two are very separate in that tiny little chip. You HTPC has the A10 correct? So you won't see a difference at all when looking at the CPU. 

 

I am thinking that maybe you will run into the same issue with the R9 since your Radeon should be well more than capable. I just check on AMDs website. You and I both of the same driver version installed. Catalyst ver 14.4 which includes display driver ver 14.1

 

Well I know it would suck. But I remember a while back I made a post about movies skipping around. I did a completely fresh win7 install and movies played perfectly after that. 0 dropped frames...now with all the updates to MBT since then...I get some dropped frames. Who knows though, I could have change something as well as just didn't remember.

 

I also never had MadVR performing any enhancements to the movies. I tried...didn't work out so well even with the overclocked GPU. I only used MadVR for refresh rate switching and controlling brightness and contrast.

 

Any of you using ReClock? I am using ReClock all the time.

Edited by A8HTPC
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My thinking is though if dxva is not working on my htpc it would be putting the load on the cpu rather then the gpu. Which is what I am observing.

 

With my desktop running a 5770 i can clearly see the drop in cpu usage with dxva working as the load from my understanding is directed to the gpu. 

 

With hardware accel disabled in xbmc or mpc-hc on my htpc i get similar cpu load as i do in mbt (around 20% give or take), however when i enable dxva2 in those applications my cpu usage is next to nothing unlike mbt. 

 

 Your right the a10 should be enough but somethings not right. I will do more testing tonight.

 

I hesitate to blame my htpc setup because mpc-hc works perfectly using evr + dxva2 native and uses next to no cpu resources, same with xbmc using dxva 2, it continues to be a mbt problem exclusively. 

The graphics card besides madvr will also be for gaming. I will test more tonight. 

Edited by Ghostm
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I should also mention i can get smooth playback with hardware accel disabled and custom presenter disabled so its not a huge issue for me, im just curious about my issues with dxva in mbt. 

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Now I have DXVA enabled in MBT, LAV Video Config (which is what MBT changes I think) and ReClock and MadVR(when in use). I highly doubt it makes a difference but anything that asks for DXVA I enable it so there are no possible conflcts

 

I should look at my CPU usage a bit more but it seemed to hover between 14-25% with Hardware Acceleration on or off. Though I have other things running in the background so I'll have to look at the MBT process

Edited by A8HTPC
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In case anyone is interested I have photo logs of the CPU and GPU performance with DXVA Disabled and Enabled. I enabled and disable right in MBT.  Be interesting to see these logs from both of you.

 

Process Explorer I used for the load aspect

GPU-Z

 

MadVR Disabled. 

 

I still have custom Presenter Enabled.

<UseCustomPresenter>true</UseCustomPresenter>

GPU-Z Text Log, More Detailed. Must Download and open in Notepad full screen.

In the log you will see at the beginning, DXVA is Disabled, then GPU Core speed will jump when DXVA is Enabled.

 

GPU is NOT Overclocked during this time. 

 

(GPU-Z) GPU Specs

541189026a841_GPUZSpecs.gif

 

MBT Settings (HW Accel is changed during logging)

54118cffed29c_MBTSettings.png

 

(Process Explorer) CPU Performance Log - DXVA Disabled vs Enabled with Movie stop in between

 

541187ddae73c_CPUDXVAComparison.png

 

(Process Explorer) GPU Performance Log - DXVA Disabled vs Enabled with Movie stop in between

Note: CPU load is low but the GPU Core speed jumps to 685Mhz. Im sure if the GPU Core stayed at 282Mhz (Idle), the load would be quite high.

 

Difference is about 1-2%

 

54118815b81b8_GPUDXVAComparison.png

 

(GPU-Z) GPU Performance - DXVA Disabled vs Enabled with Movie stop in between

 

541188a61198a_GPUZDXVAComparison.png

Edited by A8HTPC
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I played around with it, but this one will have to be looked at babgvant i think. Honestly I didnt see as much as a difference with hardware accel disabled and dxva2 in mbt as i did in xbmc or mpc-hc using the same lav filters. Dxva definately works with amd, it works great on my desktop, why im having trouble on my A10 with the same settings I have no idea.

 

The stuttering still is not present in any other program using dxva either except mbt.  And Im seeing a far bigger difference in those devices with dxva2 compared to mbt. That i cannot explain. I might have to chalk it up to system variance as babgvant put it. 

Either way custom presenter disabled and hardware accel disabled im getting perfect playback, its not really an issue for me just something I wanted to see if i can figure out to help others. Fwiw babgvant also tested an A8 and said it worked perfectly fine on his A8 as well. Why some of us are having trouble remains a mystery.

 

 One thing i did mention to him is with dxva enabled  mbt usage does go down but my system usage simply climbs as high as mbt usage without dxva enabled. Which also does not happen in xbmc or mpc-hc using custom evr presenter and dxva. I dont know why the system usage is so high with dxva enabled on mbt. 

 

My settings are basically the same as yours as well in mbt. 

Edited by Ghostm
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I should also mention while my gpu usage was different mine was not as vast as yours in the pictures you provided with  dxva on vs off. Specifically the core clock.

Edited by Ghostm
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More of my settings..

 

LAV Video Settings

541213e11f56a_LAVConfig.png

 

Lav Audio Settings

541214a6b036b_LavAudioConfig.png

 

541214b6c01fe_LavAudioConfig2.png

 

 

ReClock Audio Settings

5412140aa5878_ReClockConfig.png

 

ReClock Video Settings

541218827fa06_ReClockConfig2.png

 

ReClock Advanced Settings

5412144060fe3_ReClockConfig3.png

Edited by A8HTPC
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