mpc-hc EVR freezing. please help.

I use MPC too and just love it, it sounds like a performance issue as you kinda guessed at. Your ATI card is at the lower end of things but since you've tried other cards it's almost definitely on the software side. I'm wondering when you said

"This happens with any recent build of mpc-hc over the last 6 months including the latest svn release as of three days ago."

Does this mean everything was working fine before you upgraded? If you haven't already try poking around at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/support.

That said I was also wondering why you haven't installed any codec packs. CCCP has really helped me along with both video and audio files, you might wanna give it a try. I also had some problems on my older laptop with video doing the exact same thing but when played with VLC everything was fine. Sometimes you just have to go with another player you know?

Also with .mkv files, they're really just a type of container file for your video/audio streams. If you really wanted to you could demux the problematic .mkv deal with it that way.

If I were you I'd install CCCP and VLC over the years almost every video file (including a massive amount of .mkvs) I've tried to play have been perfect. I'm sure all you video drivers are updated but go through things one at a time and hopefully you'll get it figured out. Good luck =)

If it works by using the Microsoft DTV or FFDShow Video without issue, why not just define one of them for MPC-HC to use? Microsoft DTV Video Decoder will DXVA everything except VC1, I believe.

I use MPC-HC to bitstream MKV as well. The only issue I've had is a rare crash. My system is higher-end, though, as I game on it as well with an ATI 5870.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but this same problem is driving me nuts too.

My system is a very plain Jane Win 7 x86 Home Premium (no SP1 yet) with an ATI 5670. Everything was fine until a couple months ago. Now, whenever I play a movie in .mkv container via MPC-HC player application, at some random points in the movie, the video will stall (or go black) for some number of seconds (up to a minute or two) while the time counter continues and the audio continues. Eventually the video will race ahead, overtaking the audio, then freeze again. Sooner or later the audio catches up and they proceed normally from there. Can happen multiple times in a file.

Happens with any type of ripped video (MPEG2 from DVD, h264 or VC-1 from Bluray).

I'm not running any codec pack; never needed any. The only change from the default is that I have the MPC-HC standalone codec installed and set to handle VC-1 so that I get DXVA with those files.

Most of my media plays via WMC/Mediabrowser but for some things with subs I use the MPC-HC application. Also use MPC-HC if I want to frame through an action scene. I see the problem whether or not subs are present. Same files play without incident through WMC (but no subs available in WMC... hence the main reason I use MPCHC).

This started in the last few months; not sure if it is caused by a Windows thing, a bug in MPC-HC, or possibly a video driver issue.

Any help appreciated. My system has been stable since installation in fall 2009; this is the first real annoying issue.

Marc

Processor = Athlon X2 Kuma at 2.7 GHz, 4 GB RAM installed, couple Caviar Greens. Processor usually around 10% during playback.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte MA78GPM-UD2H circa April 2009. Installed the Athlon X2 Kuma at the same time.

I have had no problems with MPC-HC during all of 2009-2010 despite fairly frequent use. Through the winter I had a period where I didn't use MPC-HC much. Meanwhile, Windows updates and such went on.

I updated MPC-HC (with the Jan 31 2011 stable build) when I was having an aspect ratio/full-screen problem that I thought I could solve with an update, but it turns out that was a red herring. Eventually reinstalled latest with "restored default settings" and problem went away.

Not long after that I started noticing the freezing. I can't say if it's due to new version or other random things. I've put on a few newer daily builds since.

I haven't experimented with renderer options; it always used to just work fine.

One thing I can rule out as the change: I haven't updated video drivers since I installed the 5670 more than a year ago. Ain't broke, don't fix. I could always try the latest video drivers I suppose (I have a system image to revert to if needed). But I'd rather focus on MPC-HC as I suspect something in it changed and is the culprit.

It's not clear to me how the Athlon could be the problem; it was working fine for a year and a half across Vista, W7RC, and finally W7RTM [>1 year stable].

The fact that it does the weird freeze, speed up, freeze til catchup, normal thing suggests some connection to the video architecture is messed up...

I'm not interested in changing processor / mobo at this time. My next mod to the system might be to get an SSD. Right now my OS drive is just a partition on one of the caviar green drives, and I'd rather move OS away from the same physical drive as the media. I get the occasional momentary hiccup due to system activity on the system partition; this would likely be cured with an SSD (or any other drive to separate the OS). But these are momentary issues, not the minutes of problems the current freeze issue is causing.

Any further thoughts?
Marc

I'm wondering if anyone has any recent input on this MPC-HC freezing topic?

I still have the problem, and am bumping up the priority of fixing it or finding a workaround.

I've added an SSD to the system since my prior posts a year ago, but this had no effect on the freezing problem.

It still happens at random times, sometimes within a couple minutes of starting a movie, sometimes an hour in, sometimes never...

Any ideas, or steps I could use to troubleshoot?

Thanks

Marc

Have you tried using a different Media Player like VLC? This way you can find out if the problem is MPC or something else. I've been having similiar freezing problems in one of my systems. I reinstalled Windows 7 but that didn't solve the problem. For a while i've been suspecting it's the mobo's sata ports that are malfunctioning.

Hi gonzo90017,

Thanks for the reply! Given two pieces of evidence, I think I can rule out general issues like mobo / SATA / drives:

1. >90% of my watching of content is done through the plain Windows MC system using the standard windows software. I've never once had a freeze or other similar glitch. Similarly, I've started to use TMT5 for some things, and it plays back fine, too. No glitches.

2. If there was a SATA issue, I would encounter it either in a drive-specific way (if the port/cable/power/drive unit) was bad, or generally during any use of the computer (if the SATA controller was frying). I never see problems like this, even when copying content over from another PC or doing other drive intensive things. I occasionally rip on this computer and never have a problem.

Since other players seem OK, I believe the problem is in MPC-HC or one of it's components / codecs that it uses internally.

I have used VLC player (the recent 2.0), but I haven't been able to tweak it to get the picture as nice as MPC-HC. And it doesn't have a "resume where you left off" feature that's a critical one for maintaining my WAF. I have no idea why they didn't build that in!

Mostly, I'm just settled into MPC-HC with all of my keys and such defined and it looks / sounds the way I like it, I just need to figure out this freezing thing without killing its ability to display subtitles.

I'll play with the "output" options. Last night I switched from EVR CP to EVR Sync. Let's see if that changes things. I got through one movie (an mpg2 rip of a DVD) without a freeze... but the freeze is random enough that it's not guaranteed to come every single movie.

Marc

Marc, consider using MadVR instead of EVR. I had an issue with stutter a while back, did some reinstall of my filters/MPC-HC setup and switched to MadVR and it solved my problem while maintaining all the things I love about using MPC-HC.

believe this was the link i followed: http://coalgirls.wakku.to/faq/playba...r-mpc-hc-madvr

Interesting!

I'm gradually working through the built-in renderer options and will add this to my list. I'm sad I can't try it out on my x64 desktop machine first... I'm generally cautious about bringing in new software/components on my HTPC. But, risks like that are what backups are made for...

It may take a while to finish the troubleshooting but I will be reporting back...

Marc

MadVR isn't new. I haven't used it because I don't have a dedicated GPU but many have and it is stable.

Just an update folks,

I switched from EVR CP to just plain EVR. I still got freezing.

I've now switched to the Haali Renderer option. So far, no freezing, but I haven't been using it long enough to feel confident it won't freeze up. However, this setting currently isn't using DXVA for the movie I'm watching at the moment which is 1080p VC-1 encoded. It has been a long time since I've played HD content without DXVA... the sound of my HTPC's fan spinnng up is a bit annoying.

Maybe there's an adjustment I can make to engage DXVA? I'll also try to see if it will use DXVA for the more common AVC/H264 encoded stuff.

I'll post back again after I have somre more experience.

Marc

Still get freezing under the Haali option. So its probably something desperate than these settings control.

I updated my Gigabyte motherboard bios yesterday to the latest and will see of that helps. May also try the Madvr route but that involves some potentially disruptive setup.

I agree marc G

I've read elsewhere (or maybe earlier in this thread?) that the issue may be related to AMD CPU... swapping out my CPU and MB and upgrading is the last thing I want to do right now, so I'm working through other things.

I've had freezes in VLC player too... but not in plain Windows Media Center and not in TMT5.

So my idea is that it must be some common component or approach used between MPC-HC and VLC. I had through that changing out the renderers would fix it, so I'm sad. But I guess they share some internals.

I will eventually try the MADVR setup, once I run out of easier approaches.

I wonder, is there a "firmware" onboard the Radeon 5670 card that could be upgraded? I looked around the web and didn't find anything other than the approximately monthly ATI/AMD driver updates. I'm on the latest (12.4) now, though I've had this problem for over a year so I kn ow it's not recently introduced.

Marc