[Kelfa]

Computer Specs...


Emachines, i know i know..

2.66 ghz Celeron

768 ram

2x80Gig HDD

256 MB Geforce 6200 OC video card


I'm trying to play 720p .mkv on my 1080p plasma through the DVI-HDMI connection.


Regular windows look AWESOME, but whenever I try to play one of these files on my TV the playback start stuttering real bad and is very slow and choppy...


Im on WINXP using, Media player classic, I downloaded the CoreAVC and Media Splitter, everything seems to be set up ok.


Is this processor just too slow to output the picture to my TV?


Is there anyway to buffer most of the video first before I play it??? Im gonna try and play it tonight on the regular monitor and not the TV and see if the larger resolution is what is killing it..


BTW file sizes are 4-8gb.

 

[dubyahJay]

Judging from system specs, I would say it is a RAM and CPU issue. You can always throw a matched 2 gig RAM set in for cheap and a new vid card such as an Radeon 3450 (for cheap) to offload x264 content to.

 

[IanD]

Best first step in troubleshooting these sorts of issues is to CTRL-ALT-DEL and bring up the Task Manager. Click on the Performance tab and check CPU and memory utilisation whilst playing the problematic material.


If your CPU or memory is underpowered, you're likely to be getting close to maxing either one and it should be apparent from the performance graphs.


Note that stuttering can sometimes occur even if the CPU performance graph is not quite maxed as there can be load spikes that do not show, due to the somewhat slow polling by the software.


CoreAVC can not make use of GPU acceleration, so decoding must be handled completely by the CPU.


I expect a 2.66 Celeron is not sufficient for 720p X.264 mkv playback without GPU support, but it's also dependent on the bitrates used in the source material too.

 

[wogitalia]

I would say that 720p would be at about the limits of your PC. Celeron chips were never great and I daresay putting it out to max resolution is hurting the machine hard.


To be honest, I wouldn't bother just sticking ram or a GPU into that machine, almost better off getting a bit more and upgrading the whole thing. With the HD, Case and Opticals it shouldn't cost you more than a few hundred anyway.

 

[fitbrit]



Quote:
Originally Posted by dubyahJay /forum/post/12981939


You can always throw a matched 2 gig RAM set in for cheap and a new vid card such as an Radeon 3450 (for cheap) to offload x264 content to.

I'm not sure it's that easy to accelerate h264 in an mkv container in hardware.

 

[Kelfa]

Update...Messed with some settings and tried to free up some hard drive space on my drives, the drive I was playing it off of only had 1 gb free so maybe that might be slowing it up.


Movie played perfect for the first 15-20 seconds then the audio went OOS and the video lagged a little bit, but this was a very large improvement over the last try that only lasted 2 seconds before a major glitch up.


In Media Splitter there is an option to set an audio buffer size....default was 8100kb buffer...could I set this number very high to help?


Any other buffer options I can set to help with CPU load...or can the 6200 oc graphics card take some of the load?

 

[720p]

disable all deblocking in coreavc if you already haven't done so

 

[philljp]

ok, you are pushing it a bit on that build. But I've managed to get someone with a 1.8GHz Celeron playing 720p .mkv's via my latest software config here:

http://www.projecthtpc.co.uk/htpc_software08.html


But as mentioned, the bitrate of the source can effect performance too.

 

[havix]



Quote:
Originally Posted by philljp /forum/post/12988344


ok, you are pushing it a bit on that build. But I've managed to get someone with a 1.8GHz Celeron playing 720p .mkv's via my latest software config here:

http://www.projecthtpc.co.uk/htpc_software08.html


But as mentioned, the bitrate of the source can effect performance too.

I tried Kmplayer but forgot to disable it's internal x264 decoding. I'll have to try that tonight. Thanks for the info. I've been having issues on a 3ghz P4 with Super Speed enabled and high bitrate 720p and lower bitrate 1080p.

 

[Kelfa]



Quote:
Originally Posted by philljp /forum/post/12988344


ok, you are pushing it a bit on that build. But I've managed to get someone with a 1.8GHz Celeron playing 720p .mkv's via my latest software config here:

http://www.projecthtpc.co.uk/htpc_software08.html


But as mentioned, the bitrate of the source can effect performance too.

I tried this setup exactly and it did not work. It actually played worse than media player classic. MPC plays the best out of VLC,WMP,and WMplayer but still lags.


The video is still a little slow and stuttering and the audio is OOS by quite a bit.


Tried the video on another friends computer and it works perfectly.

This damn 2.77ghz celeron sucks...it uses 2-4% cpu at idle with only taskmanager open...my 1.8ghz AMD uses 0. hmmmm maybe I'll put my new graphics card in that computer....probably would play better, lol.


Any final suggestions?

 

[JyveTurkey]



Quote:
Originally Posted by fitbrit /forum/post/12983020


I'm not sure it's that easy to accelerate h264 in an mkv container in hardware.

Correct, you're not going to accelerate an mkv container with a gpu at all.

 

[philljp]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelfa /forum/post/13029942


I tried this setup exactly and it did not work. It actually played worse than media player classic. MPC plays the best out of VLC,WMP,and WMplayer but still lags.


The video is still a little slow and stuttering and the audio is OOS by quite a bit.


Tried the video on another friends computer and it works perfectly.

This damn 2.77ghz celeron sucks...it uses 2-4% cpu at idle with only taskmanager open...my 1.8ghz AMD uses 0. hmmmm maybe I'll put my new graphics card in that computer....probably would play better, lol.


Any final suggestions?

You made sure it was using CoreAVC and Haali (Press Ctrl Tab) with Superspeed set? There isnt really a better software decoder than CoreAVC for H.264.

 

[Kelfa]

I followed your build exactly, uninstalled my codec packs first...fresh install of KMplayer and MPC, then heali and core avc....should I be using AC3 filter as well?


This is frustrating...I just bought the 6200 geforce for this computer so that I could connect it to my HDTV and now it can't play the damn files im trying to play.


Last night I tried to play a smaller .mkv 720p. 1.4gig TV show, playback was a lot better but the audio was still a little OOS. A 4.4 gig movie is very OOS.


Any last suggestions to get this to work?? With the 2.7 celeron and 756 ram, do you think a gig more ram might do the trick or is the cpu just too slow??

 

[talon95]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelfa /forum/post/13172074


I followed your build exactly, uninstalled my codec packs first...fresh install of KMplayer and MPC, then heali and core avc....should I be using AC3 filter as well?


This is frustrating...I just bought the 6200 geforce for this computer so that I could connect it to my HDTV and now it can't play the damn files im trying to play.


Last night I tried to play a smaller .mkv 720p. 1.4gig TV show, playback was a lot better but the audio was still a little OOS. A 4.4 gig movie is very OOS.


Any last suggestions to get this to work?? With the 2.7 celeron and 756 ram, do you think a gig more ram might do the trick or is the cpu just too slow??

Did you try IanD's suggestion and check your cpu usage during playback? Is it at or near 100%?? If it's not, then there's another problem.


And just to be clear from your original post, the files play fine on your normal monitor, but not on your TV? If that's the case, are you using dual view or just displaying the desktop on one or the other? If you're using dual view, try switching it to only the TV (disable the monitor).

 

[Kelfa]

Files playback badly on the regular monitor just as bad as the TV. The CPU usage is 98-100%.

 

[dovla84]

My config:

CPU: AMD Athlon 1800+(1,53GHz , 32bit)

RAM: 256MB DDR1

GPU: ATI 9550pro 128MB

Monitor: Philips - 1024x768


How to get 720P video working on this extremely outdated config:


Download CoreAVC (H.264 Software video decoder).(google for 'CoreAVC free')

Install CoreAVC with default options.

Download MPC-HC (Media Player Classic - Home Cinema version).

Install MPC-HC.

Open MPC-HC > Options > External Filters > Add Filter > select CoreAVC and then set it to “Prefer”.


The only thing that I can't do with this decoder is to load subtitle.Everything else is working fine.

 

[JiffOrange]



Quote:
Files playback badly on the regular monitor just as bad as the TV. The CPU usage is 98-100%.

Think you just answered your own question. Sorry to say but a celeron will not cut it for HD unless its at very low bit rates, h.264 is just too complex to decode. Need a CPU upgrade, no amount of RAM in the world will help.

Quote:
Correct, you're not going to accelerate an mkv container with a gpu at all.

Not true ....if the video is encoded correctly then HA is possible. If its a download with a dodgy re-encode (by that I meen not done correctly to enable HA, correct number of B frames/encode level) then you are correct that HA will not function but if its a rip or done correctly then HA will work just fine. mkv is just a container.


Cheers,

Jiff.

 

[digitlnoize]

As someone who also has a crappy setup, you have my sympathies. That being said, I've got 720p working just fine on my Pentium 805D (2.6ghz), 1gb ram, and GeForce 4200. I'm using Vista, but it all worked fine when I had XP too. VLC worked the best for me, until I got Vista Media Center working. That seems BY FAR the best. Never a hitch in any playback.


If you haven't already, try the Community Codec Pack. Made a WORLD of difference for me...

 

[noki123]



Quote:
Originally Posted by dovla84 /forum/post/16813216


My config:

CPU: AMD Athlon 1800+(1,53GHz , 32bit)

RAM: 256MB DDR1

GPU: ATI 9550pro 128MB

Monitor: Philips - 1024x768


How to get 720P video working on this extremely outdated config:


Download CoreAVC (H.264 Software video decoder).(google for 'CoreAVC free')

Install CoreAVC with default options.

Download MPC-HC (Media Player Classic - Home Cinema version).

Install MPC-HC.

Open MPC-HC > Options > External Filters > Add Filter > select CoreAVC and then set it to Prefer.


The only thing that I can't do with this decoder is to load subtitle.Everything else is working fine.

I have almost the same specs as yours. if you are really eager to play movies from your pc try to upgrade your ram thats help alot. I use jetaudio to play my .mkv files run great and it had the codecs of it owns.