Mirillis forum

Hi !
First of all, i would like to congratulate you for the new h264 core. It is indeed a SIGNIFICANT improvement that any free players on the internet like VLC, MPC, etc. should have (their developpers are not focusing on it lately, unfortunately !). It playes much better any FullHD h264 file on my slow 2.13 Ghz PC than other players do and it rarely reaches 100% CPU usage (normally 80-90 % at high load). But there is a problem that i'm going to describe in the next lines. I will refer only to the 1920*1080 h264 compressed files.
When playing high bitrate files (> 15Mbps, 25fps) in full screen mode the playbeck is not smooth, there are some very short pauses (once/3-5 sec.) - the motion is not fluent. The same happens with 30fps files (even at lower bitrates), or with FullHD MPEG2 files (my motherboard has hardware support for MPEG2 decoding). If i turn to 100% video size any file is played flawlessly (altough the difference between 100% video size and my screen size is very small - the 100% size image covers almost my entire 1920*1200 screen). I tried to use the overlay mode and it worked, but partially -
the motion is fluent, but slightly flickery, which is annoying. If i disable the 1080 i->p conversion it is even worse, the "stutter" is increasing. I also tried to enable/disable Vista Aero, but no change.
Is there a solution ?
Thanks.

fullhd_fan wrote:Hi !
First of all, i would like to congratulate you for the new h264 core. It is indeed a SIGNIFICANT improvement that any free players on the internet like VLC, MPC, etc. should have (their developpers are not focusing on it lately, unfortunately !). It playes much better any FullHD h264 file on my slow 2.13 Ghz PC than other players do and it rarely reaches 100% CPU usage (normally 80-90 % at high load). But there is a problem that i'm going to describe in the next lines. I will refer only to the 1920*1080 h264 compressed files.
When playing high bitrate files (> 15Mbps, 25fps) in full screen mode the playbeck is not smooth, there are some very short pauses (once/3-5 sec.) - the motion is not fluent. The same happens with 30fps files (even at lower bitrates), or with FullHD MPEG2 files (my motherboard has hardware support for MPEG2 decoding). If i turn to 100% video size any file is played flawlessly (altough the difference between 100% video size and my screen size is very small - the 100% size image covers almost my entire 1920*1200 screen). I tried to use the overlay mode and it worked, but partially -
the motion is fluent, but slightly flickery, which is annoying. If i disable the 1080 i->p conversion it is even worse, the "stutter" is increasing. I also tried to enable/disable Vista Aero, but no change.
Is there a solution ?
Thanks.

Hi, it looks like some performance problem or graphics drivers issue.
What is CPU utilization when you experience not smooth video playback?
Your PC is a desktop? What is your graphics driver version?

Yes , my PC is a desktop and i downloaded today the latest graphic driver version and there is still no change.
(earlier version 185.85 or something similar, i don't remember exactly , now 196.21). I'm going to post some CPU usage figures, but they are valid only for the 100% video size mode, because i can't see the Task Manager window in the full screen mode (it just dissapears, although the "Stay always on top" option is enabled).

1.)1080 i->p conversion enabled, video overlay (option) disabled :
100% video size : cpu usage aprox. 80-90%, flawless playback !
fullscreen : very short (almost periodical) pauses at every 3-5 sec, it is not very noticeable, but nevertheless annoying
- the resulting motion is not smooth (this is what i need to be corrected !)

2.) 1080 i->p conversion disabled, video overlay enabled :
100% video size : cpu usage aprox. 50-70%, slight flickering and quality loss
fullscreen : the same.
The motion is smooth in both cases.

3.)1080 i->p conversion enabled, video overlay enabled :
100% video size : cpu usage aprox. 60-80%, slight flickering and quality loss, motion is smooth
fullscreen : slight flickering and quality loss, and the stutter becomes noticeable - the playback is worse than it is at 1.)

what is wondering me is the fact that 100% video size means "almost" the fullscreen on my monitor and it runs perfectly at 1.) but the full screen mode at the same point does not.

Could you please check if playback in fullscreen mode works fine if you set lower resolutions of your display?

My current monitor resolution is 1920*1200 (16:10 24" monitor). Tested resolutions :
1920*1080
1680*1050
1440*900
1280*720
The stutter is slightly decreased, but the decrease is not proportional with the resolution decrease, it remains "constant".
The CPU load is almost the same.

Sorry to chime in here, but you said earlier that "...my slow 2.13 Ghz PC". Do you think maybe that has to do with the issue?

I have no problem playing back 1920x1080 60i movies at 17Mbps. The motion is always perfectly smooth regardless whether I'm playing full screen or not.

XP Pro SP3 / 32
Intel Q9550 x4 | 4G
GeForce GTX 275

Yes, having a lower speed CPU could make the PC run slowly (not necessarilly !), but the full image (100%) size and the full screen size on my monitor are almost the same (playing back a 1920*1080 file in 100 % size on a 1920*1200 screen), so the full screen mode should not be an extra load for the CPU. I think the problem is somewhere else.

Ah, I see what you mean.