Slow/stuttering playback on "decent" system

[DmonHiro]

Sorry, I just don't see how or why a recorded video would need better hardware than what most games, even newer ones, need.
I'm only now starting to hit the limits of what my system can handle. What is it about h.264 releases which require so much processing?

Well, h264 is, if you want an analogy, an archived video format. The CPU will "unarchive" the video and play it at the same time, hence the high CPU load. Yes, I know that's not really what it does, but it's the only analogy I can think of right now.

Why do something in a format that those with older systems cannot use, and requires much more system resources just to play?

Because using h264 gives much better quality at lower size, is easier for encoders to do, matches very well with .mkv that allows the use of softsubbs (another CPU eater). Most fansubers don't care about older syatems, they only want to get the best possible quality out.

Even with regard to image resolution, xvid formats seem to play alot better.

xvid requires only one codec and any random player. It's also almost never encoded at 720p, as the file size would be huge.

What is the advantage here if people will end up having to re-encode everything to play on their DvD, gamesystems, ect anyway?

Again, fansubbers care about output quality, and most will agree that they don't care if you can or cannot watch their releases on a DVD, as they were made for the PC. If you want to watch on a DVD, then encoding is your own problem.

I prefer to think that there is just some setting which is fouled up somewhere, or some sort of conflict than to think that people are choosing to use a format which seems, atleast to me, to offer few benefits with much higher requirements. With most .avi files, I can watch them fine while I have a MMO (in shop mode) open in the background (surely I can't be the only one). With these, I can't even watch them properly even if I terminate every non-essential system process, including kasparsky.

All these problems are problems with YOUR system, not really the files. The fact that others can play them just fine proves that there is nothing wrong with the files. Just get the SD if you have problems with HD. I can watch HD anime and burn a DVD or do what ever work I have to do on my PC just fine, and my PC is pretty much as powerful as yours, just with a slightly stonger CPU (2.97 VS 2.6). There is something in your system that is screwing everything up.

[synaesthetic]

His computer should be able to play back 720p without dropping frames or sync problems.

My old 2.2GHz single core Athlon 64 played anything I fed it without issue, and my freaking netbook will play 720p without dropping frames.

[Kurz]

Is overclocking possible on your motherboard?
I think a simple 200mhz increase will elevate your problems.

Btw how many processes are there running in the background?
Maybe its time to go and trim some of them.

[DmonHiro]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

His computer should be able to play back 720p without dropping frames or sync problems.

My old 2.2GHz single core Athlon 64 played anything I fed it without issue, and my freaking netbook will play 720p without dropping frames.

No doubt it will play 720p videos, but the problem is the softsubs. For example, the Sengoku Basara OP from Shinsen's files will not play well on that system.

[synaesthetic]

Wow, I didn't realize how much processor power softsubs used.

I never noticed with my old desktop because it played L-E's 720p release of Shion no Ou (with softsubs) without any problems whatsoever, and played 1080p Blu-ray rips without any issues either.

The netbook though does not like softsubs at all, but plays unsubbed or hard-subbed 720p fine. It's kind of pointless for a screen resolution of 1024x600 to play 720p and higher so I just stick to 480p.

[Vagrant0]

Originally Posted by DmonHiro

All these problems are problems with YOUR system, not really the files. The fact that others can play them just fine proves that there is nothing wrong with the files... There is something in your system that is screwing everything up.

I thought THAT was the point of this thread... Trying to figure out what is wrong with my system so that I can play those files. None of the players or codecs I've tried have solved the problem, and as mentioned, I've already tried watching it with every non-essential process shut down. So I would assume that since others with similar systems haven't been having a problem that the problem is something with the settings of the codec, player, or similar.

I'd even be open to the idea of re-encoding files for my own use if it didn't take 5 hours+ for each step, and hit an error of some kind halfway through.

Originally Posted by Kurz

Is overclocking possible on your motherboard?
I think a simple 200mhz increase will elevate your problems.

I'm not sure if I built this system with overclocking in mind, or because I fried my last one (fan crapped out on me) and needed a cheap upgrade. Regardless, I'm not at a point where I would feel comfortable doing this since I can't afford a new computer when things go horribly wrong. I'm sure I could, but would prefer not to take the chance.

[synaesthetic]

Vagrant0, have you tried wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Windows? Old Windows installations will inevitably slow down. Large amounts of junk entries collect in the registry, storage gets glutted up with unnecessary programs and generally the OS just doesn't run well after a period of time.

I typically wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows every six months, which keeps things running quite smoothly.

How long on average does it take for Windows to start up? How long to shut down? Do you experience slowdown when doing other things besides playback of 720p and higher resolution video?

I'd format and reinstall if I were you, and make sure to keep your hard drive defragged; do it at least once a week.

[FatalMemory]

You wouldn't have any of the "h264" boxes ticked in "Internal Filters" -> "Transform Filters" in MPCs settings, now would you?
I've seen internal decoders not playing nicely with VFR before.

[Vagrant0]

Originally Posted by FatalMemory

You wouldn't have any of the "h264" boxes ticked in "Internal Filters" -> "Transform Filters" in MPCs settings, now would you?
I've seen internal decoders not playing nicely with VFR before.

Nope, they're all unchecked.

@synaesthetic
I'm a bit hesitant about doing a reformat currently since I am in the middle of some projects at the moment, and reformatting tends to always result in me losing something along the way, even when you save most of your stuff on a non-system drive. I do however defragment regularly, clean my registry frequently (Often manually double checking to make sure things are uninstalled completely, as well as running registry mechanic until it stops finding things to remove), and don't do much in the way of unstalling random temporary crap on my computer. But that's not to say that I probably wouldn't benefit from it, been awhile since I did it last.

However, at the moment I'm tempted to think that it's more something to do with some limitation of my videocard, or some settings since I was noticing the same kind of stuttering within some players, while my system was not hitting 100%. I managed to get some better performance by turning off deinterlacing, skipping deblocking, and turning down the priority of the audio decoder to normal. This helps with the skipping, but the video still starts lagging behind more and more, so just setting a second delay on the audio isn't a solution. And I can manage to reduce some of this by preventing vorbissub from being loaded, so if I can manage to figure out how to make the soft subs less resource dependent, I might be onto something. Basically, I think I need to just figure out ways to undo all the neat extra stuff that h.264 allows.

[Miles Teg]

Originally Posted by Vagrant0

However, at the moment I'm tempted to think that it's more something to do with some limitation of my videocard, or some settings since I was noticing the same kind of stuttering within some players, while my system was not hitting 100%.

The Radeon X1600 pro can't be the one posing problem, the video card is not used to decompress the video and no recent video card should have a problem with displaying a video or Windows himself would be slow.

Originally Posted by Vagrant0

I managed to get some better performance by turning off deinterlacing, skipping deblocking, and turning down the priority of the audio decoder to normal. This helps with the skipping, but the video still starts lagging behind more and more, so just setting a second delay on the audio isn't a solution. And I can manage to reduce some of this by preventing vorbissub from being loaded, so if I can manage to figure out how to make the soft subs less resource dependent, I might be onto something. Basically, I think I need to just figure out ways to undo all the neat extra stuff that h.264 allows.

Then problem solved your processor is not good enough to play 720p video with ASS sub. What you have done is alleviate the strain on your CPU. No try to find an option to not apply style to the sub and perhaps the video will play normally. Can't help you find the option as I am a Linux user.

When playing 720p video you don't need deinterlacing to be activated, use it only with interlaced video

[synaesthetic]

Is his processor less powerful than a single-core Athlon 64 3500+ @ 2.2GHz?

Because that was what my old desktop was, and it played 720p and 1080p without dropped frames or desynch problems, even with softsubs. And it did this well enough with room to spare to run Firefox, Pidgin and tons of background services without slowdown.

[Miles Teg]

Were you using coreavc Because even some C2D can have problem with high bitrate H264 1080p video when using CCCP/FFMPEG.

An Athlon XP2500+ (should be equal to a P4@2.6GHz) can have problem playing a 720p video but an Athlon 64 X2 @ 1.8GHz (the same frequency) has absolutely no problem. The difference between generation of processor can be important. A C2DE6750@2GHz (underclocked) is faster at decompressing H264 than an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ at full power (2.5GHz)

Test done using "mplayer -benchmark -nosound -vo null" with ASS activated in the config file.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by Vagrant0

When playing the larger resolution file, the system was working at around 85-90, with the player using between 50 and 85 or so, with the remainder being used mostly by the idle process. With other players it was capping out at 100, but the image was playing a bit better.

If it was really a limitation with CPU, then it wouldn't be constantly stuttering when the player is working 50-85%. And having the system at an average higher 85-90 makes me suspicious.

Like I said before about my own P4-Xeon I haven't had problems and I also have a Pentium-M 1.6Ghz that plays all 720p softsubbed without problems.

And while P4s are slower per clock in general, they're pretty fast with SSEx.

Originally Posted by Miles Teg

The Radeon X1600 pro can't be the one posing problem, the video card is not used to decompress the video and no recent video card should have a problem with displaying a video or Windows himself would be slow.

True.. but there could still be problems with rendering..
YV12 / YUV2 / etc -> RGB

(Vagrant0 if you want to play around with these, it's in CCCP's Video decoder configuration applet under Output)

.. and I guess you've tried "Reset Settings" and "Re-register filters" already for the CCCP config applet?
other than that I'm out of ideas and hope you get it resolved

[arenine]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

If it was really a limitation with CPU, then it wouldn't be constantly stuttering when the player is working 50-85%. And having the system at an average higher 85-90 makes me suspicious.

Like I said before about my own P4-Xeon I haven't had problems and I also have a Pentium-M 1.6Ghz that plays all 720p softsubbed without problems.

If there is such a big discrepancy between the player usage and the system usage, I would think the other processes are using up too much of the computer resource.

Also, I don't think it's a good comparison using your P4-Xeon. Those CPUs are mainly marketed towards servers and is quite a bit more powerful than the ones sold at the consumer grade level.

Originally Posted by Vagrant0

Sorry, I just don't see how or why a recorded video would need better hardware than what most games, even newer ones, need. I'm only now starting to hit the limits of what my system can handle. What is it about h.264 releases which require so much processing? Why do something in a format that those with older systems cannot use, and requires much more system resources just to play? Even with regard to image resolution, xvid formats seem to play alot better. What is the advantage here if people will end up having to re-encode everything to play on their DvD, gamesystems, ect anyway?

It's not the h.264 that requires the additional processing power. It is all the extra pixel that does. Each pixel goes through a bunch of calculations in order to get displayed on your monitor. A SD video is around 640 x 480, which equates to 307,200 pixels. On the other hand, a 720p video file is around 1280 x 720, which equals to 921,600 pixels. That means it takes 3 times more processing power to handle a 720p video file compared with a SD video file. Fansub groups are still putting out SD anime, so it's best to stick with them for the mean time.

If you still want to play 720p files, I think your best option is to get a new video card that supports CUDA in conjunction with CoreAVC. That way, CoreAVC can offload the computational workload to the video card.

P.S. I don't think your system is "decent" either. It's borderline at best.

[Vagrant0]

Originally Posted by arenine

If there is such a big discrepancy between the player usage and the system usage, I would think the other processes are using up too much of the computer resource.

Also, I don't think it's a good comparison using your P4-Xeon. Those CPUs are mainly marketed towards servers and is quite a bit more powerful than the ones sold at the consumer grade level.

The thing was that in SMSPlayer, the player was only using about 85-90% of the total system, but was stuttering even more. Other system processes were never a factor since they never draw more than a 0-2% of the total system during testing. This is what I was talking about. Even when the system was not being used at 100%, there was still stuttering. At the moment, most of the stuttering has been reduced, however the image starts to lag behind the audio more and more after a minute or two, getting progressively worse. Shutting down everything other than windows components and the player does not improve upon this, so the problem must be elsewhere, or something so large that this little freeing of resources doesn't change anything.

Originally Posted by arenine

It's not the h.264 that requires the additional processing power. It is all the extra pixel that does. Each pixel goes through a bunch of calculations in order to get displayed on your monitor. A SD video is around 640 x 480, which equates to 307,200 pixels. On the other hand, a 720p video file is around 1280 x 720, which equals to 921,600 pixels. That means it takes 3 times more processing power to handle a 720p video file compared with a SD video file. Fansub groups are still putting out SD anime, so it's best to stick with them for the mean time.

If you still want to play 720p files, I think your best option is to get a new video card that supports CUDA in conjunction with CoreAVC. That way, CoreAVC can offload the computational workload to the video card.

Well and good, except that more and more fansubs are only being released in these formats, or at the very least, only in h.264, which seems to be more related to the issues I am experiencing than just the resolution. I can play other videos with that resolution in other formats, often with additional things running in the background with little to no problem. And can play 1024x576 xvid files, or similar while I have a mmo in the backgound, with little to no problem. But anything that uses h.264 or mkv formats causes some sort of issue when nothing else is running. So writing this off as simply being "your system does not meet requirements" just seems a bit hard to swallow. Compared to when I started, I've managed to improve things quite a bit by fooling around with settings that sound like they might help. If I actually knew what settings I could use to improve performance, or decrease resources, I would probably be even better off. Most of this I'm simply clueless on, which is why I am asking for help.

Worst case, I'd be open to any means of re-encoding files, provided that it didn't take 10+ hours of processing per file, and could figure out how to make it work.

[synaesthetic]

480p releases are actually getting less and less frequent, which is unfortunate for those who want to watch fansubs on less powerful machines.

I'd much rather watch a 480p release laying in bed with my netbook than sit up at my computer desk in the living room to watch 1080p blu-ray rips.

I hope that groups keep releasing 480p h.264 files, but I have my doubts. While most groups still do release standard-def xvid... not too many release 480p h.264.

[Miles Teg]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

Like I said before about my own P4-Xeon I haven't had problems and I also have a Pentium-M 1.6Ghz that plays all 720p softsubbed without problems.

Your making the Pentium-M extremely sad by comparing him with his anemic half-brother

Vagrant0 > If you still have smplayer :
Go to Options->preferences then performance and put loop filter to "skip always".
To deactive ASS styling Subtitle -> use SSA/ASS Library.

If that don't help go to options -> view logs -> mplayer, possible that something present in the log will be useful.

When your looking at the task manager, do you have one of the core at 100% or the load is shared between the two or one core is at 85% and the other do "nothing".

[arenine]

Originally Posted by Vagrant0

Well and good, except that more and more fansubs are only being released in these formats, or at the very least, only in h.264, which seems to be more related to the issues I am experiencing than just the resolution. I can play other videos with that resolution in other formats, often with additional things running in the background with little to no problem. And can play 1024x576 xvid files, or similar while I have a mmo in the backgound, with little to no problem. But anything that uses h.264 or mkv formats causes some sort of issue when nothing else is running. So writing this off as simply being "your system does not meet requirements" just seems a bit hard to swallow. Compared to when I started, I've managed to improve things quite a bit by fooling around with settings that sound like they might help. If I actually knew what settings I could use to improve performance, or decrease resources, I would probably be even better off. Most of this I'm simply clueless on, which is why I am asking for help.

Worst case, I'd be open to any means of re-encoding files, provided that it didn't take 10+ hours of processing per file, and could figure out how to make it work.

Well, if you think h.264 is the problem, you can trying getting a SD h.264 file like this one
http://a.scarywater.net/ayako/%5BAya...5D.mkv.torrent

If that file starts stuttering too, then we may reasonably conclude that something related to h.264 might be the main problem. If it plays fine, you may have to recognize that your computer can't handle high resolution video files.

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

480p releases are actually getting less and less frequent, which is unfortunate for those who want to watch fansubs on less powerful machines.

I'd much rather watch a 480p release laying in bed with my netbook than sit up at my computer desk in the living room to watch 1080p blu-ray rips.

I hope that groups keep releasing 480p h.264 files, but I have my doubts. While most groups still do release standard-def xvid... not too many release 480p h.264.

It is understandable why many groups do not release 480p h.264. Some people still want their .avi to reencode and other stuff but, .avi is an ancient file format and does not allow for h.264. But the difference between a 480p h.264 and a xvid file isn't too big of a deal, it's just that h.264 offers the same quality of the xvid at a smaller file size or higher quality at the same file size.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by arenine

Also, I don't think it's a good comparison using your P4-Xeon. Those CPUs are mainly marketed towards servers and is quite a bit more powerful than the ones sold at the consumer grade level.

In my case, I know it's actually very similar to his P4, if not a bit slower (2.66Ghz, 512k L2 cache, 533fsb, 266mhz ddr1 ram; exact same Netburst microarchitecture)

Originally Posted by Miles Teg

Your making the Pentium-M extremely sad by comparing him with his anemic half-brother

lol yeah, this little P-M bugger can really perform. But still.. at only 1.6Ghz and slower ram, it's probably equivalent to his system or slightly slower. (it's definitely slower in SSE2 ops than P4). Note this is the old post-PIII based Pentium-M, not one based on the Core architecture.

[Vagrant0]

Originally Posted by arenine

Well, if you think h.264 is the problem, you can trying getting a SD h.264 file like this one
http://a.scarywater.net/ayako/%5BAya...5D.mkv.torrent

If that file starts stuttering too, then we may reasonably conclude that something related to h.264 might be the main problem. If it plays fine, you may have to recognize that your computer can't handle high resolution video files..

Noticed some very slight stuttering through the OP, but that could have just been from the actual way the frames were encoded, or because I have frame skipping enabled (I think). However, it was only using 5-14% of my system.

I'm not saying that resolution is not part of the problem, just that there might be multiple things which are compounding over a few minutes of play time. I don't deny that I'm trying to stuff 10 lbs. of video in a 9 lbs. bag, (or even a 7.5 lbs bag). However, there should still be some way to reduce the impact of what I'm lacking. I've already managed to make up for about 90% of the problem, it's that remaining 10% that's proving to be a bit tricky.

@Miles Teg
I'm reinstalling it now, will edit the post once I've had a chance to test.

*edit* it's worse all around in SMS player now. Even the file arenine suggested is dropping frames constantly (even though I've tried disabling this). CPU usage is also shooting up to 100% with Haruhi and 30% for arenine's file.