I'm in the UK and have been using Windows Media Center (WMC) for over 10 years now on two PC's, one in each room. I would dearly like to move to XBMC-Kodi and have installed a couple of versions over time with the most recent test a few months ago. I was amazed at the richness of the features compared to WMC but the only thing that stopped me was the difference in the smoothness of playback of 1080p HD WTV files (H264) recorded from FreeView HD or Astra. For some crazy reason, watched pans in WMC are much more fluid than XBMC, despite my trying all the video settings to achieve the same result, same frame rate, refresh rate etc. I'm not an expert on these things so I cant go deeper than to say I've failed. I don't want to have to convert all the files, but I would dearly love to play them with the same look as they have in WMC. Surely this must be addressable by codec / settings? Can anyone give me any suggestions of how to move forward on this or to debug what is happening?
Thanks for any help - Brian.
Are you seeing lines, choppy playback, pixilation, etc? If you're sure it's 1080p, then I don't have the best answer. But in my case, I was watching 1080i WTV files using server.wmc/pvr.wmc and changing the Deinterlace setting to On cleared up all of my issues. I'm in the US, though, where OTA programming is interlaced, so that may not be your problem.
Turning deinterlace to on or auto is one common fix, the other is to turn on "adjust refresh rate to match video" in settings>video>playback
Thanks for your suggestions Dilligaf and giant25. Over time I've worked my way through all of those settings but the effect that I see is a slightly jerky pan - static pictures are fine. This effect is not gross, there is no pixlelation or major video artifacts, it is simply that when going back to WMC and playing the same scene, movement is much more 'fluid'. As you say I would have expected refresh rate or deinterlace to be the issue but it is easy to see when you have these settings wrong. I feel I'm looking for something deeper than these headline settings.
I assume you are talking about the playback of wtv files and not just a live-tv issue. If the broadcast is really 1080p, if you don't mind, please make me a short clip (like 2 minutes long) and upload the wtv file to here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0...sp=sharing
Do other players show the same problem, like wmp or vlc?
I seem to be having a similar issue. HDTV (OTA) is streaky in XBMC and not in WMC during live TV (It is the same if it is a OTA recording, looks good in WMC but streaky in XBMC, all other videos play fine in XBMC). Very noticable while watching sports, or anything with fast movement. I've been using serverWMC for close to a year and only noticed this recently (not sure if it was after the latest update for serverWMC or after I installed the last version of Gotham). Any suggestions would be appreciated.
That really sounds like the broadcast is interlaced and you have deinterlacing turned off in xbmc. Have you checked?
Deinterlacing was off. Seems better now. Thx!!
I am having a similar issue to bfrost with playback in XBMC where play back is not as smooth as it is in actual Media Center. It is most pronounced in sport ie fast moving (Footy for example). I have messed about with deinterlace options and they make a little difference but still not quote as good. I have two computers, one with a Nvidia 430 and the other is the haswell i5 NUC. In terms of ranking playback...
Both are Windows 8.1 PC's
Media Center Nvidia 430
XBMC Intel NUC (very close to above)
XBMC Nvidia 430 (noticable not as good).
The video is 1080i recored off BBC 1 HD. Any idea what I can do?
I assume this is both on saved wtv files and not just live-tv? All I can think is that you need to play with the settings, beside deinterlace try 'adjust refresh rate to match video'. Also, are you running wmc while you are watching xbmc on the same computer? I have noticed on some of my systems that the quality of xbmc playback is effected by wmc running.
Assuming its an issue with the playing of wtv files and not something particular to live-tv streams, you might get more help by posting this to the general xbmc forum.
Yea it seems to be both live and recorded, I don't have Media Center open at the time either. At a guess I would say it is the WTV format playback that is at issue and the codec XBMC is using to decode it. I will have another play with the video settings and make sure MC and XBMC are using the same refresh rates etc.
If it turns out to be an xbmc playback issue, you'll need to submit it to the xbmc team. I guess the trick will be whether the problem is obvious or not in whatever example files you provide them. You might consider other players just for comparison, like vlc, to see if they also show the problem, which would be useful info if you submit it.
Ok so an update on this, I have found v14 beta seems to fix playback or at least make it loads better. I expect this will be down to codec changes in the new version. I did a couple of test and where as before turning on deinerlace made a little bit of difference, it now makes loads. The auto modes seems to work much better too, as I am sure in 13 it was not always picking up the need to deinterlace on occasion or selecting the best method.
If anyone else is having poor play back it might be worth a look.
One thing I found purely by accident is that turning off hardware acceleration and using software had a noticeable effect on Live TV image quality coming from ServerWMC. This was done in conjunction with de interlacing functions being turned on. For some reason the software settings were much better.
I wish I had a good explanation for this but maybe someone else can chime in on that.
@jkirk,
Interesting. Which system are you referring to? windows? android?