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I'm trying to find the best combo of codecs... I have a great system built with awesome components for audio and video playback, but I'm getting some stuttering on video playback.
I went to the avsforums.com and followed some of their suggested codec settings for windows media player playback (figured it was worth a shot). They use ffdshow and shark007 codecs together and I followed their settings guide... The first night I had XBMC running I noticed no stuttering in 90% of my files. Basically I was only getting a TINY amount of stuttering on older SD files, which I was okay with.
After a couple days I've noticed that the stuttering has come back with no explanation.
I know this isn't a hardware problem so don't question that... This is definitely a software / codec issue of some sort.
So, what codecs and settings are you guys running on your HTPC setups?
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craigd
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2010-07-01, 16:48
(This post was last modified: 2010-07-01, 16:53 by craigd.)
XBMC uses it's own codecs to play back media and most should be fine, except on occasion some wmv files.
what awsome components are you using and what types of files are you having issues with?
***edit***
also what platform and version of xbmc are you running
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I've got a quad core CPU with 8 GBs of ram and a radeon hd 4670 card. I know it's overkill, but I built it this way because I knew I'd only be using it as an HTPC for a year at most. I'm going to be building a micro-atx HTPC setup soon to replace this one and move this one into my room as my main pc. The computer is currently only being used to run uTorrent (acting as a seed box, basically) and XBMC.
I'm running optical audio to my HT receiver while video is running straight to the TV. I'm running at 60Hz too, so my TV shouldn't be confused by the signal at all.
As I'm typing this I'm starting to wonder if uTorrent reading/writing to the hard drive during playback is causing the stutter... It just hit me that this could be a possibility. Unlikely, but possible.
Anyway, I'm on Windows 7 64bit, running XBMC R26017. Any help would be appreciated.
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craigd
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Almost certainly not uTorrent.
May be the ati card, most of the development is geared to nvidia graphics systems. newer svn's have more support for ati I think but can cause other headaches depending on your experience with xbmc.
Let us know what files you're struggling with, extension, resolution and codec.
If it's all content make sure you've installed latest drivers and directx, if it's just hd check if dxva is enabled, not sure if it supports ati or not.
search for "stuttering" and you'll get a lot of similar threads with some solutions.
also press the menu button while video is playing and it'll monitor gpu and cpu performance, monitor for unusual behavior, big spikes, dropped frames etc.
more knowledgeable people than me could offer more advice with a debug log also.
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use the new builds. I have a similar system with an HD5850. Camelot has a sort of micro-stutter, not smooth at all. The new builds are smooth as silk. The new stuff is still a little buggy, but its worth it.
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well, I absolutely love it. I had 3 x 3870's before, and the 5850 creams them in 3d gaming. I was frustrated that a high end gaming PC with a high end graphics card could not smoothly play video, when a $50 DVD player can do it fine. Finally, with the latest releases, we have smooth video playback on the ATI 5xxx cards.
I am building a separate HTPC and bought a passive HD5450 for it. Any 5xxx series card should be about the same for HTPC usage. They all have the same processor, and it hardly takes any effort for that processor to decode HD movies.
I think an I5 is a bit overkill. I'll be using a Zotac NM10-DTX motherboard with the 5450, and I expect performance to be excellent for XBMC.
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I just wanted to add that upgrading to the latest nightly build fixed the issue. I guess it was just ATI incompatibilities with the last stable XBMC release.
Thanks for the help guys!