[shondafarr]

Hello there!

I got a brand new Lenovo Q180 w/ Blu-ray drive attached to a 46" Samsung LED. After first startup, playback of any video was dismal: very blocky and grainy. Those issues I got fixed by getting the newest Catalyst Control Center from AMD, shark007's free codecs, and disabling "Allow this device to wake the computer" in the ethernet devices' power management as described in a thread on the Lenovo board.
Updating the PowerDVD app solved 3D Blu-rays not being played back.
Quite a bit of fiddling...

Now one big hurdle remains:
Any video playback -- DVD, Blu-ray, 720p mp4/mkv, XVID, anything -- has a small stutter every few seconds. Like the video stops for 1/10th of a second and then fast forwards to resync. I see it with Windows Media Player as well as in PowerDVD and with XBMC.

These are the specs of the Q180:

Intel Atom Processor D2700 (2.13 GHz 1 MB)
AMD Radeon HD 6450A 512kB
4gb RAM
750gb HD

It seems to be powerful enough, I see CPU and GPU usage at around 40% max.

Does anyone have a clue what the problem could be?

Thanks very much!
shondafarr

[bluray]

@shond-

Since you already installed the latest AMD CCC 12.3 version, you do not need shark007. You can try a couple things-

1. Set power option in W7 control panel to "high performance"
2. Enable DXVA2 and disable everything else in XBMC settings/videos/playback
3. You can start off by disable everything in CCC Video Quality other than "Enforce Smooth Video Playback" as shown in my screen shot below-

[shondafarr]

Thanks for the quick reply, bluray!
The Q180 is my brother's and I don't see him that regularly. Trying out any suggestions may take a while. I hope that's OK.

Since you already installed the latest AMD CCC 12.3 version, you do not need shark007. You can try a couple things-

OK. Should I deinstall shark007 codecs, or do they no harm?

1. Set power option in W7 control panel to "high performance"
2. Enable DXVA2 and disable everything else in XBMC settings/videos/playback
3. You can start off by disable everything in CCC Video Quality other than "Enforce Smooth Video Playback" as shown in my screen shot below-

I already did 2) and 3), as I saw that suggestion already while searching around. Since it's not just in XBMC, 2) wasn't a probable candidate anyway...
I'll give 1) a try ASAP.

If anyone came up with other possible solutions or methods to reveal the cause of these stutters, I'd be grateful.

Thanks,
shondafarr

[Streamerke]

Hi,

I am in the process of testing XBMC on my 4 year old PC because I want to migrate from Popcorn Hour to XBMC. But before I do I want to make sure I will actually make some steps forward as Popcorn Hour comes with many bugs, glitches and other problems.

This morning I also noticed some judder or stutter especially with full HD movies. I was able to solve it by changing the rendering method from "automatic" to "DXVA". This setting can be found in the Systems > Settings section. I do not remember where to go from there but I am sure you'll find it. I did not notice any problems after this change.

Regards and good luck

[bluray]

Hi,
I was able to solve it by changing the rendering method from "automatic" to "DXVA". This setting can be found in the Systems > Settings section. I do not remember where to go from there but I am sure you'll find it. I did not notice any problems after this change.

Regards and good luck

See post #2......

[bluray]

OK. Should I deinstall shark007 codecs, or do they no harm?

The rule of thumb- if you don't need it, why have it.....and XBMC use its own codecs anyway!

1. Set power option in W7 control panel to "high performance"
2. Enable DXVA2 and disable everything else in XBMC settings/videos/playback
3. You can start off by disable everything in CCC Video Quality other than "Enforce Smooth Video Playback" as shown in my screen shot below-

I already did 2) and 3), as I saw that suggestion already while searching around. Since it's not just in XBMC, 2) wasn't a probable candidate anyway...
I'll give 1) a try ASAP.

If anyone came up with other possible solutions or methods to reveal the cause of these stutters, I'd be grateful.

Thanks,
shondafarr

For #2, it is very tricky and every little thing can cause playback to stutter. You can try to enable DXVA2 with DXVA as render method. If that doesn't work, try disable "Adjust display refresh rate to video" and "sync playback to display"......every HTPC is slightly different. You have to try different things on your HTPC!

Since you have the same problem using PDVD and 7MCE, I don't think that it is XBMC settings problem. It is more likely have a lot to do with #1 & 3 in my suggestion.....

[FredipusRex]

Thank you for this thread!

I have the Lenovo Q180 and it was stuttering on 1080P (especially VC1) content. There was absolutely no CPU load and I'm running on a 1Gig network which was under 2% utilization and still - stutter city.

Following the recommendations of bluray, above, I am now stutter-free! Everything is smooth as silk, even my super-high bitrate VC1 files.

Thanks!

[bluray]

Thank you for this thread!

I have the Lenovo Q180 and it was stuttering on 1080P (especially VC1) content. There was absolutely no CPU load and I'm running on a 1Gig network which was under 2% utilization and still - stutter city.

Following the recommendations of bluray, above, I am now stutter-free! Everything is smooth as silk, even my super-high bitrate VC1 files.

Thanks!

I'm glad that is work out for you......

By the way, Lenovo Q180 is a very sleek HTPC......is it a very silent HTPC?

[FredipusRex]

I'm glad that is work out for you......

By the way, Lenovo Q180 is a very sleek HTPC......is it a very silent HTPC?

It's very quiet. I'm using FLIRC to control the box via my receiver's remote control (I mapped the remote to use Tivo codes, which were readily picked up by the FLIRC device, which maps them to XBMC keystrokes).

If I could figure out some way to get FLIRC to be able to control both XBMC and WMC so I could watch Blu-Rays without hauling out the wireless keyboard, that'd be sweet. (I have the blu-ray attachment - both the PC and drive together are no bigger than a small Blu-Ray box set). I suspect if I really hacked the keyboard mappings file in XBMC I could get XBMC and WMC to respond to similar keystrokes, but then I'd probably get stuck when it switches to PowerDVD to play the disc...

Thanks again.

[bluray]

I'm glad that is work out for you......

By the way, Lenovo Q180 is a very sleek HTPC......is it a very silent HTPC?

It's very quiet. I'm using FLIRC to control the box via my receiver's remote control (I mapped the remote to use Tivo codes, which were readily picked up by the FLIRC device, which maps them to XBMC keystrokes).

If I could figure out some way to get FLIRC to be able to control both XBMC and WMC so I could watch Blu-Rays without hauling out the wireless keyboard, that'd be sweet. (I have the blu-ray attachment - both the PC and drive together are no bigger than a small Blu-Ray box set). I suspect if I really hacked the keyboard mappings file in XBMC I could get XBMC and WMC to respond to similar keystrokes, but then I'd probably get stuck when it switches to PowerDVD to play the disc...

Thanks again.

You can try to install AnyDVD HD 14 days trial. After you installed it, you need to reboot HTPC for it to work. With AnyDVD HD running in the background, you should be able to playback blu-ray directly on BD-ROM using XBMC Play Disc option.....

[FredipusRex]

I keep forgetting that XBMC now has some rudimentary Blu-Ray support. I actually own a copy of AnyDVD HD, so I'll try that out later.

[g8m3r]

Just wanted to say thanks to Bluray - using the three suggestions helped fixed my stuttering issues as well.

[bluray]

Just wanted to say thanks to Bluray - using the three suggestions helped fixed my stuttering issues as well.

Congratulation....it is good to know that my suggestions work for you too.......