[peanutlicker]

Hi all, I've been reading through all sorts of posts about using the Broadcom CrystalHD cards with various issues though can't find anything that specifically matches what I'm experiencing.

I'm running a rather old Dell Precision M65, Windows 7 64, with Eden and a recently purchased BCM70015 card. Before adding in the card, (eg software and DXVA only) I could flawlessly play back content at 720p and below, and had moderate success with the CPU decoding 1080p content, though anything complex ended up dropping frames like crazy.

Since adding the CrystalHD card, I can now play back all but one of my 1080p library flawlessly in XBMC (except for some apparently normal issues when seeking) though one particular file and just about ANYTHING 720p or even LOWER now plays horribly bad with either serious dropped frames or sync issues when the CrystalHD acceleration is enabled. Obviously if I disable the acceleration it goes back to playing the SD content just fine, though having to toggle between the settings is a PITA. I've tried playing with as many other settings as I could find including windowed playback, fullscreen as a window, render methods, scaling, post processing etc. though can't find anything that helps.

I'm not sure if there's something major that I have missed such as only using an older version of the CrystalHD drivers, though the HD1080p playback issues I had all seemed to work fine with the latest drivers from the Broadcom site (3.6.9 used).

I can also confirm that with the exact same set of drivers that EVERY file I have including the one 1080p that is problematic for XBMC plays flawlessly using MPC-HC, and in all cases the CrystalHD driver is definitely active with low CPU load at around 20% average and the occasional spike up to ~40%.

I would really appreciate any advice on any possible configuration or the problems I'm facing, as I was certainly hoping that the performance of the card I am seeing in MPC-HC could be achieved in XBMC for the obvious reasons of the awesome interface vs horrible player interface.

I've collected the following info in the hope that it will help:

• Debug xbmc.log - http://pastebin.com/L3rt2Hr0
  
• MediaInfo 1 - http://pastebin.com/sJ4LHLCD
  
• MediaInfo 2 - http://pastebin.com/2KFBtLDh
  
• MediaInfo 3 - http://pastebin.com/49sZeHE6
  

The MediaInfo output is included for the three clips used in the testing as follows:

• MediaInfo 1 - 1080p.BluRay.x264.mkv - this file plays perfect with CrystalHD, or drops frames in software only
  
• MediaInfo 2 - 720p.mkv - this plays horribly with CrystalHD (shows dropped frames), or perfectly in software only
  
• MediaInfo 3 - 1080p.x264.mp4 - this plays mostly ok in CrystalHD (no dropped output frames though apparently not all decoded), and some rare dropped frames in software only
  

All of the files are 23.976fps, though the only one of this list that displays ok with acceleration on is the first clip. Clip 2 shows constant dropped frames (at least that's what the overlay is telling me) with CrystalHD on, and Clip 3 curiously shows 0 dropped frames (is this because the CPU hasn't dropped them?), though certainly does not display at 23.9fps, instead varying well above and below.

The linked debug log includes playback of each clip in both cases, CrystalHD acceleration enabled, and disabled.

It seems as if anything that's not really taxing the CrystalHD suffers greatly when it's trying to be presented in XBMC only, and as mentioned each works flawlessly well in the stand-alone MPC-HC player.

I seriously hope someone can advise something silly I'm (not) doing and that this can get documented to help someone else in the future.

Kindest Thanks.

[ashlar]

Lucky you. I can't play 1080p stuff on the previous version of the card, something that's never been fixed so far. And I still need to load TMT in background, lest nothing works.

All in all the Crystal HD solution, for me, has been quite a big let down.

[peanutlicker]

Hi ashlar, I can imagine that you'd have a vastly better experience (at least outside of XBMC from my experience) with the BCM70015 card, which I picked up for $44 delivered from ebay.

I haven't tried the trick with TMT in the background yet, though in lieu of any other advice I have [since posting this original message] tried using MPC-HC as the default player for all but 1080 content, though only ended up getting ~14fps from it when it's launched from within XBMC, unless hidexbmc was set to true in the configuration as follows:

Code:

<playercorefactory>
    <players>
        <player name="MPC-HC" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="true" video="true">
            <filename>C:\Program Files (x86)\MPC-HC\mpc-hc.exe</filename>
            <args>"{1}" /fullscreen /close</args>
            <hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
            <hideconsole>true</hideconsole>
            <warpcursor>none</warpcursor>
        </player>
    </players>
    <rules action="prepend">
        <rule video="true" player="MPC-HC">
            <rule videoresolution="1080" player="dvdplayer"/>
        </rule>
    </rules>
</playercorefactory>

So, with that configuration, at the moment at least I have the luxury of XBMC for the library and menu navigation, however revert to playing non 1080p content through MPC-HC automatically from within the UI. It's not the perfect solution, though does mean I can largely stay within the XBMC UI.

Note that when I tried it the other way around (playing only 1080p content through MPC-HC) then I ended up seeing some very minor yet annoying video stutter so have settled on the above configuration for the moment.

Again, if there's any advice that someone can give as to how to get XBMC playing all the content reliably with the internal player I'd really appreciate it.

It would be nice to think that, in a similar fashion to the above playercorefactory setup, I could somehow enable the CrystalHD support only for 1080 content, and leave the software playback for all other cases.

Cheers.

[Ned Scott]

Sadly I can't help test this, since my Windows HTPC that had a BCHD is dead (bad mobo), but back when it was working it played everything great even with the cheaper BCM70012 card and Windows XP (running XBMC v10). Same setup (and eventually adding the BCM70015) worked great a few months ago under linux (didn't test it under Windows).

Since your other players aren't having issues, I'm guessing the problem lies in a change between XBMC v10 and v11. I'd open a bug ticket (the Bugtracker link at the top, just use your forum name and password) and post the same info you did in this thread (or even link to it) so that the devs have a formal way of tracking the problem (and to make sure that someone sees it).

[peanutlicker]

Since your other players aren't having issues, I'm guessing the problem lies in a change between XBMC v10 and v11. I'd open a bug ticket...

Thanks Ned, based on that advice I'll see if I can temporarily downgrade back to v10 and see if the performance difference is still there, and if so will certainly log a ticket.

Cheers.

[peanutlicker]

Update - I've tried on both 10.0 and 10.1 though in either case I don't seem to get any video to display (decoding starts as I hear audio) and assume this is the issue that many others had reported in which case it required TMT to be running in the background?
I'll do a bit of reading on that one to see if I can at least get something playing, and then good or bad will determine whether I end up logging a bug.