Frame drops with hardware decoding enabled
#1
With recent nightly builds (64-bit MacOS X on 10.8.2 on a 2011 Mac mini i5 + Intel HD 3000) I am getting very frequent frame drops with hardware decoding enabled. As soon as I disable hardware decoding, it's smooth with zero frame drops.

It started happening right after the bug causing the green lines on the bottom and the right-hand side of the screen was fixed. So around Dec 18 I think it was. Not sure if it's related to that fix or not though.

Interestingly, if I bring up the OSD, it plays smoothly while it's on-screen. Does it disable hardware decoding with the overlay on-screen maybe?

Log with hardware decoding enabled

Log with hardware decoding disabled
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#2
No one else is seeing this?
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#3
Still happening with Dec 31 build Sad
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#4
Can you make a bug report on Trac for this using what you described first post? Just make a new debug log using the latest nightly build.
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#5
Same here too. Moved from Eden to Frodo over the holiday and started watching a movie last night. Turning Hardware decoding off causes playback to be fine.

Glad it wasn't just me!
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#6
Will file a bug report tomorrow night after the in-laws leave.
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#7
Ticket 13907 opened for this issue.
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#8
hint, when creating a bug report with xbmc.log, start playing and do nothing for 10-15 mins, so we can see what might be going on. If you bounce into play, then bounce out in less than a 10-15 mins, we can't see squat Smile
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#9
(2013-01-05, 20:49)davilla Wrote: hint, when creating a bug report with xbmc.log, start playing and do nothing for 10-15 mins, so we can see what might be going on. If you bounce into play, then bounce out in less than a 10-15 mins, we can't see squat Smile

Oh, sorry, I ran it long enough to clearly see the problem on-screen (50 or so dropped frames). It's dropping very, very frequently.

I will re-run it though. Do you also want me to produce another log without hardware acceleration?
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#10
Attached a log spanning 30 mins of playback.
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#11
Not sure why the dropped frames aren't reported in the log, but the codec info overlay ('o' key) does show them.
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#12
Are the dropped frames obvious while watching, or is it just the count that increases?

Edit: On my optical link, a 1080p using passthrough DTS on my optical link, no drops. However, switched to a 720p file that uses WMAHD, I see the drop count on the overlay, but nothing was visibly dropped/skipped.
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#13
It's very obvious.
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#14
Hmm, setting the Render method to Software solves the issue (leaving VDADecoder enabled). Well, mostly anyway. There are a couple of frame drops here and there, but not the once/second I got when it was set to Auto Detect.

Both of the shader methods cause the issue when used in conjunction with hardware acceleration. Either disabling HW acceleration *or* setting the render method to software solves the problem (mostly).

The only way I get no frame drops at all is by setting the render method to Software and disabling hardware acceleration. This obviously gets the CPU going though.
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#15
I was just wondering, whether this was "fixed"... ? I started using Frodo RC3 yesterday (MacMini 2012, i5 base-model, ML 10.8.2) and must say, playback seems quite buggy to me... dropped frames (at least I think thats what it is) and actually a slow down after 1h and 24 minutes (restarting the movie (with return where left off) the movie solved this)...

I also must say, it seems as if Frodo would starts up slower (I use an SSD so its not really sloooower but just.. you know... maybe a split second ;-) ) than Eden...

No debug log just yet, as I am at work (obviously not working ;-) ) and just wanted to see whether I am the only one with this problem / perception...

cheers
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