Win AMD R7 260X Video Playback Issues
#1
Hello Folks,

I've built a HTPC a while ago which i also use for gaming, the basic specs are:

Hardware:
* MSI AMD Radeon R7 260X GPU connected via HDMI to LG 42" TV
* Intel i3-4360T CPU
* B85 Mainboard (Asrock)

Software:
* Windows 8.1 OS
* latest Beta-driver from AMD
* XBMC 13.2 with MediaPortal TV Addon


99% of the time the system is used for DVB-S(2) playback, i'm running MediaPortal TV Server on a different machine, using XBMC 13.2 as the frontend. As most TV stations i watch deliver SD content, XBMC needs to deinterlace and upscale the content, and that's where the trouble starts Undecided

Problem No.1: As already mentioned in a different forum thread, AMD driver seems to deliver the most poor quality when it comes to deinterlacing, which seems to be true (Both DXVA-BOB and DXVA-Best are aweful!). So i've tried to uncheck the "Use DXVA2" checkbox to enable software based deinterlacers. Using the "Deinterlace" setting gave me very good quality, also for HD (1080i) TV stations the CPU load was at ~15% during playback, which is fine for me.
Concerning TV playback everything works fine with these settings, but it seems that these settings lead to

Problem No.2: playback from other sources (i.e. MKV files with 1080p24 content) leads to partial Video flickers and async audio/video playback (it seems that the longer the video runs, the higher the delay between audio and video gets - don't know if this is possible?).
I can only "correct" this by enabling the "Use DXVA2" checkbox, after this the videos playback is fine but of course leads me problem No. 1 again..

If anyone who may have experienced the same difficulties, i'd be glad on any hint you can give me on configuring the XBMC video settings to avoid both issues.
Note that I've disabled all "video enhancement" options of the AMD driver, as I've read that these options tend to make things worse..

Thanks in advance for any advice,

yours,
Juergen
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#2
Hi Folks,

Nobody here with AMD graphics, Win8 and interlaced SD Video content? Sad

thanks,
Juergen
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#3
Yeah I have AMD graphics (inferior to yours), Win 8 and interlaced SD video content (albeit through DVB-T) and don't have any of your issues so can't really help other than to suggest maybe others haven't had these issues here either and the lack of replies may reflect this rather than your post being ignored.
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#4
Hi,

Well, your reply at least gives me some hope that this is "solvable", which is far better than no reply at all Smile

Can you let me know the Video settings ("System -> Video Hardware" and "Videos -> Acceleration" and the deinterlacing / scaling settings for video playback) you use on your system, and maybe the AMD driver Version?

I'll also try to explain the video issues i get when using "DXVA Best" deinterlacing: when there are large areas in the picture which have the same color, these areas start to "flicker" (the colors of these areas seem to change a little bit a few times per second), which is quite annoing to me. I think this only occurs with SD content, when also upscaling is required (i currently use "Lanczos3 optimized", but have also tried others), i've not seen this behaviour with interlaced HD content.
I've also tried "DXVA BOB" deinterlacer, but this gives a very ugly overall picture quality (looks like upscaling one half-picture and just dropping the second one).

Thanks in advance for your help,

yours,
Juergen
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#5
Ok as it seems most appropriate to you I am going to give you the settings for my secondary HTPC which is running Windows 8 and receiving Live TV fed from my main HTPC.
This PC is far from the latest tech, its an AMD A4 3400 based APU system with 4GB of RAM.
My default video settings on it are auto deinterlace, DXVA best deinterlace method and Lanczos3 video scaling method.
However for live TV I have to adjust the scaling method to lanzos3 optimised for every channel on first viewing (XBMC always remembers this setting afterwards) otherwise despite getting no dropped frames reported there is a noticable jerkiness on any panning scenes be they SD or HD.

I think I understand your description of the flicker or I hope I do, before my old tv recently went to television heaven I would get a very noticable flicker on any sharp image on it, it could be an upscaled SD image from my PC or a native HD image but the flicker wasn't a few times a second more like 10 or 20 which the eye shouldn't see but does (does this description of the flicker sound accurate), since I was forced to replace this TV a couple of months ago I haven't noticed his phenomenom again. Before you invest more time tearing your hair out do you have another TV or monitor you can connect to eliminate this from your list of problems?

I genuinely hope you can find a solution to your problems because everytime I have friends or family visiting I am always complimented on how great my (cheap) XBMC systems look and sound compared to their ludicrously expensive but tbh useless off the shelf AV setups are.
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#6
Ok, your settings match the one i currently use, and to be honest, when i wrote my first answer to your reply, it also came to my mind that maybe i'm searching for the root cause at the wrong end of the HDMI cable Wink
I'll try to borrow an full-HD monitor from my employer and give it a try, maybe it's really just my LG TV which is trying hard to "disimprove" the video..
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#7
Hi,

I've been able to reproduce the display flickers also with a Full-HD monitor today. I've also tried to record the display errors with my digicam, but the moire effects of recording the TFT picture make it hard to identify the effects in the recorded video..

However, i've experienced that the most intense effects of the de-interlacing flickering seem to occur reproducibly maybe half a second before a scene change (a fast scene change, not a fade out / fade in change). Does this sound familiar to someone?

thanks,
Juergen
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#8
Good Evening Folks,

First of all, Merry X-mas to everyone! Smile

Just to let you know, it seems that this issue has been solved with Kodi 14, using DXVA2 and "DXVA Best" deinterlacer does not give the strange color-flickers any longer.

Big thanks for this christmas present to the devs! Wink

yours,
Juergen
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AMD R7 260X Video Playback Issues0