[WINDOWS] How to improve 1080p playback performance?
#1
My system:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200
ATI 4350
1GB RAM

What can I do to improve 1080p playback? Right now it's slightly jerky.

Will a better graphics card help (eg. ATI 46XX)? From what I understand that should not help since it's basically only better in 3D performance.

I also set skiploopfilter to 48 in advancedsettings.xml which made no difference for me.

Outside of XBMC I use CoreAVC codec which plays 1080p perfectly smooth.
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#2
That, right there, is the humorous motherload of non-recommended hardware for 1080p playback. AMD CPUs are slightly notorious for playing HD poorly and ATI graphics cards won't allow you to use VDPAU in a Linux or Live install.

With that said, you might try the DSPlayer build of XBMC found here:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=61355

The DSPlayer should be able to harness your ATI 4350 for HD playback.
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#3
Given that I'm running XBMC on Windows XP, will a different graphics card help?

I'm going to give DSPlayer a try, but it looks like it will play like an external player instead of fully integrated into XBMC, correct?
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#4
While it isn't dvdplayer, dsplayer is designed to play exactly like any other fully integrated portion of xbmc. This means the overlay will be the same. Controls via keyboard and remote will be the same. For all intents and purposes, dsplayer is just another part of xbmc that just happens to use dxva for HD decoding rather than ffmpeg.
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#5
I had a similar issue under Linux, so first I tried multithreading with my Athlon 4200, which worked so-so but loaded the processor heavily. Then I purchased a cheap GeForce 8400 GS.

It now handles any 1080p video I've thrown at it without breaking a sweat.

Here's more information on NVIDIA chipsets with VDPAU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU

Also, although I have the exact same processor as you, I'm not running in 64 bits, for what is worth.
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#6
18000rpm Wrote:My system:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200
ATI 4350
1GB RAM

What can I do to improve 1080p playback? Right now it's slightly jerky.

Will a better graphics card help (eg. ATI 46XX)? From what I understand that should not help since it's basically only better in 3D performance.

I also set skiploopfilter to 48 in advancedsettings.xml which made no difference for me.

Outside of XBMC I use CoreAVC codec which plays 1080p perfectly smooth.

have you tried using Media player classic as an external player and use that to play your mkv's or other HD content?
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#7
Hi,

My config give very great results in all 1080 movies.

Windows XP last update on Asus P5E, intel C2D E8200 (overclocked as E8400), 2*1GB (6400cas4), Zotac Geforce 8800GT

CPUs and GPU are sleeping Smile

Check memory usage because i see that you have only 1GB and XBMC can take a lot of memory ... if your pc is starting to swap , it's bad.
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#8
Does anyone know if switching to an Nvidia card will improve my 1080p playback performance? I'm running Windows XP.

I couldn't get the dsplayer version to work (it was also slightly unstable, with jerky UI, video freezes, etc).

I don't think adding more memory will help. If my system is indeed swapping during playback it would look a lot worse than just a few dropped frames here and there.
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#9
18000rpm Wrote:Does anyone know if switching to an Nvidia card will improve my 1080p playback performance? I'm running Windows XP.

I couldn't get the dsplayer version to work (it was also slightly unstable, with jerky UI, video freezes, etc).

I don't think adding more memory will help. If my system is indeed swapping during playback it would look a lot worse than just a few dropped frames here and there.

Yes it will improve very much. Before using xbmc@Linux i was using mediaportal@windowsxp with nvidia cuda's driver - full hd movies and dvb-s works grate with ~20% cpu load.

Now, this same configuration on xbmc@Linux uses max 10% of first core and 5% of second core. And i have only p4 2300 ht and 1gb of ram.

Nvidia 8400 is very cheap so chenge your videocard asap Wink
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#10
I was under the impression from reading other threads, and from other people's opinions that it was the CPU and not the GPU on the video card that is doing the work? Is this wrong?

That being said, I have a P4 w/1MB RAM and I'm going to be swapping up to a Core2Duo shortly, so I can report my findings, as I also have slightly jerky performance on MKV files.
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#11
Adding an NVIDIA card will currently only help with Linux versions. In the, hopefully, near future the DSPlayer will be stable enough to offload to GPU, but DXVA allows GPU offloading to both ATI and NVIDIA cards. The question becomes less about which company to buy from and more about what feature set you need.

@DurhamDev - In Windows you are absolutely correct. In the official build the only thing doing any decoding is the CPU. On unofficial builds created by Tiben, the GPU can do the decoding in Windows. On Linux, if you have an NVIDIA card, the GPU can decode.
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#12
natethomas Wrote:@DurhamDev - In Windows you are absolutely correct. In the official build the only thing doing any decoding is the CPU. On unofficial builds created by Tiben, the GPU can do the decoding in Windows. On Linux, if you have an NVIDIA card, the GPU can decode.

Now, would this be different if I use an external player? (I'm having mixed success with them at the moment, as they aren't 'super smooth' transitions to play the movie, nor do they give me the on screen display, obviously.)
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#13
It depends on the external player. Some such as mpc-hc, allow for GPU decoding, but don't guarantee it or anything. Others don't. You'd be better off reading about the various players.
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#14
natethomas Wrote:It depends on the external player. Some such as mpc-hc, allow for GPU decoding, but don't guarantee it or anything. Others don't. You'd be better off reading about the various players.

Hm..... on mediaportal i was using cyberlink's dvdplayer codecs and all mkv and hd strams was processed by gpu. Is xbmc different ?
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#15
jalokim Wrote:Hm..... on mediaportal i was using cyberlink's dvdplayer codecs and all mkv and hd strams was processed by gpu. Is xbmc different ?

I'm not sure if I understand the question. XBMC uses ffmpeg. So zero offloading. The beta DSPlayer that Tiben is working on offloads everything your card allows it to offload. This means, for example, that if you are using a previous generation ATI card, you will not be able to offload L5.1 encoded h264 video. Cyberlink can't do it. No one can do it, because the GPU in question cannot handle it.

Did that answer your question?
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