HTPC Problems and Questions

[Crappyday]

I currently have a HTPC specs are

AMD Athlon x2 3.0 ghz dual core
Asus Micro ATX AM2+ board
Has Nvidia gefoce 8300 on board
6 gig DD2 PC1066
1TB Western Digital 1TB drive 7200 RPM
Windows 7 x64
Use CoreAVC coded for blueray file types.

I notice on my LED tv that 720p Movies in x264 format are almost perfect but I can notice some sluggishness in the video. 1080p movies with file size around 14-17 gig are jumpy big time in high motion scenes. Will say putting in a Gefoce GT430 1GIG card smooth all that out of is the CPU holding me back.

Small note when my HTPC under windows 7 x64 sits at idel for a while or goes to sleep it seems to lose audio and if i restart all is good. Just wondering if anything I can do to prevent this from happening.

only codec set I have on there is Xvid and CoreAVC the only 1080p I have because of problems is Avatar MKV-h264 1080p Video 1920×1080 10782 kbps // Audio Eng DTS 1509 kbps. I am playing these through XBMC with Transperancy Skin. Though not as noticeable I can still see slow downs in high action parts on my 720p movies.

Thanks for any help

[Mike Garcen]

can almost guarantee that 8300 card is your problem. I think something like the GT430 should work MUCH better since i believe it can do hardware accelleration for most of your content (Andrew would know).

For your audio disappearing issue, have you ensured you have hte latest drivers for your motherboard? The GT430 should resolve that as well since you would be using the HDMI with audio in that card.

[Crappyday]

I just found out that I have never had Allow hardware acceleration DXVA2 enabled inside of xbmc and what I read about that and after reading that the 8300 does support this it seems I havent been using Hardware acceleration enabled will need to check when I get back to the house.

[Mike Garcen]

well that’s good news 🙂 definitely if you can enable HWA, you should see not only a significant improvement in performance but also MUCH lower CPU usage (shockingly in fact)

let us know…

[Crim]

I had no problems with mine when I was using the onboard video (8200) but I did when I tried to use CoreAVC. Removing CoreAVC and using just FFDShow I had no stuttering (Core looked terrible in comparison and had stuttering issues).

[Crappyday]

cpu usage went from 70ish% to like 40% with this enabled but 1080 still unwatchable in high motion scenes

[Crappyday]

So next question would be if I were gonna spend roughly 100 bucks should it go toward new video card like the nvidia 430 or maybe a new cpu like a triple core or somthing from amd

[jrandeck]

I’d say you’ve got plenty of CPU for HTPC use.  I’m actually surprised that what you have isn’t handling the 1080 video just fine without HWA. 

I have a mini-ITX system with a single core Celeron (Conroe-L) running at 2 GHz with NVidia 9300 graphic on-board and it plays most content just fine, though I have seen some stuttering on some Blu-Rays.

A new video card will probably get you a much better experience than a processor upgrade IMO.

[Crappyday]

I have got about 5 1080p sample files im gonna run some test with them with and without XBMC using coreavc and fdshow i will let you know results if you have any other things i should try let me know

[jrandeck]

Just for grins you might try the free version of Splash Player: http://mirillis.com/en/products/splash.html

I have some clips recorded on my wife’s camera that only play smoothly using that player for some reason.  My previous favorite player for HWA was MPC-HC (Mediaplayer Classic – Home Cinema).  It doesn’t have the best looking interface, but it does its job well.

I don’t use FFDShow or CoreAVC so I can’t comment on how they compare, and I don’t know if it’s possible to integrate the players above into XBMC, but they are worth trying for a point of reference at least.

[Crappyday]

well somthing really odd movies i could play in xbmc now are all jumply getting roughly 4-8 fps. But if I play the movies in Media player classic there is no problem. This sucks cause I really like XBMC frontend for orginzing my movies and tv shows.

 

Any other frontends I should try prefer one that displays fanart and does online scrapping of posters and fan art from imdb or themoviedb.com

 

[skirge01]

I’m assuming that XBMC is using external (Windows) codecs.  I’m pretty sure MPC uses it’s own codecs, so that could explain why MPC is able to play them back.  You may actually have a codec issue.

SageTV can do what you’re asking about, but it isn’t free.  It does have a free 15 day trial, however.  The fanart and scraping are done via free plugins you can add through the UI.

[jrandeck]

I believe babgvant’s Anti-pack codec pack installs the MPC-HC codecs so that they can be used by other programs.  He also has a utility for upping their priority (or has a link to one, it’s been a while since I installed it).

There used to be a guide on this site, hopefully it’s still there.

[Mike Garcen]

[quote=jrandeck]

I believe babgvant’s Anti-pack codec pack installs the MPC-HC codecs so that they can be used by other programs.  He also has a utility for upping their priority (or has a link to one, it’s been a while since I installed it).

There used to be a guide on this site, hopefully it’s still there.

[/quote]

Way out of date, but FYI: http://www.missingremote.com/blog/antipack-get-your-videos-working-without-destroying-your-pc

[Crappyday]

Well for what ever reason I uninstalled xbmc and when i went to check CoreAVC setting i didnt see it listed in my program list or unstill list so i reinstalled it and reinstalled xbmc using a different skin because i felt like last skin had some lag to it.

So after do that and only scrapping the bluray movies into the frontend CPU usage is now under 10% and and I hold constant 24 FPS in 720p and 1080p movies. So not sure what had changed but all seems well now. I am gonna play around with FDshow because i hear you can get better results from it when setup right. I just need to find a good setup guide dont want to mess up there are alot of options inside that program.

 

Thanks alot for all the help!

[Author]

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