Random Video Slow Downs in Mplayer on Windows 7

[blazerqb11]

Every few days(and for days at a time) the video performance on my machine seems to drop drastically. I can't play videos in MPlayer and video editing becomes incredibly slow(AviSynth+VirtualDub), but I can still play videos with WMP and MPC with no slow downs. The performance always goes back to normal after a few days without me changing anything, so I'm pretty confused about what is causing it. Anyone have a clue what could be responsible?

Specs:
Windows 7 64
Core2 Quad Q8200
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT
6GB DDR3

[Guest]

Have you looked to see what processes are running when you are in the slow state and what CPU they are using?

[blazerqb11]

Have you looked to see what processes are running when you are in the slow state and what CPU they are using?

Thanks for the reply. Yes nothing is using any CPU that I can see, other than the video player(Desktop Window Manager may use something like 2%). When playing in MPlayer it just about peaks 1 core during slow downs and the other cores stay relatively low. In MPC I get one core from about 10-40%(usually about 5-10% total), and the rest low, and in WMC I get 25-50% on each core. It's funny because MPlayer usually uses less CPU than either of those two.

Also, I've tried setting the vo to gl2, direct3d, and directx, with not much difference, although it seems to run a little better with direct3d.

Edit: After looking a few more times at MPlayer, it seems it usually just uses 25-40% on each core with a few random times where it comes close to peaking a single core while the others drop off. The slow downs are all happening during high motion scenes, but the CPU usage doesn't seem to be going up much at all, and certainly, not close to 100%.

Oh, hey it just shifted back for a little while and then went back to being slow. The only thing I did was start a virus scan that hasn't caught anything. I was able to play the video that was slowing down before twice at the same time, and run a virus scan with no slow downs and MPlayer was only using about 6% of the CPU.

[blazerqb11]

Well, I updated to the latest drivers for my GPU, tried letting Windows automatically install drivers, used all 4 of my memory sticks solo each in a different slot, swapped out my GPU, ran a virus and Windows defender scan (nothing came up on either) and the problem was evident in every situation.

I just ordered a new HDD and I was planning on installing Linux on it, which should tell me whether it is a hardware or software problem definitively(although it could still technically be the HDD that Windows is installed on, but I've had no other HDD related problems whatsoever).

[Reimar]

Edit: After looking a few more times at MPlayer, it seems it usually just uses 25-40% on each core with a few random times where it comes close to peaking a single core while the others drop off. The slow downs are all happening during high motion scenes, but the CPU usage doesn't seem to be going up much at all, and certainly, not close to 100%.

Oh, hey it just shifted back for a little while and then went back to being slow. The only thing I did was start a virus scan that hasn't caught anything. I was able to play the video that was slowing down before twice at the same time, and run a virus scan with no slow downs and MPlayer was only using about 6% of the CPU.

25% vs. 6% CPU usage? Sounds like a throttling issue, either for some reason the OS doesn't realize that it should get the CPU out of power saving state (try some less aggressive power saving scheme maybe, I don't really know how to influence that on Windows), or the CPU gets too hot and enable thermal throttling.
Of course both mean that everything should become quite slow in those cases, not just media players, but it might be hard to notice with other applications.

[blazerqb11]

25% vs. 6% CPU usage? Sounds like a throttling issue, either for some reason the OS doesn't realize that it should get the CPU out of power saving state (try some less aggressive power saving scheme maybe)

Maybe, but it was playing correctly at 6% and slow at 25%. Wouldn't it be the other way around?

I think you might be on to something with the power scheme though. I had it on "High Performance" and just for fun (and the fact that your comment made me thing about how I have been messing with the power schemes quite a bit lately), I flipped it back to "Balanced", and voila, it was running fast again. Obvious that switch shouldn't increase performance, but when I switched it back to "High Performance" it stayed fast. Maybe something is going haywire there. I'll have to see how long this last, and whether that trick works again in the future I guess

Of course both mean that everything should become quite slow in those cases, not just media players, but it might be hard to notice with other applications.

Now that it is running fast again, I definitely noticed a huge improvement in drive browsing speed (it did seem a little sluggish, but I wasn't sure), so it seems it is more system wide than I imagined.

[blazerqb11]

Absolutely amazing, it happened again this morning, so I changed power plans to see if it would speed it up this time, and it did. I guess I should report this to Microsoft.