Having trouble decoding 1080i/1080P MKV files

[alexb75]

I've been having a lot of difficulty playing 1080i or 1080P MKV files on my machine, with various players, decoders... I am sure I'm doing something wrong and I need help.

I got an older machine, I admit it.. it's an Athlon 64 3200, with and ATI 9800 Pro 128MB Video card, 2 GB Ram. However, from what I've researched, IT MUST BE powerful enough to play 1080i/p videos.

I've tried VCL Player, Mplayer, Quicktime, MPC-HC, and downloaded a whole bunch of codec, ffdshow, etc... to no avail.


Quicktime fails miserably
VCL totally drops frames/unwatchable
Mplayer plays OK, but still drops frames, and has MAJOR audio sync issue
MPC-HC does the best with latest ffdshow, video plays fine, but it has minor audio sync issue, which gets worsen the longer it plays (start at .5 second, then builds up to a few seconds, etc...)


Anybody knows how to play 1080i/1080P H264 MKV files flawlessly on PCs like mine? I am not sure if I should try something that uses my Video Card Hardware decoding or get a better software decoder... One SW I heard is good is CoreAVC, but I didn't wanna pay $15 if there's another solution out there.

Thanks

[sneaker_ger]

I had a similar machine standing around here for quite some time and can say that your machine will not be enough. Maybe you'll find a video here and there with easy to decode material (low bitrate etc.), but most of the time your setup will not be able to decode everything in real time.
CoreAVC is indeed said to be the fastest H.264 decoder for older CPUs like yours, but it is probably still not enough to reliably play 1080p content. (My old Athlon XP 3000+ had more than enough to do with 720p).
You won't find any software that can use your ATI 9800 to accelerate.
If you really want to try it with your PC, then try CoreAVC and try different renderers in MPC-HC (I think overlay and Haali should be pretty fast).

[Midzuki]

Just for the record, the H264 decoder from DivX is free, and many people ( including myself :) ) feel that it's even faster than CoreAVC.

[alexb75]

Oh man, I HATE THIS!

WHY, they can't make a player that you can just switch between codecs to decide which works? I now tried, SMPlayer, Mplayer, MPC-HC, KMPlayer, with all internal decoders, FFDSHOW, Core AVC 1.95, and a whole lot of different settings and it's driving me NUTS!

So far, KMPlayer internal decoder takes LEAST CPU resources (70%), BUT, it just doesn't show the video smoorthly, a lot of blocks, etc.. unwatchable. MPC-HC looks best, but it really doesn't matter if I use Core AVC or other codec, video plays fine, not choppy, but Audio is AHEAD of the video ALL THE TIME, when you scan to mid of the video they get in-sync again, but as soon as it plays for a few seconds they get out of sync and it just gets worse from there. CPU utilization is 90-100%.

Anyone has found a good player that can decode? It's STUPID, I am sure there's someway to get my ATI card to decode something...

[Kado]

Your GPU has no HW h.264 decoders so it will not decode h264 video.
Try to disable deblocking and low latency etc in the decoder. Divx h264 decoder is fast as well. Use overlay mixer or haali as recommended before. My old Pentium D needed to be @ 3.6GHz to decode 1080p video properly.
You can "force" specific codecs in MPC-HC external filters list.

[alexb75]

Your GPU has no HW h.264 decoders so it will not decode h264 video.
Try to disable deblocking and low latency etc in the decoder. Divx h264 decoder is fast as well. Use overlay mixer or haali as recommended before. My old Pentium D needed to be @ 3.6GHz to decode 1080p video properly.
You can "force" specific codecs in MPC-HC external filters list.

Man, THANKS A LOT. Disabling de-blocking HELPED A LOT, and using Haali looks to be better than Overlay.

But, I got an issue with Haali, it messed up the Aspect Ratio and is compressing the 16:9 to 4:3? Anyways to fix this?

Thanks

[Dark Shikari]

Oh man, I HATE THIS!

WHY, they can't make a player that you can just switch between codecs to decide which works?Because Directshow.
I now tried, SMPlayer, Mplayer, MPC-HC, KMPlayer, with all internal decoders, FFDSHOW, Core AVC 1.95, and a whole lot of different settings and it's driving me NUTS!

So far, KMPlayer internal decoder takes LEAST CPU resources (70%)KMplayer just rips off libavcodec. It's broken (and lowest CPU) because it's dropping frames before decoding.

Anyone has found a good player that can decode? It's STUPID, I am sure there's someway to get my ATI card to decode something...H.264 didn't even exist when the 9800 came out.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Your system probably can't play 1080p with CABAC and deblocking, plain and simple.

You have 3 options
1) Give up :)
2) Get a cheap GPU that has DXVA so you can play it all in hardware. These can be had for about $50 and will probably outperform your 9800.
3) Upgrade your CPU. Probably not worth it IMO

Derek

[renq]

Your system probably can't play 1080p with CABAC and deblocking, plain and simple.

You have 3 options
1) Give up :)
2) Get a cheap GPU that has DXVA so you can play it all in hardware. These can be had for about $50 and will probably outperform your 9800.
3) Upgrade your CPU. Probably not worth it IMO

Derek
A single core CPU can struggle a bit decoding 1080i/p files, especially at higher bitrates. Depending on which socket your pc uses- 754, 939 or am2- you could try and get a multicore cpu: Athlon 64 X2 for s939 or am2/am2+/am3 AMD multicore cpu for am2 socket (provided there is motherboard support for them). You're out of luck if it is s754- no multicore cpus.

Another solution would be to get HD2000 or HD3000-series AGP videocard, which support H264 hardware decoding, although there might be some incompatibilities (for instance, these gpus cant decode L5/5.1 files with high nr of reframes, they support only up to "BluRay standard" L4.1).

[mindbomb]

with cat 10.4 and newer, you can decode level 5.1 on amd hardware.

[renq]

with cat 10.4 and newer, you can decode level 5.1 on amd hardware.
HD2000 and HD3000 cards do not support L5/5.1 with high refframes (even with Cat 10.4+) - it's a hardware limitation!!! With low number of RefFrames, they might, not sure.
HD4000 and up have no problems.