How to get Q6600 to play 2160p video?

[Chengbin]

Is there any way to get a stock Q6600 to decode 2160p video? I've tried the crowdrun and ducks take off video, and both brings my Q6600 to its knees. I'm getting about 13fps on timecodec. Is that normal?

This video is making me question if I'm doing something wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRr4aO8Aa78&feature=player_embedded

Thanks.

[yetanotherid]

What player/decoder are you using? Is CPU usage pushed to 100%?

I just tried the crowd run video using my dual core E6750 and even though it was also busy transcoding a 1080p video to AVI at the time, it played it flawlessly.

I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Try downloading and installing the Combined Community Codec Pack and let it disable any splitters/codecs it wants to. Hopefully you'll then be able to play the video with MPC-HC without any problem.

[yetanotherid]

Here's a story for you.....

The PC I mentioned I used to play the file in my previous post.... a couple of hours later I rebooted it and when it restarted it gave a short beep then just sat there. It's done it a few times before so I hit the reset button and it booted up, but after it finished it wouldn't play many HD videos without stuttering and it certainly wouldn't play any of the ones I'd just been watching. I spent a few hours messing around with it and in the end discovered GPU decoding was no problem and CPU encoding was only a problem while it was overclocked (yet it's been running slightly overclocked since the day I built the PC).

Eventually I worked out while testing with the same 1600x900 video over and over, that if I set ffdshow to resize the video down to a width of 1416 or less it'd stop stuttering. A width of 1432 and the stutter would just be noticeable and the higher I went the worse it got, yet CPU usage wasn't high at all. The odd thing is my monitor resolution is only around 1200, but bumping it up really high didn't fix the problem. (I thought maybe the GPU having to resize the video down to the monitor resolution might be the problem as there was no stuttering if I got ffdshow to resize it while decoding). Not being able to find the cause of the problem I eventually replaced the video card for an identical one and the stuttering problem vanished.

So here I have sitting on my desk a video card which will decode and display HD video without a problem, and it'll display anything the CPU decodes as long as the CPU isn't overclocked. Nothing else was overclocked, just the CPU. I'm not sure I'll ever understand why.....

[Chengbin]

I'm using ffdshow's H.264 decoder using all 4 threads, and it maxes out my CPU during 2160p videos.

I'm seriously amazed that your dual core can play crowdrun without problems. Seriously amazed.

Then I must have done something wrong.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Try switching renderers. EVR can be pretty demanding on slower GPUs. Try Haali renderer. It's very fast

Derek

[Chengbin]

Try switching renderers. EVR can be pretty demanding on slower GPUs. Try Haali renderer. It's very fast

Derek

EVR uses GPU? I have it on EVR, and it doesn't use my GPU.

Haali renderer was much worse. I got about 1fps compared to 13ish fps with EVR.

[mariush]

Windows 2003 R2, 32 bit.. mpc-hc 1.3.1249, q6600 overclocked to 3ghz, radeon 4850

vmr9 renderless, haali mkv splitter
ffdshow - starts slow at 6 fps then after about 5-10 seconds gradually goes up to about 15-18 fps
divx decoder, again 6 fps but starts much faster to go up to about 14 fps and stays there
coreavc starts straight at 9 fps but goes up quick and stays much more time at 17x and is relatively smooth.

with internal matroska splitter, coreavc decodes at a smooth 10.5 fps throughout the movie.

with coreavc decoder:
haali video renderer doesn't work right for me, it goes down to about 3 fps.
vmr7 2d surfaces 12 fps
vmr7 3d surfaces 15.5-17 fps
vmr9 2d 14-15fps
evr custom presenter ... 49.19 average fps it still had hiccups but minor and the renderer only reported 2 dropped frames in the end.


Shocked by evr custom presenter and how well it ran... too bad it screws up royally with SD content with AR specified inside and has other issues. In general with up to 1080p I have no problems using vrm9 renderless.

So anyways, looks like the CPU can actually decode 2160p 60 fps fast enough but it's the renderer and splitter that complicate things. On windows 2003 I can't even install the ATI control panel anymore and I update drivers manually so I'm not even sure if all that video acceleration works right.

Have to install that Windows 7 eventually and see how it works there...

[yetanotherid]

I'm using ffdshow's H.264 decoder using all 4 threads, and it maxes out my CPU during 2160p videos.

I'm seriously amazed that your dual core can play crowdrun without problems. Seriously amazed.

Then I must have done something wrong.

I'm downloading it and playing it from the hard drive using MPC-HC (overlay mixer) and ffdshow. I just tried it again and my dual core maxed out at 65% while playing it.

Did you try installing the CCCP and letting it reset things to see if it helps? I don't really have any other ideas. However if MPC is using the Gabest splitter or VobSub installed it might be an idea to uninstall them and try something else. The CCCP comes with the Haali Media Splitter and it works well but it doesn't always live harmoniously with the others installed. I was having some frustrating sync issues at one stage and getting rid of everything else and installing the CCCP fixed them.

My HD stuttering problem I mentioned earlier.... I thought I'd licked it by replacing the video card but it returned later that day. So I spent hours and hours.... using a fresh XP installation, trying different drivers till eventually I found it.
My CPU is slightly overclocked. I've got the FSB bumped up from 333mhz to 400mhz, taking the E6750 to 3.2gig. Nothing else in the PC is overclocked. Even the RAM runs at it's normal speed. After running some benchmarks I discovered my video card's frame rate drops dramatically when the CPU is overclocked. With the CPU at normal speed it was fine and the stuttering problem went. Same using a different video card. So in the end I dropped the FSB down to 396mhz, the PCI express bus down to 99mhz and running like that the stuttering problem has gone. Oddly enough, the PC was also sending a high pitched tone to the speakers on occasion. That's stopped now too. It must be a problem with the MB when the CPU is overclocked, but to really frustrate me I also have another PC here with the same MB, the same video card and a Q9450 CPU and it's never had an issue with the FSB running at 400mhz. Computers...... :(

[Chengbin]

Interesting. I'll try it out soon when I can get a fresh copy of Windows 7 installed when I get my SSD next month. I screwed up my system by touching the directshow filter merits. Even though now I can play videos, I'm not in the best position to test.

Thanks everyone.