Pretty much kills my machine
Posted on: Tue, 11/03/2009 - 01:11
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Pretty much kills my machine
Just installed this tech preview on my media center running Win7 Ultimate 64-bit.
Any attempt to open a .mkv in WMP or MC just causes a black screen, extreme hard drive activity, and a virtually frozen machine. I can move the mouse cursor around but any attempt at switching to another process etc can take minutes. I cannot start task manager via Ctrl-Alt-Del; I eventually get a failure dialog. It seems the machine is totally I/O bound as the CPU fan does not speed up.
This is on a 3.0GHz Pentium-D with 1Gb RAM and a ATI HD3450 video card.
Any ideas? I did have Media Player Class Home Cinema installed before this; not sure if there is some bad interaction in codecs/filters/splitters.
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@DigitAI56k, I think you are right. I uninstalled the DivX preview and installed Shark007's codec set. That uses by default a choice of FFDShow, Microsoft's codec DXA, or MPC_HC's DXA codec. Both the DXA codecs were unwatchable, while ffdshw is erfect, at the expense of CPU.
So this is a hardware-assisted codec issue it seems.
Note: with Shark's set which uses the Haali splitter by default, the file which just caused my disk to thrash works just fine (with DXA playback), so there does seem to be an issue with the DivX splitter, although I never tried installing ACFilter; maybe it was just that.
Anyway, good luck with this guys; I'l probably stick with Shark's package as it works as good as I'm likely to get it seems for now.
@tiberiust - not true. I can handily play these same .mkvs with Media Player Classic using pure software codecs (at the expense of CPU fan noise). No stuttering or any other issues. It is only when offloading to the GPU that I have issues (I get artifacts with MPC too, although not nearly as bad).
CoreAVC worked great for me on Vista 32 on a crappier motherboard with a 2.8GHz Pentium-D but is no use to me right now until they release a 64-bit version. IIRC both the two files below worked on Vista with CoreAVC. I have had a machine have problems with these but it has not been the video codec but rather crappy audio drivers that caused the stuttering.
@porfitron: Indeed, I do have the latest drivers and CCC from ATI installed, and your tech preview is the last thing I installed.
Here is the media info for a file that just causes hard drive churn:
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile :
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 8 frames
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@5.1
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 2h 58mn
Bit rate : 5 870 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 5 993 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 544 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.35:1
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.352
Stream size : 7.30 GiB (92%)
Title : x264 Videostream
Writing library : x264 core 50 svn-558
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=hex / subme=6 / brdo=0 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / slices=2 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / bime=0 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / rc=2pass / bitrate=5993 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=2 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2h 58mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 490 MiB (6%)
Title : Dolby Digital 5.1
Language : English
And here is the info from one with bad artifacts:
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile :
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 13 frames
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@5.1
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 3h 43mn
Bit rate : 7 449 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 7 604 Kbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 800 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.202
Stream size : 11.6 GiB (93%)
Writing library : x264 core 57 svn-702
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=10 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=6 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=2 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / mbaff=0 / bframes=16 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=7604 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30
Language : English
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 3h 43mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 615 MiB (5%)
Language : English
Maybe the system is trying to use hardware accelerated decoding for this stream. Level 5.1 with 13 refs and 16 B's is a bit of a stretch in that case :)
If that is indeed the case then it's possibly something Microsoft/ATI will have to address. Make sure you keep up to date with the latest ATI drivers.
Thanks for the mediainfo...
Noticed that the Audio is AC3 and our tech preview doesn't include handling of this. Did you install something like AC3filter? Users are reporting good results:
http://labs.divx.com/node/8496#comment-13709
In the meantime, we'll see if we can find comparable content around here to test with.
Ah, seems to behave differently on some others. I have found some that open but are unwatchable due to artifacts (blocking, weird colors, ...). This is with WMP; these files will do nothing if I say "open with Media Center so it seems Media Center is missing some reg keys or something to allow it to recognize .mkv.
Even though Windows 7 automatically installs drivers, we've found it's best to get the latest graphics card driver from the manufacturer's website and use that instead. Also, make sure that the DivX Tech Preview is the LAST thing you install if you install other codec packs or software players, because the other installers may over-write the reg entries done by our installer.
Lastly, this tech preview enables DXVA (hardware accelleration) via MS Media Foundation, so that means you can have an old or low end CPU (e.g. Atom) because the decoding will take place on the GPU vs. the CPU (for supported cards). The DivX Codec is not used in this case; in fact, our tech preview doesn't even include our codec, even though you can optionally install DivX 7 first. So, again, please make sure you've got the graphics card drivers updated and the tech preview installed last.
And finally, there is a chance that the video streams inside the MKV may not be H.264 (could be VC-1 or Xvid), which are not supported in this Tech Preview. You can tell what's in the MKV by opening it with MediaInfo (a free video analysis app): http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download
Please let us know if you have more questions.
I've got that video card in my HTPC (2.4GHz Core 2 Duo) and it breezes 1080p at abt 25pct CPU load using Core AVC Codec. I tested the same on my wife's (she only does e-mail!) Pentium D 3.2 GHz and the video stuttered and sometimes froze/pixellated/blocking (whatever...) with the CPU running at 100pct and that's with Core AVC also. Core is reputed to be better at handling CPU load on older machines than DivX, so to conclude m8....you need a newer PC. As I said, a cheap Core 2 Duo will walk thru HD video. It's the CPU that is stressed, not the video card.
T
I'm having no luck what so ever with this. I can't get 5.1 audio working for MKV's on the HTPC using the DIVX Tech preview / AC3Filter.
Now when playing movies on the PC on some MKV's I am getting block pixelation making them un-watchable, other times I just get a black screen and only the audio.
Added a Linksys Extender in to the mix most MKV's don't play just audio and a black screen, those that do play look like really bad DIVX movies, worse than when using the Shark 007 codec pack and letting Windows 7 do its native transcoding thing.
This was a clean install of Windows RTM 32 bit all the latest drivers installed from Realtek and ATI etc.
People have been raving about this tech preview over on the Green Button, they must know something I don't as it seems pretty unstable to me right now.
Thanks.
cw-kid
Microsoft Media Center MVP
http://windowsmediacenter.blogspot.com
it could very well be your graphics card, ati's have an issue with hardware accelerating certain bit rates in mkv's i.e less than VC5. I had the card you re talking about for a couple of days of testign an found some of my mkv's worked others where exactly as you described, works better software than hardware, i would suggest changing to a nvidia card, an 8600gt or better is the best you can go with, plus u get the gt silent so no fan noise at all either