Me too on the jerky video with 3.7.2

[merrypig]

Damn, I had perfect video play back using a rc2 build of 3.7.2 until today. I rebooted and now all I get is jerky crap.

Stupid thing; I can open the same video file in windows media player and confirm that it is using snapstreams codecs (!) and it plays back perfectly.

This is ... almost certainly a BTV player problem.

I also watched live tv through wintv2000 and the video capture/playback is perfect. So it's not a hardware interrupt problem.

Finally, I tried every damn codec under the sun for btv.. and still... jerky playback.

Unfortunately uninstalling btv and reinstalling didn't fix mine.

Now.. the ONLY thing that happened to my machine between the last time I watched it - was that I installed meedio and then uninstalled it. However I reinstalled btv again afterwards - but it's possible meedio changed something that has messed up btv . Has Meedio changed one of the default directshow filters that BTV uses I wonder? ...

Time to search out any changed files I guess..

Most frustrated.

[merrypig]

Ps uploaded my system info and raised a bug report; conf code 3-2892.

[Bilar Crais]

Me three. Except my jerkiness involves tearing in 3d mode. I'm still using the same video card, OS, decoder, etc. Yesterday I noticed tearing, and I haven't seen that in a very long time. The only thing I've done differently is install 3.7.2. Now I'm not saying it's responsible, but out of frustration, I wiped my drive today and put in 3.5.2; still monitoring the tearing issue. I feel like a damned traitorous bug for doing it too.

[merrypig]

I have some suspicion that my directinput is the culprit. Before I had any jerkiness I could run dxdiag completely. Since, whenever I run dxdiag it bombs out on directinput.

I'm reinstalling my HID/USB devices to see if that helps. If not, I'll reinstall directx and see if that does stuff.

It doesn't appear to be a video file or a codec issue (all are fine in other applicatons) and I'm wondering if it's the directinput stuf f(remote /keyboard etc) that is interfering with the playback. My cpu usage stays below 20% so it's not an application busy loop ...

[merrypig]

Hmm. interesting.

I ran a video through zoomplayer using the snapstream decoder.

What was interesting is that instead of reporting the fps as 29.97 as it should be; it was playing it back at 25.4 fps. The monitor is set to 60hz refresh (actually a projector).

Something seems to have messed up the internal clocks...

[weezer1024]

25.4 is a PAL playback rate, not NTSC isn't it? That alone would cause jerkiness if BTV is expecting 29.97 and the actual video is 25.4. Anything in the logs to indicate the rate at which it's recording or playing back?

[Bilar Crais]

Yes, 25 is PAL. I vaguely remember a post from the last few days; something to the effect that recording profile parameters are not sticking in the new build.


Try importing it into an authoring tool and see if it bitches about being non-compliant. VideoReDo has a feature on one of the pull-down menus that tells you the specifics about an mpeg too.

[not_Shorty]

directinput is for mice/joysticks/etc though, I don't see how it relates to video playback in any way.

[Bilar Crais]

Better yet, check your log and see what it set your frame rate at when it initialized the card builder.

[merrypig]

Hmm, having a real hard time trying to get consistant results here.

Re the 25.4 vs 29.97 fps. Yes. 25 is pal. but this is 25.4... (creeps up slightly to 25.6 ish). So it's not a clear cut PAL configuration. But this video has also played back at 29.97 in the past. If I change my monitor refresh to 70 and back to 60, then I get 29.97 on the same video file - having changed nothing else. Until I run BTV again (I think.. hard to pin it down repeatedly).

And I know directinput is nothing to do with video. However, BTV is monitoring keyboards and remotes. It's not inconceivable that a bad bit of code there might be messing up the video threads. However, I've reinstalled all my code, the directx 9.0c again and still it's doing it. Can't quite get any reason for dxdiag to exit. All my devices are working fine.

Now, here's something. I'm fairly sure I'm getting stuttering playback in zoomplayer now, and I believe that IS due to the wrong frame rate for _some_ reason. Whatever that reason, is probably what is messing up BTV.

I've also found some some broken up video in short bursts during playback (recorded file or live) when viewing in btv. I don't seem to get them using windows media player or zoom player, but have yet to configure exact same options as btv.

It could indicate an interrupt issue if it was universal to all applications, but thus far it only seems to stand out in btv.

I've also managed to mess up my btv caption recording *sigh*. ... They work beautifully in wintv2000 but not in btv. I can't tell if this is a recording profile in btv again or if it's my drivers.

Oh, I also noticed one very interesting thing. I downloaded and reinstalled directx 9.0c again. Curiously, that install installed the ...0902 build of the quartz dll - the one that is supposedly from the working 9.0b release before it was broken. It looks like microsft actually have updated the directx download to use the old version?!? That seems hard to swallow as truth, but I deleted the original file and then reran the 9.0c install - and it put in the quartzdll with the 0902 version.

Not sure what is going on there - but I'm wondering if that might even be part of my problem...

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by merrypig

Hmm, having a real hard time trying to get consistant results here.

Re the 25.4 vs 29.97 fps. Yes. 25 is pal. but this is 25.4... (creeps up slightly to 25.6 ish). So it's not a clear cut PAL configuration. But this video has also played back at 29.97 in the past. If I change my monitor refresh to 70 and back to 60, then I get 29.97 on the same video file - having changed nothing else. Until I run BTV again (I think.. hard to pin it down repeatedly).

By all of the symptoms you describe, especially the part about FPS changing by adjusting refresh rate, I would absolutely swear that you have the ReClock Direct Show filter installed. It comes in some codec packs, though you don't strike me as the codec-pack type. Still, it bears checking out. If it's messing up ZP and BTV, it would be installed as the "default renderer."

Originally Posted by merrypig

It looks like microsft actually have updated the directx download to use the old version?!? That seems hard to swallow as truth, but I deleted the original file and then reran the 9.0c install - and it put in the quartzdll with the 0902 version.

Actually, they have! It's included in the June 25 DX9 SDK. Crazy, ain't it? I wish they'd just build a new one, because deinterlace seems kind of broken on the older quartz. the "B" version exhibits some interlacing and jaggies in DXVA mode, whereas the 9.0c version deinterlaces perfectly, but suffers from the well known spastic fit malody.

[not_Shorty]

they do have a newer one than 9.0c's original version, you had to phone them and ask for a download link to get it. Don't know why they would've rolled back rather than putting the newer one in. Strange. KB885354

[hfiles]

To test to make sure that Family Guy would record right tonight, I randomly found a cartoon to record on Nickelodeon. That came through very slow and laggy and the voices were all messed up. Out of frustration I deleted it, but now I realize I should have checked WMP or something else. I'm test recording CNN's "Reliable Sources" and I'll post my findings when that's done in 12 minutes

[hfiles]

Here's the rundown:

Media Player 6 = Bad Playback, Everything Slow
BeyondTV 3.7 = Bad Playback, Everything Slow
VirtualDub = Everything good when you set to 4:3 ratio.
Media Player 10 = Bad Playback
Winamp 5 = Bad Playback
Real Player 10 = Bad Playback

So, yes. It is playing back very jerky in all the major players.

[merrypig]

I found my cause.

Something marked both my drives as PIO only. The IDE controllers were set to DMA if available, but the checksum's that windows calculated were in error so the OS was forcing them into PIO mode regardless.

The trick is to delete the checksums from the registry and reboot. Windows will reevaulate the checksums and enable dma mode if valid. I'm not running ultra dma again and BTV is working properly again.

The observations worthy of others noting are:-

1/ my dvd playback was fine, yet btv, zoomplayer, wmp all showed sluggish performance.
- this was because my video was coming from my 2nd ide bus - both disk were now pio mode.
- my dvd drive was on the primary ide bus; and was still marked ultra dma.
Thus only video served from the pio mode disks was suffering.

2/ This showed on playback of prerecorded video (saved to the pio mode disks) and on live
tv. Live tv more so because of the slices now running to the same disk. The inability to use my ramdisk is really making this hit me harder tho.

3/ What was frustrating was that the BIOS and the ide controllers both reported Ultra DMA available. It was only digging further that I saw they were actually running PIO mode.

So even if you have configured your disks to be Ultra DMA - and they once worked properly - DO DOUBLE CHECK. Windows can 'silently' mark them pio again.

I did have one IDE port1 timeout in my event log. I can't tell if this is a result of being marked pio, or the cause of why they got marked PIO. needless to say; going to have to monitor that one...

What a waste of a day that's been...

NOTE TO SNAPSTREAM: You would do REAL well to add a check at startup that all video folder disks are in Ultra DMA mode and make an entry in the Warnings dialog /log file if they are not. I think this could save hours of debugging... users, not like myself *grin* , will somewhat assume its crappy software or codecs...