[Lunatic]

Hello, I've just installed XBMC on my new laptop, and the video playback is terrible for mp4's, same movie loaded in AVI seems to work just fine, however, when the mp4 of the movie was loaded, both the audio and video seemed to start acting up, video is lagging and sluggish while the audio plays a few snippets every few seconds and otherwise is blank and mute.

I'm not entirely sure if this problem is related to Windows 7, I have a different computer with Windows 7 OS and XBMC runs perfectly on that machine.

My laptop specifications are:
AMD Phenom II x4
ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 HD w/ 1GB DDR3 Dedicated memory
6 GB DDR3

I have already tried to play these files in other video players and they work fine, as well as on my other machines, running Win XP and Win 7 OS.

I have also tried to play around with the video rendering methods as well as turn off automatic settings for my graphics card such as de-interlacing, none of which made a difference.

Quite honestly, i don't know if it is the HD or the ATI graphics card that is creating this problem, please let me know if anyone has experienced this problem before.

I just wanna know if there is a simpler solution than converting all of my videos to AVI.

[jimbosis]

Your machine should blow the doors off of XBMC playing MP4's - I definitely wouldn't be converting your files to AVI just yet.

The obligatory 'do you have the latest Catalyst driver?' question has to be asked but the proper playing in other players suggests you're good on that front.

I'd start by seeing if switching render method in Video Settingshas an impact. I'd also look at 'Sync playback to display' and A/V sync method. I seem to remember having some sort of similar problem with stuttering because of one of these settings.

Finally, are you creating your own MP4's? Not all players are created equal and you may have something a little strange in your encoding settings. I'd recommend grabbing an MP4 for comparison (cough *Piratebay.org* cough) to see if the problem occurs across the board. If there's a difference grab Mediainfo and see what the difference is.

[jhsrennie]

I wonder if it's an audio problem. Your avis and mp4s may have different audio formats e.g. stereo for the avi and 5.1 for the mp4. It might be worth a play with the audio settings. Alternatively pop a debug log on pastebin.com and post the link here.

JR

[HansP]

did you enable DXVA2 in video settings ?

[Lunatic]

Hello, So here's what i have so far.

@jimbosis

Do I have the latest Catalyst Driver?

Yes, I ventured down that road as the first step to resolution, and I have updated all the drivers, however i have not gained any grounds due to the update.

I have played around with the sync method, and I have also tweaked a bit with the A/V sync

Yes, I have been creating my own mp4's, I realized after your post and tried an mp4 from a different source and found that it seems to run fine. I then used the Mediainfo, and here are my results in terms of differences (beyond the size of the files) MP4 #2 is the one that worked perfectly fine on the new machine. Both of these are working well on the other machines however.


MP4 #1:

Overall bit rate: 1 313 Kbps
MPEG-4 Visual @ 23.976fps
AAC @ 126 kbps

MP4 #2:

Overall bit rate: 546 Kbps
MPEG-4 Visual @ 25.000 fps
AAC @ 64.2 Kbps

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@jhsrennie

I have tried to tweak around with the audio settings, but I'm not sure it's a problem with just sync as the video itself lags as well, the audio isn't necessarily out of sync but rather mute for most of it and repetition or echo for other parts of the video.

I am not entirely sure what you mean by "pop a debugging log onto pastelink and post link here"

---------------------------

@HansP

I have tried to play the video with both the DXVA2 setting turned on and off, this hasn't seemed to make any difference either.

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I want to thank all of you for helping and i do really appreciate it.

[jhsrennie]

I am not entirely sure what you mean by "pop a debugging log onto pastelink and post link here"

Enable debug logging from System settings, System, Debugging. Restart XBMC then play a films that gives problems for a while then stop XBMC again.

To open the log press Windows-R and in the Run dialog type:

"%appdata%\xbmc\xbmc.log"

(including the quotes) and click OK, and the log will open in Notepad. Open http://pastebin.com/ and copy and paste the log, and pastebin.com will give you back a link. Post that link here. That allows us to go to pastebin.com to view your log, which may (or may not) give some clues.

JR