[wolffstarr]

TL;DR Summary: Is it possible that my WD Green 5900 RPM 1TB hard drive having the Windows install on it is the reason why I'm getting pauses/stuttering in 1080p playback? Seems a bit odd, but I'm nearly at my wit's end.

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I'm getting random pauses in playback on 1080p video (see this thread for full details: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=148822 ) and I'm beginning to wonder whether it's hardware or software based, so I thought I'd throw a list of the hardware I'm using up and see if anyone here can see something glaringly wrong with my setup.

Motherboard: Asrock H55M/USB3 R2.0
Processor: Intel Core i3-530@2.93GHz, not overclocked.
Memory: GSkill Ripjaws DDR3-1333 4GBx2 Dual-Channel Kit
Video: Issue has occurred with both the i3's built-in GPU and with a PowerColor Radeon HD4850 512MB, using HDMI Out direct to the TV.
Display: Sharp Aquos 60" LCD LC-60E78UN
Drives: This is current, likely to change in the near future. System drive is a 1TB WD Green SATA2 drive, also being used for storage. Additional internal storage is a very old Seagate ST400something 400GB SATA2 drive, a 7200.10 320GB Seagate (likely to become the system drive soon), a WD MyBook 2TB USB3 External drive, connected to the sole USB3 port, and a month-old Seagate 7200.14 3TB SATA3 drive.

I'm running Win7 at present. I was contemplating putting in an SSD in place of the 320GB drive to see if that helps the matter, and I was also contemplating moving back to Linux (moving from Linux to Win7 is why the WD Green is my system drive), possibly at the same time. Unfortunately I don't have any more SATA ports on the motherboard other than eSATA, so I would definitely have to replace the 320. (It's empty now.) The 320 is also the newest HDD of the ones I can boot from.

My problem is that video pauses for a split second while the audio continues with no issues, then the video fast-forwards (rather than skips forward) to catch up to the audio. This happens frequently in XBMC, very rarely in VLC, and fairly frequently in the one test I did with Plex. I also get stuttering in some movies. It's been a few months, but I don't recall it under Linux; that being said booting into XBMCBuntu Live off of a USB2 key drive had the same issues of stuttering/pausing. Am I looking at a bottleneck on the system drive maybe? Core i3 and/or a Radeon HD 4850 are just not going to work for it? (CPU is at about 5% during movies per Debug)? Or am I looking at a software issue of some sort?

One other thing, any appearance of stuttering and pauses seemed to disappear when I put in the Radeon card, but the display was letterboxed due to the Overscan settings. As soon as I adjusted that to take up the full screen, the issue started happening again.

Thanks for reading, appreciate any thoughts or suggestions. FYI, this system (in a different case and with less drives) used to be my desktop PC, and I rarely had any issues with the hardware end of things.

[spyder]

My $.02 - I don't see how this could be hardware issue, I am using a 1.6 dual core atom, W7, 2gb ram, and can stream 1080p video from a NAS drive on a 10/100mbit network without any stuttering. I noticed you didn't mention anything about adjusting the video settings, have you done this? Also check for video driver updates.

[wolffstarr]

Sorry, should've covered that. I didn't think it could be a hardware issue, but I'm pretty much tearing my hair out at this point.

I've updated both the Intel drivers to the latest that Intel has on their site, and installed the latest AMD drivers (which is 12.6 for that card) when I put the Radeon in. For video settings I've messed with just about everything - Software, Pixel-shader, DXVA, Auto-detect, DXVA2 on and off, Set Display Refresh to match Frame Rate on/off, sync to display on/off, about the only thing I haven't tried is running it in windowed mode - XBMC is set for true fullscreen. It happens repeatedly in the first 3 minutes of a bluray rip of Avengers, but it also has happened on most of my movies scattered across all of the hard drives.

[spyder]

I saw you were new here, so I thought you may be new to XBMC as well. I would at least try running it windowed mode, I don't see how that could be the problem, but it's worth a shot. With the video settings question out of the way, I'm not sure what it could be(bad ram?). I think you should post what your current settings are, it would be easier to pinpoint the problem.

[wolffstarr]

Actually, I *am* somewhat new to XBMC, only been playing with it for about 4 months now, and most of that has been getting the system up and running correctly before going to fiddle with XBMC. (Then repeating when I switched off of Linux and onto Win7.)

I'll try and get my current settings up tomorrow once I'm home from work; about to crash now. Interestingly, it appears that this might NOT be an issue with the hardware, but a DTS timestamp sync issue. Check this - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=82896&page=6 - the first post on that page pretty much sums up what I'm seeing. I'll need to spend some quality time with MKVExtract and MKVMerge to find out if this will fix it, but I get the feeling it will.

[wolffstarr]

Followup post: I went ahead and remuxed Avengers (one of the worst offenders) last night as outlined above, and it now plays smooth as silk. So, it appears that it's not an issue with hardware after all, but in fact an issue with audio having corrupted timestamps that's throwing off video for some reason.

Thanks for the suggestions spyder!

[a11599]

If you do not mind you might try the build in my sig, it has a patch for the dts timestamp issue. It works fine for me.

[spyder]

Glad you got this sorted out.