[Hannes The Hun]

well... hard VDPAU performance numbers of the various GPUs (IGP, dedicated, Ion etc) might be relevant for XBMC performance, especially in relation to the nvidia driver version, but I'd suggest an extra thread for that stuff.

also, I'm not sure how well this benchmarking tool translates to real world decoding performance...

[alanwww1]

There are some great news for VDPAU users with IGP integrated chipsets like 8200, 8300, 9300, 9400.

Whoever had stuttering problems even with no frames dropped there is a ticket which is already commited in the latest SVN-s which greatly improves vdpau surface management:

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/6761

Now i don't have to overclock my ddr2-800 memory to achive completely smooth playback. Now i have the same silky smooth playback as with a dedicated 9400gt.

Great work Gnif !

This puts he crown to Motd2k's VDPAU implementation !

[MrIcka]

There are some great news for VDPAU users with IGP integrated chipsets like 8200, 8300, 9300, 9400.

Whoever had stuttering problems even with no frames dropped there is a ticket which is already commited in the latest SVN-s which greatly improves vdpau surface management:

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/6761

Now i don't have to overclock my ddr2-800 memory to achive completely smooth playback. Now i have the same silky smooth playback as with a dedicated 9400gt.

Great work Gnif !

This puts he crown to Motd2k's VDPAU implementation !

Do this fix the issue with 8x00 integrated graphics with fullscreen? Or are it solved already?

[alanwww1]

Do this fix the issue with 8x00 integrated graphics with fullscreen? Or are it solved already?

I have 9400. But it is surely not solving that problem. It is just a fix for xbmc treating surface allocation.

But i heard Motd2k made a fix for the fullscreen problem, but i don't know if it is in the main branch already...

[motd2k]

These are the same thing, gnif noticed that when XBMC started up in fullscreen mode we also enabled anti-aliasing. This results in around 400% extra load on the bus, which with the limited memory throughput on the iGPUs caused massive slowdown.

AA wasn't enabled on other versions of XBMC, or when starting XBMC windowed or with the safefull patch (which was effectively just a hack to start XBMC windowed and then switch it to fullscreen).

[Haggy]

Whoever had stuttering problems even with no frames dropped there is a ticket which is already commited in the latest SVN-s which greatly improves vdpau surface management:

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/6761

Now i don't have to overclock my ddr2-800 memory to achive completely smooth playback. Now i have the same silky smooth playback as with a dedicated 9400gt.

What files / samples / bluray rips exactly? As for me that patch did not change anything in playback quality. Casino Royale for example stills stutters at some scenes whereas Iron Man is perfect from start to end. Killa is OK, but the artbeat sample stutters sometimes and gets constantly out of sync and even drops audio towards the end to regain sync. yes, i do have smoothvideo available and yes my rig runs at 1800 mhz, i overclocked that damn 8300 and tweaked every bloody bit out of X.

now what?

[alanwww1]

What files / samples / bluray rips exactly? As for me that patch did not change anything in playback quality. Casino Royale for example stills stutters at some scenes whereas Iron Man is perfect from start to end. Killa is OK, but the artbeat sample stutters sometimes and gets constantly out of sync and even drops audio towards the end to regain sync. yes, i do have smoothvideo available and yes my rig runs at 1800 mhz, i overclocked that damn 8300 and tweaked every bloody bit out of X.

now what?

What TV do you have ?

I have Samsung LCD and there are some zoom options 16:9 Wide etc and "JUST SCAN"

Only if i set the tv to just scan i have perfect smooth playback. For me the ticket works perfectly. Completely smooth playback where i had stutter before.

[Bahndit]

I need to rip my BluRay copy of Casino Royale (Just built a new UNRAID rig so now I have the space to do so) but otherwise my ION board has been running silky smooth for me as well. I also used to have my RAM oc'ed to 900Mhz but I dropped it back to stock and I saw no performance loss. Killa Sample drops 1 frame and plays very smoothly all of the way through. Where can I get a copy of the Artbeats demo? Let me know and I will report back.

-Bahndit

[Haggy]

What TV do you have ?

I have a Sony LCD, but that doesn't matter. It has no 100Hz Motion trickery, so i'll notice the slightest judder - and that's what i actually want to do: xbmc playing smooth, not the tv compensating. 1:1 Pixelmapping is certainly on. Would you please try the artbeats sample: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/artbeats.html ?

EDIT: I see you're on Intel and 9400GT. That's a completely different rig. Fine if it works for you though.

[alanwww1]

I have a Sony LCD, but that doesn't matter. It has no 100Hz Motion trickery, so i'll notice the slightest judder - and that's what i actually want to do: xbmc playing smooth, not the tv compensating. 1:1 Pixelmapping is certainly on. Would you please try the artbeats sample: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/artbeats.html ?

EDIT: I see you're on Intel and 9400GT. That's a completely different rig. Fine if it works for you though.

24fps material would not play smoothly on 100hz, 100/24=4.16
You TV has to support 24p native playback or youhave to speed it up to 25fps. Are normal 24fps AVI files play smooth ?

[Haggy]

No, i don't mean 100Hz refresh but 100Hz Motion compensation crap. Sony calls it Motionflow, others call it <younameit>. It's essentially a piece of software that renders frames in-between the 24 frames to compensate jerky pans. mostly effective for soccer and other "panning" sports. trust me...i know every bit of my tv

But back on topic: I think i fixed it. Some crappy (really don't know what) setting in my .nvidia-settings-rc caused all the trouble. I removed nvidia-settings completely from my .xinitrc and now even 007 is smooth as butter.

Fingers crossed.

EDIT: Even Artbeats is now silky smooth and the dropouts are gone!

[sexus6]

I have Panasonic plasma tv that supports 50/60Hz. Actually I put 1080i resolution.

With VPDPAU HD videos works fine, but when there is a traveling or slow movement of the camera, I feel small "cuts", the same when 1 or 2 frames are dropped, but there is not any frame dropped.

IS this normal?

[Haggy]

it depends blurays are normally made in ~24hz just as the movie was filmed with, so there is indeed stuttering that comes from the material itself. it's most noticeable at panning scenes because the difference between frames is relatively high among those. That's the reason "Motionflow" et al exists. Some like it, some don't...i don't like it and so it's kinda normal for me that panning scenes do show some stuttering. It's just more cinema-like. Your stuttering may come from your TV which maybe not 24p capable or indeed from xbmc/vdpau/gpu/whatever.

[mlmc]

Some good reading, about fps and such..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#Telecine_judder

[alanwww1]

I have Panasonic plasma tv that supports 50/60Hz. Actually I put 1080i resolution.

With VPDPAU HD videos works fine, but when there is a traveling or slow movement of the camera, I feel small "cuts", the same when 1 or 2 frames are dropped, but there is not any frame dropped.

IS this normal?

You should try to enable resample audio option as the way xbmc syncing audio to video playback.

this way your 24fps movie will be sped up to 25fps with audio resampled. this way you can have stutterfree (just the little stutter you also see in the cinamas) playback on 50hz refresh rate. This way when you press "o" you should see the movie played back at 25fps.

You have to have the SVN version of xbmc for that and note that you can't use passthrough with this option so you have to untick the ac3 dts passthrough options in the sound hardware setup screen.