[Aperkins]

I have been changing video and audio settings for months now trying to get rid of choppy video playback. It seems that I have resolved this issue for all my 720p or 1080p blurays but I still have the issue with all my standard definition dvd videos. I have read that audio settings are usually to blame for video problems and that I should make sure that my audio settings are correct, I will list my setup and my settings below if someone could let me know if these are in fact the correct settings or not, it would be greatly appreciated.

Setup:
Htpc running xbmcbuntu XBMC version 13.1
geforce gt 620 graphics card hdmi out to denon 3310 out to tv
all movie files stored on a drobo 2nd gen connected to a windows pc and shared over the network to my xbmc machine

Audio output settings:
Audio output: Device HDA Nvidia, Don Denon-AVAMP on HDMI#1
(my htpc has onboard audio as well should I be using this for my audio output instead of my Nvidia graphics card?)
number of channels: 5.1
output configuration: Best Match
stereo upmix: disabled
normalize levels on downmix: disabled
Resample Quality: High
Keep audio device alive: 1 minute
Play GUI sounds: never
Passthrough Audio Device: HDA Nvidia DON DENON-AVAMP on HDMI #1
Dolby Digital: enabled
Dolby Digital Plus Enabled
Dts: Enabled
True HD: Enabled
DTS HD: Enabled

Video Output Settings
Display Mode: Fullscreen#1
Resolution: 1920x1080p
Refresh rate: 60
Blank other Displays: disabled
Stereoscopic mode (current): none
preferred mode: none
Vertical blank sync: always enabled
use limited colour range: disabled
(I know this says if you are using a tv to enable this setting, but when i do it really washes out the picture)

Playback settings:
sync playback to display: enabled
a/v sync method: Video clock(drop/dupe audio)
(is one of these options better than the others?)

Acceleration settings:
Render Method: Auto detect
(should I be using advanced shaders since I have a graphics card?)
Enable HQ Scalers for scalings above: 0%
(What does this setting actually do, should this be at 100% since I am upscaling dvd and 720p video to 1080p?)
Decoding Method: Hardware Accelerated
Allow multithreaded software decoding: greyed out
Allow Hardware Acceleration (VDPAU): Enabled
Prefer VDPAU Mixer: enabled
use mpeg4 VDPAU: enabled
Allow Hardware acceleration (VAAPI): Disabled
(This option says it is for intel graphics and amd graphics, should I enable this even though I am using an Nvidia card or should it stay disabled.

One more thing I thougt was strange is that it seems that the HTPC CPU is working much harder when playing a dvd then when playing videos in High Definition, I am basing this only on the noise I hear coming from the pc and the fact that the activity light on the fron of the pc blinks nearly constantly during dvd playback and significantly less on HD playback. Thanks in advance for any help.

[nickr]

Very thorough details thanks. The first point is that DVD is mpeg2, whereas your 720p and 1080p is likely to be h.264. Having said that vdpau should hardware accelerate both codecs successfully. you can check the output of the codecs info details (press O on your keyboard).

The second is that you don't seem to have 'adjust refresh rate to match video ' on. This may be significant. You can check what frame rate the video is and what it is playing back at on the same codecs info details.

Lastly, your DVD material may be interlaced. When playing back, choose video osd and try playing with the deinterlacing settings.

[Aperkins]

Awesome, I did not know about the o info page I will look into that, and also try enabling adjust display refresh rate to match video. Thank you very much for the info.

[fritsch]

Acceleration settings:
Render Method: Auto detect
(should I be using advanced shaders since I have a graphics card?)
Enable HQ Scalers for scalings above: 0%
(What does this setting actually do, should this be at 100% since I am upscaling dvd and 720p video to 1080p?)
Decoding Method: Hardware Accelerated
Allow multithreaded software decoding: greyed out
Allow Hardware Acceleration (VDPAU): Enabled
Prefer VDPAU Mixer: enabled
use mpeg4 VDPAU: enabled
Allow Hardware acceleration (VAAPI): Disabled

Set mpeg4 VDPAU to disabled. There are so many xvid / mpeg-4 rips out there out of a time where codec standards were far away. Set the Enable HQ Scalers for scalings above to 20%. This will upscale 720p in hq but not wasting extracycles when upscaling files that are just some pixels less than 1080p.

Post a Debug Log after having played such a sample.

[Aperkins]

ok will do thanks