Choppy 1920x1080 playback.

[Nyanmar]

Hey guys, first post here. I'm not too keen on general video technicalities and such, so bear with me. I've just recently built a new PC and have noticed that playing 1080p videos (.mkv's, not loaded from the ODD) results in occasional choppiness from time to time. I'm currently running a dual-monitor setup, with my primary monitor maxing at 1680x1050 and my secondary being full 1080p. There's no problem watching 1080p videos on my primary monitor (no surprise there), but there's always some presence of various choppiness when I full-screen them on my secondary. I've tested the same video (H264, MPEG-4 AVC) on VLC, MPC and WMP, with VLC displaying the most frequent choppiness and WMP displaying the least. I've got the latest CCCP installed and all mobo/GPU drivers are up-to-date. My system components for reference:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 3.2GHz Quad-Core
Mobo: MSI B75MA-P45 Micro ATX
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X 8GB DDR3-1600
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM
PSU: Orion HEC 585D 585w
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Primary monitor (DVI): Samsung SyncMaster 220wm
Secondary monitor (DVI): ASUS 242h

I'd be a bit surprised if this was hardware related, but hey, I wouldn't really know. If there's some kind of configuration/calibration that I've overlooked, please direct me to what I should do. I greatly appreciate the help, guys. Thanks!

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You should try to activate GPU decoding.

[Nyanmar]

Got nothing, it still frequently shifts back and forth from regular play to choppiness. Though it is much more prevalent during scenes where there's a lot going on screen.

[TypX]

With GPU decoding enabled (and after having restarted vlc)?
Can you share the logs? (stop playback, Tools->messages->set verbosity to 2, start playback again).

[Nyanmar]

Yup, I had GPU decoding on and restarted VLC as well. It even made it worse I think because every time I would skip around the video, it would become pixelated and distorted for a little bit before loading the scene. I turned on the debug log and let the video play for a few minutes, primarily during action-heavy parts. Here it is:

main warning: early picture skipped
main warning: received buffer in the future
mkv debug: seek request to -1 (0.791000%)
mkv debug: seek got 6780315000 (78%)
main debug: Buffering 0%
main debug: Buffering 0%
main debug: Buffering 13%
main debug: Buffering 26%
main debug: Buffering 37%
main debug: Buffering 51%
main debug: Buffering 62%
main debug: Buffering 74%
main debug: End of audio preroll
main debug: End of video preroll
main debug: Received first picture
main debug: End of video preroll
main debug: Buffering 86%
main debug: Buffering 98%
main debug: Stream buffering done (3131 ms in 120 ms)
main debug: Decoder buffering done in 41 ms
main warning: picture is too late to be displayed (missing 20 ms)
direct3d debug: Created 96x96 texture for OSD
main debug: audio output is starving (-88913), playing silence
main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor
main debug: looking for xml reader module: 1 candidate
main debug: using xml reader module "xml"
main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.257 ms - Total 0.257 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.257 ms)
direct3d debug: Created 786x72 texture for OSD
main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'mouse button' 0 t=8
main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'mouse button' 0 t=9
main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'double click'
qt4 debug: Qt4: Fullscreen state changed
qt4 debug: Qt: Entering Fullscreen
qt4 debug: Qt4: Fullscreen state changed
qt4 debug: Qt4: Fullscreen state changed
main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'resize' 1920x1080 fullscreen
direct3d debug: Created 333x58 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 313x71 texture for OSD
main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor
main warning: resampling stopped after 22999037 usec (drift: 36873)
main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor
direct3d debug: Created 228x59 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 283x71 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 932x149 texture for OSD
main warning: audio output out of sync, adjusting dates (-40269 us)
main warning: not synchronized (-40268 us), resampling
main warning: buffer too early (-76143), down-sampling
direct3d debug: Created 254x71 texture for OSD
main warning: resampling stopped after 12484850 usec (drift: -1338)
direct3d debug: Created 1636x71 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 96x59 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 538x59 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 856x150 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 825x136 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 1064x71 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 633x72 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 450x71 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 247x72 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 270x58 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 582x72 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 820x149 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 700x58 texture for OSD
direct3d debug: Created 96x96 texture for OSD
main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor

[TypX]

That's not the complete log. The interesting part for me is in the very beginning (hence the play after the message opening). Having seen synchro issues breaking the playback... you should try a 2.1 nightly build with directsound or waveout audio output.

[Nyanmar]

My apologies, I restarted playback this time instead of just skipping towards an active scene. I downloaded VLC nightly 2.1.0 and tried both waveout and directsound settings under Audio. Still choppy. Also, the video remains to be pixelated and distorted every time I skip around (even on low quality .avi files). I uploaded the two debug logs for each audio setting, but blocked out my directory names because....well, just because.

waveout: http://pastebin.ca/2317442
directsound: http://pastebin.ca/2317443

[TypX]

The macroblocking when seeking is a video driver issue.

In this log you are not dropping frames. If you don't seek, is it still choppy during the action scenes? If yes it may be a bad encoding issue.

[Nyanmar]

It may be a driver issue then (in terms of the macroblocking, anyway), because in regular VLC as well as nightly, if I disable GPU/hardware accelerated decoding, I get no distortions whatsoever while seeking. It's choppy during playback, yes, but I get no more pixelation when skipping around. As for your question, it's choppy on and off, action scene or not, it's just more prevalent during action scenes. I would hope it's an encoding issue, I'll try another video.

Edit: I've tried another video, same thing. I've also tried toggling "H.264 in-loop deblocking filter" to all and FFmpeg threads to 4, 2, and 1. Video quality deteriorated a bit and it's still choppy after doing both.

[JeffG]

I've never been able to get smooth 1920x1080p video from any version of VLC. 1.xx is much better than any 2.xx I've tried, but there are still frequent drops/glitches I don't get in WMP, MPC or any other player.

Wild shot here, try going into the input assignments and turn off volume control for the mouse wheel. It dropped VLC's cpu usage by ~20% on my system.

[Nyanmar]

Thanks,I tried that, but still no good. MPC-HC plays it flawlessly once I changed the audio output to waveout. I'm glad someone else has the same issue regarding smooth playback. Will just stick with MPC for now.