CPU Usage with and without PVRX2

[gazoo]

Oh one last question..I'll stop soon, I promise :p

Will getting a heftier video card such as an ATI X1650 help, or is this all about the CPU?

[gazoo]

FYI. Got it running! Here's the post from another thread. Sub helped me out-

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I didn't know exactly how to uninstall ffdshow so I disabled it in the config. After this everything started falling into place. Apparently ffdshow was getting in the way of dvr-ms for some reason. It wasn't doing this with mpeg2 files, just the dvr-ms ones.

Once it was out of the way, I worked my way through the different codecs. Intervideo seemed to be the best one for the dvr-ms 1080i files but I still had stuttering (but it was the best of the bunch). Well I walked away and left PVRX2 running and came back 2 hours later. This time everything was PERFECT! NO DROP FRAMES! It seems that since I kept turning PVRX2 on and off, there must have been some update or some other process running that was sucking down the CPU at the same time and it finished while I was out.

I even played a 1080P .m2t file (full HD) with no problems!
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It's really on the hairy edge of NOT working, but it just barely makes it. There can't be ANYTHING going on at the same time while I'm viewing 1080i dvr-ms files. But hey, it works.

I'm still curious if anyone can answer if this playback problem is easier solved by more CPU or more GPU power.

[gEd]

great news gazoo, glad you got it working.

btw: I was wrong to recommend coreavc earlier. I was assuming your 1080i was h.264 instead of mpeg.

I'm sure a newer 2x00 ATI card would help but I can't confirm as I am still on the 9600.

[Deusxmachina]

Finding the actual DVR-MS problem certainly beats my band-aid fix of "just don't use DVR-MS files." And of course now that it's fixed, it's time to shop for a new one.

CPU all the way. Regardless of video card, not all files can be accelerated anyway. There's recent talk about that, about why some files won't accelerate, and it turns out things like h.264 have some fairly strict encoding requirements. Can't use more than three b frames for every eight full frames or whatever while encoding. Something like that. Can't say I paid full attention while perusing it.

CPU helps in pretty much every other computer task, too. And more CPU means less card needed. I don't think I get video card acceleration at all at any time right now on my HTPC. It's all Core2Duo, baby.

If you get a fairly new CPU, though, it'll need a new motherboard to go with it, and I'm guessing your current one isn't PCI-e. It usually winds up being a 1, 2, 3, combo -- CPU, board, video card. Grabbing a higher ghz Pentium that can fit in the current slot might be a way to get off cheaper. Even if doing a full upgrade, this one could now be used for a client viewer.

[jbodin]

Oh one last question..I'll stop soon, I promise :p

Will getting a heftier video card such as an ATI X1650 help, or is this all about the CPU?

I'm using an ATI X1550 (same thing as an X1300), and I can view/play ATSC HD broadcasts just fine on my system; my CPU is an Athlon64-based Sempron 3100+ (running at 1.8 GHz, not overclocked), so the CPU/video card combination is fairly modest.

I had been suffering from similar performance problems until just a few days ago, though, and your posts help lead me in the right direction -- the fix for me involved switching the Mux (as seen in GBPVR Config utility under the "Misc" tab); the problem I was having, though, was that the demuxer I needed to use didn't show up under the tab.

As described elsewhere in this thread, I used GSpot to identify what demuxers I have installed -- I spotted the required ATI demuxer (which I KNOW works fine on my system because it works fine with my DVBViewer application), and then I went into the config.xml file and edited the <PreferredMpegPlaybackDemux> entry and entered the EXACT name of the ATI demuxer (as shown in GSpot). Then when I launched the GBPVR Config utility, the ATI demuxer showed up as the selected Mux under the "Misc" tab. I then exited the Config utility and launched PVRX2, and the stuttering problems I had been experiencing were gone. I did a little further tweaking for my decoder under the "Playback" tab and fiddled around switching between the PureVideo decoder and my CyberLink (ATI) decoder. I finally settled on the CyberLink (ATI) decoder, and my CPU utilization is around 30% now, with no stuttering while viewing live ATSC HD broadcasts with timeshift enabled, and I can now also now play back recorded HD content with no stuttering.

This problem had been bugging me for quite a while, because live HD broadcasts, timeshifted HD broadcasts, and recorded HD content ALL worked just fine on this system using the DVBViewer application, so I knew that the problem for me with PVRX2 was in the configuration, NOT in the hardware. The problem was that DVBViewer allowed for a wider range of tweaks without having to dig into a cryptic config file, but I've been a long-time GBPVR user and I like the GBPVR/PVRX2 interfaces MUCH better than DVBViewer for HTPC use, so I was very motivated to get GBPVR sorted-out.

It would be nice if someone could put together a comprehensive guide detailing the differences between the Mux choices (under the "Misc" tab) and the demultiplexer choices (under the "Playback" tab) -- this was the root of my problem, and I had to edit the config.xml file to solve my problem . . . the pull-down selections in the GBPVR Config utility just didn't reflect the options that were installed and available on my system, so without "getting under the hood" and messing witht he config.xml file, there would have been no way to ever get GBPVR/PVRX2 properly configured. A guide to help lead you through all of this -- and something that helped define the differences between available demultiplexers and decoders -- would really help a lot of people out, I suspect.

For the time being, though, I guess our shared "lessons learned" via these message threads will have to suffice (and hence my fairly detailed write-up here . . . hopefully this will help someone else out).

[sub]

I'm not sure why you had to do any of that, but its not the sort of things I would normally recommended to any one - so probably not sort of things I'd expect to see in a guide. I dont see anyone having to change the <PreferredMpegPlaybackDemux> setting under normal circumstances. It doesnt relate to whether the ATI Mux option is visible as a mux choice. The demux and mux are entirely different things and not related. To get the ATI mux to appear in the list, you just need to have the "ATI MPEG Muxer" filter registered on your machine.

I'm glad you got it working well anyway, but just wanted to mention that wasnt a normal set of changes anyone would make.

[jbodin]

I probably wouldn't have had this problem with a clean OS install, but I had been having problems getting hardware acceleration to work with my GeForce 7600GS card, so I recently switched over to the ATI X1550. In the process of doing all the troubleshooting and hardware change-over, I had registered, unregistered, installed, and uninstalled all of my various apps, muxes, and demultiplexers . . . which is probably part of the reason why teh ATI Mux option wasn't appearing in the "Misc" tab. Once I got that sorted-out, though, things kind of fell into place.

Thanks for all your efforts, Sub -- GPBVR (and now PVRX2) will probably continue to be my preferred HTPC solution for some time to come!

[gazoo]

Glad to hear I helped you some jbodin.

I had one question: I don't see a demux selection in the misc tab. The only thing i have in there that is a drop down menu is the deinterlacing selection and the BDA mux which is either TS or DVR-MS.

The deinterlace I set to none because that was the one that worked best for me.

[jbodin]

Glad to hear I helped you some jbodin.

I had one question: I don't see a demux selection in the misc tab. The only thing i have in there that is a drop down menu is the deinterlacing selection and the BDA mux which is either TS or DVR-MS.

The deinterlace I set to none because that was the one that worked best for me.

My bad -- I was referring to the BDA Multiplexer under the "Misc" tab.