Help! I am stuck with stuttering.

[AndrewB]

I need help. First some background and a confession.

The background . . . I have been using GBPVR for many years now; I remember back before the GBPVR097 versions. It has always worked well for me. I ran it on a Sempron 3000 box and in later versions of GBPVR, the playback has been getting worse so I decided to spend some money thinking that the hardware was running out of puff.
I bought a PVR500 card and an AMD dual core 5000+ 2.6GHz, 2G RAM. I have a NVIDIA GeForce MX 4000 card. I am running XP pro SP3 and have read through lots of posts. I have also replaced the quartz.dll.

My confession is that in the mean time I tried Mythbuntu, but came back to GBPVR. Sorry sub.

Now media player V9 replays perfectly as does VLC. However when I play recordings and videos via GBPVR and get crappy stuttery performance. I understand that GBPVR asks directdx (or similar) to play video. As I have all the config settings on default, why is this not working?

I also have a wife who has been watching quietly from a distance and is asking why nothing is working.

I am at a loss, as to what else to try.

[sub]

Its most likely related to the video or audio decoders you're using. Reproduce the problem then zip and attach the pvrx2.exe-native.log and I'll take a look.

[AndrewB]

Thanks Sub. ZIP file attached.

[sub]

There isnt an obvious cause shown in the logs, but I would think its related to the decoders you're using. You should try other decoder combinations, rather than relying on the 'system default' you currently have selected.

[AndrewB]

I have tried several decoder options with no noticeable difference.

PVR2.exe Video Renderer: VMR9 Custom
GBPVR Video Renderer: Am I right to assume this does not matter any more?

Under MPEG-2 Playback I currently have the following video CODECs (and similar under audio)
InterVideo NonCSS Video for H.
ffdshow Video Decoder
MPEG Video Decoder

Again all to no noticeable difference when chosen. Am assuming that I only need to update CONFIG and save, I don't need to re-boot or do anything further to change decoder within GBPVR.

[sub]

Try installing these decoders and try selecting them:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPV_Decoder.htm
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPA_Decoder.htm

[AndrewB]

Thanks sub. Playback is now significantly better, but now perfect. (Note sure the wife would like it) However you have given me a lead. Let me play round further. I wonder if the video card could be the issue?

[sub]

The video card is pretty weak, but should be able to do standard def. Given the rest of your machine specs, that would be the one thing I'd upgrade.

[AndrewB]

I will look into that, however it is interesting that Windows Media player 9 and VLC both playback very well on the same machine.

[sub]

Try using the Overlay video renderer option. This probably what these are using, and tends to work better with old video cards.