Freezing during playback / High CPU usage

[mattyb]

I'm having playback issues... recordings (and even items from my video library) are freezing at seemingly random moments. These are always catastrophic and require a full computer reset as the keyboard and mouse are inoperable.

I've run in windowed mode and checked cpu usage which seems very high 60-80%. I've also tried to recreate the issue in Windows Media Player or VLC and can't manage it, so it seems it's a GBPVR issue.

I'm using Dscaler5 as my video and audio decoders. I've attached the logs. Can anyone see anything that may be causing this?

Thanks in advance.

[sub]

Were the logs zipped up immadiately after the freeze happened? It doesnt look like it, so you're probably best to reproduce the problem and repost the logs.

Also, you might need to make sure your audio renderer is set to 'system default'. Other audio renderer options are a common cause of playback problems like this.

[mattyb]

Ok, next time it happens I'll re-post the logs.

In the meantime I'm still getting high CPU usage, whether freezing or not. Any ideas why this might be? I think my system should be able to handle recording/playback right? I'm only capturing/playing SD content - no HD stuff.

Also, I changed the audio renderer to try to remedy some audio sync issues I was having. Alas that doesn't seem to work either so I'll be changing that back as you suggest.

[sub]

In the meantime I'm still getting high CPU usage, whether freezing or not.

During playback, or even when sitting at the menus?

High CPU during playback probably means your video decoder isnt taking advantage of any hardware acceleration features of your 7600GS video card, and 60-80% could be normal in that situation depending on how much post processing your video decoder is doing. Personally, I'd try to get a decoder that'll gives you hardware acceleration, then you're more likely to get 10-20% CPU usage. Since you're on XP, you'd also need to be using either Overlay or VMR9 to get hardware acceleration. No acceleration on EVR on XP.

[mattyb]

Ok, this makes sense. I didn't realise the Dscaler decoder was software only. I'll try with a different dec. Only problem is the Dscaler seems to give the best performance I've found so far in terms of image quality, ie. sharpness and no blurring during fast motion (sports - which is what I record the most).

[mattyb]

I've installed the Nvidia Purevideo decoder and it seems to work ok. CPU usage is now 15-35% during playback. I haven't had a freeze yet but I'll continue to monitor.