Perfect r5000-hd H.264 playback

[HawgGuy]

After months of tweaking, experimenting and .. failing. I now have perfect, hardware-accelerated h.264 playback using the r5000-hd as source.

The (PAFF interlaced) h.264 streams from dish would either crash sage when played unaccelerated or be unwatchable due to stuttering when played using HW acceleration.

They now play perfectly for me with HW acceleration (using 5%) CPU under XP using an ATI 2600 PRO and the latest ATI CCC 7.8 drivers and Cyberlink 7.3 decoders.

The "cure" was to change the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FreyTechnologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\NumBuffers

from the default of 40 (hex) to 60 (hex). Thats it. Simple, eh?

The registry change does nothing unless you have HW accel turned on. I had less success with an Nvidia 8500GT and the latest Nvidia (163.44) drivers, but it did help. With the ATI 2600 PRO it is a cure.

If anyone else if having problems with h.264 stream playback - I'd be interested to hear your results with this change.

[chrisc16]

Hm. I've been using my R5000 for about 2 weeks now, and I haven't had a problem playing any Dish Network channel yet. So I'm afraid to change anything for fear of breaking something.
EDIT: I see after I posted that you're running XP; I'm running Vista, maybe that is why I'm not having any problems?

I'm running an 3800+ X2, Gigabyte 8500GT, with the latest Nvidia drivers, and using the PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra decoder.

-Chris

[HawgGuy]

Originally Posted by chrisc16

Hm. I've been using my R5000 for about 2 weeks now, and I haven't had a problem playing any Dish Network channel yet. So I'm afraid to change anything for fear of breaking something.
EDIT: I see after I posted that you're running XP; I'm running Vista, maybe that is why I'm not having any problems?

I'm running an 3800+ X2, Gigabyte 8500GT, with the latest Nvidia drivers, and using the PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra decoder.

-Chris

I'm with you. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I think your lucky. I had problems under Vista as well as XP. When you watch h.264 HD stations (like ESPN2 or NFLHD) does it play accelerated or unaccelerated?

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by HawgGuy

When you watch h.264 HD stations (like ESPN2 or NFLHD) does it play accelerated or unaccelerated?

Well, I actually haven't tried either of those channels (not a sports fan), but I did check the CPU while my wife was watching HGTV-HD (which I believe is h.264) and it was at 70% usage, which would be unaccelerated. I'm not sure why it's not accelerated, but again, if it ain't broke...

-Chris

[Ralphjb]

Originally Posted by HawgGuy

After months of tweaking, experimenting and .. failing. I now have perfect, hardware-accelerated h.264 playback using the r5000-hd as source.

The (PAFF interlaced) h.264 streams from dish would either crash sage when played unaccelerated or be unwatchable due to stuttering when played using HW acceleration.

They now play perfectly for me with HW acceleration (using 5%) CPU under XP using an ATI 2600 PRO and the latest ATI CCC 7.8 drivers and Cyberlink 7.3 decoders.

The "cure" was to change the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FreyTechnologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\NumBuffers

from the default of 40 (hex) to 60 (hex). Thats it. Simple, eh?

The registry change does nothing unless you have HW accel turned on. I had less success with an Nvidia 8500GT and the latest Nvidia (163.44) drivers, but it did help. With the ATI 2600 PRO it is a cure.

If anyone else if having problems with h.264 stream playback - I'd be interested to hear your results with this change.

Well I just tried it and it seems to work. I am running XP and have nvidia 8600. Gotta copy this link to elsewhere.

Thanks!

[Ralphjb]

Since I am ignorant about such things, I gotta ask an ignorant question. If going from "40" to "60" works so well, how about going to "80?"

[HawgGuy]

I think the minimum to get smooth playback on my setup was somewhere between 50-60, so I chose 60. No other reason really.