Choppy playback on MKV's

[leerph 4]

I recently installed MB3 and love it but this is an ongoing issue I am hoping to get some help with. On my blu ray's I rip them with makemkv and leave them the full size for best picture. Originally on MB2 I would have MB minimize WMC and use MPC-HC play the files. This worked fine for a while but all of a sudden I started getting choppy playback. Keep in mind this is on a system I setup about 2 years ago so it's hard to remember what all I had installed. Anyway, I uninstalled the shark codec pack and used this guide to get native playback inside WMC:
hack7mc.com/2009/02/mkvs-for-minimalists-on-windows-7.html

My problem persisted. I tried several splitters but the haali splitter using ffdshow audio decoder is the only way I can get it to somewhat play at all but it still chops some. I'm sure I"m having some codec issue but I do not want to have to wipe windows and reinstall everything. 

Having been away from the game for a while since everything was working perfectly it looks like there are a lot of new options out there. I see that MB3 has native playback using their own player. My problem is now I have WMC setup to play these files after using the link listed above and I don't know how to change it back since this was a registry change.

 

What I am hoping for is to get everything reset and then have it play natively with no skipping with the MB3 player. Can anyone tell me how I might be able to accomplish that without starting from scratch?

 

Also, for me the biggest drawback to leaving my files in MKV format is that there was no chapter skip or fast forward or rewind. I could only use the skip forward and skip backward feature on the remote to move it 30 seconds at the time which is very inconvenient. Does the new MB3 player support chapter skip and/or FF/rewind. Thanks in advance for all your help!

[leerph 4]

UPDATE: I went in through the web browser for MB3 and accessed the movies that way and it would then play them using the MB3 player. However, the playback is still choppy. More than through WMC in fact. I am not sure what splitter or codecs it is using as none show up in the taskbar during playback. Any ideas????

[gcw07 347]

UPDATE: I went in through the web browser for MB3 and accessed the movies that way and it would then play them using the MB3 player. However, the playback is still choppy. More than through WMC in fact. I am not sure what splitter or codecs it is using as none show up in the taskbar during playback. Any ideas????

When playing it through the browser you are actually transcoding it, so it wouldn't use any splitter or codecs on the PC itself.

[ebr 14959]

Did you set up your library using UNC paths such that the WMC/MBC machine can directly access the media?

 

Since you are getting similar results in both web client (which streams/transcodes) and MBC (which should not) I'm wondering if MBC is trying to stream them because it can't access them directly.

[leerph 4]

Yes. It is a NAS box and I set it up with UNC paths. In fact I set up MB on my laptops which is attached to the network and it streams it fine so it has to be an issue with my actual htpc. I so do not want to have to wipe it and reinstall but I'm really chasing my tail here. Any ideas?

[BC101 31]

leerph: to rule out anything funky, copy a smaller .mkv (like a 30min episode of something rather than a  2hr movie) to somewhere on your htpc (rather than UNC path from NAS box), open it with Windows Media Player and see if it plays locally without choppyness. 

[gthrift 57]

Could also be a codec issue. Maybe WMC is using the wrong directshow filters or hardware acceleration isn't enabled.

 

Try this guidehttp://www.thehtpc.net/htpc-tips-and-tweaks/media-center-lav-filters-and-external-subtitles/

[Marc_G 92]

I've got two recommendations, presuming that playing the local file still gives choppy results.

 

1. Do a fresh install of MPC-HC. The recently released 1.7.1 version. It's got internal LAV (since 1.7.0 actually) and should play the file independently of external codecs or anything odd that  is set up on the HTPC. Does this work cleanly? Note that MBC can be configured through the MBC Configurator for very seamless integration with MBC.

 

2. If you want to avoid an external player, just make sure you've removed all codec installations and such, then set up LAV splitter and the AV filters.  These work well and use hardware acceleration. Should play smoothly. My system is 4 years old mostly (AMD 2 core, ATI 5670 I added a year or so in) and plays fine. Here's a guide:

http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/726-windows-media-center-internal-player-mb-classic-and-lav-filters-guide/

 

Failing that, do what I did and do a fresh installation of Win7x64SP1... But I know you are trying to avoid starting over.

 

Good luck.

 

Marc

[jordy 284]

Hi,  I have - for the first time - ripped a blu-ray movie to m2ts format (1:1 copy). When I play it in MBT or MBC playback is stop/start. The client pc is a laptop - Intel core2 Duo T9300 / 4gb / nVidia 9500m GS graphics - over wi-fi (802.11n). I have looked at the set-up for LAV filters according to the HTPC guide and nothing looks out of the ordinary, except that the formats that are listed in LAV splitter and Video settings do not include m2ts. I don't want to reduce the bit rate etc preferring to keep it original.  Any ideas?? TIA.

 

EDIT:

Playing around with this m2ts file, I noticed that it would not play properly on the server either. Tried  the web-browser and also directly in Media Player (LAV installed) and it was stop/start in both. I  know that the file is good because it played fine on the pc that ripped it, but that is an i7 with at GT560 video card. This kind of says to me that the server pc has a motherboard bottleneck in that it can't feed the data stream at the necessary bit-rate from the source drive. I've checked and all the Mobo drivers are up to date. Anyone got any ideas?

Edited November 24, 2013 by jordy