Marc_G 92 Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 Hi guys, Yet another installment here in my transition from Emby for WMC (using MPC-HC as a player) to a pure ET environment. This one actually has me worried though. Please help! Ok, here's what's going on. I've got my Tronsmart Ara X5 Plus (Windows 10, fully updated to current patches) set up with Emby Theater and it's going through testing upstairs tied into my computer monitor auxiliary HDMI port. (Until I get a new receiver, on Xmas, I can't really tie it in to the main theater system downstairs, since it doesn't have an SPDIF port). Note I read with interest this thread which covered some issues settling in this very type of computer, which turned out to be mostly AVR configuration. Anyway, in playing some content, I notice the motion is a bit jerky instead of smooth. Some content exhibits this more than others. But it's definitely visible. Anytime there's a pan scene going on, you can see jerks. My first response was to think "oh no, I bought this tiny computer to be my theater player and it can't even play bluray level content properly!" So I installed MPC-HC (current version, no customization) and all files (from the same sources) play perfectly smooth like butter. So, it is something about how I've got ET set up, or something about ET intrinsically. I went into the settings, video, and tried lots of settings. All the renderers (EVR, EVR+, MadVR). MadVR was the worst, and I think EVR was the best, but still definitely noticeable jerkiness. Tried both the Intel QuickSync and DXVA2CopyBack on EVR, no fix there. Maybe there's some other setting or combo of settings I need. While experiencing the jerkiness, the dashboard says "direct playing" for the device. So, I'm not suffering a transcoding issue. The exact same scenes play fine on either my desktop PC with ET running, or on my ANCIENT main HTPC running ET and Emby Server. The server is a circa 2009 Athlon X2 Kuma (2.7 gHz) with a circa 2010 AMD 5670 graphics card (and yes, a more modern SSD and 5 TB worth of recent issue storage drives). I'm happy to post whatever logs would be relevant to dig into this, but are there simple steps I can take first? I need to get this thing butter-smooth before I can install it as my main unit. The jerkiness really drives me nuts. Is it possible that something in my SOUND settings could be crapping up the video rendering? I've got it set to stereo (based on my monitor speakers) but otherwise all default/auto settings. Please advise on how to trouble shoot this. It has me worried! Thanks in advance. Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1113 Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 Is refresh rate switching enabled? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1113 Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 Also try running a GPU monitoring program like GPU-Z in the background while playing a video to make sure it isn't overloaded. DXVA2CopyBack is probably your best bet for hardware acceleration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 It doesn't look like your GPU supports hardware acceleration. Check your GPU refresh rate. If it isn't already, set it to 59Hz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordy 284 Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 (edited) Have yuo tried turning Hardware acceleration off completely? I was having some issues with pixelation in some of my videos and turning HW acc off fixed it. This is on a old i3 laptop running win10 and intel graphics. Oh, and I also have refresh rate switching turned on - no probs. Edited December 12, 2016 by jordy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 12, 2016 Author Share Posted December 12, 2016 Hi folks, Refresh rate set to 59 (I think this was default). In Emby Theater I went in and turned hardware acceleration to None and enabled refresh rate switching. No discernible changes. The same reference material played on this box by MPC-HC (Current version, no changes from default settings) plays all this content flawlessly, so I know the box is capable of decent play (since that's what it's built for ). I suppose I could try the Edge filters next and see what that is. Will try the CPU-Z thing this evening. Any other suggestions appreciated to help tweak in the box. On Emby for WMC, I always used MPCHC as an external player... do I understand correctly that ET could use it, but that there's no tracking of progress through the movie? MPC-HC has built in progress tracking, but it's not elegant as I recall. I'd rather just figure out what I need to do to get ET to play smoothly. Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clarkss12 295 Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 (edited) From your post, I decided to test my Ara last night, and you were correct, the video was jerky. I have so many different boxes that I tinker with, I get one to work well, then move on to another box. I also know that this Tronsmart was playing well last weekend, because granddaughter and I watched several Christmas movies, both DVD rip and BlueRay rip. I would have noticed if there were any visual problems, because I would have just changed to a different client device. I made this video a couple of weeks ago and everything played well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlby8W_xgHY&t=253s Edit: Just started to play "A Christmas Story" and there is no jerkiness, strange. Edit 2: Just tested one of my BlueRay rips that most of my players will NOT play without jerkiness, "The Dirty Dozen". It uses VC1 encoding and Dolbly Digital audio, it is playing flawlessly. This is my standard video that I measure my other boxes by. So, I have no idea why I had jerkiness last night when I was testing. All my devices are connected via gigabit Ethernet switches and mostly cat6 cables.. Edit 3: My Ara feeds into my Denon AVR and my AVR feeds into my Samsung Smart TV. Edited December 12, 2016 by clarkss12 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 12, 2016 Author Share Posted December 12, 2016 Thanks for looking into this. I too have noted some variability that I attribute to me playing with settings and such. However MPC-HC always plays flawlessly. Hmmm... Will do more tests tonight! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 (edited) Hi everyone, I haven't gotten around to downloading CPU-Z but I did a bunch of other tests tonight. I use five different reference videos, four made with MakeMKV as direct rips of the main track from a disc (two bluray rips, one pretty typical DVD rip, and one challenging Japanese DVD title), plus one TV show recorded by Emby (last weekend's Saturday Night Live, which has a weather alert scrolling so jerkiness is easy to spot). Using Emby Theater, I tried all manner of adjustments in the video section. Almost all content showed some level of jerkiness (the "typical" DVD rip was relatively smooth). I tried +/- the refresh rate switching, all renderers, etc. MadVR was the worst, no surprise since there's not much beef in my box's processor. I then tried Emby Theater with the "Edge" filter set, repeating above tests. No discernible change. I exited and restarted ET after selecting Edge.. I think I read somewhere you are supposed to do this. Playing directly with Media Player Classic-Home Cinema resulted in smooth playback on all content, with default MPC-HC settings. Just installed it and ran, didn't change anything. Tried to set up MPC-HC as an external player in ET, but without knowing the command parameters to use I'm out of luck, unless I can figure it out from my Emby for WMC system, which uses MPC-HC. Any help here? I wouldn't mind using it until the situation improves, as long as I can find a solution for preserving location in the file on exit, which I think the player itself supports. Then I tried loading Kodi with the Emby for Kodi add-on. I'm a software guy but it took me like half an hour to figure out how to get it installed and configured even reading the guide. But it played all the test content flawlessly. It occurs to me I can also run tests in VLC... I downloaded it to help with my HDHomeRun configurations. Haven't tested it with videos yet. So, my conclusion so far is that on my Tronsmart Ara X5 Plus, whatever video engine ET uses is struggling. Others, like MPC-HC or whatever the heck Kodi is using, run smoothly on this little box. Will do the CPU-Z thing this week for further diagnostics, and will happily do any other tests or configurations you folks suggest and provide any logs to help improve the experience on this platform. Let's be clear: My goal is a pure Emby system. If I have to use Kodi or whatever, I'm considering it a workaround until we can sort through this. Thanks in advance for your continued help troubleshooting. My next steps are testing VLC as a reference, and trying our CPU-Z to get an idea how much the box is struggling under load. Marc Edited December 13, 2016 by Marc_G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 (edited) Have you tested in the web app? http://tv.emby.media/#!/plugins/defaultskin/home.html And with the store app? Edited December 13, 2016 by Doofus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 Never used the web app... don't know much about it. I'm headed up to bed so I'll put web app and store app on tomorrow night's test bench. Oh, and what should I be doing with CPU-Z? I loaded it, get lots of stats... but don't see anything like the resource monitor from windows, etc. As one last ET test on the Tronsmart tonight, with everything back reset to default video settings wise, I ran with resource monitor going. I had the window taking up about 60% of the screen. Average CPU usage 70-75%. Then I maximized the window to full screen and it was pegging over 90%. Will test with other players tomorrow. Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 Never used the web app... don't know much about it. I'm headed up to bed so I'll put web app and store app on tomorrow night's test bench. Oh, and what should I be doing with CPU-Z? I loaded it, get lots of stats... but don't see anything like the resource monitor from windows, etc. As one last ET test on the Tronsmart tonight, with everything back reset to default video settings wise, I ran with resource monitor going. I had the window taking up about 60% of the screen. Average CPU usage 70-75%. Then I maximized the window to full screen and it was pegging over 90%. Will test with other players tomorrow. Marc Look at the sensors in GPU-Z. You'll be able to see if the processors are fully loaded. You'll have to look at clock speed, too. Just because it's running at 90% doesn't mean it's struggling if the clock speed is far below it's max. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 OK, a couple quick stats using resource monitor before I go to work: Using the same 1080p video that ET full screen took 90%+ CPU to deal with on my box, MPC-HC (completely default installation) played it at an average of 15-20% CPU. Kodi for Emby played it at an average of 10-15% CPU. VLC (completely default installation) struggled and pixelated frequently and was running 60-75 % CPU. Tried running the web app, but it was transcoding, and my circa 2009 server isn't really great at that. I was getting 14 fps, and it was hiccupping frequently. If I want to transcode it's time to update my server, but right now direct play suits my needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1113 Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 OK, a couple quick stats using resource monitor before I go to work: Using the same 1080p video that ET full screen took 90%+ CPU to deal with on my box, MPC-HC (completely default installation) played it at an average of 15-20% CPU. Kodi for Emby played it at an average of 10-15% CPU. VLC (completely default installation) struggled and pixelated frequently and was running 60-75 % CPU. Tried running the web app, but it was transcoding, and my circa 2009 server isn't really great at that. I was getting 14 fps, and it was hiccupping frequently. If I want to transcode it's time to update my server, but right now direct play suits my needs. Was this with hardware acceleration set to none or DXVA2CopyBack? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 36991 Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 have you tried default settings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 Default settings resulted in some jerkiness which is what started my investigation. Tried all three renderers with copyback, no major change. Can try anything else suggested tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1113 Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 I wonder if the ET overlay is the difference between your box having the horsepower to play a video or not play a video smoothly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 I'm assuming you have the latest driver? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 Remind us of your hardware configuration. What tv/monitor, what cables etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 Yup. 100% up-to-date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 Tronsmart Ara X5 plus running Win 10, fully updated As of last night. Connected via HDMI to my computer desktop monitor for testing. I see the same stuff connecting directly to my tv. No AVR yet in the mix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1113 Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 I'm running out of idea's to try. Can you try setting your Windows system resolution to 720p 60hz and disable refreshrate switching in ET? I assume you have been using 1080p up until this point... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 36991 Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 What ET process had the high cpu %? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 Luke, new version of LAV is out. https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 Will report on 720p and process % after I get home tonight. Thanks guys you rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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