Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 OK, got some data. My apologies, I had the Tronsmart unit off during the day, and on waking it up it decided to update all manner of Windows stuff with no way I could figure out to pause it. So you'll see the updater service stealing 20-30% of the CPU in some of these screen captures. OK. First, here's MPC-HC playing a 1080p movie ("The Golden Compass"). MPC-HC itself in full screen is taking up about 7% of CPU. I ended that movie, and fired up Emby Theater (full desktop app). I gave it a few minutes to do whatever it does on startup and settle down. Here is a pic of ET essentially idling. It spawned three separate "Electron" processes eating up about 20% of CPU while the application was idling; maybe some other processes shown are part of it too. Then I played the movie in ET. As you can see, Emby.Theater (32 bit) is taking 66% of CPU, plus those electron processes are still around and maybe some other small stuff. Hopefully this is helpful in tracking down what's going on. I tried installing the app from the store, which is happening now, but I figured I'd report these three above first, as going into the Windows Store initiated a bunch of app updates. Ugghhgh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 I just threw in the new LAV filters. Giving them a whirl... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 OK, got store app installed. But it was completely unusable. When playing, it would jerk like a manual transmission in the hands of someone who never drove one. Stop Start Stop Start. Stop Start. Here are views idle and playing. Low CPU use. Idle: Playing (Sorry, different scene than prior screen caps... couldn't find that scene because it was churning so badly) OK, I'm gonna go uninstall that app. Then I'll try the 720p thing. Curious to know what use that will be, but I'm happy to try anything for diagnostics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 I just threw in the new LAV filters. Giving them a whirl... OK, will do. That means select Edge filters, exit ET, reload ET, give it a minute, then test... right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 (edited) OK, will do. That means select Edge filters, exit ET, reload ET, give it a minute, then test... right? No, Luke hasn't included them in ET, yet. My guess is that Babgvant will recompile them for ET before Luke adds them. But you can download them and replace the existing filters. Edited December 14, 2016 by Doofus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 Happy to try this, but could you please describe the process to do so? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 First, download the zip file, here Then delete the content of the LAV folder C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Theater\COMObjects\LAV Unzip the files to that directory 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 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... Tried 720p. It was noticeably jerkier. CPU pegged at 99% total. ET process 60-70%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 Interesting, I suppose the downscaling algorithm is quite resource intensive. If you have a 720p video can you also test that at a 720p system resolution? Also try setting hardware acceleration to auto. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 OK, unzipped the 32 bit LAV filter set into the folder specified. No difference, initially. Then I set dxva2copyback or whatever acceleration. This notably improved things, and reduce the emby.theater (32 bit) process significantly (maybe around 20% of CPU). Still definitely some stutters and jerks though, just less so. This was interesting because the copyback setting didn't improve things for me, as far as I can remember, in tests with the prior filters. The best playback is still either MPCHC or Kodi (both are similar). I find the Kodi interface quite intimidating. Is there a good resource on setting up external players, in terms of what parameters to pass to them? I might try my hand at configuring MPCHC as an external player until the ET video engine is optimized for wimpy processors such as the one in the Tronsmart. It's really a puny thing. I appreciate so much all the help I've gotten here, and I'll continue to test anything in hopes of coming upon a solution! Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 Interesting, I suppose the downscaling algorithm is quite resource intensive. If you have a 720p video can you also test that at a 720p system resolution? Also try setting hardware acceleration to auto. I don't have a 720p video handy that I know of. Sorry! No difference (pre-lav filter switch) setting No acceleration or Auto. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babgvant 143 Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 Luke, new version of LAV is out. https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases Uploaded to Edge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 Marc, delete your LAV folder, restart ET and let it download the new stuff. Then set to edge. Give that a whirl. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 14, 2016 Author Share Posted December 14, 2016 Will try tonight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 15, 2016 Author Share Posted December 15, 2016 Hi guys. Video still has a perceptible flicker. I dumped the LAV folder contents, started ET, switched to Edge, exited, restarted ET, (meanwhile checked to make sure folder was repopulated; it was). Went through battery of tests. Best results were with Intel Quicksync (marginally better than DXVA2Copyback, and definitely better than no acceleration). With no acceleration the CPU pegged 99%, almost all of which was various ET processes. With IQS or DXVA I was running ~55% CPU or so, mostly ET processes. Tried all renderers; slight favorite was EVR+. MadVR didn't work at all...total stutterfest, migraine-worthy. On my desktop monitor no effect changing monitor refresh rates to match video; perhaps on a TV this would be meaningful. Still, even the best I could do with ET didn't hold a candle to either MPC-HC or Kodi, each of which played perfectly smoothly using less than 10% CPU resources for the player processes and less than 15% overall. Anybody got a link to External Player configuration string settings? I might try setting that up with MPC-HC until ET player evolves to cope with these wimpy processors in these boxes. I will say ET player looks great on my AthlonX2 Kuma + AMD 5670 GPU (my traditional HTPC which also serves as Emby server), and it rocks on my desktop i5 system. I want to make clear that I appreciate everybody's help and love Emby, even if my dinky new player box makes me switch viewers for now. I anticipate this will be a short term thing. Either ET player will optimize, or what you get in a $100 box will evolve, and all will be well. That said, it's clear that both Kodi and MPCHC can play the video using maybe a fifth of the CPU resources as ET, so maybe there's considerable room for optimization. Keep up the good work. You guys rock. I will continue to monitor this thread and will try anything new ASAP if you think you've got a fix or a troubleshooting idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 15, 2016 Author Share Posted December 15, 2016 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. @@clarkss12 , One thing I noticed is that if the Tronsmart decides to download an update or something, it takes anywhere from 25-40% of the CPU just to do that in the background. This could be the cause for significant differences in player performance from one time to the next. I told Windows that I usually use the device from noon to midnight, so I think it will try to avoid those times, but who knows. Windows 10 Home does pretty much whatever it wants whenever it wants and sticks us with the consequences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 Hi guys. Video still has a perceptible flicker. On my desktop monitor no effect changing monitor refresh rates to match video; perhaps on a TV this would be meaningful. Out of curiosity, what do you have your monitor refresh rate set to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdiesel 1114 Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 You can try running ET as a shell to squeak every last drop of performance out of your box. https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/30010-set-emby-theater-as-shell/page-1&do=findComment&comment=295564 It is easy to reverse if you want. Just hit alt-ctrl-del and run "explorer" to boot into windows normally and you can revert the changes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 15, 2016 Author Share Posted December 15, 2016 My Intel display properties report my refresh rate as 59p, which is consistent with the other computer on this monitor. I recall long ago using an MPC-HC diagnostics overlay screen that would report stats about ongoing video play. Is there such a feature in the ET player engine that might give us useful data about what's slowing down the frame rate? (And yes I've confirmed I'm direct playing, not transcoding ) Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 Well, if it improves when using hardware acceleration, that would suggest you need more oomph. Maybe memory expansion could help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 15, 2016 Author Share Posted December 15, 2016 The box isn't upgradeable. Recent testing made sure no weird windows stuff was going on during tests. The baseline level of jerkiness in ET persists even when playing video is all that is happening. :-( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 I think at this point, it's down to Luke and Babgvant. If I think of something, I'll be sure to post it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 16, 2016 Author Share Posted December 16, 2016 I played around just a little last night. Confirmed MPC-HC is using DXVA acceleration. I would be happy to post diagnostic screens from it to show what it is doing, to learn how to improve ET's player for low end boxes. I setup MPC-HC as an external player and so far just pass {path} to it. The player itself can be configured to open full screen, exit (back to ET) on Stop, and even remember file positions (reliability uncertain so far). I will start a separate thread about optimizing use of external players in ET. Curious to learn any tricks out there. One other ET note: when ET is essentially idling... Just sitting there on its home screen, it takes up maybe half my cpu worth of processes. Three separate Electron ones plus others. This continues indefinitely... Not just a startup thing. What exactly is it doing with all that CPU? Marc Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted January 2, 2017 Author Share Posted January 2, 2017 Hi all, I'm capping off this thread. I've decided to send back the Tronsmart Ara X5 Plus since it is so sluggish and also because it doesn't bitstream HD audio (despite clear statements in the promotional material that it does). Eventually I'll get a more powerful box to be my front end; for the moment I'm just using my new server as a display unit as well. Thanks for the support along the way. I do think ET has some distance to go to run smoothly on low oomph TV boxes (Kodi played fine on the Tronsmart), but for now I'll leave that problem to others! :-) Sincerely, Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37064 Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 @@Marc_G @@Jdiesel The next release of Emby Theater will feature improved performance, hardware acceleration, and better multi-monitor support. If you'd like to try it out ahead of time you can do so here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/46763-theater-mpv-test/page-1 Enjoy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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