Stutter issue with software cause

[mark235 5]

When you try it, I've put the stats in. If you want to check them, press shift+i.

 

No stutter whatsoever in fullscreen or windowed mode.

 

Summary findings:

Emby Theater fullscreen > stutter. Windowed mode: no stutter

MPC-HC as external player in Emby > no stutter

MPV standalone player (Doofus' build) > no stutter

 

All tests with the same file from the same share.

[Guest asrequested]

You mentioned subtitles. When you play in theater, are you using subtitles?

[mark235 5]

Normally I do, but I kept them off for these tests.

 

Turning them on has no positive or negative effect in Emby Theater

[Guest asrequested]

Luke, might this be another electron anomaly? If it's smooth in window but not full-screen?

[Luke 37249]

I'm not quite sure. Can you try using standalone MPV as an external player within the app? thanks.

[mark235 5]

I'm not quite sure. Can you try using standalone MPV as an external player within the app? thanks.

 

No stutter

[Luke 37249]

Right now I'm not quite sure. it is always possible the way we are communicating with mpv is causing some overhead. it could also be related to a third party lib called electron. Can you locate your Emby-Theater installation folder? There's a couple things we can try. Thanks.

[mark235 5]

I believe that would be:

 

C:\Users\HTPC\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Theater

 

I noticed a logs directory, but that mostly concerns the update proces.

 

What would you like me to do?

[chef 3749]

Posting to follow this thread...

Edited August 25, 2017 by chef

[mark235 5]

Don't know how relevant this is, but I did some tests from my laptop, connected to the same TV via HDMI. Laptop specs: i7 6700HQ, NVME SSD, 32GB RAM, GTX1060.

 

Same network, but a Wireless AC connection instead of 1GB ethernet. Same share. Same file. Same version of Windows (10 Pro) and Emby Theatre (2.8.2). Refresh rate also the same (60Hz).

 

No stutter in Emby Theatre fullscreen, either with default settings or H/A enabled.

 

These results point towards performance limitations on my NUC, but the NUC test results with external players point towards something else.

[mark235 5]

This may sound strange, but sometimes the audio can cause issues like this. Humor me, try playing Guardians with the AAC audio. If nothing else, we can rule it out.

 

Stutter also present in fullscreen with the commentary AAC audio track. Also tried changing the Exclusive Mode audio setting, and switching between bitstreaming and PCM playback. No joy

Edited August 25, 2017 by mark235

[Guest asrequested]

I didn't think it would help, but I wanted to rule it out. Issues similar to this have been reported, before. I'm very interested to see what Luke has in mind. I'll probably test it, too. To see if there are any adverse effects. Or possibly improvements.

[Luke 37249]

You could try updating electron. If you go into the system/x64/electron folder you can upzip this over it:

 

https://github.com/electron/electron/releases/download/v1.7.6/electron-v1.7.6-win32-x64.zip

 

Make sure to back it up first. See if that has an impact.

 

Please note, this might result in degraded scrolling and animation performance in the app, ignore that for now as I just want to see the effect on video playback.

 

thanks.

[mark235 5]

Renamed the original electron folder to electron.backup. Extracted the new folder and renamed it to electron. No change to the stutter issue.

 

BTW, I didn't notice any degraded scrolling and animation in the app.

[mark235 5]

@@Luke Any further idea's?

[Luke 37249]

In the emby install folder there's an electronapp folder. inside there is main.js. you could try removing the two beginning slashes from line 649:

//app.disableHardwareAcceleration();

Let me know if that makes a difference. Thanks.

[mark235 5]

It does, no more stutter :-), great!

 

After the succesful test I noticed that Emby Theater had also gone up to v2.8.3. So to make sure the fix was actually caused by the javascript adjustment, I put the slashes back, and the issue promptly returned.

 

With the fix applied, I do notice a good amount of judder compared to MPC-HC with MadVR and Smooth Motion enabled. This is (a lot) less annoying than stutter, which most viewers in my house will notice. I seem to be the only one that notices judder. 

 

Enabling the Interpolation feature in Emby Theatre did not help with the judder. Interestingly enough, If I enable MadVR within Emby theater, The old issue comes back. Stutter in fullscreen, no stutter in windowed mode. I see an increase in CPU load with MadVR enabled, but it does not go above 30%. 

 

Is there a H/W acceleration setting in main.js that might influence the MadVR behaviour? 

[Luke 37249]

Is there a H/W acceleration setting in main.js that might influence the MadVR behaviour? 

no.

[stettler 27]

The GPU in those Intel N3700 is a total pain and drivers are buggy. Problem isn't going be the CPU but the intergrated GPU. It's very hard to find the right setting that will work correctly. Even using hardware acceleration, MadVR will show that there is a lot of presentation glitch (not counting frame drop if there isn't enough resources).

 

I got ok result on a NUC with a N3700 cpu by using ET with MadVR and those settings:

 

In ET:

Hardware acceleration: Intel Quick Sync
Video renderer: Madvr
Output range: 0-255
*Change monitor refresh rate to match video: yes  (too bad the option doesn't exist anymore...)
Smooth motion mode: disable

 

In MadVR:

 

Devices -> display mode -> switch to match display : disable
Devices -> display mode -> list all display modes : (empty)
Devices -> hdr -> disable
Scaling algorithms -> chroma upscaling -> bicubic
Scaling algorithms -> image upscaling -> processing done by gpu : DXVA2
Rendering -> General Setting -> Enable automatic fullscreen exclusive mode : enable
                                Enable windowed overlay : disable
Rendering -> Dithering -> none

 

Ie: that CPU/GPU doesn't have enough processing power to use anything fancy.

 

Also, very important: don't install any anti-virus on that NUC. It just can't handle it. And you _have_ to disable Windows Defender but sadly Windows will re-enable on a regular basis. To fully disable it, change this key in the registery:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender
DisableAntiSpyware DWORD32  value=1

 

 

You could try to use refresh rate switching in MadVR by enabling it with:

 

Devices -> display mode -> switch to match display : enable

and listing the input signal accepted by your TV under:
Devices -> display mode -> list all display modes

 

Personally, I never got it working from ET but maybe you will be more lucky.

Edited September 3, 2017 by stettler

[mark235 5]

The GPU in those Intel N3700 is a total pain and drivers are buggy. Problem isn't going be the CPU but the intergrated GPU. It's very hard to find the right setting that will work correctly. Even using hardware acceleration, MadVR will show that there is a lot of presentation glitch (not counting frame drop if there isn't enough resources).

 

I got ok result on a NUC with a N3700 cpu by using ET with MadVR and those settings:

 

....

 

I don't understand how the GPU and drivers can be the problem, when they work absolutely fine in external players like MPC-HC. Also with MadVR.

 

Thanks for the feedback and settings, I'll give them a try.

[mark235 5]

@@Luke, thanks for your help resolving this!

 

Regarding my previous post: is the Frame Interpolation option in Emby Theatre supposed to give the same result as the Smooth Motion option in MadVR? I don't understand why FI doesn't do anything on my pc.

 

Edit: just found the answer in MadVR FAQ: Smooth Motion is frame blending, not frame interpolation

Edited September 3, 2017 by mark235

[stettler 27]

I don't understand how the GPU and drivers can be the problem, when they work absolutely fine in external players like MPC-HC. Also with MadVR.

 

Thanks for the feedback and settings, I'll give them a try.

 

Really depend of your setting. I had a intel NUC5PGYH (with the N3700 cpu). It's CPU/GPU is barely able to handle MadVR with minimal scaling algorithms (and nothing else). That's why I couldn't use anything more fancy than bicubic. for chroma and offloading image upscalling to GPU. Anything needing more resources and MadVR would report frames drop. I remember trying full HW acceleration instead but MadVR was reporting a lot of presentation glitch and the result was awfull.

 

If I remember correctly, the drivers for the N3700 GPU  were know to have problems and they were nearly never update. Perhaps they released newer driver that work better now? (I havent used that NUC since at least 1 year). Also, I think only Win 10 is really supported on this NUC. Intel provide a way to install Windows 7 but not all the needed drivers are available or/and up to date.

[stettler 27]

By the way, I never tested the new mpv with the NUC instead of MadVR. If you want to get automatic refresh rate switching of your monitor/TV, you have 2 choices:

 

1. Use the current version of ET with mpv and install the extra utility/script as described here:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/46763-theater-mpv-test/?p=483845

 

or:

2. Use an old 2.6 version of ET (from before they started using mpv) with MadVR and the settings I provided above:

In ET settings, enable "Change monitor refresh rate to match video". And in MadVR disable "Devices -> display mode -> switch to match display".

 

Trying to enable "Devices -> display mode -> switch to match display" in MadVR and giving it a list of resolution/refresh rate never worked for me with ET. I always got a black screen with only audio playing (but it works with other players for whatever reason)

Edited September 3, 2017 by stettler

[stettler 27]

 

Any idea why the issue is linked to windowed mode / fullscreen?

 

Windowed, even borderless windowed, is not at all the same as fullscreen. There is more processing involved in windowed mode as everything pass through the desktop composer (that's how its called?). The funny thing is that windowed is working better than fullscreen for you. But then, there was some big games that worked better in windowed mode than in fullscreen for whatever reason.

 

PS: "Maximizing" a window without menu/border is not fullscreen. It's just a borderless window taking the whole screen. You can't visualy see the difference between those 2 modes but they are not processed in the same way.

Edited September 3, 2017 by stettler

[Luke 37249]

Thanks @@stettler, some great info here.