Acer Timeline 1810TZ video flicker/choppy issue, wrong driver?

hey check out this...
download jet audio 8 ..
this player has dxva option which takes default Microsoft and also subtitle option .....

 

in case anyone is interested still. i found a solution to my original TEARING problem - that was not media player related - the Tearing on flash video playback and AVI etc etc.. at all times on all players, and browsers.

Increase Virtual Memory

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click on View by and set to Large Icons under Category. Click System.
3 . In the left pane, click Advanced system settings.
4 .On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
5. Click the Advanced tab, and then, under Virtual memory, choose Change.
6. Click Custom to change the Initial size (MB) and Maximum size.



Hot tip: Keep the initial and maximum size the same to cut down on your CPU access. This will stop your CPU from constantly change your Virtual memory paging size. Also set the size 1.5 times higher than your physical memory.

 

Hey,
good catch
It is a notch better than MPC-HC but it still has glitches (or stutter?) with sound, particularly on the more complex videos (the Anime as well as Earth videos).

However, I am no longer willing to suggest that WMP12 can one-up the other players; if you turn off subtitles, the other players can also "compete" CPU% wise & framerate-wise...

---------------

Just to be 100% certain that all the test videos were in order (good sound quality, etc), I played them all on my main system, which consists of a 3GHz Intel C2D and nVidia 9800GTX which has "CUDA" and what not. OS = XP. All played perfectly, without a hitch / stutter / delay / sound quality issue, etc.

The Anime w/Karaoke "animation" is by far the most difficult to render properly and my PC managed it @50% CPU, with perfect sound quality and the karaoke animation was dead on (timing wise).

Since it's XP, I don't have WMP12 or the DTV-DVD decoder, so the default "MPC Video Decoder" was in use and filter o/p was DXVA. Audio format is FLAC and was handeled directly by MPC, internally.

The Bond preview (mp4 w/ H.264 & AAC) used on avg. 5% CPU (lol) and again enjoyed DXVA support.

The Earth mkv (H264/AVC & AC3) ws unable to make use of DXVA on my PC (?) but I still managed perfect playback with 40~60% CPU utilization. MPC Video decoder showed H254 -> YV12 so it was doing pure software decoding.

Again, all the above "test" videos come from this site here.

---------------

I'm starting to think that the 1810TZ's HW has reached it's limits, despite what others have suggested. Please note that my definition of successful playback means almost 0 frame drops and almost perfect sound. Do not judge sound quality by the 14/1810T's aweful loudspeakers; use headphones...

My last attempt will be to wipe out the 64x version of MPC-HC I installed and try the x86 version as strongly suggested by the above site's author. I sort of missed that "tip" during my first pass and having a 64bit version of W7, I naturally went for the 64x ver of MPC-HC...

stay tuned

 

hey can u upload that anime file i cant doewnload it...

 

Absolutely Getting 720p playing consistently is a bonus, these sample video`s are literally killers, and definitely the litmus test for any system.

So "The KMPlayer" can also take advantage of Windows 7 native DTV decoder, CPU utilization is reduced, although as with all DXVA solutions picture quality tends to degrade a touch, I still find "SPlayer" to be the better solution for DXVA, admittedly not the most efficient, yet seems to offer a good compromise of picture quality & CPU utilization, for my Samsung X420 & Acer Timeline 3810T.

Just watching RocknRolla (720p) on the X420 9%-16% CPU with "SPlayer 3.4" and the picture quality is best I have seen so far with DXVA, give it a spin, it might also work for you

 

Sorry but the thing's 300MB and I don't have any personal online storage accts. Hopefully the original link will be active again (at least it says it will...)

Hi & thx again for the info & tip! Sure, why not - I'll give SPlayer a try too!

On a side-topic, I wanted to update my graphics drivers but ran into "unfamiliar" territory... I have an Acer factory-default setup (W7 HP with the bloatware minus the biggest offenders - McAfee, etc). This also means that the Device drivers are OEM-tampered versions... So when I DLed Intels graphics drivers and tired to install them, the executable terminated with a cannot install generic Intel drivers on your OEM setup (or similar). I researched this on Intel's site and per Intel's own instructions, downloaded the "ZIP" version instead.

I then tired to do a driver update via the Device Manager with said downloaded drivers and the device Manager responded with a "update successful - restart required" message. However, upon restarting, I found that the original drivers were still installed...

Is their a INF or Registry hack I can use to force the generic driver install? I really hate to try to compare video playback results with everyone here when I know I'm a few driver-generations behind most of you...

*EDIT* Argh, I accidentally downloaded the x86 ver... once I tried the correct, x64 version, everything went according to plan...

Thanks 2 all

 

splayer uses mpc hc dxva decoder..

 

Hmmmm, that explains a few things, all the same I still like the player overall and I want a separate player for DXVA. One thing I do really like is the user can control the position of subtitles, so you can move them into the black area.

I might have a look and see how Splash is developing, it too has a lot of promise, only from me it would never select the correct aspect ration and it was not user selectable, version 1.2 is now out, and hopefully it will be a little smarter with the aspect ratio recognition. Anyway I will give it a shot on the 3810T first.

MPC HC is certainly one of the best media players, I Prefer "The KMplayer" although it can bring more complexity thanks to it`s myriad's of settings

 

Sigh,

running out of ideas & running out of steam...

My last attempt to rectify the problem was to replace my OEM 1855 drivers with Intel's own 2021s.

After extensive testing, I've decided the problem doesn't reside with any one player although MPC-HC is the worst offender (maybe due to the "tweaks" recommended by Ranpha, dunno), even WMP12 occasionally stutters on easy test videos (eg. mp4 Quantum Solace preview found on Ranpha's site).

It doesn't matter if I go pure SW or use DXVA, I loose frames (equating to clicks, pops & stuttering of AUDIO playback). Since you can't really "see" the stuttering or frame-loss, but can clearly hear it, I looked at the audio-side of the equation and ruled out at least the o/p HW by bypassing it with an external soundcard (no to mention BT bypass with BT stereo heaphones). MP3s sound fantastic (and one of my test videos, from DivX' own website, uses mp3 for audio - and stutters just as bad as any other container / audio format... ).

Last but not least, the impact of the problem varies from extreme & frequent to non-existent. I've seen the same video on the same player go from 183 to 0 frames dropped!!!

I tried to terminate every non-essential app and I even disabled Wifi / WWAN and BT for my testing. No change. I've monitored CPU utilization & did manage to determine micro-bursts which coincided with the audio pops / stutter, but there was absolutely no other App or task responsible for said increase, short of Winows 7's own system tasks...

What else do you think I could / should do to narrow down the possible cause of the problem that hasn't already been done... Thx everyone

 

Thanks for going deep into this.
Its very interesting reading.

Could it be Windows accessing the HDD at the same time? One would expect that enough video would be buffered but it could be a bug. Specially since its so randomly.
Have you tried running the video files off another source, like a memory card?

Dont give up! You are getting close now.
Thanks

 

What about your Antivirus/Security solution is it kicking in and scanning the files in realtime? I use Eset NOD32 on all my systems, and it keeps the overheads down, I don't turn any of the background programs off.

I generally look for 720p, 1080p is really pushing these CULV system, with varying methods of encoding, bit-rates etc. As for the Atom I get reasonable results, although large 720p files with very high bit-rates will overcome the CPU & software decoding solution.

I know things have improved significantly, yet personally I am very cautious of changing the system codecs, as I have never had great results. inversely have you looked/tried Shark007 codec pack this gets a good press and has good, forum etc and importantly for you 64bit support

I have just looked at The KMPlayer, what renderer are you using, when decoding with Windows 7 DTV decoder, I observe a big difference in CPU utilization depending on the renderer; EVR (C/A) the lowest by a large margin, reducing a further 50%, and the very unpleasant BBC Planet Earth file is playing in full screen @ 50,135Kbs CPU 18% - 33% SU7300 CPU, only problem is EVR & KMP don't play well, and playback freezes sporadically.

 

cmeide, that was a very good suggestion - I don't know why I didn't come up with that check myself

Alas, that's not the problem, at least I don't "see" a problem there. I used a 2GB SD card and I tried the card as both a source as well as system cache ( Readyboost, 1GB).

Earth mkv, ~19.7Mbps video:
8MB/s @ MPC-HC startup, 2.5MB/s for the remainder of the clip. This was identical with source on the HDD and on SD. No change when turning on readyboost either. All "combinations" resulted in an average of 5~15ms response time from the media (HDD, SD).

Bond mp4, ~4.5Mbps variable video:
4MB/s @start, 700KB/s for the remainder. Exact same stats as above.

Earth on WMP12:
" System" & not wmplayer, was constant @2.5MB/s throughout playback, regardless of file location (HDD / SD).

Bond on WMP12:
This time wmplayer was doing all the reading @ a constant 500KB/s, only slightly less than with MPC.


Earth streams at 19.7Mbps from system memory (which incidently MPC used 300MB thereof) and the HDD streams it at 2.5MB/s or 2.5*8= 20Mbps. Given the initial few seconds "burst" of 8MB/s (64Mbps) followed by a constant 2.5MB/s, I believe we can rule out the HDD as a bottleneck... . Same deal with the mp4 video (4.4Mbps "variable" from RAM, 700x8=5.6Mbps from HDD for MPC, 550x8=4.4Mpbs for WMP12).

Oh well... at least that's one check less and looking on the bright side, I'm happy to see my HDD has no problems with AHCI, etc.

Neeeeext pleaaaaase!

Hey,

sorry if I didn't make it clear, but just like your SU7300, my SU4100 has processing power to spare:

Bond mp4 @4.4Mbps: SW @60%, HW(DXVA)@25%.
Earth mkv @19.7Mbps: SW @80~90, HW(DXVA)@25%.

No, I haven't tried any new codecs because between a .divx, several .mkvs, an .mp4 and even a .wmv, all of which suffer from frame drops / audio stutter to one extent or another, I can't image another codec's going to make a difference. Between trying DivX7 / WMP12 / MPC-HC x86 & x64 / Jet Audio 8, I have to draw the line somewhere, lol...

And no, I don't have an anti-virus pgm instaled atm (I immediately removed McAfee & Norton from my OEM Acer setup). I may have "indexing" on, but my recent HDD tests show no sign of resource bottlenecks.

But hey, thanks for your 2 cents, I'll take whatever advice I can get

 

i bet ppl shuld blame CRAPY intel GMA 4500 driver for all DXVA glitches!

 

Well, seeing as I'm having the problems even with SW decoding, I'm thinking it's not the drivers (although I can't rule them out either :-/ )

 

Sounds like a DPC latency issue to me. Try this program

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Does the red high latency spike in sync with frame dropping? On my 1410, Intel WiFi driver gives a red spike every 10 seconds but playback seems OK. Also, when disabling wifi/bt etc., make sure to do so from Windows device manager instead of switches on the laptop.

 

I figured as much, there is hardly any difference in real wold performance between these CPU`s, funny I have tried MPC-HC and everything plays slow as treacle

Shark007`s codec pack worked as promised, but it does load a lot of programs onto the drive to make everything work, too much for my liking, so will re-image my machine and stick with what I had previously , I kind of like it simple in that I can always just swap out or upgrade a single prog with binary codes, than goof about with the system.

 

Wow, another great tip - got to love NBR and its members

I've never heard of such latency problems before so it's all new to me. I downloaded the tool, ran it on my 1810TZ, got red all over the place in every possible configuration. In an attempt to figure out what is normal in "real-world" terms, I also ran it on my Dell M1330 (C2D T7500 + nVidia 8400M) and the graph was 100% green & yellow, even during the most complex video streams...!

Back to the 1810TZ... I varied everything offline (disabled all "common" devices) and did managed to improve things somewhat, however there was no single device that was the "root of all evil", so to speak... :-/

Furthermore, I must point out the although playback in SW mode also causes drops, it's not as bad as when DXVA is in use. In summarizing all of the above, please see the two attached images. I'm still "analyzing" the data so I have no exact cause or solution just yet. But for the time being, I'll need to playback in SW mode in order to get half-way decent quality...

Thank you again for another excellent suggestion - you all rock

 

So how about the audio driver? latest one is available from realtek.com.tw. And disable all realtek enhancement settings and see if it helps.

 

Well, as you can see from my device listing above, I disabled the internal audio device(s) too for the final test, which still showed major spikes... :-/

 

I dont know if it is associated, I remember when I set up my 3810T, I had to turn off Dolby "Natural Bass" as it played havoc with video playback, however we are talking about a single core SU3500 which is easily overwhelmed.

You have been down so many avenues with this one there has to be a root cause, like I say I am just shooting for 720p on these CULV systems, 1080p is a bonus, it can be achieved and why your system is so reluctant to deliver is a real mystery, any way so far the ride has been great, and lets hope you get to the bottom of it soon.

I also ran the latency test and on the Samsung X420 (7 32Bit) during playback it is in the green, even with the notorious BBC clip, I do see the occasional red blip,but nothing like you are experiencing.

 

hey traveller did u try the dxva checker to benchmark the decoders?

 

BBC clip...? Are you talking about the "Earth from pole to pole" 19Mbps mkv?

I DLed DXVAchkr but I don't really know how to ah, use it... :-/ Unfortunately the readme is in Japanese... .

I mean I can run a log, see "created" & "destroyed" entries, etc. but I don't know how to benchmark codecs... Also, I can't "check DirectShow/MediaFoundation Decoders"... you?

Attached, a few more images; two runs of a 720p wmv9 (Terminator2 HD preview), one's good, the next is covered in red, although I changed nothing... as well as a sample of the DXVAchecker "log" showing the DXVA acceleration in use...

FYI, the yellow 10s-interval spikes are the WiFi device, however this has no effect during video playback.

 

Yep thats the one, First attachment is MS DTV-DVD decoder & EVR (C/A) second attachment is the most stable set up KMP binary codec & VMR9 Renderless, never fails. EVR (C/A) is a better image, only it wont play well and freezes with KMP

 

Ouf... I've finally managed to get somewhere with my problem... !

After playing around with devices etc. and realizing I had no specifc device driver issues, I decided to look into the codec-side of things. I wasn't expecting much success here because after all, I had just as much problems with WMP12 as I did with MPC-HC and even Jet Audio 8, all of which use their own SW decoders.

None the less, I decided to try the Shark007 Codec pack(s) which ulieq on the Acer-Aspire-1410-and-1810-Timeline-11.6" Thread turned me on to et voila, I'm enjoying drop-out free video playback

Unfortunately I'm not 100% sure why it works now, as MPC-HC still works with it's own codecs but I'm thinking it's due to the x64 support Shark007 provides. I'm also using the 64bit version of MPC-HC, not to mention WMP12 x64, so I think I have to rely on x64 codecs! Note that I uninstalled the Haali Splitter beforehand (it's a 32-bit version) but Haali splitter is provided by Shark007 (& it's an x64 version, too!)

Attached, a list of registered filters, splitters, etc. and most are x64 versions! I'll keep "analyzing" to try to come up with a definitive answer but in the meantime I can finally enjoy all types of video formats in full HD without stutter or excessive sound/frame dropouts