Performance Issues

[Andrew Howe]

Hi,
I have a Pioneer BDC-202 drive, a 3 Ghz CPU, 2 Gb of RAM, an Nvidia 8500GT and an Audigy 4 sound card. When I play Blu-Rays (in Power DVD) they tend to stutter for a bit, then play smoothly, then stutter and carry on like this, and when I try to play a True HD sound track everything stutters continuously, and quite badly.

Do I need to upgrade part of my system to make things run smoothly?

Also, Windows (XP Home, if that makes any difference) refuses to recognise the drive itself, and kept saying it was a hard drive, so I told it that it was a generic CD-ROM drive and Windows installed some drivers and now registers it as a CD drive, so I dunno if that could be the problem.

Lastly, it doesn't seem to make any difference whether I use the latest released drivers or the new 174.74 drivers for my Nvidia card.

[maxmcleod]

alright check it out... first problem could be the drivers...
sort that out first
update firmware, try drivers again, they have to work...
a generic cdrom driver won't help you much.

if that doesn't help, I would suspect your processor... its kind of slow, I know a lot of people recommend a dual core at least to handle HD...

The new beta drivers from nvidia won't do much for the stuttering to help you, its either a problem with the drive/driver config or your processor lagging behind

your video card is fine, its the same one I have, and I don't have any stuttering problems,
only one time did I have a hiccup, and it was when two tv shows started recording at once, and the harddrive was asleep and spun up, not sure why that affected it, but it did, after that and since its been smooth sailing...

[Andrew Howe]

the CPU is almost constantly maxxed out at 100% when I play a Blu-Ray, so I'd guess it's the CPU. Gonna sort out some decent drivers anyway, see if it makes any difference.

[Andrew Howe]

Hmm, I've found a firmware update on the Pioneer website...but no drivers or any sort of software. If I update the firmware would that make Windows any more likely to find working drivers/identify it as the right kinda drive?

[maxmcleod]

yea a new firmware could help the computer find a better driver or recognize the drive better

but yeah if your cpu is maxed out, that would be a problem

[Obiit]

Have you checked to see if hardware acceleration is turned on in PowerDVD to fix the 100% cpu usage?

The drive firmware is not really an issue with PC based blu-ray unlike it's standalone cousins. BUT the Pioneer has issues with some motherboard chipsets - i think it's the AMD 690 so that could be the problem with it thinking it's a hard drive ?

I use that drive with Windows XP Pro and it just detects it as it should do.

HTH

[Andrew Howe]

Originally Posted by Obiit

Have you checked to see if hardware acceleration is turned on in PowerDVD to fix the 100% cpu usage?

It was turned on, and having tried turning it on and off, I've noticed it makes no difference, infact it's worse with it on Very odd.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by maxmcleod

alright check it out... first problem could be the drivers...
sort that out first
update firmware, try drivers again, they have to work...
a generic cdrom driver won't help you much.

if that doesn't help, I would suspect your processor... its kind of slow, I know a lot of people recommend a dual core at least to handle HD...

The new beta drivers from nvidia won't do much for the stuttering to help you, its either a problem with the drive/driver config or your processor lagging behind

your video card is fine, its the same one I have, and I don't have any stuttering problems,
only one time did I have a hiccup, and it was when two tv shows started recording at once, and the harddrive was asleep and spun up, not sure why that affected it, but it did, after that and since its been smooth sailing...

You are correct about the processor - The slowest processor that I have seen do BD is a 3.4 single core (with minimum studder). The Core2Duo's handle BD very well.

[Obiit]

Without graphics card hardware acceleration your cpu will do all the work and yes that cpu hasn't the horsepower to codec crunch BUT the card should be doing the processing Check with the manufacturer that the card definitely accelerates H.264/MPEG4-AVC/VC1 . Then if it definitely does then de-install PowerDVD and try to re-install version 3319a (it's the one that gives the least grief).

Or of course try re-installing PowerDVD first

[Andrew Howe]

I tried reinstalling PowerDVD (but their site is down at the minute so I can't update and I'm not getting a picture with this older version ).

I turned off SPDIF DTS mixing, and things play nicely now - can be jerky at times, but if I pause it for a few seconds and then unpause, everything runs fine.

I double checked and having the PureHD box checked or unchecked, CPU usage always remains between 80 and 100%. Would the box be untickable if my graphics card didn't support it?

[glogrono]

Originally Posted by prerich

You are correct about the processor - The slowest processor that I have seen do BD is a 3.4 single core (with minimum studder). The Core2Duo's handle BD very well.

This is absolutelly not true. THe biggest thing you need to concern yourself with is, first taking care of the firmware so your computer recognizes your drive as a Blu Ray drive. Then get a new graphics card. Yes, the 8500 will do HD, but it's not great at completelly handling the HD decoding. If this is your HTPC and you don't do any gaming, get an ATI HD-3450 ($49.99), that's what I have on HTPC which has a P4 2.8ghz(single core, Hyper threading), 1gb ram, 2 x 160gb hard drives, running Vista Ultimate with the Aero feature turned off and the sidebar turned off for better performance. I Play Blu Ray at 1080p with amazing picture and NO stuttering or any problems what so ever. While doing so, my cpu is usually at about 35-40% and the ram is about the same. The newer, very inexpensive ATI HD-3XXX series is designed specifically to completelly offload HD decoding to the video card and not the CPU.

[Obiit]

Originally Posted by Andrew Howe

I double checked and having the PureHD box checked or unchecked, CPU usage always remains between 80 and 100%. Would the box be untickable if my graphics card didn't support it?

Versions of PowerDVD after 3319a don't allow you to untick Hardware Acceleration. Search the net for Powerdvd 3319a updates as it won't be available from cyberlink's site (it is actually about 5 revisions before the current one and before they took a lot of really useful stuff out ).

If you really want to do it properly spend the cash like glogrono says on a HD 3450. The ATI cards are cheap as chips and fantastic for blu-ray

[Andrew Howe]

Hi again,
After a few days of trying various releases and updates of PowerDVD and fiddling about with firmware updates and different drivers, I've found a set-up that gives me clear and stable video and sound

CPU usage has been settling down to around 90% - a bit too close for comfort, so I'm gonna upgrade my CPU in the not-too-distant future just to make things a bit more secure.

An odd thing I have found though is that my system copes fine with uncompressed PCM soundtracks but chokes on TrueHD ones - the odd thing I've found is that they have practically equal bitrates. And Cyberlink tells me that it's the video that chokes my system when using a TrueHD track - the video bitrate goes from a steady 25/30 Mbps when using a Dolby Digital track to jumping between 30 and 120 when the TrueHD is on, which is very odd as the video isn't changing at all I'm wondering if the metadata for the TrueHD track is being classified as a video stream by PowerDVD? But even then there's no way it would add 90 Mbps...

[glogrono]

Originally Posted by Andrew Howe

Hi again,
After a few days of trying various releases and updates of PowerDVD and fiddling about with firmware updates and different drivers, I've found a set-up that gives me clear and stable video and sound

CPU usage has been settling down to around 90% - a bit too close for comfort, so I'm gonna upgrade my CPU in the not-too-distant future just to make things a bit more secure.

An odd thing I have found though is that my system copes fine with uncompressed PCM soundtracks but chokes on TrueHD ones - the odd thing I've found is that they have practically equal bitrates. And Cyberlink tells me that it's the video that chokes my system when using a TrueHD track - the video bitrate goes from a steady 25/30 Mbps when using a Dolby Digital track to jumping between 30 and 120 when the TrueHD is on, which is very odd as the video isn't changing at all I'm wondering if the metadata for the TrueHD track is being classified as a video stream by PowerDVD? But even then there's no way it would add 90 Mbps...

In my opinoin, I think the easiest and least expensive thing you can do is upgrade the video card to the one that I recommended. That will let the videocard do 100% of the video and leave your cpu all the power it needs for other stuff such as decoding the audio. I have a similar system to yours except P4 2.8 ghz and only 1gb ram, but with an ATI HD-3450 and I can play all the HD audio and video with no stuttering and 35-40% cpu usage.

[Obiit]

Yep for 23 quid you cannot go wrong with that card

[Andrew Howe]

Unfortunately the HD-3450 isn't really an option for me - correct me if I'm wrong but it's not as powerful as my current Nvidia 8500 and wouldn't play stuff like Call of Duty 4 etc.

[WickyWoo]

You should really be runninga dual-core for Blu playback. In my experience, add 15-20% to whatever they tell you the minimums are on any kind of video playback

[glogrono]

Originally Posted by Andrew Howe

Unfortunately the HD-3450 isn't really an option for me - correct me if I'm wrong but it's not as powerful as my current Nvidia 8500 and wouldn't play stuff like Call of Duty 4 etc.

You are right about this. THis card is enhanced for HD video playback and it does it extrememlly well, but as far as gaming goes, I don't recommend it. I only use my pc for video though, so it works for me. Try and 8800, They're only about $150

[Obiit]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

You should really be runninga dual-core for Blu playback. In my experience, add 15-20% to whatever they tell you the minimums are on any kind of video playback

Thats not strictly true. I've had a P4 2.6 with an ATI 2600 Pro AGP card running MPEG4-AVC blu-ray fine (only in stereo mind you). It all depends on how good the graphics card is on codec acceleration whether he needs a hefty cpu to take up the slack or not. With a decent graphics card what he has is fine.

If he wants a mixture of games and blu-ray then Nvidia is probably the best choice (the 9000 series i think all have codec acceleration) but it all depends on how much he has to spend

I'd recommend new graphics card first then CPU if required.