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I'm having trouble playing VC-1 encoded BD rips (MKV format, all ripped from my own BD collection) on my "new" Athlon X2 computer.

I previously had a Core 2 Duo E6600 which had no problem decoding VC-1 streams in software, but that system's motherboard died recently. I just moved into a house, so money's tight. A friend kindly gave me a computer he no longer uses.

The specs are:
Asus M2N-E motherboard
Athlon X2 4600+ 2.4GHz
8GB DDR2/667 (4 of which came from my old system)
8800GTS (also from my old system. It's G80-based, so it doesn't have a hardware video decoder)

This system has no problem with MPEG2 and H.264--only VC1 gives it trouble. I've tried Win7's built in decoder, MPC Video decoder, and LAV. All of them struggle maintaining 24fps with VC1 rips. Also, MPC-HC never uses more than 80% of the CPU; It usually bounces around 50-75.

I was using the same video card, OS, and codecs on my old C2D system.

Anyone know what might be the problem with the new system, or know of a more efficient VC-1 decoder? Thanks.

This wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo
claims that your 8800 accelerates VC-1 decode (it has the 2nd-gen VP2 unit), so I'm not sure what might be wrong with your computer. I know that newer versions of the K-Lite Codec Pack have an install-time option to choose which acceleration method you want for H.264 and VC-1, so maybe you don't have a compliant codec installed.

If that doesn't help, it looks like any modern low-end video card can do hardware decode even faster than your 8800.

Here's the red-team equivalent page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder

bthylafh wrote:

This wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo
claims that your 8800 accelerates VC-1 decode (it has the 2nd-gen VP2 unit), so I'm not sure what might be wrong with your computer.

Oops. He has the older (by a few months) G80-based 8800, which lacks any hardware acceleration. The later G92 GPU (used on the 8800's with the wider memory bus) has support for VP2.

The E6600 runs some standard benchmarks about 50% faster than the Athlon X2 you mentioned. This might explain why the new system is struggling. I don't know if a drop-in replacement for the 4600 is in your budget, but perhaps some mild overclocking would be good enough.

For the purposes of video decoding, I'd get a newer used lower-end card from eBay if your finances are that tight.

Newegg's got this card that will do the trick:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814131339

This is strange. Just tried MPC's decoder again, this time under WMP. CPU usage was even lower than before--only 48-54%--yet the video was limping along at 18 or so fps. It looks like this CPU would be able to handle VC1 if the decoders would use more of the available power. At first I thought MPC was only using a single core, but both CPU graphs are showing roughly equal activity.

I'm going to try mildly overclocking this thing later on and see where that gets me.

setaG_lliB wrote:

This is strange. Just tried MPC's decoder again, this time under WMP. CPU usage was even lower than before--only 48-54%--yet the video was limping along at 18 or so fps. It looks like this CPU would be able to handle VC1 if the decoders would use more of the available power. At first I thought MPC was only using a single core, but both CPU graphs are showing roughly equal activity.

I'm going to try mildly overclocking this thing later on and see where that gets me.

It's still possible it's only using one thread and the scheduler is bouncing it between the cores.

If you use FFDshow, make sure you check queue output samples, under the queue and & misc section, and turn off "use queue only in"

Make sure you're using the most up to date software (mpc/ffdshow) and dunno if lav filters could help.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156191

Codec problems/conflicts can often cause playback problems. In general, I recommend using (ONLY!) CCCP for your codec pack and selecting libavcodec for h.264 in FFDShow video decoder configuration. I also recommend MPC-HC, but this is more user preference and it looks like you're already using it. Having multiple codec packs can often cause problems, and K-Lite codec pack by itself is known to cause problems too. With the above configuration, I've never had trouble playing things back even on fairly slow computers (though admittedly I haven't played a large sample of HD video).

I use coreAVC in zoomplayer. I can play 1080p on my laptop: turion x2 ultra 2.2ghz & ati 3850m

l33t-g4m3r wrote:

Make sure you're using the most up to date software (mpc/ffdshow) and dunno if lav filters could help.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156191

Just tried LAV filters again...success! I installed both the 32- and 64-bit versions this time. Last time I only installed the 64-bit version, and the performance sucked.

Thanks for all the help!