Archive:HOW-TO:Fix common 1080p playback issues: Difference between revisions

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#REDIRECT [[Troubleshooting]]
You may find that 1080p videos play back jerkily and/or drop
frames. This is mostly a problem on Windows, but sometimes
happens on Linux as well. The problem is usually that decoding
video is very CPU intensive and unless your PC has a powerful CPU
it simply can't keep up with the video and has to drop frames.
If you check the CPU usage you'll probably find it is maxed out.
This has become a particular issue with the popularity of Nettop
and Netbook PCs based on the Intel Atom processor. None of the
the Atom range of processors
is fast enough to decode 1080p without assistance from hardware
acceleration.
 
Modern video cards have processors that can accelerate video
playback, however a standard way of doing this has not emerged yet.
Recent nVidia cards have a method of acceleration called VDPAU
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU) and XBMC supports this
but only on Unix. You should find that with a recent nVidia card
XBMC Live and XBMC on Ubuntu will play 1080p quite happily. The
Windows version of XBMC v9.11 does not support hardware acceleration,
but work is in progress on several fronts. This article describes
the various ways you can get 1080p videos to play on Windows.
 
'''Update''': support for DXVA has been added to the development build of
XBMC, and will be in the next version due in May. You can try it out
by downloading a recent build from http://mirrors.xbmc.org/. For info
on DXVA see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXVA.
 
== Problems on Linux ==
 
We get occasional reports in the forum (http://forum.xbmc.org/)
that 1080p won't play on Linux. Assuming you have an nVidia card
that supports VDPAU (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU the Wikipedia article]) try updating the
video drivers. Also try switched off all the Gnome desktop visual
effects and or compiz.
 
:A short How-to for Linux Nvidia playback fixes [http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=141369&pid=1220215#pid1220215 can be found here]. Should work for XBMCbuntu and other variations of Linux.
 
== Windows "Fake full screen" setting ==
 
A quick check before you go any further: look in the Settings, System, Video output section and check the ''Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen'' setting. If this is enabled try disabling it.
 
== Broadcom Crystal HD ==
 
I've put this first as it's currently generating a lot of excitement.
The Broadcom Crystal HD is an accelerator card that you can fit
into a mini PCIe slot. See
http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s387278
for details. The accelerator has experimental support in the recent
builds of XBMC. It's cheap (around £20 or $30 on ebay) but it
does need a PCIe slot and on your Nettop this probably has the
wireless card in it. However if you can install a Crystal HD reports
in the forum suggest it works very well and allows playback of 1080p
even on the humblest of Atom processors.
 
Update 13th Jan: the Crystal HD only works with the OpenGL build so you'll
have to compile your own or try and find somewhere to download an OpenGL
build. Having tested the Crystal HD with an OpenGL build on a Revo 3600
(Atom 230 CPU) it plays 1080p perfectly at 25-30% CPU :-)
 
== Use an external player ==
 
The module within XBMC that plays videos is called DVDPlayer, and
DVDPlayer doesn't support hardware acceleration. However there are
some media players that support hardware acceleration on Windows
using the DXVA interface (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX_Video_Acceleration for details
of DXVA). One media player that works well is MPC-HC
(http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/).
 
XBMC can be configured to use an external player like MPC-HC. When it
is configured this way XBMC will play a video by running a copy of
MPC-HC then waiting for it to finish. This works pretty well, and
most of the time you wouldn't notice that XBMC is using an external
player. However it is a bit tricky to configure. The article
[[HOW-TO use an External Player for media playback]]
explains how to configure the external player. If you run into
problems ask in the forum as lots of people there use MPC-HC and can
help with the configuration.
 
== DSPlayer ==
 
The DVDPlayer module built into XBMC doesn't support hardware
acceleration on Windows, but there
is an experimental video module called DSPlayer that does support
DXVA hardware acceleration.
 
DSPlayer is currently supported in the forum in the thread
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=61355. Reports suggest it
works well, though it's missing some of the features of DVDPlayer.
 
[[Category:How-to]]

Revision as of 08:12, 4 March 2014

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