WMV-HD Playback Problems

[thr33face]

I am in need of help. I have wmvhd playback problems on my pc.

Depending on the clip i want to play i have multiple problems.
If i play the 720p clip from PGR3 i have choppy video and the sound is just noise (white noise?)
i get the same for the 1080p clip 'Robotica'
The clip from Gears of War (1080p) is playing choppy (most probably because its 10Mbit/sec and my system can´t cope with that) but sound is fine.

the problem is, all these videos played fine ( GoW choppy) with DirectX 8 ( i verified this two times with a clean XP install). As soon as i install DX 9.0c i get this problems.

I use WMP10 and Catalyst 5.9. This problem is driver independent as i´ve tried it with Catalysts back to the 5.1 release. ( Unticking or ticking WMV accel. doesn´t change anything)

My System:
AthlonXP 2400+ @ 166x12,5 (which makes it a 2600+ according to Windows)
512MB RAM
Abit AT7
Radeon 9700Pro (Stock Speeds)
SB PCI 128
Resolution: 1152x864 @ 85Hz

Please help me to find a solution to this problem. I already searched the internet high and low, but could not find anything that worked for me.

 

[BlueTsunami]

I'm thinking the Athlon XP isn't helping you out much. I have a AMD 64 (Venice)@1.8GHz and I can play 720p and 1080p fine but at 1080p its cutting it kinda close. I also use Hardware Acceleration with my 6600GT. It allows WMV-HD video to be decoded by the 6600GT itself (instead of the CPU itself solely doing it).

Before that CPU, I had a Athlon XP 2200+ and I couldn't play 720p video at all. I would try looking into your video card providing some hardware acceleration for WMV-HD (or HD video in general) playback.


EDIT

WMP10 Patch for WMV Acceleration
From HTPCnews.com:

"MS finally allows WMV acceleration
Posted by: SpHeRe31459
I just got work that Microsoft has finally put out a patch to WMP10 to properly enable WMV-HD acceleration for graphics cards that support it.

Grab the update here:
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;888656

I got these results from my contact at NVIDIA, I will be testing how it works for myself soon.


QUOTE
I ran some tests on my demo system with the “Step_Into_Liquid_720.wmvâ€￾ WMVHD clip that can be downloaded from the Microsoft website and have observed the following improvements with a 6600 Passive:

Without WMV patch: 64% CPU Utilization

With WMV Patch: 40% CPU Utilization



I also ran the same tests with the 1080p version of the same demo clip and have observed even better improvements:

Without WMV patch: 98% CPU Utilization (and dropping frames)

With WMV Patch: 57% CPU Utilization (no dropped frames)



So if you have a GeForce 6-series card or a Radeon x700 and higher you can now benefit from the WMV acceleration that has been sitting dormant waiting for MS.
ATI users may need to wait until updated drivers are available. There is a hidden registry key that may or may not work. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control ->Video. You will need to hunt through the keys until you find your current ATI video card. Then the key to change is called DXVA_WMV = 1"

avsforum.com

Try out what uddinz says in that post over avsforum.com. Thats exactly what I did for my Nvidia 6600GT. The technique for the Ati card will possibly work for you.

 

[Fruitfrenzy]

the problem is, all these videos played fine ( GoW choppy) with DirectX 8 ( i verified this two times with a clean XP install). As soon as i install DX 9.0c i get this problems.

I wonder if this is related to using overlay instead of VMR to display the video.

Possibly your system struggles when the VMR decides to render the video using the 3D hardware to do the colour space conversion and scaling but is OK when using the hardware overlay (which uses far fewer resources such as memory bandwidth).

Your graphics card should have pleanty of bandwidth available but it may still be the cause of the problem.

Try doing a screen grad in DX8 and DX9 to see if one is using an overlay. If an overlay is being used then a screen grab will have a blank rectangle instead of the video.

 

[thr33face]

now with DX9 it is using overlay. also before it used overlay.
if i switch between overlay and 'high quality mode' (which i guess is VMR) the only thing that changes is, that i can capture the video window. but that´s it.

i already tried the solution from the avs forums some time ago, did it again now but nothing changed.

another interesting fact is, that i mplayerc i can play the robotica1080p clip just fine, but the pgr3 clip has the same problems.

the whole situation is wierd, as the only thing that changed was directX ( i would go back, but i need dx9)