Encrypted HD CPU usage

[Psymiley]

Hi all!

 

Been setting up DVBViewer and found an odd bug.

 

Quick spec list:

XP Pro

DVBViewer Pro (bought & dl today)

TT-3200 DVB-S2 + CI

Intel Core 2 Quad (Q6600 @ 2.40GHz)

2GB Ram

FFDShow (ffdshow_rev2183_20081007_clsid_sse_icl10)

 

When watching an encrypted HD channel, the video becomes quite choppy.

An unencrypted HD channel uses 20-25% CPU.

Any SD channel uses 5-6% CPU.

 

Tested with and without timeshift enabled.

Recording the problem channel results in a smooth playback, but sound out-of-sync.

(OK with unencrypted)

 

What I found:

Watching the CPU usage graphs in Task Manager, the encrypted channel would max-out on one of the 4 cores (the other 3 were idle).

Unencrypted HD and any SD channel would split load over all 4 cores and run perfectly.

 

Any ideas?

[Tjod]

Any ideas?

I think renaming the Plugins folder to Plugins1 will fix your Problem.

[Psymiley]

Had another look around and CiNcH posted on the H.264 codec:

 

Known limitations:

libavcodec is extremely CPU intensive, especially with content that is not encoded using the slice concept, for such content the decoder is not threaded (so better have a single core CPU with high clock speed)

for better performance you should disable H.264 deblocking within ffdshow

 

This may be it? Will give the 2nd a try tomorrow! 1st point i'm kinda stuck with for the moment.

 

Tjod: Will give that a try too.

 

Thanks!

Edited October 9, 2008 by Psymiley

[Moses]

don't use ffdshow for H.264 material yet, or do like chinch has said... but I'd recommend to try some other decoders... for example the cyberlink decoder (which comes with powerdvd) could give you access to the capabilities of your graphic card (you didn't mentione your graphic card, so I can't tell you if that is a good option, or not). If you prefer to use your CPU for h.264 decoding, you should have a look at CoreAVC or the Arc Soft H.264 decoder. Most of this decoders can be tested via trial versions.

 

Give ffdshow some time to fetch up with the development on h.264 decoding.

[CiNcH]

Give ffdshow some time to fetch up with the development on h.264 decoding.

ffdshow/ffmpeg/libav is not bad at all. A new branch has been opened with ffmpeg-mt (multithreading). Hope to see a working build soon. This may become a real alternative..

[Psymiley]

don't use ffdshow for H.264 material yet, or do like chinch has said... but I'd recommend to try some other decoders... for example the cyberlink decoder (which comes with powerdvd) could give you access to the capabilities of your graphic card (you didn't mentione your graphic card, so I can't tell you if that is a good option, or not). If you prefer to use your CPU for h.264 decoding, you should have a look at CoreAVC or the Arc Soft H.264 decoder. Most of this decoders can be tested via trial versions.

 

Give ffdshow some time to fetch up with the development on h.264 decoding.

 

That would be useful! It is an NVidia Geforce 7100 (can support hardware h.264 decoding).

Advertised as able to use blu-ray, and actually runs very well!

I presume i'm doing decoding on the CPU though, which it does very well and with little effort.

 

ffdshow/ffmpeg/libav is not bad at all. A new branch has been opened with ffmpeg-mt (multithreading). Hope to see a working build soon. This may become a real alternative..

 

Looking forward!

 

Oddly enough, the processor graphs (4 of them, 1 per core) show a balanced workload on all processors when decoding h.264, except on the encrypted HD channel, where the first 3 cores just idle (no load) and the 4th core maxes at 100%

 

Why it picks the last core though?

Threading glitch in ffdshow or DVBViewer to pick the last core available?

 

Can't tell if it's DVBViewer or ffdshow? (the process list states DVBViewer.exe as the item under load)

[CiNcH]

Threading glitch in ffdshow or DVBViewer to pick the last core available?

Does not matter which core it uses. Bottom line is that the core in use will be maxxed out, don't matter which one, the result will be the same..

 

That would be useful! It is an NVidia Geforce 7100

Don't think that a GF7100 will do too much concerning H.264 HD decoding...

[Psymiley]

Does not matter which core it uses. Bottom line is that the core in use will be maxxed out, don't matter which one, the result will be the same..

Only if encrypted. Unencrypted, all cores are used, each sit at 25% load.

I could understand if the other HD channels all maxxed out a single core, but they balance out.

 

I know the 7100 isn't fantastic, it's mainly for the HDMI output. I'm happy with the CPU doing the work, though it'd be interesting to see how well the GPU

can stand up to hardware decoding it says it can do, when ffdshow starts supporting it.

 

I'll try another codec when possible to try narrow the problem down.

[Moses]

7000er Geforce (and the older 8800er) can only do deblocking & deinterlacing in hardware, no H.264 decoding.