best high def quality on monitor

[penguin15793]

I have a pretty powerful pc, should be able to play hd movies fine and i have, i use wmp classic, but i recently got some of the planet earth episodes in 1080p and the sound is choppy, how can i fix this? i have ac3 or whatever..

and also, sometimes the picture looks a little grainy, i have a widescreen monitor, what can i do to fix both of these issues?

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

Check the video codec settings and start turning off as many post-processing features as you can find. One of them may be called "Film Effect", which deliberately adds graininess for ambiance at a significant cost in CPU effort.

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

Oh, before I forget: Go into the MPC options and open the Internal Filters page.
If AC3 is on or off on either list, try the other way.

You can also double-click on AC3 in the right side list and fiddle around in there too, clicking the Apply button to test your selections until it sounds good to you, Shifting between 16 and 24 bit PCM output might do something good for you. 32 bit will probably make things worse. IEEE float is definitely the most demanding on CPU, but you might get lucky if it shifts the load to cooler hardware which has nothing better to do. Changing your "Decode to speakers" setting will probably improve the sound a bit, though maybe not the stuttering.

If the external AC3 filter still works better turn off both selections in MPC and start fiddling around in the settings for your external AC3 codec. Most of them let you fiddle around while the video is playing, so that should be easy to work out by trial and error.

[SlyckTom]

Can you tell us the exact specifications of your processor and video card?

Also, in addition to Aaron's suggestions, check out Afterdawn'd guide on getting MKV files to work properly... http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive ... ay_mkv.cfm

The bottom line is, if you have anything less than a dual core system and a high end video card, chances are you won't have much success. True 1080p content like the "Planet Earth" series require serious processing power...

[Psycho Ced]

Other then a good dual core, do you really need that high end of a card? Core 2 dual and GMA x3100 (integrated graphics) can do this. HD2400 are cheap these days but I've read that X1600 can also support this, not sure if this is just barely or only on tweaked models though.

[Fartingbob]

A decent duel core CPu will handle it all fine if thats all your doing at the time. Some of the newer ATI cards can totally decode h264 without the CPU, although it varies from card to card. Some will split the job between the GPU and CPU.

[SlyckTom]

I suppose high end is subjective...I have a 9800 pro, which handles HD video rather nicely...and that stopped being high end about 5 years ago

[velatire]

For 1080 content even the most powerful PCs can be choppy if you don't use a player with video acceleration/purevideo/purevideo HD/avivo/avivo HD.

Using VLC, 1080 content will not play on my PC. With Nero Showtime, it will.

[penguin15793]

exact specs:

cpu: pentium core 2 duo e6300
gfx: geforce 8800gts
ram: 2gigs 800mhz
mobo: gigabyte, forget the model, it's a mini-atx
audio: some shitty onboard

sorry i didn't get to read all of the posts yet i just wanted to put my specs on as i see i forgot to put them here, i wanted to note though that when running the movies, i monitor my resources and none of them are even above 60%. I've played hd content before, i'm beginning to think that this might just be this movie? i'm going to see what i can do

edit: these specs should do the trick, am i right? some kinda software error that's causing the sound issues?

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

The onboard audio might be the issue. Start fiddling with those AC3 settings and make sure you have the latest audio drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's website, or the PC manufacturer's if that's the better source, There might be some audio driver settings you can fiddle with too,

Consider getting a good audio card too. They're worth the price.

As for whether it's the movie, see if the skips or dropouts are repeatable when you play the same section again.

[penguin15793]

Alright, i tried messing with settings, and then i just tried playing back the same sections over and over again, it's definitely the video. not much i can do about that i guess


edit:btw, i couldn't find that film effect in any of my video codec settings, i'm using ffdshow, do you know exactly where it would be?

edit2: i stand corrected, i'ts not the video, i just played the other one and it has the same problem, and while testing that one by going over different sections, i noticed i'ts not hte same section everytime

edit3: i built this pc so theres no pc manufacturer, i'm looking to upgrade the onboard sound drivers but i'm not sure what to update, i have realtek hd audio apparently, but i wanna upgrade the driver, not the codec, and i'm not sure how to differentiate between the two on the realtek site (http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dow ... Down=false)

would that be an upgrade to my driver? or just fiddle around with the codec which i see no need to upgrade since i'm using ffdshow..correct?

[SlyckTom]

Gee Penguin...with those specs I would imagine you should be able to play 1080p content...I would try Nero Showtime as fischju recommended...its worth a shot...

[penguin15793]

hm do you really think that might eliminate my audio problems?

[SlyckTom]

I think I'm not clear on something...how is the video playback?

[velatire]

Also try Media Player Classic with CCCP. Turning the output to DX9 will free up a lot of CPU cycles and the audio should then work.

[penguin15793]

slycktom: video playback is fine, it never gets choppy, only audio does

[penguin15793]

does showtime work with matroska files? all it did was play the audio for me is something not configged right on it?

[SlyckTom]

Showtime didn't work for me either...Could it just be a bad file? Have you tried a different 1080p movie?

[velatire]

.mkv? Probably an x.264 encode with the source being the Blu-Ray/HD DVD disk. Which means it was done by a person, which means it could be messed up. I got an Xbox 360 HD DVD drive for my PC and use it for 1080 content with no issues, which means your PC is powerful enough. Either a codec issue or the file itself.