HP MicroServer: Not quite perfect 1080p playback

[cramhead]

Hey guys
I was a bit annoyed at my setup after trying to watch the Dark Knight Rises the other day. The movie is a 13 Gig 1080p x264 DTS file and the majority of the time playback was acceptable.

However I found on wide shots frames look a bit jerky and scenes where a lot of action was happening (explosions or the scene when the American football pitch collapses) it couldn't handle the playback.
I have followed guides so that I though the server would be up to it...

My setup
HP MicroServer
Windows 7
4 gig ram
Gefore GT 520
Hard drive - HDMI - Amp - TV

I tried playback with VLC and Windows media player
Not sure why I'm not getting perfect playback

Can someone help?
Thanks

 

[chromosome]

I'm using mpc hc and plays everything fine. Just got to make sure the graphics card is doing most of the work.

 

[blacksheep99]

Likely it's an audio setting that is causing the issue. Try unchecking some of the output options and you'll find the playback is fine

 

[cramhead]

I set the sound to 5.1 in vlc. Where are the other output options? Under the mixer in Windows?

Likely it's an audio setting that is causing the issue. Try unchecking some of the output options and you'll find the playback is fine

 

[blacksheep99]

Sorry, I must have been tired because I wrongly assumed you were using XBMC to view the films.

With VLC it could be codec related? Maybe give XBMC a try and see if that helps?

 

[ChuckMountain]

Sorry, I must have been tired because I wrongly assumed you were using XBMC to view the films.

With VLC it could be codec related? Maybe give XBMC a try and see if that helps?

VLC doesn't rely on external codecs in the same way as XBMC, I could be wrong but I thought it used the same code base for playback. By default my XBMC have had the use GPU acceleration ticked.

In VLC if you look under Preferences then Input & Codecs, there should be an option to use GPU accelerated decoding. Tick this and restart, you should notice the CPU usage dramatically drops and it should play smoothly.