Playback problems in xbmc - occasional stuttering of a/v

[degeneration]

I had my htpc up and built and all seemed good.

Watched a film on it the other day from an external usb hd, and was pleased with how it turned out. Playback was great. That was with it lying out and all the final bells and whistles not in place. i.e. booted to desktop, opened xbmc and then used it. I'd previously just plugged the drive into my tv before I built this htpc, and it always played back fine too.

I've now put it in the AV rack under the TV, had it set up with eventghost to start xbmc as a shell, for a more seemless integration, and have a remote customiser set up to start as well before the xbmc.

Watching a film for some reason there is frequent (every couple of minutes, no set frequency) stuttering of the a/v. the audio will repeat about a half a second of what has just been, then the picture will judder as it resynchs itself.

Thinking it was something to do with the way I had it all set up, I just tried it with windows booting to desktop, then opening xbmc, but the same still happens. I tried a second film just in case it was simply the source material, but the same problem was exhibited.

My hardware is:
asus m4a88t-m mobo
Athlon ii x2 250
2x 1GB kingston hyper-x blu DDR3 1333MHz
500GB HD
Films being played from external USB drive at the moment.

There does seem to be a reasonable amount of heat around the case, bios has the mobo and cpu temps as being around 45-50 degrees.

I don't know or understand why this stuttering has started, as it didn't happen two days ago.

Any suggestions to help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[DFENS 360]

Sounds like a refresh rate issue.

In the "system" section of the xbmc settings menu, try ticking "adjust refresh rate to match source material" (or something similar to that).

 

[philom5]

I'm having the same problem.., just built a really fast HTPC.., ripped a ton of movies. The other night I watch The Big Labowski, not a ton of fast action in the film, and noticed at times the scene slows and jerks. This is the only way i can describe it.

Also.., if I pause the movie and then hit play.., there seems to be a delay in getting the speed to display properly. And at times have seen audio out of sync.

I found this thread online and there is a paragraph part way down the page that talks about getting "smooth video" out of XBMC. I'm not a techie so don't kill me if this information is no relative.

How to upgrade XBMC Live to latest svn and enable smoothvideo playback « Marshalleq's Journey through time….

Any thoughts ?

Thanks.

Phil.

 

[degeneration]

I got my problem fixed by by uninstalling everything I put on the win7 install that I no longer wanted... all the programs I put on to try etc, then uninstalled xbmc, then reinstalled it all. No problems since.

 

[philom5]

I'm running XBMC on Ibuntu. Never had Windows on this machine. But what I can tell you is that the jerkyness only happens once in a while.

I looked at the video settings and have it set to "Auto".., but there are other options and not sure if I should try them.

Any advice is appreciated.

All the best.

Phil.

 

[bryanchicken]

I'm running XBMC on Ibuntu. Never had Windows on this machine. But what I can tell you is that the jerkyness only happens once in a while.

I looked at the video settings and have it set to "Auto".., but there are other options and not sure if I should try them.

Hi,
have you tried using XBMC live to see if it happens with that? If it doesn't then something on you ubuntu installation is probably periodically doing something, taken resources and causing the playback to falter.

As far as settings for video these are what i set:
Match refresh rate to source material (mentioned below)
I can't remember the setting (away from machine) but its something about sync. I set it to something like "sync video, resample audio". This is for the smoothvideo/reclock-like functionality that smooths judder if your refresh rates and video don't quite match.

 

[philom5]

Thanks Bryan..., will give the setting a try.

Not sure what XBMC Live is but will do a search. T^hanks for the tip.

Phil.