I hope somebody can help me as I think I am almost there with a new Vista Media Center setup.

When playing live TV, recorded TV and DVD playback, periodically, the sound and video stutter on my new setup. I thought it was purely sound related at first (Soundmax audio).

I am not sure if my hardware is up to specification (it was for MCE2005), I am running 1Gb Dual DDR Ram, onboard Nvidia Geforce 6150 and Nvidia 430 chipset with 2xPVR150.

I have NOTHING other than essential services and antivirus running on this machine although, at any given time about 700Mb of memory is consumed. I have looked at the performance options in Vista and, I notice both disk (reads per second) and memory (read failures per second) spikes as the sound/video stutters appearing with CPU never higher than 6%. Network is not a problem as this is local to the PC at present with all media local on a 500Gb SATA drive.

When I view live or recorded TV through the 360 extender it is fine.

Do I have enough memory? Is this configuration? Do I need a dedicated Video Card for VMC?

Any help appreciated as $1,500 does not seem well spent at the moment!

I should add that all Vista drivers are up-to-date and windows automatic updates are up-to-date and that this system has just been built with a new install of Vista Premium. I have also scanned this forum for clues to my specific problem without success.

Are you displaying at HD quality e.g. 720p? What happens if you reduce the resolution to 480 or 576?  HD output with 1GB memory on a built-in video is going to be a stretch. You should really think about getting a separate video card.

Video drivers are another possibility. Try the latest nvidia driver plus the lastest beta.

What happens if you turn off antivirus?

 

Purchased a new GeForce 7600 GT video card and reduce output to 800x600.

Still have the same issue.

Your configuration should be okay. How about the following?

• I assume you have tried turning off virus checking
• Are the latest Windows Updates applied
• In the Device Manager - are there any harwdare devices incorrectly configured (look for yellow warning symbol etc.)
• Use the Windows Event Viewer to look for system events aroung the time of the stutter
• Deinstall any non-essential software
• Do you get the same problem with playback through Windows Media Player 11?
• What MPEG2 decoder are you using? Can you try another decoder? (Although be careful installing new software. Make sure you have a good restore point.) You might need to use the Vista Media Center Decoder Utility to check which decoder you are using / change the existing decoder.
• Is it only MPEG2 encoded video that gives this problem? (Recorded/Live TV and DVDs.) How about Dvix/Xvid AVI encoded video? (You would need a decoder like ffdshow to test this.)
• You wondered above if the Soundmax drivers might be related. It's worth considering. Perhaps the video is pausing to wait for the sound to sync. Expensive option would be to buy a standalone sound card and disable onboard audio. How about disabling onboard audio through the BIOS, then playback without any sound device at all. (However not sure if it will allow this.)

 

My stuttering video and audio is resolved!!!!!

I've had my stuttering problems for months and it completely went away when I disabled both my network cards.  The problem has been gone for days now.  I know you need your networks card but this may halp narrow down the problem.

Hi Bild,

thanks for the feedback.

Virus checking has been disabled (same problem)

All Windows Updates are up-to-date

This motherboard has a single PnP device (MIDI Gameport) that is not recognised by Vista (this is disabled). Other than this Device Manager is dandy.

At the point of stutter, disk activity goes crazy with CPU and Memory fairly idle. Network is not an issue here as it a local SATA disk. In the event log, there have been some references to performance issues but this is not clear at present.

I am going to try the codec utility and try something like Nvidia Purevideo and see if this resolves the problem.

The Soundmax is disabled in the BIOS. I am using an external TurtleBeach Micro SPDIF at present. Same issue.

Hi EricJK,

will try the network card disable tonight.

Not sure how it will help though as I need internet connectivity!

1) follow MPEG2 suggestions in the first post here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/175657.aspx

2) tweak the sound properties like the second post here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/2/175657/ShowThread.aspx

Also, use the latest NVidia BETA GeForce driver if you are using NVidia
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_rel70betadriver.html

Thanks S4Czech,

had just downloaded the PowerDVD 7.2 trial and have the audio/video codec utility for Vista so will give this a go this evening.

Any explanation for the massive SATA disk spiking with my problem? Is this to do with dedicated settings for the audio hardware you refer to or is the Vista MPEG-2 CODEC just poor?

The audio fix stopped all my problems. 

Start, Control Panel, Sound, Right Click SPIDIF Interface, Properties, Advanced(tab), and then.....

UNCHECK "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device"

 

I'm not sure about specfic disk spikes, but you might also wnat to do this:

start, right click computer, manage, Device Manager

Open Disk Drives

Right click your hard drive, pick Properties  (or just double click it)

Under the policies tab, Check on: "Enable Advanced Performance"

Tried the suggestions from S4Czech.

I saw improvement but still not totally resolved. The video is smoother with the audio stuttering every 4-5 minutes now for a much shorter time.

PowerDVD 7 made things worse (not sure if Trial version is the best comparison). Hardware acceleration was offered but when selected, Media Center crashes on playback (Using GeForce 7600GT so this should be fine for Purevideo).

I am going to re-enable the onboard Audio using a jack connection instead of SPDIF tonight as this may now simply be a SPDIF output issue.

I am then going to check SATA settings in the BIOS and check this advanced performance check-box in Vista Properties.

I disabled the network cards (EricJK) but this made no difference at all.

I still cannot believe how much hardware Vista needs at this point in time. It is still very much a driver beta period for me.

Ayhow, getting better but my $400 Xbox 360 is still outperforming my $1600 Media Center PC on playback!!!!

Do you have X2 AMD?
Go to AMD web site and see if they have a update driver for CPU.

Hi Richard,

I do have a X2 AMD on this board.

I downloaded this patch from AMD but understood this was for XP only?

 

Yep I think its XP only, but not 100% sure