Stuttering mpg video playback on WMP

[joema]

Some of my .mpg videos periodically stutter during playback on 64-bit Win7 if played through WMP 12.0.7600.16415. If played back through VLC 1.0.3 the problem doesn't happen.

Problem happens whether in full-screen or windowed mode. The stutter points are consistent and reproducible -- happens at the same place in the video each time. Doesn't happen with all mpg videos, only some.

There's nothing else running on the machine. Perfmon shows almost no CPU activity on all cores, and no significant disk or network I/O.

Video: EVGA GTX-275, latest nVidia 8.17.11.9562 drivers. CPU: i7-860 @ 3.78Ghz. Disk: WD Velociraptor 300GB SATA.

The same mpg videos play fine on a lesser-powered XP machine (2.4Ghz Core 2 Quad Q6600) through WMP 11.0.5721.5268.

Additional config details: see profile.

 

[torrentg]

The stutter points are consistent and reproducible -- happens at the same place in the video each time. Doesn't happen with all mpg videos, only some.

The files in question are poorly multiplexed. Use TMPGEnc 2.5 (MPEG tools in file menu) to demultiplex them. Then use bbMPEG to multiplex them together again using DVD standard.

 

[dcarpenter97]

joema,

Have you had any success with the de / re multiplexing approach? After a few days of searching, I finally came across this post. I am experiencing the exact same thing. I have a multi core Windows 7 Pro 64 machine on which only SOME MPG videos stutter (always at the same place, even if they have been stream copied), but these same clips do NOT stutter when played on my old XP laptop! The player is Media Player Classic with ffdshow decoders (on both machines), and when played with VLC they do not stutter.

With a few test files, the demultiplexed video plays PERFECTLY, but when multiplexed back, the stutter returns (always in the exact same place).

 

[joema]

I gave up pursuing it and just switched to VLC media player. It happens on so many videos I'm convinced it can't be purely the "poorly multiplexed" issue as sole cause.

It doesn't happen with Media Player XP, only Win7. Media Player under XP can handle these files -- whether poorly multiplexed or not. Therefore Media Player under Win7 should be able to.

 

[dcarpenter97]

Thanks for the info. On the bright side, after learning more about demuxing and AC3 and splitting and encoding than I ever wanted to, I finally resolved the issue. It was making me crazy because my XP Laptop could play all these files without a problem, but the Windows 7 64 machine couldn't. Here is the solution:

Install Media Player Classic Home Cinema
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/download-media-player-classic-hc.htmll

and the ffdshow tryouts
ffdshow tryouts | Official Website

The 64 bit versions also worked, but for some reason the links were down, so I didn't want to complicate things. You might not need the ffdshow if you only want to play mpeg-2 (because of Windows 7 built in decoder) but the ffdshow has much more flexibility.

In Media Player Classic menus, View/Options
under internal filters, check EVERY BOX under source filters, and on transform filters check everything except MPEG-1 Video and MPEG-2 Video.

Under Internal Filters/Audio Switcher, check "Enable built-in audio switcher filter"

ffdshow will have installed a start menu group, and in there is audio configuration. Under codecs, make sure that AC3 is set to liba52.

if you use the ffdshow video configuration (to use it instead of windows 7 decoder), for the mpeg-2 codec, set to "libavcodec". Setting to disabled willl use windows 7


Then play the file and marvel at the results. While playing, use the menu Play/Filters to see what all it is using. I would expect that you see:

Default DirectSound Device
Video Renderer
Audio Switcher
ffdshow Video Decoder
AC3 Audio Decoder

If you ever get around to trying this, please let me know if it worked!

 

[Bric]

This solution worked very well for me.
Thanks.