High resolution videos stuttering, isn't using GPU to play videos.

[Frog Emoji]

So I have a GTX980Ti and I've been struggling to play high resolution video. At first I thought I might be limited by my hardware, but when I check task manager I see my CPU is sitting close to 100% and my GPU at around 10% barely used at all by Virtual Desktop.

I've been playing around with video decoders for the past couple of days trying to fix this but I cant manage to get the videos to play smoothly. At best by using the software decoder in the drop down I can get it to play with minimal stuttering, but the audio gets completely out of sync because of this.

I've installed the K-lite codec pack and have been playing around with the LAV settings where I can choose hardware acceleration, I read online that the nvidia cuvid decoder would help, but when I select it it says "Active Hardware Accelerator: <none>" and "Active Decoder: <inactive>". I've searched around a lot and cant seem to find any other solutions to try. Both the other options for decoding, DVXA2 and D3D11 don't result in the GPU being used either.

As stated above my GPU is a 980Ti and should be able to handle it, or at least stop the stuttering by working more than 10%.

Thanks for any advice.

[ggodin]

Make sure to install the HEVC video extension from the Microsoft store, it used to be included with Windows but was removed in recent updates:
https://www.microsoft.com/store/p/hevc-video-extensions-from-device-manufacturer/9n4wgh0z6vhq

[Frog Emoji]

Originally posted by ggodin:

Make sure to install the HEVC video extension from the Microsoft store, it used to be included with Windows but was removed in recent updates:
https://www.microsoft.com/store/p/hevc-video-extensions-from-device-manufacturer/9n4wgh0z6vhq

I have installed that before but when I noticed no change in the playback. After downloading it gives me a prompt to "launch" but that only opens the windows film and TV app, how do I know if VD is using the extension or not?

After installing that I was able to play the video in the Film and TV app with smoother video, however the audio was out of sync. When playing the video my GPU usage was upped to around 30% but my CPU was still maxed out. So it does enable some kind of hardware acceleration with my GPU but still mainly relies on my CPU.

[ggodin]

For reference, DXVA is like playing it in Windows Media Player and choosing Direct3D 11 is like playing it with Movies and TV app; you should get about the same CPU/GPU usage.

You’d have to link me the video so I can try on my side. Perhaps the way it is encoded isn’t compatible with the hardware decoder.

[Frog Emoji]

So with some further testing if I open the file with WMP there is no GPU usage at all, my CPU is maxed and the video/audio is out of sync. If I open in the Film and TV app the same thing happens, however my GPU is also at around 30% usage (CPU still maxed).

Now if I open it in VD, I and use DXVA I get around 5% GPU usage (probably not due to the video) and maxed CPU. If I switch to D3D11 I get around 30% GPU usage and maximum CPU. This is completely consistent with what you said, the numbers I reported in the original post must have been a mistake or due to me messing around in codec settings. When I set the hardware acceleration in the codec tweaker to use NVIDIA CUVID GPU usage sits around 10% but this actually gives the best results for playback. Just to note, with no video playing VD uses around 16% of my GPU idle.

Now that that is cleared up I'm still not sure what the issue is with my GPU not being utilised even more. I read somwhere that the 980Ti doesn't support h.264 decoding, but this source [en.wikipedia.org] says the 980Ti does support it. Is it possible that my hardware just isn't powerful enough? The main issue is the audio desync due to the minor stutters, but the video still plays. I'm confused why the codec settings say there is no selected decoder or hardware accelerator but it does seem to use the GPU with these settings.

I have this issue with multiple high res videos and can play other lower res VR videos fine so I don't think its the encoding of the file.
Thanks for the fast responses btw.

[Frog Emoji]

I've had some developments with this issue if youre still following this at all. I have since resorted to downsampling the videos instead of trying to make my hardware better at decoding them, however im running into issues playing these videos in anything other than VLC. I used VLC to convert them and I encoded them as h.264 instead of h.265. I downsampled the resolution to 80% and am now able to play smoothly without stuttering in VLC, however I cant play the videos at all on VD or WMP. If I play them in Film & TV I get smooth video but no audio. I have tried changing all the video decoding options in VD with no luck. Do you know of any way to solve this?

[ggodin]

I believe your issue is mostly with the software you use to encode it. I have a 980 Ti and a 1080 Ti and am able to play both h.264 and HEVC videos without any issues at up to 5k.

If you can figure out a way to send me a sample of those videos, I can try them out to confirm they don’t play smoothly here either,
Thanks!

[Silver Dragon]

Originally posted by Socks:

I've had some developments with this issue if youre still following this at all. I have since resorted to downsampling the videos instead of trying to make my hardware better at decoding them, however im running into issues playing these videos in anything other than VLC. I used VLC to convert them and I encoded them as h.264 instead of h.265. I downsampled the resolution to 80% and am now able to play smoothly without stuttering in VLC, however I cant play the videos at all on VD or WMP. If I play them in Film & TV I get smooth video but no audio. I have tried changing all the video decoding options in VD with no luck. Do you know of any way to solve this?

You can use MediaInfo (free util) to paste the contents of the video and audio codec. That would help to see if the hardware can decode the codec. https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo

[Frog Emoji]

Originally posted by Silver Dragon:

You can use MediaInfo (free util) to paste the contents of the video and audio codec. That would help to see if the hardware can decode the codec. https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo

Thanks for the advice, thats a really useful app. I used VLC to convert the file to h264 and this app says its "AVC" which is a generic name for that kind of video encoding? It also confirms that when I use VLC to convert to HVEC that theres only an audio stream left over and no video is converted at all. This tool will be really useful when troubleshooting this stuff.

I think the problem might just be in the hardware. Ive tried numerous things with no success. I've sent ggodin a video file privately and he's been kind enough to try to reproduce and solve this issue with me. Hopefully we discover some kind of software problem because a 980Ti should be more than poweful enough to decode these. without having to convert.

[Nemesis]

I have the same, it worked great a few weeks ago but now everything I try to play just stutters, And CPU is at 50% while my GPU (1080ti) is at 10%....
And the capture rate is at 7 fps...