Choppy Video Playback

[Snuffy]

Hi Guys & Dev,

I have Oculus Rift CV1 and a decent PC (Intel 6700k & 980ti), however when i play back 60fps x264 videos the playback is choppy as in it seems like frames are being skipped, i have klite and lav set as my default decoder, ive even tried forcing hardware decoding in the lav options.
Ive also disabled all windows effects on the off chance windows 10 was being a party pooper.

anyone else experience this and know how to fix this issue?

Regards
Snuffy

[E1Mariachi]

Finally got some time to play with codecs and various settings again.

Good news: I found a combination that seems to outperform everything else.
Whirligig 3.71 + Lav codecs + nvidia cuvid hardware acceleration. It used to be causing crashes but (since last drivers update?) doesn't anymore and it is fast enough to handle the highest resolution hevc files I have with virtually no stutter. I say virtually because there is just barely noticeable jitter-like effect that you really have to look for to notice. I think it's pretty much result of lack of frame interpolation.
Otherwise every video I can find plays fine now.

Bad news: guys from the red camp with AMD cards are out of luck.

[Is_no_more]

Originally posted by E1Mariachi:

Finally got some time to play with codecs and various settings again.

Good news: I found a combination that seems to outperform everything else.
Whirligig 3.71 + Lav codecs + nvidia cuvid hardware acceleration. It used to be causing crashes but (since last drivers update?) doesn't anymore and it is fast enough to handle the highest resolution hevc files I have with virtually no stutter. I say virtually because there is just barely noticeable jitter-like effect that you really have to look for to notice. I think it's pretty much result of lack of frame interpolation.
Otherwise every video I can find plays fine now.

Bad news: guys from the red camp with AMD cards are out of luck.

Thanks for posting your solution. Enabling NVIDIA CUVID and HEVC codecs for HW decoding definitely helps, but the problem is not completely gone for me. I have an 5820K@4.5GHz and 780Ti, so maybe I should start considering upgrading my graphics. xD

[Whirligig]

I'm currently looking into other video playback solutions including the VLC library which is currently in progress. I have a working version but I need to work out a way to implement it without causing legal issues. The video plugin is going to continue to be the bane of my life I thing :s

Keep an eye out for updates regardless and hopefully you will find improved performance in the near future.

All the best

Phil

[Rambo Amadeus]

+1 here same results i7-6770 geforce 1070

Originally posted by E1Mariachi:

Finally got some time to play with codecs and various settings again.

Good news: I found a combination that seems to outperform everything else.
Whirligig 3.71 + Lav codecs + nvidia cuvid hardware acceleration. It used to be causing crashes but (since last drivers update?) doesn't anymore and it is fast enough to handle the highest resolution hevc files I have with virtually no stutter. I say virtually because there is just barely noticeable jitter-like effect that you really have to look for to notice. I think it's pretty much result of lack of frame interpolation.
Otherwise every video I can find plays fine now.

Bad news: guys from the red camp with AMD cards are out of luck.

[Nivek TT]

Also running an i5 @4.3 GHz and a GTX 970 and seeing movement stuttering. Tried the force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded launch option and it probably improved things but still no good.

Unfortunately I'm not techy enough to understand Nvidia cuvid acceleration, can anyone link a dummies' guide?

As others have said, no issues at all from the same video via Virtual Desktop but I much prefer Whirligig.

[Whirligig]

Hi

The latest version of Whirligig offers other video paths to use which might help with the playback especially if you're finding Virtual Desktop is playing them smoothly. So firstly try the other Video paths. To do this click on the Cog icon on the bottom left, then go to video paths and then click on Media foundation. That will be using the same playback type that Virtual desktop uses. You can also try VLC but I recommend going from Media Foundation to VLC rather than DirectShow to VLC as it can sometimes crash when you do that.

Regarding getting smooth playback with Nvidia cuvid. If you have LAV codecs installed then go to your start bar and search for Lav Video. Open it up and change the Hardware Decoder to use: to Nvidia CUVID. Then the next time you run Whirligig in Directshow mode it should be using the hardware decoding for playback.

Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if you have a problems or questions.

All the best

Phil

[Nivek TT]

Phil,

Thanks for responding. Set to Nvidia CUVID as you describe and found the settings from the latest build and all seems to be good!

Crackin' stuff and keep up the good work.

Would be nice to choose the default media on startup, I would choose the menu rather than the last played video.

[Whirligig]

Thanks, glad you've got it running smoothly.

There is a way of doing this with command lines.

-feature "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Whirligig\production\media\Whirligig.jpg"

If you right click on Whirligig, go to properties and then set launch options and put that in there (the location of your start image may be different). Then it will load it up instead. Although I have to say that I've had a go with mine and noticed that it doesn't loads it's previous settings so I'll look into that and see if I can fix it :)

Maybe worth a go :)

Phil