Windows 10 - HDR and 10 Bit Colour Smooth Movie Playback Issues

AWPC · 23 Jun 2020 at 11:45

Anyone else having this. Cannot get smooth playback of HDR 10 Bit content. It stutters at times on panning & or every few seconds. Movies especially playback seems poor. Things I tried:

1: VLC - increased the caching settings for playback. Fixes some stuttering but the panning issue is still just as bad.
2: MPC-HD - Stutters at times on different content does not seem to be able to handle HDR 10 bit.
3: CNXR Windows Store App (wants £14 per YEAR :eek:

for the 10 bit HDR codecs to play the content smoothly with no trial!). Not willing to have to pay that every year its ridiculous you could buy a standalone UHD player for that!
4: PowerDVD - wants £44.99 to even try this! So good luck with that!!

Cannot find any other options it seems to be you either buy something or put up with it!

Does anyone have any ideas its probably not hardware related (24 or 16 core AMD Ryzens + RTX Super 2060 or GTX 1080 HOF) as without HDR the same content playbacks just fine! :eek:

Buffalo2102 · 23 Jun 2020 at 21:16

VLC works fine for me. I used to get problems with it and so I used to use Pot Player instead - maybe try that?

jpaul · 23 Jun 2020 at 21:40

you've checked that the player is allowed to set the refresh on the display to match the video eg ~24hz or 50hz (which normally means a new hdmi handshake)
otherwise you get telcine type judder.

AWPC · 23 Jun 2020 at 22:50

jpaul said:
you've checked that the player is allowed to set the refresh on the display to match the video eg ~24hz or 50hz (which normally means a new hdmi handshake)
otherwise you get telcine type judder.

Will have a look thanks for the input. Its only on horizontal panning with HDR I get the stutter. If HDR is disabled it works ok on large MKV movie files with 10 bit colour.

ALD · 24 Jun 2020 at 20:15

I use the updated builds of MPC-HC from https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/releases and Madvr as the renderer.

AWPC · 25 Jun 2020 at 06:57

ALD said:
I use the updated builds of MPC-HC from https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/releases and Madvr as the renderer.

Does your HDR 10 bit playback work smoothly though? This is the big issue for me. On most media with HDR + 10 bit colour I cannot get smooth panning scenes its either no HDR & it works smoothly or it stutters a bit from time to time on certain scenes. With Nvidia GPU's there seems to be a windows bug around 10 bit HDR 24Hz content. Trying to find a workable solution.

Thought I came close yesterday using a 2019 Kodi HDR build setting the desktop to 24 Hz but even then you still get some stuttering its not smooth at all from start to finish!

jpaul · 25 Jun 2020 at 11:10

Can you play the media directly on the tv (what is the screen) ? via, usb say - and does it have the same problem ?
I believe video processing you get on tv's like motion interpolation, frame creation, may not be as effective using hdmi input, from external 'boxes' -
(if you have the original bitstream/codec source, algorithms for motion interpolation are more effecttive)

ALD · 26 Jun 2020 at 14:09

AWPC said:
Does your HDR 10 bit playback work smoothly though? This is the big issue for me. On most media with HDR + 10 bit colour I cannot get smooth panning scenes its either no HDR & it works smoothly or it stutters a bit from time to time on certain scenes. With Nvidia GPU's there seems to be a windows bug around 10 bit HDR 24Hz content. Trying to find a workable solution.

Thought I came close yesterday using a 2019 Kodi HDR build setting the desktop to 24 Hz but even then you still get some stuttering its not smooth at all from start to finish!

Yes i get smooth playback. I use Madvr to switch refresh rate to match video. Have a AMD gpu though so that might be the difference.

AWPC · 28 Jun 2020 at 10:11

jpaul said:
Can you play the media directly on the tv (what is the screen) ? via, usb say - and does it have the same problem ?
I believe video processing you get on tv's like motion interpolation, frame creation, may not be as effective using hdmi input, from external 'boxes' -
(if you have the original bitstream/codec source, algorithms for motion interpolation are more effecttive)

Works fine if I set my high end UHD Disc player to stream the media. Its something PC related to HDR playback & Nvidia GPU's. 24Hz helps a lot but its still not as smooth as I want it to be trying to view a movie a day & change settings to see what can make it better.

PowerDVD20 is not very good jittery playback than free player like MPC or VLC LOL!!

AWPC · 29 Jun 2020 at 17:03

Watched a UHD file ok last night.

Used MPC-HC with HDR 10 Bit colour & 24Hz Refresh rate (manually set). Worked ok so going to try another his evening.

Seems to be an issue with 24HZ not auto setting on Nvidia GPU's & or some apps like PowerDVD20 & VLC do not seem to provide smooth playback regardless!