Problems watching video with my old PC on Windows 7

Hello everyone.
I'm new here, so first of all I want to thank the creators of the pack and for being there to help.

This is my PC:

Mother: Intel D865PERL (Chipset: i865P/PE/G/848P)
Graphics interface: AGP 3.0 (8x)
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 (Prescott) - Socket 478 mPGA
RAM: 3.5 Gb
GPU: NVidia Geforce 6200 (EVGA) 256 Mb - DDR 2 - 64bits
(Supposed to support PixelShader 3.0)
1 Samsung Syncmaster 2033SN Monitor (1600x900) (VGA output)
1 Samsung TV (1920x1080 - 60p) (DVI output)
Supposedly it has DirectX 11.

I use AvastFree antivirus, VirtualDJ (for listening to music), EmuleTorrent and JDownloader (for downloading), and Maxthon (as a browser), and they are usually open while I play video.


Here's the problem:

I've had this PC since 2004, running 24/7 ... only shutting down every few months to thoroughly clean it, change processor grease, etc.

Until 1 month ago I had WinXP SP3 installed with the latest functional drivers and the K-Lite mega pack, and the video ran perfectly at 720p and some 1080p formats on both displays.

A few weeks ago I decided to take a step forward (within what the hardware allows me) and did a clean install of Windows 7 Lite (a version based on Windows 7 Ultimate, but consuming less resources).

Everything works perfectly, even faster and more stable than with XP, but I'm having some (random) problems with video playback in general, and I can't figure out why.

Sometimes there are certain cuts in the image when the video moves from left to right (and vice versa), as if there were jumps between frames, but the video does not slow down. If I pause the image, it looks perfect.

Other times, the video gets very stuck.

Other times, the playback is perfect, but every few seconds it seems to speed up some frames, as if trying to keep up with the audio.

Other times, when switching to full screen, the video freezes and goes black.

Other times, in full screen it looks fine, but when I go out of full screen I start to see the image cuts that I mentioned before.

I tried with several renderers, seeing that the best results are given by EVR (both) in MPC-HC, and Direct3D9 (integrated) in PotPlayer.
I also tried MadVR and at times it seemed to fix the problem, but eventually it would get worse and freeze playback.

I have hardware usage set to DXVA (copy-back), and tried all the other modes, but they didn't turn out any better.

I even tried installing everything separately, using K-Lite basic and installing MPC and MadVR separately, since in K-Lite it doesn't appear available to me.

I can't think of any more ideas.
Could you help me to find a configuration that allows me to watch videos in the best possible quality, within what my hardware allows?

Thank you very much.




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Have you tried K-Lite with MPC-HC and MPC Video Renderer?
MadVR is good but heavy on resources.

In my experience although it may sound strange most of the time I was having problem with video it was caused by the audio driver.
Updating chipset driver, audio driver and video driver may help a lot.

If you want a personal suggestion to improve the PC, I suggest to get a Samsung SSD 870 EVO and install Windows on it.
This SSD fly even on 15 years old PCs.

Thank you for your response.
When installing K-lite and opening the "Configuration Tips", I read that MPC Video Renderer was better than MadVR in terms of resources and that was the first thing I tried and with that configuration the problem of small jumps in the image appeared for the first time.
This I solved at that time with EVR, but it did not allow me to place the subtitles outside the image, so I started looking for other renderers and MadVR seemed to work until it did not.
As I said before, problems happen randomly, sometimes it's one, sometimes it's another.

Somewhere, while researching, I read that it might have to do with the audio, as you say.
In my case, I have 2 audio boards: the integrated Intel board and a SoundBlasterLive Value, PCI.

With WinXP I always used the SoundBlasterLive, and the integrated board never worked ... I even thought it was defective from the factory.

When I installed Windows 7, being a "Lite" version, it didn't come with drivers, so I used Driver Booster to automatically install all the updated drivers, and this got the integrated audio board working, but for the SoundBlasterLive there seems to be no drivers, as Creative never provided them.
So now I have the SoundBlasterLive disabled, and the integrated board running with the supposed drivers updated to their latest version.
The video card also has its drivers updated.

Having an SSD is a good suggestion, thanks.
I'll see about getting one when I have the money

I suggest to use this for install and update drivers: https://www.snappy-driver-installer.org/
It is free forever and never ask to pay, I have used it on a lot of PCs.
You still need to have some knowledge because although in most cases just using the latest drivers is good it isn't true in 100% of cases.
I usually use it for all drivers except for NVIDIA/ATI video cards where I get the latest driver from the official sites.

A small SSD of 250 GB is just 42,99 € (for example); using a small SSD for Windows and a big HDD for data is a cheaper alternative to a single big SSD.

To speed up also disable the things that run at startup that are usually in registry here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
PS: You have to know what is really needed and what not.

Also post a screenshot of the performance tab of Task Manager (while the video is playing).

Maybe there is a problem with this driver thing, as I don't have much idea in which cases an older driver would work better ... I could only test to see if there is any change.
Being such an old PC, I was begging for someone on the forum to know well about this having had it happen to them before.

I installed Windows 2 weeks ago, as did the drivers, which according to Driver Booster are the most current.
I am NOT sure about DirectX, as the system tells me I have 11, but the Geforce 6200 is supposed to support DirectX 9.c.

Regarding booting, I only have AvastFree Antivirus enabled.
The PC flies (even faster than with XP), but when playing video I get these random problems that I can't figure out where they come from.

Playing 24fps video on a 60Hz will never be smooth with panning shots. The reason is simple, each frame needs to be displayed 2.5 times, meaning half of them are show twice and the other half three times. With such low framerate this difference in display duration is clearly visible.

You should use DXVA2 native instead of copyback.

Try if you get better results with only one screen connected.

Here are some screenshots of the Task Manager.
The first 2 are playing video with MPC, using EVR (custom), and having Outlook, VirtualDJ, EmuleTorrent, JDownloader and Maxthon browser open.

The third screenshot was taken after closing Maxthon, and it really made a change.
The strange thing is that having Maxthon open, MPC consumes more CPU than when I have it closed.

Thank you, Admin, for your response.
This thing you say about FPS makes sense, but shouldn't I have noticed it in these 15 years watching movies on the same PC with the same GPU and the same monitors, except with XP?
Because, so far, it never happened before.

I tried all the possible hardware accelerators and I stayed with DXVA (copy back) just because I read that it was recommended in the "Configurarion Tips", but I will use the native one to see if it gives better results.

Using native instead of copyback will lower CPU usage.

Your graphics card has a low amount of memory. So avoid having other programs open during playback that use any form of GPU acceleration. As you have already noticed, browsers make use use of GPU hardware acceleration. If there too little graphics memory available, then that can result in playback issues.

With "cuts" in the video do you perhaps mean "tearing", as if two frames were cut and glued together? You should be able to fix that by enabling "Vertical Sync (VSync)" in the NVIDIA driver settings.

- I tried native DXVA and the CPU usage was identical to "Copy back". But I left it on native per your recommendation.

- I enabled VSync in the NVidia control panel, as I had seen in the "Configuration Tips" that they recommended it. That's been the case since I first installed K-Lite on Win7.


I kept thinking yesterday that maybe I'm not describing well what the problem is, because I don't know what it's technically called.

As soon as I started having this problem, I started searching the web to find out what it's called, but I didn't see anything that looks like it, which makes it very difficult to explain, so I decided to film with my cell phone the TV screen and take screenshots where you can see it clearly, which I paste here below.





I think you can clearly see the horizontal cut in the image. This only occurs while the video is playing, so by pausing the video I could not capture it.

I want to repeat and make it clear that these small cuts happen AT RANDOM and there are times when I can watch a complete video without it happening.
I tried closing ALL programs that were in the background and it still happens randomly, sometimes it does, sometimes it does not.

These programs I usually have open are the same ones I used until 3 weeks ago with Windows XP without any problem or excessive resource usage ... and maybe my biggest mistake is wanting the PC to run exactly the same with Win7, since the hardware is the same.
And at times it does well, and at others it does not.
Even, as I said before, with Win7 it is faster in general.

I try to find what is the punctual reason for all these problems to be able to handle it somehow, but as they happen randomly it becomes very complicated.

There are many ways to optimize and use less video/system memory, for example:

1) Disable almost all visual effects on Windows:

To have maximum effect disable everything except "Smooth edges of screen".

2) Use Pale Moon as browser (it is a fork of the old interface of Firefox that use low resources but it is still updated and secure) and disable its hardware accelleration.

3) Disable Superfetch (most of the time it just slow down hard disk and waste RAM):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000000

4) Disable hibernation:

Code:

powercfg.exe -hibernate off

5) Disable indexing service:

Code:

sc config WSearch start= disabled

6) Restart PC

Yes, this is "tearing".

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/noticeable-cut-lines-or-tearing-of-the-screen-image-on-one-of-the-monitors-of-a-duplicated-set-33f3f11f-85de-772c-3325-28eefde009c8

Thank you very much to both of you.

Ale, I reduced as much as I could the use of PC resources.
I have the classic Windows view on, without any visual effect.





Admin, thanks for solving what's the name of the problem, that's already a breakthrough at least for my anxiety ... ha,ha,ha
Regarding the Microsoft article, it recommends enabling Aero to fix the problem, but my understanding is that this would consume more resources instead of freeing them up (I don't know how to enable it either).

The monitors are set to "Dual View", which is like a large single screen, but the desktop is only visible on the main monitor ... when I want to watch a video on the other screen I have to drag the player to the side, similar to an "extended" monitor.

It also recommends setting both monitors the same.
Should I set the 1080 TV to 1600x900?
Would I do it from the NVidia control panel?

I don't know if any of these things will solve the problem, or if you can recommend me something different, but, in the meantime, I tried activating "D3D full screen" in the "Playback" > "Output" settings and it seems to fix it, although I don't know if it will work every time (remember that I use the EVR (custom)).

With EVR Custom renderer try this:
Player menu > View > Renderer settings > VSync > enable VSync

This might help to fix the tearing even with the classic theme.

Changing resolution of your TV to match your monitor is probably not even possible. The resolutions are too different.

Sorry for the delay in responding, the day before yesterday, trying to reinstall the SoundBlasterLive audio board, the PC went into a boot loop and I was forced to format and reinstall Win7.
Due to time constraints, I was only able to watch one movie last night and there was no "tearing" or any problems.
As I continue to finish with the installation I will see how it behaves, and in a couple of days I will report back.



(Translated with Translator)