Vista + H.264 = WTF!

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

I'm coming to the conclusion that HD video in general is just a cruel joke, and probably isn't even worth my time. It took me long enough to get HD playing smoothly on Windows XP, I caved in and bought Power DVD 7 and it worked fantastic. Now that I've upgraded to Vista I'm in the same boat I was in before.

Power DVD plays sound, but no video, ffdshow is way too choppy with about 50% frame loss even with a high end Core2 system and post-processing off. What exactly are my options? Is the total and utter lack of Vista support as well as poor HD support in general mean I will never be able to watch what I want?

It just seems to me that codecs in general are a joke, with every company trying to do their own thing, theres no homogeneity. I'm at wits end, Help computer!

 

[secretanchitman]

i was in the same boat...except it usually only happened some of the time when playing back HD (1080p) in fullscreen. solved the problem by upgrading (no pun intended) to xp back again...and getting a c2d based xeon.

what codec packs (if any) are you running?

 

[n7]

Get CCCP (includes media player classic + FFDShow), & works great on Vista.

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

I used to use CCCP, swore by it, however I gave the Vista Codec Pack a shot and it seems to work better on Vista although marginally. I may switch back because it doesn't seem to matter. They both function exactly the same for H.264. Choppy and annoying.

 

[n7]

Heh?

x264 is fine here.

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

With MPC I get about 15-20 FPS with a E6400 at stock speeds using CCCP or Vista codec packs. The free codecs are awful, they hiccup when the bitrates fluctuate. The entire time my CPU usage is only about 60-70% and yet its still missing tons of frames and becomes totally out of sync.