[Resolved] Media player classic mpc-hc flicker

[schollar5]

Hi,

Yesterday i picked up the first installation of rainmeter ever on my notebook, and so far so good everything works great, but then i experienced some strange results with video playback using media player classic (MPC-HC 1.5.3.x) with Overlay rendering settings. I'm using this setting a long while (for years) and not any problem ever happened but it seems like Rainmeter just won't fit, it just starts flickering when i open a video and start playback, and then it flickers also when i interact with the mpc gui, even if i move the mpc window through the screen. The video plays back just fine. I can change the rendering methods in mpc hc, to VMR/EVR etc but the only setting the video looks fine is Haali renderer that is ok, but it causes quite high cpu usage that means haali is not an option, but overlay is the only one. So all in all, it looks like that Rainmeter might have difficulties with the rendering methods. As far as i can tell, the Overlay renderer is uses DirectDraw to display the content, but i can't tell how it really does. As a quick addition i tested dxdiag and it also went fine without any flicker.

I'm tested flash video playback on youtube, even flash games with 3d renderers (these are hardware accelerated) but i didn't noticed any flicker, so it's hard to tell what really causing this issue. I even launched up splinter cell 1 game in windowed mode, but no flickers.

My notebook is equipped with X3100 vga, T9300 cpu, on an up to date Windows XP SP2. I even installed dotnet's till 3.5 sp1, and let the windows update to get the kb's for dotnet, so i'd say it's a quite up to date sp2.

Can i help somehow to test this issue? Any test/demo app i can run just instruct me what to do.

Bests,
R.

[schollar5]

Ok, one more bit of information, i can turn down the hardware acceleration on the troubleshoot tab, but it had no impact on the flickerings till i reached the 3rd position (disabling the direct3d and directdraw stuff) when it gets acting strange. the video turns upside down (even the subtitles) but the flicker is immediately goes away!

Strange, isn't it?

[santa_ryan]

Might want to post this into the "Bugs" section:

http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=14

[Seahorse]

Presumably you are running up-to-date graphics drivers?

[schollar5]

Edit:

Video bios updated to 1668 (verified in bios / system information)
Intel chipset driver updated to the latest 9.3.0.1019 (as seen on downloadcenter.intel.com).
965GMA updated to the lastest x.5128 (verified)

It has no impact on the flickering issue, it is happening exactly the same way like before. The mostly odd thing is, i never experienced such a flickering but rainmeter the only one it does, so i belive it must be something with the rendering that causes the problems here.

[schollar5]

Probably, fixing the issue i experienced here might improve the rendering mechanism of Rainmeter for everyone, so i'd say it's worth a look... but that's my opinion.

[jsmorley]

Do you get the same effect with other media players, VLC for instance?

[schollar5]

Hmm thanks for the tip i checked vlc and i was unable to reproduce the flickering with any of the rendering modes, so it looks like the mpc have the issue here with the Overlay video display, and rainmeter is just fine as it is.

[jsmorley]

Hmm thanks for the tip i checked vlc and i was unable to reproduce the flickering with any of the rendering modes, so it looks like the mpc have the issue here with the Overlay video display, and rainmeter is just fine as it is.

Glad that works. To be honest I personally think VLC is a better media player in any case, as things like Media Player Classic (make no mistake, a popular and good player) also require you to install some CODEC pack as well, where VLC does not.

I'd love to know what is going on with MPC, but I can't replicate the issue here on my desktop / nVidia hardware, and I don't know that without your hardware and drivers to test on, anyone here is going to be able to make much progress. I'm just glad there is a solution that works for you.

[Seahorse]

nVdia and MPC for life, never seen the issue...