Blocky H264 Video on 3650 (Windows 7 64)... Driver or Hardware?...

I'm hoping the brain trust here can help me solve an issue I'm having with my media PC, running Windows 7 64-bit and an ATI 3650 card...

I've noticed about the past 3 or 4 weeks, when I'm playing H264-encoded video that it will randomly go blocky on me, leaving artifacts behind for a few seconds, then returning to normal (while playing via DXVA). I've been trying to narrow down the problem, but I can't figure out what's to blame...

My first guess was the drivers, so I've tried installing each version (that I know of) from Catalyst 9.12 on up, including the hotfix and beta releases since, and each one still has the random blockyness problem.

My second guess is that the passive cooler may not be totally up to the task of cooling the 3650's processor. However, I've cleaned dust/dirt out from the heatsink, it doesn't seem overly hot to the touch, and other demanding tasks don't seem to corrupt the display - only playing back H264/x264 codec video via DXVA seems to produce a glitch.

So, before I take the more drastic step of buying a different card for my media center box (with a fan this time, and maybe Nvidia instead of ATI), I am wondering if this corruption was a known driver issue in recent Catalyst releases?... I've tried to find this specific issue elsewhere and I can't seem to get a good enough answer for it...

I figure if it is a known driver issue, I can save a few bucks by seeing a few blocks for a while until it's fixed (hopefully)... any insight would be helpful here... thanks!

 

wrong thread

 

In what sense? I'm asking if this is a known issue with ATI Catalyst drivers, in an "ATI Catalyst Drivers" thread...........? :3eyes:

 

First, uninstall whatever software and codecs you use, then try the K-Lite Codec Pack, get it from here.

Tell me if that fixed your problem.

 

Well, it turns out that it might be neither problem...

I poked around countless places until I read something about a "judder" issue some people were having on their media pcs running Windows 7 (playing via HDMI to their TV). Apparently if the refresh rate is set wrong, and your TV is stupid enough not to compensate (like mine is), then you get everything from skipped frames to macroblocks.

I'd never heard of such a thing before, but just for kicks, I decided to change my refresh rate from 60hz to 59hz in CCC to see what would happen. I then played one of the "problem" movies, and sure enough, the problem didn't happen again.

It seems to make videos look darker and more grainy now, but at least the one problem stopped. Now I just have to tackle the new issues.

Anyway, thanks for the attention. Hopefully my solution works for someone else at some point.

 

I experienced the very same, horizontal blocking in the middle of the picture while playing on the TV. Turns out that when installing drivers from scratch it sets the TV to 50Hz as opposed to 60Hz and that causes the issues.

Sadly I seem to get the same issue on my monitor as well, though far less often, and in that case I can't really do anything about it.