Playback quality

[pgoelz]

I am struggling trying to improve the overall playback quality of my analog recordings. I am using a PVR-150 and have found that if I select something other than "encoder passthrough", live TV looks pretty good. But playback of recordings is still less than ideal. Since I have a fairly high bitrate set for recordings, I'm thinking this is due to the deinterlacing applied during playback but I can't figure out how to control it. I have ffdshow selected as the video decoder with the intent of selecting a different deinterlace method. But during playback there is only an ffdshow icon for audio, not for video regardless of what I set for the playback decoder. Does this mean that for some reason, GBPVR is not honoring my playback decoder setting?

Just a bit confused....
Paul

[gEd]

I can;t help with the deinterlacing as I am still on an analogue CRT.

the pvrx2-native log file should show what decoders were selected for playback. you could also enable the OSD in the ffdshow video decoder to test.

Also, perhaps check out the hauppague tweak tool to sharpen up the recordings

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ak+pvr-150

[TonyXL]

What's wrong with the recordings (e.g., muddy picture, jerky motion)?

Do you have a DVD writer? If so, burn a recording to DVD and play it on a DVD player. If it looks OK on the DVD player, the problem is with the decoder. If it looks bad on the DVD, the problem is with the recording settings (use the tweak tool to fix this).

[pgoelz]

Good ideas about burning the file to a DVD. I'll try that. I'll also have a look at the log file and see what it shows for the decoder. But again, while there is an ffdshow icon in the notification area for the audio decoder, there is none for the video decoder regardless of what I select in the config tool.

The issue with the playback quality is that it is blurry. Motion is OK but the resolution looks well below what I get on an analog TV tuned to the same channel. The resolution also seems to increase and decrease slightly in steps if you watch closely. I suspect that is either a VBR artifact or a deinterlacing artifact.

Until recently, I had been accepting the playback quality as "as good as it is likely to get" because it looked pretty much the same as live TV on the same card, although it was not as good as a real TV. But when I changed the GBPVR live TV deinterlacing choice away from the default "encoder passthrough", live TV got quite a bit better. But it didn't affect playback of a recording made from the same live TV program. That leads me to believe that the encoder is capable and the problem is playback. I should add that I am using the "medium" recording setting, modified to something like 8000 bpS average and 11000 bpS peak, VBR. Files are running (from memory) 2-4GB/Hr so I think they are being recorded at that fairly high quality level. Still a bit new at this though...

Note that I can change ffdshow deinterlacing options if I click the "..." button next to the video decoder dropdown in config, but it doesn't seem to affect the playback.

I'll have a deeper dive this evening and see if I can find any reason that ffdshow (or any other decoder) might be disabled.

Paul

[sub]

I am struggling trying to improve the overall playback quality of my analog recordings. I am using a PVR-150 and have found that if I select something other than "encoder passthrough", live TV looks pretty good. But playback of recordings is still less than ideal. Since I have a fairly high bitrate set for recordings, I'm thinking this is due to the deinterlacing applied during playback but I can't figure out how to control it. I have ffdshow selected as the video decoder with the intent of selecting a different deinterlace method. But during playback there is only an ffdshow icon for audio, not for video regardless of what I set for the playback decoder. Does this mean that for some reason, GBPVR is not honoring my playback decoder setting?

Just a bit confused....
Paul

Reproduce the problem, then zip and attach the pvrx2.exe.log and pvrx2.exe-native.log and I'll take a look.

[pgoelz]

Thanks for the offer. Before I do that, a bit of guidance on log submittals.... should I trim the log by deleting all old data before reproducing the problem or send the whole thing?

Paul

[sub]

The logs are created from scratch each time you start the app, so restart the app before reproducing the problem then it should contain minimal unnecessary info.

[pgoelz]

Turns out I got it sorted.... I think.

Opening a PVR-150 recording with Gspot showed that the video codec box is blank, even though ffdshow is installed. So on a hunch I uninstalled K-Lite, which also uninstalled ffdshow. I then downloaded the ffdshow tryout beta 6 version, installed it and now WMP and GBPVR both use ffdshow (with a notification tray icon) and I can now configure interlacing.

After trying all the various deinterlacing options in ffdshow while playing a recording in GBPVR I discovered that it looked the best and used the least CPU time with deinterlacing disabled. No interlacing artifacts that jump out at me, anyway. Playing the same file in WMP with deinterlacing disabled does result in interlacing artifacts. Strange. Does GBPVR have any sort of default interlacing? It really does look deinterlaced.


Thanks for the assist...

EDIT.... to anyone else out there with the PVR-150, does your video look "foggy" to you? Like looking through a slightly frosted glass? Although getting ffdshow configured made things look better, there is still a slight softness to the video. It is more noticeable in playback, but it is there in live TV too. I can't compare directly with my Pinnacle USB tuner because it is not supported in GBPVR, but on another PC it looks sharper. I am assuming it is due to deinterlacing and the accomapnying blending of adjacent lines / pixels. But I have seen comments elsewhere about the same thing with no clear resolution.

Paul

[TonyXL]

EDIT.... to anyone else out there with the PVR-150, does your video look "foggy" to you?

Many including myself have had this issue. There is a recording setting in the Hauppague driver for temporal smoothing that is set quite high (8). Most people lower it to 4 or lower. Use the tweak tool to fix this. I also increased the sharpness.