Return to Render -- Just what renderer am I using?

[Reddwarf]

OK then, what role (if any) does video drivers play in all of this? I'm having no luck at all determining what the difference is between this computer (which is both older hardware and installation) and the upstairs machine, which is significantly gutsier and had a fresh reinstall only two weeks ago.

Yet here things work pretty well (so long as I'm careful to restart npvr between renderer changes), but upstairs it is just icky. Which suggests it is not an issue with npvr, but with that PC.

gspot reports the same filters for each machine. (Hm, but it might be a newer ffdshow upstairs.)

What about the hardware itself? Is there anything else that can play a part that I should explore?

A more powerful graphic card may help, even in an old computer. Depends on exactly how old it is.

[Ommina]

Onboard GPU -- "Intel HD Graphics". Board is an Intel DH57DD.

Attaching the logs.

I played the same file three times. Interestingly, the first time it played just lovely, OSD at all! Sharp, no jagged lines, no desynchronization, pretty much ideal.

Hit ESC to stop, played same file, picture quality was back to jagged and poor.

At a loss, I am.

[Ommina]

A more powerful graphic card may help, even in an old computer. Depends on exactly how old it is.

Heh, that's the icky bit. (Well, one of the icky bits.) The older computer (a Core2) does fine. It's the new computer (i5) that is struggling. While I am using the onboard video, it does work just fine using overlay (and, once with VMR9 FSE, above).

Which isn't to say I'm not willing to entertain the notion that it's the GPU that's causing the problems.

[hoborg]

Hmm, no problem in LOG, all seems to be OK. Looks like GPU drivers issue.
Maybe you should try to use modern LAV video decoder instead of old FFDshow.
Maybe SAF6 can help you with that...

BTW, you can try some experiments with FFDshow output colorspaces too.

[Reddwarf]

Heh, that's the icky bit. (Well, one of the icky bits.) The older computer (a Core2) does fine. It's the new computer (i5) that is struggling. While I am using the onboard video, it does work just fine using overlay (and, once with VMR9 FSE, above).

Which isn't to say I'm not willing to entertain the notion that it's the GPU that's causing the problems.

Changing to Windows 7 would likely improve video quality as XP had some issues with video. Or scrapping the onboard video and go for an ATI 4550 (or better) would work even on XP.

[Ommina]

I'll probably steal a dedicated GPU from another machine to see if it makes a difference. I'm a bit leery about jumping right into new hardware, if only because the picture is consistently good on the first (and only the first) playback after a restart of nprv. I would think (perhaps incorrectly) that if the hardware wasn't up to the task, that it would be insufficient regardless.

That, coupled with npvr's predisposition toward crashing if I change renderers without restarting (which I presume is not supposed to happen), leaves me worried that something else is wrong.

(And look, I've derailed my own topic. How nice.)

[Reddwarf]

(And look, I've derailed my own topic. How nice.)

That's actually a good quality to have
Let us know the outcome of your struggles, we might even learn a bit