GeForce4MX not good enough?

[danIrl]

I tried the nvidia purevideo decoder again today... and it was the same as the other decoders really. I then transfered an mpeg of a football match to my desktop PC which has a RADEON 9550. The quality of it was pretty much the same as the geforce4MX thru the TV. Slightly better, but the green grass of the pitch looks totally washed out and dark mud patches do not look realistic. This is especially noticable if flicking between LiveTV mode on the PVR and the actual TV channel. Football is the worst picture quality, standard TV programs, e.g drama, news, etc are okay (still not as good as the original feed). There is no stuttering of an sort.

I can only conclude that it is the capture card that is at fault here. What is surprising is that no one else seems to have a problem with the PVR-150 and watching sports. I think I have tried most versions of the drivers for this card. I have also tried numerous tweaks using the tweak tool. Is this just a fact of a relatively cheap analog capture card passed thru a digital encoder with an average cable feed?

I guess this question is really for the hauppauge support forum.. but since this seems to be the card of choice with GBPVR users, I would really like your opinion on this. Thanks.

[danIrl]

Well I finally bought an XFX GeForce6200 256MB with passive cooling from a UK website. Boy was I disappointed.

1) The default video mode NTSC ( I live in a PAL region) during boot up. Which means the screen flickers horribly until the windows driver loads and switches it to PAL. I emailed XFX technical support and they said default is NTSC and offered no other alternatives.

2) The quality was perhaps slightly better, but unless I could run both cards at the same time and switch between then, then hard to say.

3) Worst of all, the card sometimes causes windows to hang when resuming from hibernation! Obviously this it the worst and makes the card virtually unusable, since I always use hibernation mode when the machine in not active. Probably the 6200 is a good card, but dont buy one from XFX.

So I am back to my trusty Geforce4MX440

[pwborders]

csy:

I have the EXACT same problem with my FX5200 card as you describe. I gave up on the purevideo decoder as with DXVA off it is too blurry. I get the same problem with a newer version of the Intervideo decoder if I turn on DXVA as well but it at least looks good with it off.

Have you tried the latest forceware (84.21) drivers along with the new purevideo (1.02-196) decoder? This combo along with a 6600 or above is supposed to have some more functionality. I was planning on getting a 6600le just to support that combo but it doesn't sound promising. I had thought that the DXVA issue was with my older card and that most of my video issue was the inverse telecine (?) issue. Doesn't look like that is the case given your tests and newer hardware.

One interesting thing I found with the purevideo decoder is that if I run in VMR7 it seems to work great. I can't remember if I still have DXVA off or not but the reason I don't use it is that CPU utilization is alomost double normal in this mode. Did look good though.

I have an ATI 9600se at work maybe I will give it a try. If it works it will give me an excuse to upgrade the work machine too.

On your ATI9550 do you have DXVA on in purevideo? Any other settings I should be aware of? Thanks if this works that will be the last annoyance I have to fix. GB-PVR is such a great program.

[csy]

Hi pwboaders,

I am using forceware 84.21 and PureVideo 1.02-196, and they do have several fixes in these versions, however no improvement on the motion problem. I agree that when DXVA is off, then the Intervideo decoder provides a clearer picture then Purevideo and is smooth motion, however the picture is still not as sharp as I would like.

On further investigation I have found the motion problem is specific to GBPVR and the Nvidia video card. I have tried Mediaportal and found that using DXVA (and any decoder) is perfectly smooth and in particular the PureVideo decoder with DXVA provides a very sharp picture with smooth motion. I'm not sure what is wrong with GBPVR-Nvidia combo, it is either a DXVA interfacing problem or renderer problem. I don't have way of diagnosing the problem. My support request to the hardware manufacturer (Legend) went nowhere, so I'm left out in the cold with nowhere to get support and a card that doesn't work fully on GBPVR.

My ASUS (ATI) 9550SE video card does not suffer from this problem. Motion is smooth with DXVA enabled using any decoder (incl PureVideo decoder). There are 2 reasons why I don't use this card:
1) ATI don't support PAL-component-out (Nvidia does)
2) The ASUS 9550SE hardware has a bug where the TV-out has to be manually re-enabled every time you reboot the PC. ATI advise this issue is limited to the ASUS brand only, and ASUS are investigating (very slowly).

[pwborders]

CSY:

Thanks for the response. I have to check but I don't think the 9600se I have is an asus card but it might be, I have alot of asus hardware. If it isn't I am going to give it a try.

When you tried mediaportal and the nvidia card was it using vmr9? I wonder if that has something to do with it. You might try your nvidia card and the purevideo decoder with dxva on but set it and gbpvr to vmr7. I played with that combo a little (can't remember for sure if I had dxva on though) and the picture was great but the cpu load was rather high on my fx5200. Also did you happen to notice the cpu load under mediaportal payback with the nvidia and purevideo decoder? Since gbpvr just passes it all to directshow it seems like the only differences could be the rendering mode unless mediaportal sneaks some other filter into the stream. What we need is something that would show us exactly what is being used to playback something as it is played back. Then we might have a better idea of what is different here.

[csy]

Yes, Mediaportal is using VMR9 (the new version only has VMR9)

I've done some more testing as follows:
GBPVR, DXVA enabled, VMR9 = 30-60% CPU and jumpy motion
GBPVR, DXVA disabled, VMR9 = 60% CPU and smooth motion
GBPVR, DXVA enabled, VMR7 = 60-80% CPU and severe jumpy motion
Mediaportal, DXVA enabled, VMR9 = 20-30% CPU and smooth motion
(all tests using PureVideo decoder, but same results also occur with different decoders)

Note the low CPU usage with Mediaportal!

I can use graphedit to to view the directshow graphs for both GBPVR and Mediaportal (don't know how to paste into this thread). Both appear to be the same except for the renderer. GBPVR appears to use the default VMR9 renderer, however Mediaportal appears to use a VMR9 varient (perhaps different VMR9 mode? - way out of my depth).

My system: AMD Sempron 3000+, 1GB RAM, WinXP SP2

[-stattik-]

My system: AMD Sempron 3000+, 1GB RAM, WinXP SP2

What Nvidia card are you using with DXVA?

[pwborders]

CSY:

Thanks for the followup testing. I sure wish we could get that 20-30% with perfect picture that Mediaportal manages. I wonder what the different VMR9 renderer is. I would this it has to be that component that is making the difference since that is the only unique component.

Maybe someone else (Sub?) might know, is there a way to force a particular VMR9 renderer like there is with the codec's. Alternately who picks the VMR9 renderer? It would be nice is we could identify and use the one Mediaportal is using. I will have to look at mediaportal more closely.

I will post if I find anything helpful.

[sub]

Sorry, I dont know what they're doing differently. You could try the VMR9 Custom renderer, it might perform better than the default one for you. It uses direct3d for rendering each frame.

[pwborders]

CSY:

When you were testing mediaportal did it have ffdshow running on the output too? It seems to be a common part but I don't know if it is there by default.