ati driver

[stustunz]

i gave up for now i was getting to angry with things not loading
that line you are talking about is goes away with wait for vertical sync but then causes more problems elseware
i put my old 6600 back in and the ticker was smooth and the picture looks good
i guess i was just expecting it to work straight away
even on display 3d thing in the control, panel the picture was jumpy something just wasnt happy

i used dh driver cleaner which seemed to delete all the old files so i wouldnt have thought there would have been issues there but your right windows does try and think for you
i am really looking forward to vista im sure that will be even worse

if anyone else has ideas post them and ill give it a go in the weekend when i have time
might go get me a new hard drive to load fresh install on that way i can just switch out the hard drive/video card

[pBS]

yea, i had issues forever even with just SD video on my cards, upgraded to a x1550 and still had some problems..
but on a fresh install, even HD is smooth and effortless..!
so it seems to be some piece of @#$% software that was messing up windblows..
watch out for disk burning software, they usually hose your codecs and other multimedia things, with no options not to install them!

now, i do need to use fse mode for total smoothness, but that's fine...
i found out how to access the other monitor even while it's in fse mode..
[alt-tab]
and it doesn't hurt performance either..weird..probably windows bug..

about 20% cpu during playback...HD about 40%..ati decoder or dscaler..
ati is a little lower cpu, but seems to need a better video card..dscaler just a tad higher cpu, but works with almost any video card well...and has settings..ati is all auto everything..
ati one works well even with nvidia cards too...

make sure you have windowsxp-kb919071-x86 for the seek fix.. even if everything else works, this is a known bug...

ahh,one more thing....make sure the monitor you're playing on is the primary..
[tho i'm sure you're probably already checked that ]

if you do a fresh install, do it with the ati card in it...
and use the cd that came with it...it will be the most complete...

you can get rid of hardware settings in an existing install by booting into safe mode and removing all video cards in device manager..[every card you've ever installed shows up there..] and reboot..

[stustunz]

i know its not possible but would be cool to be able to like select just play videos using overlay or just vmr asin like a plugin with no on screen stuff at all then on day when im really hating the playback i can just click on that to play video all nice and smooth aahhhh
im hoping the external plugin thing will be back in the next release cause i think that might be the road im heading down
ive given the direct 3d a good go and just cant get it how i want it
so untill i can i want to try a work around to get my video smooth
its only on certain programs that it gets to me

the real piss off is that in the old version i had it almost perfect but the actual video content let it down so that was ok

[pBS]

for smooth hd i had to juggle the settings a bit...
try turning everything to min. except ansiotropic filtering,[excellent on cleaning of snow and detail] and i have no prob with vert. checking off...hover over the slider and it'll explain it's only to make the tv match the framerate [60hz] when playing video or to let it wait and match desktop refresh rate..

attached is my catalyst config...
actually i looked and all my settings are maxed out
i run at 1024x768 on tv and it seems to have no problem having my 17" panel as a secondary monitor with desktop on it while i watch gb on tv as primary..
both gbpvr and pvrx2 in fse mode look similar...

took me a while even on what i considered a 'clean' system to get it back to a really fresh state...uninstalls don't...period...
maybe 5% of them uninstall back to proper state..so only way is to isolate and never install offending apps..or roll back...which i'm not fond of either..
nero is a major offender, as well as whatever they call roxio now..[Sonic]
it's very version dependant so YMMv

[kayleigh]

One way to make sure that XP isn't holding on to an old video card is boot into Safe Mode & check Device Manager -> Display Adapters. If you see anything except your current card, delete it & reboot to normal-mode Windows. I've seen weird things happen when video cards are changed/"uninstalled."

[Deusxmachina]

that line you are talking about is goes away with wait for vertical sync but then causes more problems elseware

I've had vertical sync on since I think you mentioning it the last time I mentioned the wavy line. After looking at some examples, I guess it's tearing. So, still working on it. It's a very minor problem compared to my audio out of sync at random. I keep wondering if the out of sync is a hard drive problem since I have an old one in there, but it does it with Live TV and no timeshifting.

pBS, I had installed the full Catalyst stuff, had "Avivo color" and whatever settings in Catalyst Control Center, but the codec file wasn't on my computer. I installed the Avivo pack and now get the ATI decoder listed and will see how that works. I think the hardware x264 decoding is only supposed to work with that AND PowerDVD, but I'm not worried about it either way at this time to do testing.

[stustunz]

ive decided my play back from my nvidia card wasnt as bad as i thought
from what ive heard back the drivers that ati are providing at the moment for this card are not upto the task which is very disapointing

[pBS]

you know, i don't really notice any difference when i max out all settings, or min them and turn off vert sync..i am running my tv at 60 so it probably doesn't apply there..

of course it looks better with everything maxed, but it all seems more dependant on all the Windows components working properly, then everything works great..

just one faulty win subsystem or filter and the whole thing acts whacky..
so be very careful what you install, and test performance between them...
[and reboot alot after making changes,sometimes more than one is needed to finalize things] and don't trust anyone! lots of legit software will damage windows components ruthlessly....

i'll never dual-use a htpc again..just too easy to dirty it up into a mess with normal use..

[Deusxmachina]

you know, i don't really notice any difference when i max out all settings, or min them and turn off vert sync..i am running my tv at 60 so it probably doesn't apply there..

of course it looks better with everything maxed, but it all seems more dependant on all the Windows components working properly, then everything works great..

This is fun stuff. Installed Avivo, used the ATI decoder the past day, had the ATI mux detected but it wouldn't give a picture so kept using Cyberlink instead.

Today, installed PowerDVD, the ATI mux now works, but that mux is choppy if used with the ATI decoder (huh?) so now back to using MPV decoder.

Something of interest: PDVD7 Video/SP and Cyberlink DTV decoders ran about 30% cpu usage. MPV drops it like a rock to 12-15%. I have no idea how. I forget what the ATI decoder did since it was giving me problems, but I think it was around 30%, too. I didn't notice much of any quality differences. I keep finding the following to be true:

Just use MPV video decoder if possible. It's free, apparently looks as good as anything else, and I keep reading of people switching to it when other decoders give them problems anyway.

I installed PureVideo for fun. Looks soft to me. I haven't played with it too long, but so far not impressed. And the fact that you have to buy it after 30 days, bleh.

What I don't understand is why I can change the deinterlacing in the decoders while having deinterlacing as "none" in config. They clearly do something. An advantage of the ATI cards is the hardware deinterlacing, config set to "none" I would think only uses the video card settings then.

The biggest differences I've seen with quality settings so far is post-processing with FFDshow. Mainly the resizing and Luma setting for non-HD stuff, but even denoise can help HD. FFDshow is mostly great on non-HD stuff, of course, since HD doesn't need much help.

It's hard to figure out what specific problems stu is having. Sounds like deinterlacing, mainly. For scrolling text and ghosting on movement, "bob" is probably the best way to guarantee it looks good.

[stustunz]

that sounds like pretty crap results to me
ati decoder doesnt even work with there own hardware
how the hell can they release software that doesnt even work with the hardware its released and designed to work with
at least nvidia pure video actually works really well with there hardware
i wish i had brought the 8600 nvidia card now it has had good coments i might still go buy just have to hide it from the mrs now

by the way i tried all the decoders you mentions and the playback was still jerky
the only drivers i tried were the one that came with it that was crap then the latest one which aparently is no good for mpeg playback go figure

the thing is everyone said its to do with having other cards already installed but i cleared out the ati drivers put the nvidia card back in and it didnt have the same issues so i really dont have a clue as to what would cause it

the big question is do i spend money on a new hard drive to try a fresh install on
or do i just get a 8800 and know i will be happy

truth is its probably my fault so im trying my hardest not to rubbish the card or ati