ati driver

[Deusxmachina]

If you plan on messing with it anymore, the best drivers look to be 7.7 then add these tweaks: http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/

The card works pretty well with .264 HD. My main problem with it is the deinterlacing power with HD mpeg2. The onboard .264 chip is great, but it doesn't kick in at all for mpeg2. And then you only get the video card's great deinterlacing if the file is hardware accellerated, but for 1080i mpeg2 that doesn't leave much power left for the deinterlacing, at least on the 2400. Little if any software and only a few video cards can do much better than Bob deinterlacing anyway, though.

Playing around with that made me wonder if that's what was happening to you. I was watching some video that just didn't look right. A little ghosting on movement and just not smooth. I forced the software decoder to use bob deinterlacing and everything was great. I don't know what it was trying to do on Auto with that file, but whatever it was it wasn't doing it very well.

Just lots of weird little stuff that can cause so many problems. When I put PowerDVD on again yesterday, everything was a little choppy. I had to relearn what I learned the other week, that PowerDVD's deinterlacing setting (factory set to "on," of course), can somehow affect other programs even if PowerDVD or its decoders aren't being used.

I've read enough on the Nvidia hardware decoder cards to not think they're any better, and are apparently worse with Vista. It's like neither company knows what it's doing.

[stustunz]

i cant even install that driver with my card it says i dont have the right hardware im screwed
the only version i can load is the 7.9 otherwise it says it cant find any hardware compatible

all the reds are screwed now maybe i have a dud card or my pc just doesnt like it


so since ive got this far ill try the reg patch not holding oiut to much hope

[Deusxmachina]

I figured out what I think was causing the jumping when using both ATI decoder and ATI mux. The regedit mpeg2 acceleration. (nohddecode tweak.) Without it, I get a black screen with the ati/PDVD7/nvidia decoders, (apparently a common problem going back a couple years on both ATI and Nvidia), get a picture but have no control over deinterlacing with cyberlink dtv, and the only one that has a picture and gives me deinterlace control is MPV.

With it on, mpeg2 is accelerated on the card, but then that eats up power so it can't hardware deinterlace very well. I hit 100% gpu using bob on 1080i and it causes a slight stutter, not terrible, but like it's running at 20fps -- possibly what I was seeing with the ATI decoder/ATI mux combo since, unaccelerated, I only don't get a black screen on SDTV channels, and one has a constant ticker on the bottom and is smooth with that combo.

Ugh. I almost regret not getting a 7600GT or similar, but then again I know how loud those can get. I'm trying to overclock this 2400 pro to see if it has enough oomph for 1080i bob, but something keeps resetting the speeds. If ATI would just let the VPU chip work on mpeg2 like it does with 264, this wouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, for yours, try this:

1) you need to find the hardware id of your card, to replace the missing line above. Go to device manager, displays, double-click your card, details tab, compatible ids. Should look like this: PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_94C3. That's for a 2400pro though, the 2400xt has different last 3 letters. Right-click, copy/paste it to notepad, save it somewhere.

2) Uninstall current drivers and reboot when it asks.
3) dload 7.7, run it, wait until it finishes extracting and starts catalyst install manager. At this point cancel out and exit.
4) Browse to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-7_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_49713\Driver\Packages\Drivers\Displ ay (or equivalent for XP)
5) Open CL_49713.inf in notepad (or XP equivalent, there's only one inf file there)
6) search for ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO
7) copy/paste the line but with 2400 xt as the name, and your hardware ID you found before (pci\ven_1002 etc)
8) save, exit, go to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-7_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_49713 and run setup

Looks complicated, but it's a simple thing being done: ati forgot to include the 2400xt, so you're just putting it back in to the driver package.

That's for Vista, but might be similar if you have XP. I read of someone having this problem on 2003 XP but on 2005 the drivers installed normally.

[stustunz]

they are bloody useless
the other problem i was having was my cpu would start cycling(20%-40% up and down) when i installed the ati card task manager didnt show anything running but there was something going on
so i reinstalled the nvidia card with the latest drivers then cycling was still happening
unloaded the driver for the sempron cpu and it all come right very strange
when all this wasgoing on video viewing was out of the question

thanks for the info you are been very helpful
i might try it out tomorrow if my other project doesnt interest me(solar panel lifter for my bus)

[stustunz]

ok copy and past wouldnt work i got lazy and forced it to install the pro drivers so now it shows as a pro not an xt but im sure it will work fine probably not but i couldnt be stuffed trying to get all the letter exact so ill give it go

[Deusxmachina]

Rivatuner will show the gpu usage. Do you get HDTV yet in NZ? Thought I read it was only in limited areas. I'm wondering if the 2400xt has the oomph to deinterlace bob (or better, hopefully) on 1080i. I guess even if you don't get 1080i I could find some samples on the internet whenever you get things sorted out.

I'm looking at 1080i HDTVs right now, though, so if I can figure out how to output to the TV with no deinterlacing, that should work fine. All these decoders have options for deinterlacing except "off," and "none" in GBPVR config isn't stopping the deinterlacing.

[stustunz]

yeah thats what you want
the signal gets deinterlaced making it progressive
set your output to progressive
720p(progressive)
1080i (interlaced)

i just went and got me a new hard drive my cpu wouldnt stop cycling at 40%50% with nothing happening very strange no processes going on just lots of cpu cyles after about 5minutes of running this would happen

[Deusxmachina]

I'm guessing you defragged the old drive a few times first.

I was reading people discuss deinterlacing on avsforum, and some guys piped up and said that since they have 1080i televisions they see no point in deinterlacing. Otherwise they are taking an interlaced signal, deinterlacing it, then the video card output is re-interlacing it back to 1080i to display on the native-1080i television.

Right now I have a non-HDTV hooked up, and how 1080i is deinterlaced on the computer is how it looks on the TV. If I weave deinterlace, video-based video (live sports, the news, etc) looks pretty bad on the TV, but it's an interlaced TV, so the original interlaced signal (but resolution downsized since it's an old analog TV) I would think would look better since interlaced is the TV's native format. But so far I can't turn all of the deinterlacing off easily to experiment.

At the worst, I should be able to get away with the 2400pro and a 1080i set if the set will do the deinterlacing instead of the card. If so, I'd still need to figure out how to turn all the HTPC deinterlacing off. Or there's always switching to a 2400xt if that can handle the good deinterlacing methods.

That discussion on avsforum was a bit odd because there's all these people saying what deinterlacing method is the best, but then other people saying they have 1080i TVs and don't deinterlace at all at the HTPC.

[stustunz]

1 new harddrive and a fresh install and the picture is sharp and nice looking as it was to begin with colours are nice
but the my panning shot are still a bit average
getting closer to a picture that i would expect
still seems a bit jerky when there is any movement

[bigbus01]

Stu,

I bought an HD2600XT thinking it was going to fix all my problems. I still have panning problems though. I have been using the MPV decoder and it works the best for me. With this decoder I only get a stutter every once in a while (actually more like a tear than a stutter. It seems to do it more often if I start watching a video while the TV guide is still loading). I have been running 20-30% CPU on 1080i.

Bigbus