So what are you using?

[Pob]

Quite right; from the man himself:
"The BDA Multiplexer is only used for those with digital capture devices (ATSC HDTV, DVB-T, DVB-S), and doesnt apply to regular analog cards..."

[Pob]

[quote=Pob]Just built a new system based on a 780g mobo chipset, and thought I should post the settings I am using on it:

Operating System -Windows XP Pro SP 3
Video card used - HD3200 (onboard)
Analogue or digital tuner? - Nova-T PCI and Nova-T stick (digital)
Video renderer - VMR9 FSE. Back to FSE! I only used EVR in XP as I had been getting tearing when playing H264 files. On the new system this is reversed - I get tearing using EVR (probably because there is no HWA in EVR on XP)
Video decoder - ATI MPEG decoder
DVD decoder - System default (ATI Avivo)
Audio decoder - ffdshow for everything
Multiplexor -ATI
H264 playback - CoreAVC with deinterlacing set to none (hardware)
DivX / XviD decoder - ffdshow
Using PVRX2 on CRT or LCD? LCD
Display connection - HDMI
Monitor resolution - 1360*768
/QUOTE]

I was wrong - although CoreAVC was set as the H264 decoder in config, I did not realise that it is the merit of the decoder in direct show that dictates which decoder is used. So in fact I have been using the MPC Home Cinema decoder! I get such low CPU use with this decoder - less than 10% playing 720p or 1080p! I would recommend this post for anyone with an ATI HD card:
[http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...light=dxva

[Satori]

• Operating System Vista Premium with SP1
  • I removed UAC it was making life too hard....
    
• Video card used Visiontek 3650
  
• Analogue or digital tuner? 3 x Digital
  

[INDENT][INDENT]The HW specs are below
[/INDENT][/INDENT]

• Video renderer EVR
  
• Video decoder ATI AVIVO
  
• Audio and AC3 decoder FFDShow
  
• Multiplexor ATI
  
• H264 playback Cyberlink PowerDVD 7
  
• DivX / XviD decoder System Default
  
• Using PVRX2 on CRT or LCD/plasma? Rear Projection
  
• Display connection Component
  
• Monitor resolution 1080i
  

[ilovejedd]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]

• Operating System XP Pro SP3
  
• Video card used Radeon HD4550 512MB
  
• Analogue or digital tuner? both HDHomeRun + WinTV-PVR-USB2
  
• Video renderer Overlay
  
• Video decoder MPV
  
• Audio decoder System Default Dunno what that is, though.
  
• Multiplexer Cyberlink
  
• H264 playback CoreAVC
  
• DivX / XviD decoder XviD
  
• Using PVRX2 on CRT or LCD/plasma? LCD
  
• Display connection HDMI
  
• Monitor resolution 1366x768
  

[/COLOR]

[Pob]

The setting names are lazily done; if you choose Bob it will indeed kick in pixel-adaptive deinterlacing at the renderer. And, if you've got Inverse Telecine enabled in your graphic card's control panel settings, that will work as well. So I can set up multiple profiles using ffdshow and do all the filtering I want.. and still have hardware deinterlacing and a more than decent CPU load because of it. I couldn't be happier.

Sgilani - I would much appreciate it if you could share your profiles. I am trying your suggestion to use ffdshow for eveything, having given up on other decoders and hardware acceleration. ffdshow is the only one to decode everything reliably.
However I am not so pleased with the basic TV / mpeg2 quality. All I have tried so far is to set post-processing to automatic quality control, and the deinterlacing tip you posted earlier. I know there are guides to setting up ffdshow on the web, but they are very complicated!

[sgilani]

Sgilani - I would much appreciate it if you could share your profiles. I am trying your suggestion to use ffdshow for eveything, having given up on other decoders and hardware acceleration. ffdshow is the only one to decode everything reliably.
However I am not so pleased with the basic TV / mpeg2 quality. All I have tried so far is to set post-processing to automatic quality control, and the deinterlacing tip you posted earlier. I know there are guides to setting up ffdshow on the web, but they are very complicated!

Yeah, I've dissected all those online guides, and it really is true that none of that stuff matters.. What matters is what actually works for you. Unfortunately most guides deal with playing DVDs and not TV content, so here's what I've found that works from our perspective as PVRers:

(on a sidenote, I'd be happy to make a more detailed guide on the wiki, how do I go about getting access to that.. anyone know?)

1) Use your nVidia card's Edge Enhancement and Inverse Telecine.

You can waste time with postprocessing, denoising, etc in ffdshow but it's not worth it. Since you've got an nVidia card, go into the nVidia control panel and turn up the Edge Enhancement. This really makes a big difference and it beats any sort of resize/sharpness tweaking that people swear by with ffdshow. A lot of it has to do with the fact that ffdshow is dealing with interlaced frames, and so we can't non-destructively vertically resize anyway, and plus using your Edge Enhancement won't eat up your CPU!

I've got mine set to 20% and it brings out nice, sharp detail without any ringing and I'm quite impressed. The noise reduction looked more just like blurring to me, so I keep it at 0.

And, of course, turn on Inverse Telecine to recover those progressive frames from film sources! Almost all TV series and movies are truly 24fps progressive, and Inverse Telecine will recover the original footage. I won't go into too much detail about telecine/pulldown, but you can research more if you'd like.

2) Set up profiles for your different playback scenarios.

Here's where it can get a little dicey, but just follow along and it'll work out.

You should set the DirectShow merits of ffdshow as the highest, and then choose System Default as your video decoder in the config. Why? Because this way in the "auto" aspect ratio in GBPVR, the video will be set to fill the screen while watching live TV or recordings. We actually want this, because we are going to let ffdshow deal with it.

No matter what, make sure in the Output tab that you have selected only YUY2 as a colorspace, and that "Set interlace flag" is checked and Bob is selected. This doesn't mean it will do a dumb bob; the renderer will kick in hardware pixel-adaptive deinterlacing (or inverse telecine if it detects telecined material). Also, be sure the "automatic preset loading" option is checked under the profile/preset settings.

Scenario #1: Watching a 16:9 source. In this case, nothing special needs to be done. ffdshow will just decode the video and sends it off to the renderer, so just the default profile is fine.

Scenario #2: Watching a 4:3 source. If we don't make a special profile for this, then it will just get horizontally stretched and everyone looks wide and fat. Instead, make a profile called "4:3 video" or something. It's autoload conditions will be to have "PVRX2.exe" as the application exe, and aspect<16/9 for picture aspect ratio match. and have it do a warped resize. The way to do that is to use Resize & aspect. Choose "specify aspect ratio" and select 16:9 in the dropdown. In the bottom, choose "No aspect ratio correction." In the Settings subsection, choose "warped resize" as the Luma method. For now, set Horizontal warp to .800. You can tweak it later. Interlaced can be left alone, but preferably unchecked. This is because we aren't doing any vertical resizing, so this setting doesn't affect us.

Note: if, for some reason, this warped resize doesn't work for you, try going to the main Resize setting tab and choose "specify horizontal and vertical size", and in the "new size" boxes, type in 728 and 480. (or 576 if you're in PAL land). Make sure you are NOT selecting "specify horizontal size". I know, the new size boxes are below this option, but make sure the selected radio button is "specify horizontal and vertical size". The reason for 728 and not 720 is because some ffdshow builds seem to not kick in the warped resizer unless you force it to resize to another resolution. We aren't changing vertical resolution at all in ffdshow EVER because that would mess up the interlaced fields.

If you've got other scenarios, you can use this example of how to make a profile and go from there. Just make sure that, for interlaced material, you NEVER vertically resize!

And there you have it.. at least I think so from memory. What you should have now is:

16:9 material plays back as widescreen, as it should be, and will be properly deinterlaced or inverse telecined by your video card.

4:3 material will fill your screen, but it will have a warped resize meaning everything in the center portion of the screen looks fine. Honestly, it doesn't look that bad since most action happens in the middle and not the edges, and it sure beats just stretching the whole thing! It will also be properly deinterlaced or inverse telecined by the video card.

The way the profile is set up, any aspect ratio 16:9 or greater will be left untouched, so 2.35:1 movies or whatever won't be stretched or anything.

One caveat/sidenote: the hardware deinterlacing might not work if you have any recordings that have been transcoded improperly (as in, the interlaced flags were lost during conversion). I use mencoder to transcode my recordings to x264, and it keeps the interlaced flags intact and everything works great. Here's the conversion line I use:

mencoder %1 -oac copy -ovc x264 -x264encopts interlaced:crf=22:frameref=3:bframes=3:weight_b:nodeblock:8x8dct:partitions=p8x8,b8x8,i8x8,i4x4:me=umh:threads=auto -o "%~dpn1.avi"

this comes from a batch script, so %1 means the source file fed as an argument, and %~dpn1.avi translates to the same full filename as the original file, except the extension is trashed and replaced with .avi

Of course, you may choose to compress the audio also if you'd like by doing "-oac mp3lame" or something like that. By the way, using CRF in x264 is awesome, and precludes any need for 2-pass encoding. You'll also notice I turned off the deblocking, because it really makes the video quite soft and dull. I do not get any added blocking, by the way, so don't worry. Using a CRF of 22 is roughly equivalent to a q=3 in ASP terms (XviD). A quick check shows that one hour TV shows (standard def) come out to around 700mb and are excellent quality. You could get it down further by compressing the video, or by bumping up the CRF values. Some shows, like talk shows or something with lots of static non-moving areas get compressed to very low filesizes because of the adaptive nature of the compression, but quality stays just as great. Look up more info on CRF if you'd like.

[Pob]

Thank you sgilani for your detailed post. I am certainly going to try your suggestions on edge enhancement and inverce telecine - on my old Nvida rig.
My most recent build is ATI, but as chance would have it I have just reverted back to my Nvidia PC (note to self - avoid ATI in future!)
So are you saying it is best not to use any post-processing in ffdshow? I turned it on when I had a lot of low-res xvid files, and it seemed to improve the picture. I guess this is where the profiles come in, I will try adding a profile just for xvid and divx files...
I think a guide on the wiki would be a good idea- because ffdshow is a 'one-stop' solution for all audio and video types (but not MKV's?), it solves the problem of us having to download loads of different decoders, and then working out the merits..
But what build of ffdshow? The last stable release is years old, and since then they are classed as try-outs, do you recommend any specific version?

[sgilani]

Right, postprocessing might be just what you need for the low-res XviDs, so make a profile for it But don't use it for your PVR-captured material. Also, the ATI settings should also have Inverse Telecine for sure, and probably some semblance of edge enhancement or something as well; you'd just need to find the appropriate equivalent settings.

MKV (Matroska) is just a type of container, like AVI. When you playback an MKV file, first it hits a splitter that will separate out the audio and video streams. Let's say you've got an MKV that has H.264 video and AC3 audio inside it. As long as you've got support for that enabled in ffdshow, it will happily play that back too. (and hardware deinterlacing and inverse telecine will kick in, too!)

yeah, you want the tryouts. I just recently upgraded to the latest (as of now, it's rev2033) and it's working just fine, so you can use it with piece of mind. http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net

[Phunky]

• Operating System Windows XP Pro SP3
  
• Video card used Onboard ATi 1250
  
• Analogue or digital tuner? DVB-C TT C1505
  
• Video renderer N/A
  
• Video decoder ffdshow
  
• Audio decoder ffdshow
  
• Multiplexor N/A
  
• H264 playback fdshow
  
• DivX / XviD decoder ffdshow
  
• CRT or LCD? 50" Sony Rear Projection TV
  
• Display connection HDMI
  
• Monitor(s) resolution 720p
  

[aescalante]

* Operating System XP Pro SP3
* Video card used Builtin Intel ~64mb
* Analogue or digital tuner? Digital/Analog HVR 1950
* Video decoder ffdshow
* Audio decoder ffdshow
* Multiplexor Cyberlink
* H264 playback CoreAVC
* DivX / XviD decoder ffdshow
* Using PVRX2 on CRT or LCD/plasma? LCD
* Display connection S-Video (i did it on a budget!)
* Monitor resolution 800x600 ): cant wait to get my projector, i want something that handles at LEAST 1024x768 but widescreen would be awesome too

there is one place where my system kicks ass... I have it all set up to a 1000m network with 3tb-Raid1 on a NAS. every single NES/SNES/N64/Sega/NeoGeo/MAME/GBA game ever made. about 500gb of movies, 300gb of music, 400gb tvshows and music videos

i use two of these controllers
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6826127207

i use one of these keyboards
http://www.everythingusb.com/belkin_mediapilot.html

The NAS is a pretty nice P4 hyperthreaded ubuntu system that holds all my recordings. All the video, and audio is accessible streaming online. i even have the streaming of video and audio working to my cell phone! Treo 750w