HELP?!? Decoders & Codecs - Sound & Picture Problems

[Graham_Shepherd]

Hi

I'm having a big problem sorting out decoders to cope with Live TV, playback of GBPVR TV recordings & watching MPEG recorded videos (Windows MPEG Movie Files, as opposed to Microsoft Recorded TV Show).

My main problems are;

1. I cannot get a picture on BBC1 - only sound. Sub suggests trying other video decoders rather than system default. (I did briefly find a workable option by accident and can't replicate it now! However it seemed to be dependant upon the choices of video decoder, audio decoder & options and audio renderer. It also caused other audio problems.)
   
   
   
2. Playback of TV recordings from GBPVR have problems with audio playback, it's kind of warbling.
   
   
   
3. Playing mpeg movie files also has a problem with the audio. The soundtrack is a long way out of sync with the video.
   

Just for reference I'm using two Nova-T 500 cards with an ATI Radeon 9700 graphics card and a Terratec DMX6 Fire audio card.

PVRX2 Video Renderer = VMR9 Custom

GBPVR Video Renderer = VMR9

The MPEG-2 Playback options I have available in Config are;

Video Decoder;
[INDENT]System Default
InterVideo Video Decoder
NVIDIA Video Decoder
CycerLink Video/SP Decoder
Sonic Cinemaster DS Video Decoder
MPEG Video Decoder[/INDENT]

Audio Decoder;
[INDENT]System Default
MPEG Audio Decoder
NVIDIA Audio Decoder
CyberLink Audio Decoder
InterVideo Audio Decoder[/INDENT]

Audio Renderer;
[INDENT]System Default
DMX 6fire Wave
Sonic Cinemaster © ATI SPDIF Adapter
Default DirectSound Device
Default WaveOut Device
DirectSound: DMX 6fire Wave
DirectSound: Realtek AC97 Audio
Realtek AC97 Audio[/INDENT]

H.264 Decoder;
[INDENT]System Default[/INDENT]

AAC Decoder;
[INDENT]System Default
MONOGRAM AAC Decoder[/INDENT]

HE AAC Decoder;
[INDENT]System Default
MONOGRAM AAC Decoder[/INDENT]

Obviously there's loads of permutations to try!

I'm sure when I had BBC1 working it depended upon whether stereo or Dolby were selected in the audio decoder options. Does this really sound likely?:eek:

I'm getting tied in knots here. Can anybody offer any suggestions or tell me what configuration they're using which works?

Thanks


Graham

[sub]

From past experience, there is no 'one size fits all' decoder recommendation. It seems to vary wildly between between machines.

You dont need to worry about the 'H.264 Decoder' 'AAC Decoder' and 'HE AAC Decoder' settings since the UK DVB-T system doesnt use these codecs at this stage. Leave the audio renderer set to 'system default'. Now you only have to worry about choosing and audio decoder and video decoder.

If you dont find a combination that works well, then download these reliable decoders, and select them on the playback tab:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPV_Decoder.htm (video)
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPA_Decoder.htm (audio)

[Graham_Shepherd]

Thanks Sub

I will give those codecs a try later. Any particular process for installing or registering them?

Meanwhile I have a bit of a fix!

GBPVR had become unusable as far as my missus was concerned. Various combinations of decoders hung the system and BBC1 was still missing. Once the sound got stuttering, warbling and out of sync things got desperate.

Forgive the heresey but as a last resort I disabled the two Nova-t 500 cards and reverted back to an old Hauppage Nova-t usb external and re-installed ShowShifter just to buy me some time!

Trouble is that all of my fiddling seems to have left me with warbling audio in ShowShifter. Any advice please how I get things "back as they were" please?

Audio playback of mp3's etc thru Windows`Media Player is also warbling.

This is a major disaster really :mad:

Can you offer a quick solution to this problem and then at least I can come back to GBPVR at the weekend when I have time for trial & error.

Thanks as always.

Graham

[Graham_Shepherd]

Thanks Sub

I will give those codecs a try later. Any particular process for installing or registering them?

Hi - Checked the links for the codecs suggested. I see that they have detailed instructions there. Great.

[Deusxmachina]

GBPVR had become unusable as far as my missus was concerned.

Time for a new missus? I keed, I keed.

Trouble is that all of my fiddling seems to have left me with warbling audio in ShowShifter. Any advice please how I get things "back as they were" please?

Audio playback of mp3's etc thru Windows`Media Player is also warbling.

Not sure if GBPVR would be to blame for this or not. Kind of sounds like your decoders/codecs are messed up in general. For a similar example, the last time I installed the junk some people call "Nvidia PureVideo," it took over and screwed up ALL of my media players, even if I set them to not use it.

I would consider uninstalling ALL your audio/video decoders and then go from there. You could either install just a couple, or just take the easy way out like I generally do and install CCCP codec pack.

After AC3filter gave me an audio problem of some kind I can't remember, I started using DScaler5 for audio and never changed it again. Easy to set up, too. AC3filter and FFdshow were both making me jump through some hoops to get 5.1 digital working through SPDIF. My top three video decoders are MPV, DScaler5, and PDVD (PowerDVD), although other than trying to get video card hardware acceleration to work I see little reason to use PDVD.

edit: there's also an outside chance any warbling is from your hard drive having errored and is now stuck in PIO mode. May as well check it out in Control Panel. Not being in DMA mode can do things like this, or other things such as taking 45 minutes to burn a CD that usually burns in four minutes.

[Graham_Shepherd]

Hiya All

Hope I'm not whining but I need a bit more help with my current problem please. I've been away during the week and just got back to dealing with it.

As I said above, since fiddling with options on the config - playback tab I now have a general problem with playback of audio using Windows Media Player and other progs as well as the original issue I was having with GBPVR.

Both Sub & Deusxmachina have made suggestions.

I've downloaded the MPA & MPA and registered these. At the moment it makes no difference whatever I select in config the wavy/warbling/stuttering sound still exists.

Deusxmachina has suggested uninstalling all of the audio/video codecs. Can I ask how best to do this please?

I can see that via the Windows Control Panel - Hardware tab that I could delete them from there, or should I be using something like DXMan or MMCompView?

I have disabled some of the decoders using MMCompView but again to no effect and they still appear as options in config.

Alternatively should I be uninstalling them using regsvr32?

I've read of problems arising with quartz.dll files 9.0c & 9.0b. Is this likely to be of any relevance here??

Sorry to ask so many questions...

Hope you can help, I'm in a bit of difficulty here.

Thanks


Graham

[sub]

I've downloaded the MPA & MPA and registered these. At the moment it makes no difference whatever I select in config the wavy/warbling/stuttering sound still exists.

Reproduce the problem, then zip and attach your pvrx2.exe-native.log so I can see what the final list of decoders used by the system was.

[Graham_Shepherd]

Hi Sub & thanks..

Attached is the log file as requested.

At the mo Live TV seems to be ok on audio & video, but still no BBC1. If you may recall it was trying different decoder settings to get BBC1 to work that started this.

Anyhow, playing TV recordings, MP3's, or MPEG2 movies still has the wobbly warbling sound effects.

Similarly, audio playback under Windows Media Player etc is also affected.

If you help that would be great, I don't really want to have to resort to deperate measures like re-installing Windows!!

Thanks


Graham

[sub]

The logs look fine, and have no unexpected directshow filters likely to be causing this problem. Given its also happening with MP3s, and in other apps, then its sounding to me like your sound device or its drivers causing the problems. Maybe try looking for newer versions of the drivers for whatever audio device you have?

[Graham_Shepherd]

Hmmm... Thanks

I'll check that line of approach tomo. I'm keen to get it sorted before I leave for a holiday on Sunday so hope that this might be the solution. Seems odd though?

Regards

Graham