Playback Questions (780G & VMR9)

[JBreits]

I will apply the patches tonight and see how it goes.

Gazoo, I have read some of you other messages, as well as Pob's. There's almost too much information to go through.

So my 10-20% with the ATI decoder is not accelerated? I just assumed it was since the other decoders were giving me 40-60%. I can live with 10-20 but 3-5 would be awesome. I'm just wondering how it will handle it when I get a BluRay drive (when they get cheaper). Or play some other 1080p content. I don't have anything to try it with.

[soccerdad]

The 10-20% are good numbers and must be using HA if you are looking at an hd program with those numbers. Mine is ~20% and I know HA is working. Try to use dxvachecker and launch a file. It will tell you if you have hardware accel working.

[JBreits]

I just wanted to update you on the status of this. I did a bunch of reading online to REALLY try to understand filters, graphs, etc. I think I finally have a pretty good handle on it. After lots of testing and several re-installs, things are going a bit better.

H.264 and x264 Acceleration

Now I DO have hardware acceleration of H.264 files on my 780G board ~15% CPU usage compared with the 80-90% I was getting. I have the latest catalyst drivers (8.12) and avivo installed. I am getting HA using the MPC Video Decoder. Turns out my original test file, a 3 min .mkv encoded with x264 is not compatible with MPC video decoder or something (wouldn't accelerate). I got some new test files from the Quicktime website and they work great on the MPC decoder!

Also good to note that in testing, I installed PowerDVD (I dont plan on using the user interface so I hadn't installed it initially). Turns out that using the Cyberlink H.264 filter from PowerDVD, I DO get HA on the Quicktime files AND the mkv file mentioned earlier. Therefore, this is the H264 filter I'm using in GB-PVR.

One odd thing I noticed however, was that even though I set the Cyberlink filter as the one to use in GB-PVR config, it was still just taking the filter with the highest merit. I had to change the merit on the Cyberlink filter. It also took several tries before I realized that the filter merits must not take effect until I reboot.

VC-1 Acceleration

I'm currently trying to find a VC-1 file to test. I have one from the MS WMV HD gallery, which I think is VC-1 encoded (or equivalent). I will try it tonight.




ATSC HDTV (MPEG-2 TS)

I'm still having some troubles playing back some of my recorded shows (see original post about jumping, dropped frames, etc). I am using the ATI Video Decoder which gives ~15% CPU usage as compared to ~40% using other decoders. The problem is the most pronounced on VMR9. Overlay is a lot better, but still doesn't seem real smooth. I can reproduce the problem if I build a graph manually in graphedit.

The weird thing is, in my filter list in graphedit, there are 2 fitlers named Video Renderer and one named Video Mixing Rendered 9 (I assume this to be VMR9). When I use the VMR9 in my graph and view properties, I see all sorts of dropped frames. If I instead use the one called Video Renderer, it plays fine. So I assumed GB-PVR must be using Video Mixing Rendere 9 (makes sense with the VMR9 custom setting), but when I connect to the GB-PVR graph, the filter is labeled Video Renderer? I don't understand this.

Also, I've realized that this is really just a problem on my channels that are 1080i broadcasts; the 720p work ok. So I wonder if there is a problem with the deinterlacing. Unfortunately, the ATI filter doesn't seem to have any filter options that I can change. I didn't think of it till now, but tonight I'll have to try the PowerDVD MPEG2 filter and see how that performs. Hopefully I'll still get the acceleration.

If anyone has any other suggestions for this VMR9 problem, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks,
JBreits

[bajabronco]

I am having the exact same problem with my setup, everything that you described!
My config is
ASUS A8V-XE 939 VIA K8T890 ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
SAPPHIRE 100207L Radeon HD 2600PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card (latest drivers from ATI)
2GB RAM
Windows XP SP3
GBPVR version 1.3.11

Through GBPVR when under vmr9 custom, or fullscreen, 1080i ota content -live view or even playback of same content is jerky. I have checked the CPU and memory utilization, but not even near max, running overlay seems to solve the problem. BUT like you I am perplexed why this is happening, since I have tons of resources with my config.

Bajabronco

[JBreits]

Well this is just getting to be a headache. I had things pretty much working. The 1080i was jumpy but much better on overlay. Then I moved the HTPC down to my living room and hooked it up to my 47" LCD TV (HDMI connection). Set the resolution to 1080P and things got worse. Not sure how or why, but they did. Now using overlay doesn't seem to help at all on the 1080i content. It's really choppy if I'm using one of the accelerated decoders. And using the accelerated filters (i.e. the ATI filter) now gives MUCH higher CPU usage 30-40% instead of the 10-20% I was seeing before). However, if I use the non-accelerated filters, it plays back much smoother but my CPU is more lik 50%.

And through all of this, my 1080P movie trailers are still playing with just 10-20%CPU and look great.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
JBreits

[BigMoose]

I've not reread the whole thread so sorry if this is a useless quesiton, but what refresh rate is your 1080p set to and is your 1080i content? In the UK/Ireland I found that 1080p@60 was awful for 25i Hz content, but 1080p@50 works great. Also in all drivers pre 8.12 I found 1080i@25 wasn't usable - no idea why. But 8.12 seems to have fixed that and 1080i@25 works fine. All with the UK 1080i broadcast content.

Only problem I have is that when set to 1080p or i @ 50/25, I get stutter when the OSD is up, but sillky smooth playback otherwise for 1080i boardcast or 1080p Blurays. Set to 720p@50 it's silky smooth with the OSD present.

[gazoo]

Well, if your numbers dropped significantly like that I guess it's a good assumption that HA is used. However, on 3 computers I have in the house with various Windows OS's, when H.264 is in use, it's never above 3-5% unless some other process is using additional cycles. I would leave the windows task manager up on the processes bar and see what windows media is doing and run a test by playing various media and see if wmp goes high and also flip over to the CPU graphs and see the some total. The 780g boxes vary while HA is off depending on their CPU Ghz speed, but never more than 3-5 when on. On my Quad Core, it's 0% when HA is in use, and like 15-20% when not. That's got a ATI 4870 monster in it though. DXVAchecker can also show you the way but I believe it only works in XP, not Vista (at least from what I can tell.)

CoreAVG is a pretty decent software decoder and typically runs lower than Cyberlink and some others for H.264 non-HA as an FYI.

EDIT:
Sorry, I didn't notice you mentioned ATI decoder which would, I believe, make it MPEG2 that you are talking about. I have had ZERO luck getting MPEG2 HA on the 780g boards (others have though) so those numbers maybe the right ones for MPEG2 HA. I'm not sure if ATI decoder would do H.264, but I haven't tried that either. I just stuck with MPC for H.264 HA. Incidentally, the newer versions of MPC crash my Vista 780g setup (as in Blue Screen, reboot!)

Also, with regards to the VMR and VMR9 filters in graphedit. I think VMR is really VMR7 (or maybe overlay?),which runs really, really nice with low CPU's, but as soon as VMR9 is introduced, there goes everything.

[JBreits]

Gazoo, I guess I've been pretty satisfied with my 1080P playback (h.264). My CPU is significantly lower and the playback is smooth even on VMR9. Althouth I'm not down to the 3-4% range like you. It would be nice, but maybe the difference is OS (I'm on XP SP3).

My main problem (as you ascertained) is the playback of my OTA HDTV. Specifically 1080i programs, although I should probably test some more 720p programs now that I moved to my LCD TV as the monitor. I thought it WAS using HA when I had it connected to my monitor but now I'm not sure what to think. If I choose one of the HA filters, it is REALLY choppy and CPU is much higher than it was on my monitor. The non-HA filters play smoother but use even more CPU. So I can't figure out if I'm getting HA or not. I thought the 10-20% I had previously was HA since the other filters were all 30-40%.

I wonder if my resolution would have anything to do with it. I can't remember what I had my monitor set at, but I'm pretty sure it was lower than 1920x1080 60hz that I have set in Catalyst for my TV.

Maybe I am getting HA, but the HA can't handle deinterlacing for this resolution or something and that's why it appears choppy when using the HA enabled filters, but not nearly as bad with non-HA filters. Would also explain why it worked better on my lower res monitor setup.

I see Catalyst 9.1 is out so I will install that tonight and see if anything gets better.

JBreits

[gazoo]

Gazoo, I guess I've been pretty satisfied with my 1080P playback (h.264). My CPU is significantly lower and the playback is smooth even on VMR9. Althouth I'm not down to the 3-4% range like you. It would be nice, but maybe the difference is OS (I'm on XP SP3).

My main problem (as you ascertained) is the playback of my OTA HDTV. Specifically 1080i programs, although I should probably test some more 720p programs now that I moved to my LCD TV as the monitor. I thought it WAS using HA when I had it connected to my monitor but now I'm not sure what to think. If I choose one of the HA filters, it is REALLY choppy and CPU is much higher than it was on my monitor. The non-HA filters play smoother but use even more CPU. So I can't figure out if I'm getting HA or not. I thought the 10-20% I had previously was HA since the other filters were all 30-40%.

I wonder if my resolution would have anything to do with it. I can't remember what I had my monitor set at, but I'm pretty sure it was lower than 1920x1080 60hz that I have set in Catalyst for my TV.

Maybe I am getting HA, but the HA can't handle deinterlacing for this resolution or something and that's why it appears choppy when using the HA enabled filters, but not nearly as bad with non-HA filters. Would also explain why it worked better on my lower res monitor setup.

I see Catalyst 9.1 is out so I will install that tonight and see if anything gets better.

JBreits

I would give dxvachecker a try..it helped my out quite a bit when I was using it on XP to tell whether or not HA was up. I suspect the same thing about the deinterlacing - some of the HA hardware has to have everything exactly perfect in the file for it to work (and when it doesn't, it may not even play the file.)

[bajabronco]

Any change with the new catalyst and driver upgrade?