Playback Questions (780G & VMR9)

[feilh]

I just re-imaged my Vista machine. I have a similar setup with a HVR-2250 and a 780G and a 4850e CPU using a Gigabyte motherboard.

I'm getting most of the time a smooth picture and then all of a sudden I get a crappy sometimes even frozen picture. I had things working better before the re-imaging. I think its related to the demux. It may also be related to the HVR-2250 driver. I'm trying the January 09 beta, before I was using the production 4.7 drivers. Its only been a few days since re-imaging, and I haven't gotten everything sorted out.

One thing I do agree with. As long as the picture looks good. Don't worry about your CPU usage unless you are overheating or generating too much fan noise.

I got best results using an ATI demux and an ATI mpeg2 decoder getting similar cpu usage that you described. Other decoders gave me higher CPU usage.

Somehow through the re-imaging I seemed to have lost my ATI mpeg2 decoder. Does anyone have a pointer to where to find one?

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I just figured it out reading another thread. You need to add ,ATI MPEG Video Decoder, (including the commas) to the list <SupportedDecoders> in config.xml.

I would keep playing with various muxes and decoders. You will find a pair that looks good to you. I'm trying an older cyberlink mux MpgMux(5.0.0.813).ax right now. It gives me a fabulous picture with the ATI MPEG decoder. The question is it stable during long recordings. That takes time to decide.

I also always get best results with VRM9 Exclusive. I'm surprised you do not think that is the best.

[johnsonx42]

I have the same problem as the OP, but with an HD4550 board. I've used every catalyst driver that supports the chip (8.11, 8.12, and 9.1), and no matter what I can't get good playback of 1080i channels. Any decoder that uses hardware acceleration is very choppy on 1080i, while being flawless on 720p. The best I've been able to do is is to use the PowerDVD 6 decoder without hardware acceleration; even then it de-interlaces poorly.
I've come up with no solution, throwing out the HD4550 seems likely at this point. I'm not sure whether to try an HD3450, as pBS has said his works great with the 8.11 drivers, or try something newer from the green team... I had a 7600gs that didn't satisfy, which got replaced with the HD4550. All I want is smooth 1080i video with no tearing, is that so much to ask?

[feilh]

I'm using the Cat drivers 9.1 (before re-imaging I had good success with 8.12 too). I got tearing with the VGA output, but when I went to an HDMI output screen set to 1920x1080 tearing went away.

I doubt my QAM signals are 1080i, but to be honest I haven't thought about it much. Is there an easy way to tell if a signal is 1080i vs 720p.

[JBreits]

OK. I didn't get a chance to try the 9.1 drivers on Monday night, but last night I got back on the PC to monkey around. I noticed really no difference between the 8.12 and the 9.1 drivers. I was still getting HA for h.264 content (~15% cpu) and with MPEG-2 TS content (~25% cpu) but the 1080i still was studdering like crazy.

I used DXVAChecker and noticed that when going from 8.12 to 9.1, there were a lot fewer things listed on the "Decoder Device" tab. Didn't seem to matter as I still got the same results when I tested the filters against a file. I loaded up a 1080i file and played it back in VMR9 through DXVAChecker. It was still choppy. In the playback window, I noticed I could change the "Processor Device" option. I had 4 choices. I don't remember the exact names but 2 had something to do with Adaptive processing the third was called BobDevice (obviously for deinterlacing) and there was the None option. I tried all of them. Both of the adaptive options gave the choppy playback. The Bob and None options played smoothly and didnt' change CPU usage much at all. Although they payed smooth, the deinterlacing was just a little poor when there was a real quick scene change. So it was obviously a deinterlacing problem that was causing my choppy playback.

I went back to GBPVR to mess with filters and deinterlace settings. I only really tried the filters that would give me acceleration:

The ATI MPEG Decoder has no settings that I can find; extremely choppy on 1080i content.

MPC Video Decoder - No deinterlace option; choppy playback.

ArcSoft Video Decoder - Had deinterlace options of None, Auto, Force. Default was auto which played choppy. Force made it even worse. However, the None option actually made it play back smoothly. As when I ran DXVAChecker, it has some slightly poor deinterlacing during quick scene changes, but at least it's watchable now.

Cyberlink MPEG-2 Decoder - Had deinterlace options of Auto, Force Bob, and Force Weave. One worked similarly to the Arcsoft one (Force Bob I think). However, the cyberlink filter stores settings per application so if you make a change to the filter settings via the Config.exe app, they do not carry over to the PVRX2 app. You have to go to the registry and copy the settings over for the PVRX2 app. It works, but it's annoying to have to do so.

So after testing the filters above, I had decided I would use the Arcsoft one. It is accelerated (low 20s CPU, compared with 50% for non-HA), has a deinterlace option that works on 1080i (None), and does not store settings based on EXE name (not annoying like the Cyberlink filter).

That said, for whatever reason, I went back and tried the MPC Video Decoder and low and behold, it now played smoothly as well. From testing, it appears that the MPC Video Decoder is using whatever Deinterlace option I have set in the Arcsoft decoder. Making a change in the Arcsoft settings seems to affect the MPC Video decoder as well. So I guess that one would be an acceptable choice, but I will probably fail to remember that settings made to the Arcsoft filter affect the MPC one, therefore, I'm sticking with the Arcsoft filter.

After I thought I had that working, I went back and played a 720p file. It didn't look that great. I was using VMR9 Custom in a window at the time. I switched to VMR9 FSE and then 720p looked good again.



So after all that, I think I have my hardware acceleration problems with the 780G solved (at least to where I find them acceptable).

Here's my setup:

Mobo: ECS A780GM-A v1.1 bios 08.11.06
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4850e
RAM: 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR 800
Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 (with remote kit)
TV: 47" 1080p LCD. Insignia brand.
PC Resolution: 1920x1080 60Hz
Connection: HDMI
OS: WinXP SP3
Catalyst and AVIVO: 9.1 (latest)

GBPVR: 1.3.11

Renderer: VMR9 Fullscreen Exclusive
MPEG-2 Video Decoder: Arcsoft Video Decoder (set deinterlace options to None)
Audio Decoder: AC3Filter
AC3 Decoder: AC3Filter
Audio Renderer: System Default

H.264 Decoder: Arcsoft Video Decoder
AAC Decoder: System Default
HE-AAC Decoder: System Default


Results:

720p OTA Content (MPEG-2 TS) - Plays smoothly CPU mid-20's.
1080i OTA Content (MPEG-2 TS) - Plays smoothly CPU low-20's
1080p Content (H.264 trailers from apple.com) - Plays smoothly CPU high-teens.

Without HA, I saw CPU use of ~50% for my OTA content and around 85% for the 1080p content.


Hope this is able to help someone else. I still have a couple other issues, but they are unrelated to this thread.

Thanks,
JBreits

[gazoo]

Only problem (well to me at least) with VMR9FSE is that you can't play Netflix plugin at FSE. If you don't use it, you won't miss it though..

[johnsonx42]

I think i have Arcsoft total media on the disk that came with one of my kworld tuners (I have kworld usb tuners and a hauppauge pcie 1250). I guess I'll have to install it and try the arcsoft decoders.

[JBreits]

The Cyberlink MPEG2 decoder worked too, but it was a hassle to modify the registry each time I changed the filter settings.

[bajabronco]

I have done some testing and found out when the stuttering occurs on my config. I get the stuttering when the decoder is one that supports hardware acceleration and vmr9 is enabled. To do some testing, I brought up GBPVR in widowed mode, and catalyst as well, and was watching both the heat and card utilization of my Radeon HD 2600PRO card on Catalyst while playing different content on GBPVR. When running with one of the decoders that has hardware acceleration and when VMR9 was enabled, the activity on the video card would be at 100% -pegged in catalyst, and the picture would stutter (CPU utilization would be down near 20%) - when the picture was smooth, I would have to be in Overlay mode, or running a decoder without hardware acceleration and of course my CPU utilization was much higher. I am assuming the problem on our Radeon cards is being caused by maxing out the capacity of the card at 100% - anyone else who has been having this problem, can you do the same test and see if it is the same case for you as well?

[JBreits]

I wondered that myself. How can you view the utlization of your graphics card in CCC? I don't see that option on mine (HD3200 integrated)?

JBreits

[bajabronco]

In my version of catalyst there is the ATI Overdrive section- it shows it to you there.