Disappointing MPEG2 decoding

[janlovik]

If you're finding a difference in the playback quality between applications, then its most likely using different MPEG decoder to the other application or different renderer Overlay/VMR7/VMR9. If you end up with the same combination of render and decoders, then the performance will be exactly the same as other applications (because it will the exact same components doing the playback).

My PVR-box gives me better playback in Windows Media Player, than in GB-PVR. Sharper picture and better colours. So I would like to use the same render and decoder in GB-PVR as in Windows media player; how can I find out which render and decoders windows media player uses?

\Jan

[stefan]

how can I find out which render and decoders windows media player uses?
\Jan

You may want to read this thread:
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=6290

[DEfusion]

I would think the XP versions would be the same, but the 2k one might be different. I did not download one from the internet, I had it on my hard drive because I updated manually to SP2 which includes DX9.0c. I'll be happy to host it here for the board if people are interested.

You can use dxdiag to figure out what versions of each file you're using, or you can open the properties for any .dll and it will also tell you the version number.

Jason

I too have downloaded a quartz.dll file that is reporting that it is 6.5.1.902 but the filesize is 1,962,496. This didn't really make a difference to my system when I replaced the 9.0c quartz.dll file with it. Does anyone have the that is 1,246,208 bytes. It did seem a little odd that an older file would have being so big, especially with it only being a minor version difference.

-D

[hellmelt]

I too have downloaded a quartz.dll file that is reporting that it is 6.5.1.902 but the filesize is 1,962,496. This didn't really make a difference to my system when I replaced the 9.0c quartz.dll file with it. Does anyone have the that is 1,246,208 bytes. It did seem a little odd that an older file would have being so big, especially with it only being a minor version difference.

-D

I'm having the same situation with versions and sizes. I'm on Windows 2000 Pro. And the replacement made no difference.

My minor problem is that some mpeg2 files are really stalling in PowerDVD, while others play fine.

My major problem is that both recordings playback as well as LiveTV in GB-PVR are full of large (I guess 10x10 pixels) green (mostly) squares on top of picture. These squares come and go in different positions over the picture. I.e. the decoding fails completely. Maybe I'm having some lousy default decoder, but I don't how to check. DECCHECK is an XP tool.

Help?

[gEd]

replacing the quartz.dll fixed my problem whereby gb-pvr would hang when trying to playback a recording.

thanks!!!!!

[DEfusion]

I had got my gb-pvr working pretty much perfectly after having stuttering live tv & slight stutters when watching either a recording or during time shifting.

Anyway to cut a long story short I played with every setting and got it working to my satisfaction, but the XP install threw some strange errors every now and then and I decided to wipe the whole install and start again.

Saving my config settings & writing them down to make double sure I did a clean install, set everything up as it was before and now my video stuttered worse than ever.

Lots more playing around I have a completely different setup of codecs, de-interlacing etc. But I have found the two most important things for getting rid of my stuttering are:

1) De-Interlacing, playing with this massively reduces stuttering.
2) Audio codecs & rendered, playing with this can cause lots of stuttering to very little.

Changing the software video decoder doesn't make too much of a difference to me.

I am now in a situtation where I wasn't before, VM9 produces the best results (no stutter) whereas previously it was overlay. However VM9 has a strange artifacting, a strange diagonal line across the screen in panning shots where it appears as is half of the screen is a frame behind, so I'm using overlay again - it works almost as good as before.

I hope this helps someone else, but the long and short of it is that I've spent many hours trying out every different combination of settings on two seperate occasions on the same hardware and come up with two final settings that are quite different but perform well. I'm sure this is what others will have to do if they see similar problems and the simple fix of changing quartz.dll doesn't resolve it.

-D

[edgedamage]

I tryed EVERYTHING listed in all the posts and got only a little improvement. I was still getting dropped frames / playback problems after using search which would go away after pressing pause. My machine is no lightweight machine eather I do video editing / incoding with it. Using WMP or any other player I never got dropped frames playing back mpegs. I even did the quartz.dll rollback trick and still got dropped frames while playing back through GBPVR. I am using a little lcd vga monitor as well as composite out for the tv. The lcd is used reading fonts in windows which are impossable to read on a television screen. The problem was solved by telling my vid card to use the tv as the primary display and POW that was it no more dropped frames even when using the "system default" settings in the playback tab. Even searching like crazy I was unable to reproduce the jerky playback that using search sometimes caused.

[mobiusnz]

Just to add a positive result to Quartz.dll so more people might believe it works. I was skeptical as it was intermittent and only in GBPVR but having replaced the 9.0c version of Quartz.dll with the 9.0b version my problem of "Jittery" playback after skipping Fwd and Back appears to be gone!

In my search I found this picture that for a still frame I thought accurately depicted the fault in question when it comes to the quartz.dll fix. It was created in photoshop artificially by a "Darren E" in the Snapstream Media forum but it made me confident the fault discribed fit the bill for me!



To me it looked like the framerate the software was playing back at was out of sync with the recording and frames ended up overlaying each other (although it actually all kept time) but this depicts the result quite well I thought! (See Nemo looks a little ghosted or out of focus)

[muskgrave]

i tried the quartz.dll thing and it actually made things worse! gb-pvr would not even load! i was really excited when i found this program that everything I wanted had been found..but even with my powerful hardware (P4 3ghz/1gb DDR /200gb seperate drive with 8mb cache/ATI Theater 550 /Audigy2) the program acts like it's always on the verge of skipping and if i hold my nose the wrong way it either jerks the video, plays nothing but static for audio, or cuts the audio in and out....it's like i might as well be using the cheapest software dependant hardware out there b/c thats all i'm getting with this. i just tried to record a documentary i really wanted to see but it's ruined because the audio keeps cutting in and out..i'm afraid to try anything else...i'm really ticked at ATI for not supporting their 550 products with MMC, which is the only program that would record well..

[sub]

i was really excited when i found this program that everything I wanted had been found..but even with my powerful hardware (P4 3ghz/1gb DDR /200gb seperate drive with 8mb cache/ATI Theater 550 /Audigy2) the program acts like it's always on the verge of skipping and if

GB-PVR doesnt do any of the playback itself, it just uses third software and codecs already installed on your machine. If it doesnt work well for you, then it because of the combination of third party software already installed on your machine.

This software works really well for most people.