Return to Render -- Just what renderer am I using?

Ommina · 2011-09-30, 03:44 AM

I've been going through the list of video renderers (which apparently isn't a word), trying to find which gives me the best picture.

So far, ERV gives me the best picture, but no OSD.
VMR9 was mostly acceptable, but HD content has jagged lines where they should be nice and straight.
VMR7 was much the same, though it seemed to be a bit more jaggly.
Overlay actually gave me a better picture than both VMR7 and VMR9, although not quite as good as EVR. But OSD worked.

Ok, fine, but I'm using XP. Which, as I understand it, doesn't support ERV in the first place. So my best picture is coming from a renderer that, apparently, I don't have. The log states "Adding EVR renderer", so, presumably, it is being changed to something else somewhere in DirectShow land. Would it drop all the way back to Overlay (and if so, why wouldn't OSD work)?

Is there something I can do to improve the video quality I get via VMR9? (Further, I note that VMR7 on this machine gives me substantially better quality than VMR7 upstairs. Which is interesting, but I don't know what to do with it.)

I'm open to any suggestions. I need OSD, so I'm actually using overlay now. Which, I guess, is fine if that does the job, but I'd really like to better understand what is going on.

As always, many thanks to all.

stustunz · 2011-09-30, 03:50 AM

i use evr and ffdshow since nextpvr screwed everything else on xp

Ommina · 2011-09-30, 04:08 AM

Do you get OSD?

EVR + ffdshow gave me the best picture upstairs. But no OSD. Interestingly, on this machine (also XP), EVR + ffdshow gives me a good picture AND OSD, though the sound & picture desynchronize. I guess I need to find a way to compare what is happening on machine A to what is happening on machine B.

stustunz · 2011-09-30, 04:27 AM

Yes osd is fine on both nvidia cards and ati
only issues i have are
1. I get a blank screen for about 3-4seconds after more 30mins of play when i stop the video to go back to recording menu
2. Sometimes the video is a bit jumpy for about 5 secs every now and then(random)

stustunz · 2011-09-30, 04:52 AM

Make sure you are using ffdshow for audio also

Ommina · 2011-09-30, 05:30 AM

Hm, I'm not using ffdshow for audio upstairs, I'll try that directly. Along with Gspot.

VMR9 Custom and FSE both crash npvr completely, so they're off the list. Of course, with EVR being Vista+ only, the greater question of "what renderer am I using then?" remains open.

Thanks for your comments thus far, stustunz!

stustunz · 2011-09-30, 05:36 AM

evr works in xp you just dont get the video card doing the decoding the cpu does all the work ,but evr is more efficient than vmr so as long as your computer is reasonable it should work fine

hoborg · 2011-09-30, 10:28 AM

stustunz Wrote:evr works in xp you just dont get the video card doing the decoding the cpu does all the work ,but evr is more efficient than vmr so as long as your computer is reasonable it should work fine

+no HW deinterlacing
+tearing

So using EVR on XP is really bad idea...

Right now i am using VMR9 FSE and it working just fine on my HTPC with latest NPVR patches.

Ommina · 2011-09-30, 10:57 AM

OK then, what role (if any) does video drivers play in all of this? I'm having no luck at all determining what the difference is between this computer (which is both older hardware and installation) and the upstairs machine, which is significantly gutsier and had a fresh reinstall only two weeks ago.

Yet here things work pretty well (so long as I'm careful to restart npvr between renderer changes), but upstairs it is just icky. Which suggests it is not an issue with npvr, but with that PC.

gspot reports the same filters for each machine. (Hm, but it might be a newer ffdshow upstairs.)

What about the hardware itself? Is there anything else that can play a part that I should explore?

hoborg · 2011-09-30, 11:04 AM

Reproduce your problem with VMR9 FSE, then post NPVR LOGs.

What GPU do you have?

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