Poor Quality Recording

[Keeper]

How do i temporarily disabling dscaler for playback?

I did try changing the deinterlacing to different settings and Bob was the best on the TV. There were some fluttering or displacement at the bottom of the screen. Can someone tell me why Bob makes a difference?

So from everyones help it looks like the capture card is not the issue rather it is the playback (mpeg playback and video card) that is the issue. I thought i had a good video card but maybe i don't.

Is there any other drivers like dscaler that i can try?

I may try the omega video drivers as well.

thanx again for all your help

[jam_zhou]

I've got a 9600xt AIW with one pvr150. I recorded the world juniour hockey champsionships and it recorded just fine and I output to my 15 year old Trinitron.

How high do you have your output resolution? I used to have what I thought was tearing in that whenever there was a quick side to side motion the picture would be as if I was watching TV through blinds. It was always in the centre of the screen but then that's where most of the action is usually so my symptoms seem to be the same as yours. I solved this by reducing my TV out resolution from 1024x768 to 800x600 and should probably be brought down to 750x352 to match the resolution of the video.

What you might want to check out is if the recording still looks bad when you play it using winDVD or zoom player.

I use the cyberlink decoders but this happened with other decoders including dscaler.

Good luck.

[gEd]

How do i temporarily disabling dscaler for playback?

er, didn't you enable it in the gbpvr config?

I did try changing the deinterlacing to different settings and Bob was the best on the TV. There were some fluttering or displacement at the bottom of the screen.

quote from dscaler site:
DScaler 4 is a piece of software that captures video, processes it, and scales it for presentation on a projector or computer monitor.

So from everyones help it looks like the capture card is not the issue rather it is the playback (mpeg playback and video card) that is the issue. I thought i had a good video card but maybe i don't.

It could be a factor but please try the other suggestions out first before changing the card and spending $$$.

Is there any other drivers like dscaler that i can try?

Just to clarify dscaler is a de-interlacing program, not a driver.

I may try the omega video drivers as well.

I use these for my 9600 pro and the work fine, although I haven't compared them to the the standard ATI drivers to compare differences. I think the supposed image quality improvements would only be seen in games.

Try setting your resolution to 720 x 480 (NTSC) using powerstip. (Perhaps other NTSC users could comment on the merit of doing this).

[chud]

i would agree that if you are outputting to the tv, you probably want to be running something like 800x600 (or closer to NTSC res using powerstrip or a custom res in CCC).

i think when Keeper is talking about Dscaler, he is talking abou the vid codec (Dscaler5), not the deinterlacer (Dscaler4).

i would think that the S-video out on the video card is interlaced regardless to conform to the NTSC standards. deinterlacing the video would not change this, but possibly some artifacts are being introduced in the conversion (back) to interlaced.

basically in deinterlacing, none (or weave) is best for no motion. the picture will be sharp and stable. with motion you will see the comb or "blinds" effect. bob is good for motion. it tries to deconstruct the 30fps interlaced video (NTSC) into 60fps (and in the process needs to 2x scale the vertical resolution of the half res frames) so each image shown in succession is a full picture rather than an every-second-line one. this leads to a loss of sharpness and "flickering" observed in regions of no motion.

the best deinterlacing methods try to combine the two where algorithms try to apply specific methods on specific parts of the image. these are the "adaptive" options in the ATI CCC.

[gEd]

good info chud and thanks for pointing out that I was getting my dscalers mixed up!

[strategus]

I'd like to add something to this...

I'm also a sports/hockey fan (and also Canadian), so I use GBPVR for catching lots of fast-action programs.

Following this thread, I downloaded and installed the DScaler5 codecs. It made a pretty huge difference in "smoothing" out the video. But it introduced a couple of mildly unpleasant issues:

1. DScaler seems to do some weird "ghosting" when the action gets hot. You can especially notice this in a hockey game when the camera pans past the red or blue lines. You can clearly see a thin strip of the line on the ice AHEAD of the panning (ie. if the camera is quickly panning left-->right, the blue line on the ice will have a thin ghost just right of the line itself). You can notice it on the players often, too.

2. DScaler also seems to get befuddled when I use the "skip ahead" function in GBPVR. About 1/2 the time, when I resume, the video will get unbearably jittery -- and stay that way. Usually if I pause/unpause it a couple of times, it will fix itself, though. It doesn't seem to be a performance issue -- it just can't seem to get into synch or something.

I've tried the quartz.dll "fix," but it didnt' seem to help at all.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
S.

[strategus]

Haven't heard of MainConcept until now. But I'd like to give it a try.

I checked out their website. The latest version seems to be 1.5.1 -- is 1.42 better than that one?

Thanks,
S.

[strategus]

So, I gave MainConcept's 1.5.1 a try.

I have to say that for smoothness, DScaler5 still has it beat by quite a wide margin.

Not to say that MainConcept isn't superior in other ways, but for watching a sporting event with lots of side-to-side panning, it's still quite jerky and stuttered.

S.

[chud]

1. DScaler seems to do some weird "ghosting" when the action gets hot. You can especially notice this in a hockey game when the camera pans past the red or blue lines. You can clearly see a thin strip of the line on the ice AHEAD of the panning (ie. if the camera is quickly panning left-->right, the blue line on the ice will have a thin ghost just right of the line itself). You can notice it on the players often, too.

2. DScaler also seems to get befuddled when I use the "skip ahead" function in GBPVR. About 1/2 the time, when I resume, the video will get unbearably jittery -- and stay that way. Usually if I pause/unpause it a couple of times, it will fix itself, though. It doesn't seem to be a performance issue -- it just can't seem to get into synch or something.

i am not quite sure i have seen your point #1, but i have come across point #2. i believe it is some sort of failure to properly deinterlace. i am not sure what causes it or how to make it go away. i have had this issue twice and after fiddling with decoders, video card drivers and settings, etc, eventually it was gone. out of curiosity, are you using an ATI video card?

[strategus]

Yes, I'm using an ATI card -- x300, with AVIVO. Drivers are up-to-date.

But I'm outputting the signal through SVideo to a TV. So, I don't imagine interlacing is the problem (all NTSC TV images are interlaced, if I'm not mistaken).

I've scanned DScaler5 forums, but haven't found anything that seems to resolve this issue.

S.