Appears to be a deinterlacing problem (and a few other issues)

[Glasswalker]

Hey, I am just curious about this one. I have a WinTV-PVR150 card, and using it on a backend machine to record only. I am accessing those files from a second machine (currently it is my pc, but in the future it will be an xbox connected to my tv).

I am playing back either mpeg or xvid files (I have it set to transcode to xvid after midnight). When the shows are in mpeg format (high quality) they are crisp and nice, however I get VERY bad motion jaggies (you can see the 2 fields seperating badly during motion). Once this is transcoded to xvid it appears to create major pixelation problems (still scenes are clear and crisp, motion is EXTREMELY pixelated).

Any thoughts on this, or is there anywhere else I should be looking to fine tune this?

If it helps any, I used to use Myth before I found out about GBPVR (with this exact card actually) but never noticed any quality or motion issues with it. Now it was playing back on the TV directly through an nvidia tvout, but still, I would prefer if these files are watchable on a PC as well...

Also I notice that the PVR150 settings aren't "fine tuned" lol... on Myth it was neccisary to hand tune the brightness, contrast, white balance, saturation, and other settings to get good color vibrance and such (specifically saturation by default is extremely low on the 150 cards and turning it up made a world of difference in myth). Is there a way to manually access these settings of the card through GBPVR?

Thanks!

[Glasswalker]

Oh and as a followup, I am not playing the files with GBPVR, I am using a variety of players, Nero Powerplayer, WinDVD, WMP, and others, all seem equally effected.

[sub]

If you used the built in conversion stuff, then there is lots of stuff you can tweak. See the <CustomFFmpegConversions> in config.xml for the ffmpeg command line used for conversion. Documentation can be found at http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-doc.html

I'd probably try tweaking the bitrate setting first (-b).

[Glasswalker]

What about the interlacing issue though (thanks for the tip on the xvid encoding, that is awesome I will just record in highest quality mpeg and use that converter).

I am still getting lots of alternate field stuff (heavy lines that "un-weave" when horizontal movement is present, like on cheapass tv input cards...)

I cranked up the bitrate to test and encoded a file, turned out to be same size as the mpeg, no pixelation really, but still had the off lines (and really badly too, like sometimes they jut out like 10-15 pixels width) it is definately an interlacing issue.

As I said I am hoping to make the final xvid files playable on both pc and tv, so I want them to be deinterlaced (and let the tvout hardware interlace it again, I know that looses quality, but not by that much)

That and my next tv will be progressive anyway

[sub]

Its not entirely clear whether your interlacing issue relates to mpeg or xvid.

If its mpeg, then the files should be interlacing, and the deinterlacing should occur at playback - if not, try a different decoder.

If you're wanting to deinterlace during the xvid creation, I seem to remember there is an ffmpeg "-deinterlace" command line parameter. That said, even if it the file is interlaced, you shouldnt see any interlacing artifacts during playback, the decoder is supposed to deinterlace prior to presentation - if this is not happening, you might be best to try an alternative decoder.

[Glasswalker]

ok, I will give that a go. I am experiencing problems in both formats, mpeg and divx. I will try a number of playback options. Thanks!

[pBS]

make sure also that you're not double-deinterlacing with ffdshow raw filters..
[if you have ffdshow installed, if not, don't worry]