Ghosting with Intervideo Video Decoder

[jman0918]

When I watch a recording using GB-PVR's playback feature it looks great. I have an ATI 9700 Pro using Catalyst 7.0 drivers, a WinTV-PVR 150 (my ATI Theater is currently unavailable) and the Intervideo drivers from WinDVR3, which compare to the NonCSS version supplied by Hauppaugue. You can get them by installing the demo of WinDVR3.

I'd rather skip past commercials with the IR Remote than wait for my AMD 2400+ to remove, hopefully, all and only the commercials. The problem is I usually get ghosting after skipping, a double image during motion. The ATI driver is set to "auto" and has several different options, and the Intervideo is set to deinterlace (HWMC and DXVA set to 1 in HKLM\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\Common\VideoDec).

I think what's happening is that GB-PVR might be missing the key frame, or the hardware driver and Interlink software are at odds and goof up the video deinterlacing, because sometimes I can reset GB-PVR by skipping back once or clicking pause. Is this a known issue, and can it be fixed?

I'd really like to get this setup working smoothly since I get the best video quality compared to the Intervideo NonCSS and Cyberlink PowerDVD 6 playback.

[sub]

Can you post a screenshot of this so we can determine what type of problem it is?

I think what's happening is that GB-PVR might be missing the key frame, or the hardware driver and Interlink software are at odds and goof up the video deinterlacing, because sometimes I can reset GB-PVR by skipping back once or clicking pause. Is this a known issue, and can it be fixed?

GB-PVR doesnt do the playback itself, instead just letting Directshow components on your machine do it. Most of these playback issues are resolved by switching video decoders or video renderers. There are couple of other things like the quartz.dll bug that also pop up, but I dont think this sounds like that problem.

[jman0918]

I'll try to capture it, I'm not sure if stills will adequately show what's happening.

[jman0918]

I forced the playback, and was able to get some screens that might show whats happening. 1.jpg and 2.jpg were taken when i was seeing ghosting, and 3.jpg when I was not seeing ghosting. The video is MPG NTSC 720 x 480 variable 3500/7200 bitrate using a WinTV-PVR 150. Playback is on a 2400+ Thoroughbred, nforce board; the relevant component is an AIW 9700 PRO with Catalyst drivers dated 2/2/07, deinterlacing set to Auto and it can choose from Bob, motion adaptive, vector adaptive, adaptive, and weave. I am also using the Intervideo CSS codec with deinterlacing enabled.

I tried to get shots where the camera is panning, or someone is moving across the screen.

I have a hunch that I need to force the video driver to pick one of the deinterlacing options ... hmmm.

[sub]

Yuck, not very clear. Is your desktop set for 32 bit colour?

Maybe try the decoder from: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPV_Decoder.htm

[FirstTeamOPS]

I see that when I try using either the Intervideo DVD or PowerDVD codecs. Don't think I've seen that with the NonCSS codec. Maybe changing VMRs??! I settled on a different codec anyway.

[jman0918]

Um, which codec did you decide on, FirstTeamOps? The screenshots were taken on Full Screen Exclusive, and they are NTSC 320 x 240 broadcasts that are upscaled to DVD resolution. I think a lot of the blur has to do with the block noise associated with motion.

In any case, I decided to do some trial and error and a little reading, and settled on "adaptive" as the most stable and offering the highest quality I can get on my spartan budget and available signals, and that the Ati driver was switching to Motion or Vector adaptive after skips and creating unstable playback.

Or something. I might try turning off Intervideo's built in deinterlacing and just let the Catalyst driver do the deinterlacing.

[FirstTeamOPS]

Um, which codec did you decide on, FirstTeamOps?

I was using the NonCSS decoder but I had alot of image stutter (most noticeable in the scrolls) when I watch the news channels. I also tried the Quartz dll fix in one of the stickys.

I finally settled on the ATI Avivo decoder. I'm currently running Avivo (with a modified config.xml) in VMR7 with the old quartz.dll (6.05.2600.2749).

I'm not really sure if the decoder will work with the 9700 series card because I have an X1600 series.

[jman0918]

No, I dont think I can use the Avivo codec, but thats ok. I narrowed down the image studder to a conflict between the Intervideo native deinterlacing filter and the ATI Catalyst hardware accelerated MPEG deinterlace filter. Henceforth, I'm turning OFF (see above) the native deinterlacing in the Intervideo NonCSS codec, and forcing ATI to use Adaptive Deinterlacing. I found that Intervideo tweak on a SageTV forum regarding Hauppauge hardware capture cards.

I just watched 2 hrs of American Idol, the top 11 performances, and GB-PVR playback was very stable. I wonder though if I'll experience the same issues with the Theater 550 when I get it back as it has a hardware deinterlacing filter.

[FirstTeamOPS]

Donno if it would help your situation or not... but I thought there was a way to enable hardware decoding with the Intervideo NonCSS decoder. Doing a search, all I can seem to find is enabling the hardware decoder on the regular Intervideo DVD decoder.