Easy Performance Increase for Hauppauge Users

[Narflex]

I just found a nifty registry setting that cut my CPU usage in half and made the deinterlacing beautiful when using the Intervideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge as the selected Video Decoder in SageRecorder/SageTV.

I'd highly recommend trying this if you have the Hauppauge hardware; I'd also like to hear results. The only requirement is that your video card has some sort of MPEG2 acceleration. Nearly all of them do now.

Just change these registry settings to 1 while SageTV is asleep or you're not watching video in SageRecorder, or they both are shutdown:

HKLM\Software\Intervideo\Custom\Hauppauge\VideoDec\Dxva
HKLM\Software\Intervideo\Custom\Hauppauge\VideoDec\Hwmc

For the newer decoders the location is:

HKLM\Software\IviSDK4Hauppauge\Common\VideoDec\Dxva
HKLM\Software\IviSDK4Hauppauge\Common\VideoDec\Hwmc

[edmc]

Another thing that helped me was to decrease the quality a notch (from 3GB/hr down to 2GB/hr). Can't tell the difference on my 480p LCD RPTV and it operates smoother from my cursory viewing.

I'm running a "lowly" 1.6GHz P4. Maybe with these settings, I'll be able to go back up to the 3GB/hr quality...

Will post my results later tonight...

[SHS]

Keep mind in that this only useful with some video card not all.
The video must support DxVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) and HwMC (Hardware Motion Compensation) Like let say nVidia GeForce4 Go/MX Series cards

Some other stuff
MicroSoft DirectX
VPE (Video Port Extensions)
DxVA (DirectX Video Acceleration)

nVidia
VPE (Video Processing Engine) Think DScaler

MPEG Stuff
All Video support start with first SVGA card.
CSC (Color Space Conversion)

Some support one or two or all
MC (Motion Compensation) or HwMC (Hardware Motion Compensation)
iDCT (inverse Discrete Cosine Transform)
IQ (Inverse Quantization)

No video card support this
VLD (Variable Length Decode)

[JJarmoc]

Doesn't DxVA also require Directx 9?

[Narflex]

Nope. DirectX9 is not required for DXVA.

[SHS]

DxVA require DirectX 8 and Video drv that support it.

[edmc]

DxVA is also required for HD S/W Decoders like DViCo's FusionHDTV I (unless you are willing to live with quarter-resolution and have a very fast CPU).

[edmc]

I did discover that I was set to Default for the Video/Audio Renderers. I switched to the InterVideo NonCSS Video/Audio Renderers - no apparent difference so I guess the "Merit System" was already selecting those....

But I did not see a repeatable difference with flipping these settings. It seems the TaskMgr's Performance Numbers are very content dependent. I suppose I could playback the same content of a pre-recorded program, but even that would be hard to get accurate readings. But in no way did I see a 50% reduction in CPU Utilization.

In any event, watching a colorful music video in either mode consumed around 30% of my 1.6GHz Pentium4 CPU.

[laurenglenn]

I gave it a try and noticed that the video seems smoother in terms of frame rate. It just looked like I was watching regular TV. No problems as of yet.

BTW, I'm running XP with an Athlon 1400 and 768MB of RAM. The video card is a Radeon 8500LE and I have a PVR-250

[comprat]

Originally posted by Narflex
I just found a nifty registry setting that cut my CPU usage in half and made the deinterlacing beautiful when using the Intervideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge as the selected Video Decoder in SageRecorder/SageTV.

I'd highly recommend trying this if you have the Hauppauge hardware; I'd also like to hear results. The only requirement is that your video card has some sort of MPEG2 acceleration. Nearly all of them do now.

Just change these registry settings to 1 while SageTV is asleep or you're not watching video in SageRecorder, or they both are shutdown:
HKLM\Software\Intervideo\Custom\Hauppauge\VideoDec\Dxva
HKLM\Software\Intervideo\Custom\Hauppauge\VideoDec\Hwmc

Let me know how it goes, I just found this out a little while ago.

Thanks,

I went to try this, but there is no "Intervideo" folder on my computer in the registry paths you gave. I am running WinXP and have a PVR-350 card. What gives? :confused:

Thanks!

[laurenglenn]

Originally posted by comprat
I went to try this, but there is no "Intervideo" folder on my computer in the registry paths you gave. I am running WinXP and have a PVR-350 card. What gives? :confused:

Thanks!
Go to this site ( http://www.hauppauge.com/html/sw_pvr_250.htm ) and download the newest version of the Hauppauge Video Decoder. Hopefully that will install the WinDVD decoder and the registry keys for you.

Lauren

[comprat]

Originally posted by laurenglenn
Go to this site ( http://www.hauppauge.com/html/sw_pvr_250.htm ) and download the newest version of the Hauppauge Video Decoder. Hopefully that will install the WinDVD decoder and the registry keys for you.

Lauren

Thanks laurenglenn, that did the trick! I probably should have thought of that first, but I just figured I already had it installed. I was fiddling with the Hauppauge software trying to get my scheduler to work right. Guess I must of uninstalled it then. That was before I found out about SageTV.

Anyway, I changed the settings but it did not seem to decrease my CPU usage. It still hovers around 35-40%, although my video is output via my PVR-350 instead of my videocard. Hopefully we will be able to disable the local video through SageTV soon. I am running WinXP, Athlon XP 1800, 768MB RAM, Hauppauge PVR-350, Ti4200 Nvidia GeForce 4.

comprat

[jw1248]

mine had both old and new registry settings.
changing the old registry settings had no effect.
after changing new registry settings, got a 33% cpu decrease

for geforce2 and p4 2.4

sagetv 45% cpu
w/ hack 35% cpu
no sagetv 15% cpu

overall a 33% decrease

[ditohead]

I'm a recent convert to Sage and the PVR-250. I just received my hardware bundle from Frey yesterday, so I'm still fumbling around trying to figure stuff out. Previously I had the ATI 8500DV. I was not at all pleased with its picture quality or the fact that my PC was pretty much useless because of CPU utilization when trying to record something with it. That's when I found the great info here and decided to give Sage and the PVR-250 a try. After getting everything hooked up and installed last night from the bundle I can say that the picture quality is awesome compared to what I had before and my computer is still very useable even while watching/recording.

The reason I'm responding here is because I tried the hack mentioned above but did not see any difference on my system. I have a Pentium 4 1.6 with 256mb ram and nvidia card (I'll have to look up the model number later). My cpu utilization hovers around 60% with only SageTV running both with and without the hack. I see a post from edmc above where he has the same cpu with much lower cpu utilization, so my problem must not be the cpu. Any other ideas on how I could lower my cpu utilization?

[dkardatzke]

I'm assuming you have the Intervideo NonCSS decoder selected in Detailed Setup > Video? If so, have you tried the different Modes, A,B,C,D to see if there's any difference?

[ditohead]

Thanks for the quick follow-up.

Yes, I have the Intervideo NonCSS decoder selected in Detailed Setup. I have not yet tried the different modes but will give them a try tonight. I'll let you know what happens.

[ditohead]

I tried the different modes this evening both with and without the hack and none of them made any difference. In fact, with the hack in place and trying the different modes I received the error message "There was an error with the MPEG-2 video setup. Failed connecting MPEG2 video stream using DirectX Video Acceerlation media type. ErrCode=0x80070057" and had audio but no video.

Don't know if this makes any difference or not... I am running Windows XP Professional. For rendering filter if I use "Overlay" sometimes I only see a small portion of what is being broadcast and do not see any more of it even if I resize the window. Other times with "Overlay" for the rendering filter I see the entire screen. With "Overlay", my CPU utilization hovers around 40%, but obviously it is a problem if I do not consistently see the full screen. If I use the "Default (Uses VMR on XP)" rendering filter I consistently see the full screen but that's when my utilization hovers around 60%.

[ditohead]

Should have mentioned in my previous post that I have ONLY tried the hack with the "Default (Uses VMR on XP)" rendering filter. I have not yet tried it with the "Overlay" rendering filter since I have had some inconsistency with that one.

[Mike Young]

From my experience, once you enable the Hack the intervideo will ONLY work in VMR mode. Dont know if that holds true for your setup, I have also found that only Default mpeg mode and default interlacing will work, but the quality is real nice and CPU util. should be in the 10% range.
also make sure you dont have both sets of registry keys and edited only one :

HKLM\Software\Intervideo\Custom\Hauppauge\VideoDec
\Dxva
HKLM\Software\Intervideo\Custom\Hauppauge\VideoDec
\Hwmc

For the newer decoders the location is:

HKLM\Software\IviSDK4Hauppauge\Common\VideoDec\Dxv
a
HKLM\Software\IviSDK4Hauppauge\Common\VideoDec\Hwm
c


Also, I have noticed sometimes you have to close Sage down and restart to get the setting to take, particularly when you have changed codec or rendering mode.

[ditohead]

Thanks for the input. Yes, I checked for both sets of reg keys but only had the new ones. I don't know what I was doing the past couple of days that had the "overlay" rendering filter behaving inconsistently, but now it is not giving me any problems. And my cpu utilization now hovers around 30% while watching live or recorded TV with the rendering filter set to "overlay" and with the hack applied when. The "Default (Uses VMR on XP)" setting still gives me around 60% utilization when watching live or recorded TV. I have also tried all of the different "mode" options with the "overlay" rendering filter (no errors for any of them) but none of them made any difference. 30% is a lot better than 60% but I'd still like to get it lower.

[Mike Young]

One thing you could try...just to see. download the Windvd 5 demo and try that....you can set it in the controls In WinDVD to use DXVA. Then check your registry settings again. WinDVD 5 install will use the OLDER version of the registry keys listed above (the Intervideo keys), in Sage it should show up as just 'Intervideo" I found the picture quality and deinterlacing to be really good with that codec and cpu usage was between 5% and 10% when viewing TV.
That should be the highest by the way, since you are allways recording when watching. I'm experiencing these usages with a Athlon 2500 which I think is roughly equivilent to your processor.
I found when I was not using DXVA my usage was similar to yours, but with codecs that were implementing DXVA there was a dramatic difference.
In anycase, if you can get the WINDVD codec to work with DXVA and a dramatic CPU decrease, then you will know if something is not working with the others for sure.
Interestingly, I found that the plain Intervideo codec only went into DXVA when OVERLAY was used, cpu with VMR was 50%, the non css intervideo drivers where the exact oposite.

[ditohead]

Thanks for the suggestions. I FINALLY had a chance to tinker a little more and try your suggestions but still have not had any luck. Upon donwloading the WinDVD 5 demo I did have Intervideo available within Sage but I could not find DXVA in WinDVD's control's. Another interesting thing is that after installing the WinDVD 5 demo I did NOT have a "Custom" folder under Intervideo in the registry but only had a "Common" folder. I changed the DXVA and HWMC values in its corresponding sub-folders but it had no effect. Unfortunately using just the plain Intervideo within Sage actually bumped my CPU utilization back up to around 50% with either overlay or vmr.

A few more questions...

I have tinkered with registry settings before but never added any and I am definitely not a registry expert. Would there be any harm to me ADDING the registry values to the Intervideo folder in the registry?

I re-read the original post where Narflex says "The only requirement is that your video card has some sort of MPEG2 acceleration". I went to confirm this about my video card (GeForce2 MX series). On Nvidia's site the product overview page says "video acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and Indeo" which sounds to me like it should work. Would you agree?

I have 256 meg of ram in my machine. I know that more ram can never hurt, but from your experience do you think more ram would help in this situation?

Thanks again for everyone's help.

[mlbdude]

DXVA is usually comprised of two hardware acceleration settings. I used to use WinDVD5 and in the video properties there are two check boxes listed near Hardware Acceleration. Those are what you are looking for.

The Hauppauge Intervideo 4 codecs are pretty much the same thing so perhaps matching the registry entries for the Intervideo (WinDVD) 5 codec would work. I would suggest trying it through the interface first though.

[falchulk]

ditohead, that card will definitely have acceleration. I have an old nvidia tnt2 card (a gen before the geforce2) that supports it.

[mangriotis]

Can we compile a list of card known to have DXVA and HWMC acceleration capability?

I am wondering if it is worth it for me to change out my video card. I own a Radeon 9200 that is NOT capable of DXVA acceleration, and feel like I am missing out on better picture quality because of this. I am currently using Elecard Dscaler with Two Frame, which is acceptable for most things but dithering is still noticeable on fast-motion scenes.

I know that I cannot go to an nVidia card because I have tried both a GF4 mx, and an FX5200 in my system. Neither of them could achieve the same output resolution (even with Powerstrip) that works with my JVC RPTV (1120x630). This resolution needs to stay because it provides me with 720 and no overscan.

So my real question is: Which ATI cards have DXVA and HWMC capabilities? 9500 and up?

[mlbdude]

ATI 7500+ (maybe even older) are capable of DXVA. Your 9200 and my 9000 certainly are.

If you are having isues with DXVA enabled on any decoder, make sure you are running an ATI driver version that does not have DXVA broken. 3.8 and 3.9 seem to be fine.

[mangriotis]

I get the MPEG decoding error box when trying to play anything after enabling DXVA in the registry. This happens in all modes (default, A,B,C,D, overlay and VMR, bob, weave, etc.).

Why is this? I thought that was the indication that DXVA was not present.

I am running Catalyst 3.8 right now, but will upgrade to 3.9 to see if anything improves...

[mlbdude]

Yeah, you have something wrong. I had issues with 3.7 and DXVA but nothing before it or after. I can run default on everything Overlay or VMR and a couple of the Mpeg Modes (but I run default).

I also use the Sonic decoders using DXVA and they work fine as well.

Maybe an upgrade of DirectX will help too.

[mangriotis]

Turns out I was using Cat 3.7. I upgraded to 3.9 and tried it again. Similar results... I also upgraded DirectX to 9.0b (from 8.1). No change.

When trying Overlay with default, A, or B, the result is an mpeg error (sound but no picture).

When trying Overlay with C or D, Sage simply quits back to desktop with no error or warning.

Not sure how to resolve this... Cyberlink and Elecard Dscaler still seem to work fine.

[sudipto]

I have a ATI Radeon 9600 (non-pro). Will I be able to use this performance enhancement ? I don't know if this card support DXVA ...

[Mike Young]

Absolutley. Since your Card is an ATI - why dont you download and try the ATI cyblerlink Codecs as well - DXVA will be enabled by default and should achive the same or better performance - on my system they performed better than the Non CSS codecs.
- one note you will have to add them to sage properties manually, there is a thread somewhere about that or I could send you the line.

mike/

[sudipto]

Thanks Mike for the super fast reply :)

I will surely try the ATI Cyberlink codecs; are they available separately or will I have to install PowerDVD to get these ?

[mangriotis]

Can you please post a link to these ATI Cyberlink codecs? I can't find them anywhere...

[gplasky]

The ATI Cyberlink decoders would be available on the ATI web site. Look for the MMC software. In there you would find the DVD decoder. You must own the software CD to get the latest version of it. Hope this helps.

Gerry

[Mike Young]

Yes, It will ask for you to put your Catalyst CD in the drive. I want to make the distinction that this will get you ATI cyberlink codecs, which I belive are tweaked for the Radeon, I noticed a definite improvement over the generic ones.
Sage will NOT automatically install these drivers, you have to add them manually.
I suggest running them in overlay with default deinterlace and mpeg modes, and tweak-up all your video card deinterlacing.

mike/

[sudipto]

Mike: Can you tell me what line I need to add to the sage properties file to enable use of the ATI Cyberlink decoders.

Or if you can point me to the post you mentioned before that will do as well.

Thanks !

[mangriotis]

Also, when you say 'tweak up your video card deinterlacing', can you elaborate and be very specific about this? I have a Radeon 9200 and would like to know exactly how to get the most out of it.. I am not satisfied with the Elecard DScaler I am currently using.

[sudipto]

Okay, I found this thread that, I think, Mike was talking about --

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=670&highlight=ATI+Cyberlink

Will try this out tonight.

[mangriotis]

I think I found the codecs here (http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/win98/radeon-ml.html) under the Install ATI MMC section b)...

However, I have a Sapphire Radeon 9200 (powered by ATI) and it does not recognize the CD. Does this mean legally I cannot own this codec?

[sudipto]

The Sapphire CD only comes with the Catalyst drivers and NOT the ATI MMC software, right ? If so, then I don't think you will be able to use the codecs ... because you need to own the original ATI DVD Player which is part of the MMC package ... which, unfortunately, comes only with original ATI cards AFAIK.

[sudipto]

I just tried to install the ATI decoder, and I DO have a valid ATI MMC CD, still the decoder installation failed claiming that it could not validate the CD.

Anyone else seen this problem ?

[gplasky]

You have to make sure the ATI MMC version of the CD contains version 8.1. Any version older will NOT work.
You can purchase the CD you need from ATI for about $10.00 I believe.


Gerry

[sudipto]

Hmm ... that's probably the problem. The CD that I have came with my All-in-Wonder card purchased quite sometime back ... so the MMC version is probably less than 8.1 (I never used the ATI MMC software, so I am not sure which version is on the CD)

Anyone knows where I can find an older version of the ATI Cyberlink decoder that will work with an older version of the MMC CD ?

[gplasky]

They used another decoder before this. Ravisent. They switched to Cyberlink recently, I believe, with the 8.1 version of the MMC software.

Gerry

[mangriotis]

Yeah, ATI wants $10 for a CD with the old 8.1 version of MMC on it... plus $10 to put it in the mail. I cannot, in good conscience, agree to pay that kind of ridiculous shipping charge for a single CD.

Why can't they just sell the current version and allow you to download it???

[gplasky]

Because of the way they want to prevent this software from being pirated you need to have the physical disk. That way they know you legitimately own the software. I'm pretty sure when they shipped my UPS-ground it was less than $5.00 shipping. $15.00-$20.00 is not a ridiculous price for a DVD decoder. Look at Intervideo or Sonic. Their decoder is $14.99 I believe.

[RAlfieri]

This worked beautifully with my AIW Radeon 8500DV. Thanks for the tip.

[sundansx]

I am using the Elecard decoder because i think it presents the least ghosting during deinterlace when shipped back to my NTSC TV via SVID.
Is there anyway to enable DXVA to be used for this decoder? Is it something that needs to be supported in the codec? I am using a ATI All in Blunder Radeon SDR (the original radeon) on this box.

It looks like the tip that launched this thread is specific for the Hauppuage/Intervideo Non CSS decoder.

thanks.

[mlbdude]

The Elecard decoder currently does not support DXVA. When it does (they are planning on implementing it) I don't think it will work with DScaler. I know it won't work with ffdshow though.

[audiohead]

Given the choice of the following 4 cards, which would you go with on a p4 2Ghz sysem with a 1G ram?

Matrox 450
Matrox 550
ATI (Sapphire) 9600
Gengeric GeForce4 MX 440

I have been using the 550 with the Happauge PCI and 250 and have been plenty happy with that on eith a 26" Mitsub and a 36" Toshiba. I haven't gotten into hacking registers yet as that would probably be determined by which card I decaide to do with and how legable things are. I'm new to Sage but not to PVR's, been at it a couple years but not to the level that you have all stretched things but I am very ready will be enjoying this I can see over the 'other guys' alleged turnkey systems.
-bt

[mlbdude]

The ATI would work well with VMR9. I don't think the Matrox's work with DX9 at all and must use Overlay. Not that that is a bad thing though.

[audiohead]

I'm currently using the ATI on my Editing system, I pull video off my TiVo and burn them to VCD one hour per disc. I go off the VGA to a Misubsibshi E85LCD 18.1" and the composite video goes to an old C=<ommodore stereo color monitor. The commie has seperate Chroma and Luminense(?) rca's on the back... I have been doing non-linear editing (audio and video) for a number of years working primarily with the high-end SCSI disc storage systems for the editing systems and tweaking microcode on hard drives was fun, playing with PC based video is turning out to be interesting indeed...

[mostlyfodder]

Here's how I got VMR9 to work without tearing artifact: (i posted this msg in the vmr thread, too, just b/c it took me so long to sort this out & get it working.)

1- first, i did the two registry tweaks described in the forum link i found in the tips n tricks session. there was an obvious artifact, where i could see the picture being kind of painted on. i *think* that's what people mean by 'tearing'. got this info here:

2- i set the presentation interval (in the registry) to 1, and this solved the tearing artifact.

i'm using a wintv pvr 250 and ati aiw 9600 pro.

-fodder

[mlbdude]

PresentationIntervial is no longer used. The registry key is now UsePresentationInterval and I believe it defaults to 1 now.

[mostlyfodder]

mlbdude-
i recall reading that presentationinterval is no longer used, but i found that in my registry and it was set to something other than one. (it was in hexadecimal, and i don't know what the decimal value was.) i am using beta 2, but i am not sure which version as i upgraded from 1.4 a while ago.

in any case, as follow-up, i'm still happily using vmr9 with no tearing artifact and nice semi-transparent menus.

-fodder

[Scott]

Us non-tecchies would like to get a nice quality picture, too. Could you please explain what a registry is and what to do to change these to the settings you describe

many thanks,

Scott

[kny3twalker]

use these to turn it on and off but you will probably need to reboot for to see the change
and goto run in the start menu and type regedit to see the registry

[Scott]

Thanks for the info.

I double-clicked on the zip files and there was a messasge that my regisitry files had been updated. I noticed no difference in the picture (even after re-booting)

So I went into the regedit (thanks for that info on how to access this). I noticed the following entries were still set to "0", so I manually changed them to "1" per the original post (while STV in sleep mode)

HKLM\Software\IviSDK4Hauppauge\Common\VideoDec\Dxv
a
HKLM\Software\IviSDK4Hauppauge\Common\VideoDec\Hwm
c


After re-entering STV I rec'd the following error(see attached jpeg fille)


any thoughts would be really appreciated - I have the Happauge 250 card.

thanks,

Scott

[Scott]

Well, I think I have a 250, it's a relatively new card (less than 6 months old)

My PC info says the following about the Hauppauge card = "Win Tv PVR PCI II"

[stanger89]

Originally posted by Scott
After re-entering STV I rec'd the following error(see attached jpeg fille)

Scott,

Go into Detailed Setup->Video and make sure DXVA MPEG Mode, and DXVA Deinterlace Mode are set to default.

[Scott]

your suggestion worked. the picture looked better, but not as crisp as when I use ffdshow as the video decoder (http://cutka.szm.sk/ffdshow)

With ffdshow, the picture is almost dvd quality, but the motion is a bit jumpy (I'm trying to figure out how to correct this by playing around with different settings)

Even though the motion is a little jumpy at times (very minor, but noticable), the crispness of the picture is so much better that it's still worth putting up with.

The trick with ffdshow is to leave the de-interlacing box un-checked (even though I've read posts that said you must use this feature to get the correct effects). I've attached a jpeg with the some of the settings I now use.

I'm not sure if there's any downside to using ffdshow, or even how it works - but the picture clarity is unbelievable.

Scott

[Scott]

oops, here is the ffdshow jpeg

[Scott]

Well, trying to proove my thesis that ffdshow is much better then the new regedit settings, I think I actually prooved that ffsdshow is only somewhat superior in picture quality - but - like I said earlier - ffdsow also has some motion smoothness issues.

Maybe I'll stick with the new intervideo for Hauppauge settings after all.

To see for yourself here are two screen shots of the exact same scene (MR. Deeds - a great movie, as an aside) using both the new regedit settings for intervideo for hauppauge and for ffdshow...

since I can oly attache one file per message, here is the ffdshow one ...

[Scott]

here is the same shot with the new intervideo for hauppauge settings...

open them both up in slideshow and you can go back and forth to see the difference...

[kny3twalker]

scott they were for use presentation interval not the hauppauge decoder
one turns on vertical sync and the other turns it off
it is on by default and you need to reboot to see any difference
It was just to show you what stops the tearing with VMR9
also if you turn it off you can use overlay with 3 d acceleration and have no UI lag
the UI lags with 3d acceleration and useprestationinterval set to 1
I just get stuttering with it on and small annoying tears with it on
but most games do it as well if I do not turn it on

if you want good picture quality find a better decoder than intervideo or hauppauge intervideo
(cough, sonic cineplayer)
did this topic start off about ram drives or something

[Scott]

ok, so what u r saying is that the regedit changes affect both the intervideo and ffdshow decoders, right? I am trying to get the best possible picture trying a variety of settins/decoders. I don't use the machine for games, only for internet surfinng, e-mail, and -of course- watching TV.

I'll keep on experimenting and please post any good-finds to this board.

thanks,

Scott

[kny3twalker]

scott that is not truely what I was saying
the registry key I posted was for sageTV and it should not matter what decoder you use

what I was suggesting was that you try out other decoders
ffdshow is not a decoder also it uses your system default decoder and ffdshow is more like a postprocessor
if you only have intervideo decoder installed on your system it will be the default but you can always check by going in windows media player to options then DVD then advanced
what ever pops up will be the system's default decoder


You should look in other decoders though seriously
hauppauge intervideo decoder does not produce the best picture quality with ffdshow or without
with vertical sync or without
with 3d acceleration or without

to add a decoder to your list you will need to get a DVD program
like Sonic cineplayer
do not look at winDVD cause it is the same as the one you have already
it uses intervideo video/audio decoder(WinDVD does)

I am suggesting though cineplayer (I should be there sales rep)
it has nice picture quality with overlay and VMR9 video rendering
and the sound quality is nice as well

there is two options when looking at cineplayer
there is the surround cineplayer which gives you extra sound options
and the sonic DVD decoder pack for windows media center(sage in this case not windows media center)

I would go with the sonic DVD decoder pack for windows media center
is installs without its own application it comes simply with a control panel which will be in the control panel for windows

after you restart sage it will appear in your list and you can choose it
it is only 15 dollars compared to the surround cineplayer which has its own application and the extra audio options band is 50


Finally scott I am simply making a reference to something else that uses vertical sync (usepresentationinterval in sage) when I talked about games

I do play games on my box but that is besides the point and does not matter

when you turn off vertical sync alots of times you get tearing where the top of the screen will match up perfectly with the bottom
it happens in video games and with just video like we are doing
it does not affect the video itself but rather what we see
when rendering video with overlay in sage it does not tear when vertical sync is off but when you render with VMR9(video mixing rendering directx9) and turn off vertical sync you will see that the top of the video does not always match the bottom
most of the time the tearing is small but there can be a large amount of space where the top and bottom are off

if you want good picture quality I would just leave usepresentationinterval on

it is no secret and frey's have it set that way by default

If you have any questions feel free to ask

[Scott]

kny3twalker, that was a really helpful post - thank you. I guess I was getting confused, becuase the SageTV video attributes menu shows "ffdshow" as a "decoder" when you select it. Maybe that's a bit of a misnomer. In any event I've learned a lot over the last couple of days of experimenting and posting to this board.

I will try your suggestions. If anything, I've discovered ffdshow does not really do anything for the picture quality and I will probably stop using it altogether.

thanks again,
Scott

[stanger89]

It's kind of a compromise, we've been asking for native ffdshow support for a while, and when one of the members (mlbdude) discoverd that you could select it as a "decoder" Jeff added it to the list.

[SteveP]

I recently built a HTPC with a Roslyn card and Sage 2. The included MPEG decoder works and misses a frame here and there, especially on scene changes. I added the Sonic DVD decoder to check out the quality difference and the video became unwatchable because of extreme stuttering. I went back to the Intervideo decoder and made the two registry changes outlined at the beginning of this thread. Instead of improving things, it made the Intervideo decoder drop so many frames it became unwatchable. It seems like my CPU usage went up instead of down. Any ideas on why things got worse instead of better?

I am running a MSI based board with a 1.1G AMD Duron, 512M memory, XP Pro, new S60 Diamond Stealth video card (ATI 7000 chipset),...

[kny3twalker]

the two registry edits are for Hardware acceleration of the your video card and DirectX video Acceleration as I remember
thats why your processor usage went up cause of your old hardware

try sonic again but disable DXVA

[Ryokurin]

Im running WinDVD 6 codecs and these options are in the registry but I also see a new option for VMR People running this may want to look at that option as well as with me it stopped an issue where I had a visable vsync problem even after messing with sage's DXVA settings on a 9600. Processor usage is still averageing 28% on a Athlon 2100.

[Datalux]

what I was suggesting was that you try out other decoders ffdshow is not a decoder also it uses your system default decoder and ffdshow is more like a postprocessor if you only have intervideo decoder installed on your system it will be the default but you can always check by going in windows media player to options then DVD then advanced
what ever pops up will be the system's default decoder.

I have selected the Nvidia decoders that came with TheaterTek 2.0 for SageTV playback. When I look at MP10>DVD>ADVANCED the FFDShow configuration screen pops up. What does this mean? Is FFDShow in the chain when using the Nvidia decoders in SageTV?? It does not appear that it is when using TheaterTek or SageTV for playback of SageTV recordings. CPU usage is 30% for MPEG2 video vs. 90% for DVD and the FFDShow OSD does not display when playing back MPEG2 video.

[kny3twalker]

Datalux
just use radlight filter manager and reduce the merit of ffdshow audio decoder (what you saw) and video mpeg4 video decoder

then adjust the merit of nvidia video decoder to preferred merit

and reboot

that should make the correct decoder be present in WMP10

[MSquid]

What's that law of unintended consequences called?

I've followed out this Easy Performance Increase thread because that's the sort of thing I do. Especially if it's called Easy. It took about six dozen steps (don't forget to reboot when nothing seems to work any more), but I have accomplished them all. I hope things are better, I'm not sure, everything seems to work. Almost. One thing is certainly worse:

My Hauppauge remote, which used to control Sage, doesn't work now. Do I just need to reboot a couple of more times, or what?

I've tried rebooting; it still doesn't work.

Basically, all I have done is upgrade the Hauppauge software and made the registry tweaks suggested in this thread. I figure it's not the tweaks, but the software upgrades. Anyone have an idea how I can make the remote work again?

Thanks!
Joe

[kny3twalker]

simplest way would be to shut down SageTV all the way
and uninstall it from the add/remove programs list
(do not delete the program folder though)
and reinstall SageTV, this time check the box for the hauppauge remote

and make sure you have not disabled the remote from starting at boot-up

[Opus4]

Actually, the simplest thing for getting the Hauppauge remote to work with SageTV again is to check the links in my sig lines, go to #1 (Basics) and download the attachment in post #3. Put the new irremote.ini file in your Windows directory. When you reinstalled the Hauppauge IR software, you ended up overwriting the existing ini file and clearing out the SageTV settings. Keep a backup of your ini file, especially if you customize it.

- Andy

[Sarlac]

ok so back on topic,

I have a pvr150 and a geforce4ti4200, i'm using it's tv out and tvtool for overscan
the reg tweaks were already done when i went to do them sooo, i just changed the filter mode to noncss for hauppauge to see whats what. I did doublecheck settings in windvd5 they seem correct.

vmr9 and default filter 90% cpu and choppy
vmr9 and noncss filter 75% cpu and choppy
overlay and default filter 13% and smooth (my normal settings)
overlay and noncss filter 13% and audio only

What might be causing my loss of video with overlay and noncss, or my terrible choppyness and cpu load while in vmr9?

my system specs are in my sig, any input is appreciated

Thanks

[dcampano]

I am wondering if these tweaks will help me. I am running SageTV with a PVR-500, but I don't play any shows on the computer monitor. I strictly use the MediaMVP to watch live tv, and watch recorded shows. Will this register tweak improve my performance in live tv??? Thanks for any help!

[stanger89]

No, it only applies to those using the Intervideo NonCSS decoder.

[InTheFlow]

I would go with the sonic DVD decoder pack for windows media center


Does anyone know if a trial version of these decoders exists and if so, where? I wouldn't mind paying for them but wouldn't want to pay just to test it out...know what I mean? :D

[stanger89]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder_1.00.67-trial.html

[kny3twalker]

thats an old post when there was no nvidia decoders and nvDVD has quit being sold

[stanger89]

I'm sorry, I don't know where I am anymore, I could have sworn I was in an nVidia decoder thread when I posted that.

WRT Sonic, AFIAK there is and never was a trial of the decoder pack. And the trial of Cineplayer does not exist anymore.

[judoGTI]

Go to this site ( http://www.hauppauge.com/html/sw_pvr_250.htm ) and download the newest version of the Hauppauge Video Decoder. Hopefully that will install the WinDVD decoder and the registry keys for you.

Lauren

Hello!

I am very new to the HTPC scene (been up and running about 1 week now) and I have followed the instructions in this thread and still do not have the Intervideo registry entry. Where did I overlook something?

I have Hauppage WinTV-PVR-150 (latest driver and installed Hauppage video decoder http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/mpegdecoder/hcwsmd04.exe) and SageTV. This is running on WinXP Pro, I have Sage set to use VMR9 (which must mean I have directX9 installed? I dont remember doing it however, is there a way I can check to see which version I have?)

Thanks!

[laurenglenn]

Hello!

I am very new to the HTPC scene (been up and running about 1 week now) and I have followed the instructions in this thread and still do not have the Intervideo registry entry. Where did I overlook something?

I have Hauppage WinTV-PVR-150 (latest driver and installed Hauppage video decoder http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/mpegdecoder/hcwsmd04.exe) and SageTV. This is running on WinXP Pro, I have Sage set to use VMR9 (which must mean I have directX9 installed? I dont remember doing it however, is there a way I can check to see which version I have?)

Thanks!
Hold Windows-R (for RUN), and then type "DXDIAG"

That will tell you the DirectX version.

Lauren