casper
11-16-2004, 07:37 PM
Sorry for the long post...
A bit of background; I've been running sage with good results since version 1.4. I also own BTV. I bought BTV first and moved to Sage for the flexibility (multiple tuners and the client) and the PVR scheduling advantages. Sage is a great tool and the user community is awesome, especially the folks who are kind enough to share ther STV's. Maybe, someday, studio will release (or even go public beta) and I can return the favor. :)
Anyway, once version 2.1 released I installed it, and ran into a few problems. Stuttering, Tearing and generally lousy PQ. Since it is a new version I figured that I would just revert back to 2.0.20 for a while until the fixes were out. This is a real sacrifice because the Cayars STV is hard to do without. I fdisked the drive and did a fresh install of the old version. Since then its been a real drag and I've spent days trying to figure this out.
Fresh install original problem: Video Tearing and Stuttering 3 to 4 times per second.
Partial Solution: Enabled V Sync in the nVidia driver, dropped the resolution down to 800X600, went from VMR9 to default, then overlay mode. Good improvement in stuttering (down to once per second or so) and the tearing has stopped.
The once per second stuttering was still very annoying so I tried reclock. Reclock works great except for live television where it slowly loses sync until there are 3 to 4 second jumps in the video and it takes a reboot to fix it. Playback of recorded shows is excellent.
After seeing the thread on reclock and what it does I started looking at the nVidia driver to see what I could do about the timing issue. In the video driver settings I went to the "Display mode timing" section and changed from "Auto Detect" to "Coordinated Video Timing (CVT) standard". Rebooted and still running in Overlay and 800X600 I watched live TV (CNBC with the 2 tickers at the bottom). That made a huge improvement in smoothness.
Current Problem: Video skips or "stutters" every few seconds. This actually looks like a micro-rewind. The best description that I can give is that the video plays fine then at random intervals jumps back a half second or so then continues playing smoothly. Audio plays fine. I saw the post from (I think) mlbdude where he mentioned that the trade-off on enabling vertical sync is that you get stuttering. So I tried turning it back off and it helped a bit. By the way, the tearing did not return so I am guessing that the display timing helps with that.
Now I'm stuck and looking for some suggestions. Any help is appreciated.
Other details:
Currently running in overlay mode at 800X600. Have also tried at 640X480. No difference. Applied the registry hacks for the numBuffers and the Dxva, Hwmc keys both set to 1. Java is current. The machine is dedicated to Sage & all Services that are not required to boot are disabled. No anti-virus software. Drives that are used for video are formatted to 64k blocks.
I have the following (purchased) decoders installed and have tried each of them in each mode (3d acceleration/no acceleration) in VMR9 mode, Default (VMR7?) mode and Overlay. BTW, the Sonic and nVidia decoders are by far the best PQ and smoothness. nVidia Decoder v1.00.58, Sonic Cinemaster DS, Intervideo (WinDVD 5), Intervideo noncss, Moonlight Elecard
Hardware:
AMD 2600+ Barton CPU
ASUS A7N8X-X NVidia nForce 2 Chipset with current nVidia drivers
2X 512MB Mushkin Enhanced PC3200 DDR400 2:3:2 Level One
Asus Geforce FX5200 with nVidia Drivers (66.93)
2 Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80GB IDE Hard Drives on nVidia nForce2 Primary ATA Controller version 2.6 (Primary and Slave drives both running Ultra DMA 5)
1 Western Digital WD2500 Caviar 250GB IDE Hard Drive on nVidia nForce2 Secondary ATA Controller version 2.6 (running Ultra DMA 5)
Sony DVD Drive DDU-1612 16X/40X on a Promise Ultra100 TX2 running in Ultra DMA 2 mode
2 Hauppauge PVR-250's with the latest Hauppauge software & driver version: 1.18.021.22254
Soundcard is nVidia onboard and so is LAN. Antec Sonata with 380 Watt True Power PS
Snapstream Firefly Remote (USB)
Output is to a Sony 21" Multiscan E540 Monitor
DirectX 9.0b
A bit of background; I've been running sage with good results since version 1.4. I also own BTV. I bought BTV first and moved to Sage for the flexibility (multiple tuners and the client) and the PVR scheduling advantages. Sage is a great tool and the user community is awesome, especially the folks who are kind enough to share ther STV's. Maybe, someday, studio will release (or even go public beta) and I can return the favor. :)
Anyway, once version 2.1 released I installed it, and ran into a few problems. Stuttering, Tearing and generally lousy PQ. Since it is a new version I figured that I would just revert back to 2.0.20 for a while until the fixes were out. This is a real sacrifice because the Cayars STV is hard to do without. I fdisked the drive and did a fresh install of the old version. Since then its been a real drag and I've spent days trying to figure this out.
Fresh install original problem: Video Tearing and Stuttering 3 to 4 times per second.
Partial Solution: Enabled V Sync in the nVidia driver, dropped the resolution down to 800X600, went from VMR9 to default, then overlay mode. Good improvement in stuttering (down to once per second or so) and the tearing has stopped.
The once per second stuttering was still very annoying so I tried reclock. Reclock works great except for live television where it slowly loses sync until there are 3 to 4 second jumps in the video and it takes a reboot to fix it. Playback of recorded shows is excellent.
After seeing the thread on reclock and what it does I started looking at the nVidia driver to see what I could do about the timing issue. In the video driver settings I went to the "Display mode timing" section and changed from "Auto Detect" to "Coordinated Video Timing (CVT) standard". Rebooted and still running in Overlay and 800X600 I watched live TV (CNBC with the 2 tickers at the bottom). That made a huge improvement in smoothness.
Current Problem: Video skips or "stutters" every few seconds. This actually looks like a micro-rewind. The best description that I can give is that the video plays fine then at random intervals jumps back a half second or so then continues playing smoothly. Audio plays fine. I saw the post from (I think) mlbdude where he mentioned that the trade-off on enabling vertical sync is that you get stuttering. So I tried turning it back off and it helped a bit. By the way, the tearing did not return so I am guessing that the display timing helps with that.
Now I'm stuck and looking for some suggestions. Any help is appreciated.
Other details:
Currently running in overlay mode at 800X600. Have also tried at 640X480. No difference. Applied the registry hacks for the numBuffers and the Dxva, Hwmc keys both set to 1. Java is current. The machine is dedicated to Sage & all Services that are not required to boot are disabled. No anti-virus software. Drives that are used for video are formatted to 64k blocks.
I have the following (purchased) decoders installed and have tried each of them in each mode (3d acceleration/no acceleration) in VMR9 mode, Default (VMR7?) mode and Overlay. BTW, the Sonic and nVidia decoders are by far the best PQ and smoothness. nVidia Decoder v1.00.58, Sonic Cinemaster DS, Intervideo (WinDVD 5), Intervideo noncss, Moonlight Elecard
Hardware:
AMD 2600+ Barton CPU
ASUS A7N8X-X NVidia nForce 2 Chipset with current nVidia drivers
2X 512MB Mushkin Enhanced PC3200 DDR400 2:3:2 Level One
Asus Geforce FX5200 with nVidia Drivers (66.93)
2 Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80GB IDE Hard Drives on nVidia nForce2 Primary ATA Controller version 2.6 (Primary and Slave drives both running Ultra DMA 5)
1 Western Digital WD2500 Caviar 250GB IDE Hard Drive on nVidia nForce2 Secondary ATA Controller version 2.6 (running Ultra DMA 5)
Sony DVD Drive DDU-1612 16X/40X on a Promise Ultra100 TX2 running in Ultra DMA 2 mode
2 Hauppauge PVR-250's with the latest Hauppauge software & driver version: 1.18.021.22254
Soundcard is nVidia onboard and so is LAN. Antec Sonata with 380 Watt True Power PS
Snapstream Firefly Remote (USB)
Output is to a Sony 21" Multiscan E540 Monitor
DirectX 9.0b