Do you use Fullscreen Exclusive Mode?

[hmca]

FSE works fine on a 9600 non-pro until I S3 suspend. After recovery from S3, I get blackscreen on all videos, requiring a reboot to clear the problem, so I just gave up on FSE. VMR9 works all the time, although sometimes I find that the selection of Hardware Acceleration is switched off by Sage but I still get VMR9. Interesting quirk. It can't be working if it is turned off but it is!

[roxy99]

Anyone try v5 to so if FSE works?

[blade]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Anyone try v5 to so if FSE works?

FSE works fine for some people and others have problems with it. It's not a matter of does it work or doesn't it.

[Hector]

Heh I hear you. But I have to say that that the 6600GT was well worth it. I have an HD Tivo which has a real nice output. You can tell that the image from the 6600GT/FSE/Purevideo isn't quite as good but amazingly close and of course you get to use Sage instead of the clunky Tivo. The only thing I use the HD Tivo for is D* HD that Sage can't get.

IMO if you're going to spend $ on anything its the video card. Its like in the old days you used to tell folks if you can't buy an expensive stereo system then spend what money you do have in two places, the pickup needle on the phonograph and the speakers. The vid card is like speakers, its probably the biggest single difference you can make once you have horsepower (mine is only an AMD2800 and works great).

In short you'll see the difference right away so at least you'll know where the money went.

peace . . .

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

hummm
About 30% of my sage viewing is HD. If I can find a 6600GT on the cheap I may buy one. but I'm trying to cut down on my HTPC hardware buying.........I been getting ridiculous lately

Thanks

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by blade

FSE works fine for some people and others have problems with it. It's not a matter of does it work or doesn't it.

Yes but on the poll only 35% of the people use it, and I see alot of issues being posted so there must be a reason it often is problematic.

So I will rephrase the Question:

Is there anyone who was using version 4 that was experiencing problems in FSE and subsequently upgraded to version 5 to discover that FSE now work properly for them under version 5, but not on version5?

[Hector]

Can you go from a smaller window with video to FSE and back without a crash? Big bonus points if the video was playing the whole time. Either would be impressive, to me at least.

peace . . .

Originally Posted by salsbst

But I haven't had much trouble with FSE, including bouncing in and out of SageTV (from sleep to full screen and back again). I'm using the very latest driver and purevideo releases.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by Hector

Can you go from a smaller window with video to FSE and back without a crash? Big bonus points if the video was playing the whole time. Either would be impressive, to me at least.

peace . . .

The next time I have the PCs keyboard out I will give it a whirl.

[thorhtpc]

I need suggestions for getting VMR and FSE working on my setup. The hardware that I am using should have no problem using these setting. I have TheraterTek 2.3 and use VMR9 and FSE with HD playback and have no issues. And since I am using HD I would prefer not to use Overlay, since VMR has better picture quality.

Here is what I get with different settings:

Overlay - perfect playback.
VMR w/o FSE - Lots of jitter (not stuttering) in the picture.
VMR w/ FSE - Small amount of jitter in the picture.

I'm using the latest nVidia decoders that came with TheaterTek and the tray icon appears, so I know it is the active decoder.

Again, I don't have any problems playing back HD video using TheaterTek or Zoomplayer with VMR9 and FSE.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Hector]

I don't have your issue but here are a few thoughts to get the ball rolling until some smart people arrive -

I have a lesser machine (AMD 2800) and a lesser video card (6600gt) so of course you're right about the hardware.

I have used theatretek in the past but I don't know enough about it to say for sure but I think it specifically uses Purevideo, I'm not sure that means it's the system default.

To check your default use this app from MS-

DecCheck

Also I have had issues in the past leaving Sage to use the default. For me its best to specify the Nvideo decoder in Sage whether its the system default or not.

For some Sage/FSE does not like being started in anything but (Sages) full screen mode. Of course a lot of people boot up and never change it but if I use the pc for anything else and then restart Sage in anything but as a full screen eventually I'll get a crash using FSE. Not the jitters but worth a shot esp if you are not booting up in Sages full screen mode. To launch Sage in full screen mode from the desktop use the -startup option in the shortcut.

peace . . .

Originally Posted by thorhtpc

I need suggestions for getting VMR and FSE working on my setup. The hardware that I am using should have no problem using these setting. I have TheraterTek 2.3 and use VMR9 and FSE with HD playback and have no issues. And since I am using HD I would prefer not to use Overlay, since VMR has better picture quality.

Here is what I get with different settings:

Overlay - perfect playback.
VMR w/o FSE - Lots of jitter (not stuttering) in the picture.
VMR w/ FSE - Small amount of jitter in the picture.

I'm using the latest nVidia decoders that came with TheaterTek and the tray icon appears, so I know it is the active decoder.

Again, I don't have any problems playing back HD video using TheaterTek or Zoomplayer with VMR9 and FSE.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[thorhtpc]

I fixed my problem by rolling back to java 1.4. No more VMR issues.

[95TBird]

I was unable to use VMR9 & FSE until yesterday!!

If I enabled VMR9 & FSE I experienced choppy playback, locking, black screens etc. I suspected all along that I had a DirectX issue but dxdiag appeared to report that all the correct files were in place. Reinstalling DirectX using the regular installer made no difference. Then I found this...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

This is the URL For the most Current April 2006 redistributable for DirectX.

It contains ALL the DirectX files.

You simply download it & then execute & it asks you for a destination folder.

It will extract all the files to that folder .

Once that is done you can then reinstall DirectX from the setup in that folder.

Once I did that I was able to turn on both VMR9 & FSE !! They have been working perfectly for 3 days now so I believe that they will contilue to do so!!


Bruce

[Hector]

Excellent post, thanks for sharing.

peace . . .

Originally Posted by 95TBird

I was unable to use VMR9 & FSE until yesterday!!

If I enabled VMR9 & FSE I experienced choppy playback, locking, black screens etc. I suspected all along that I had a DirectX issue but dxdiag appeared to report that all the correct files were in place. Reinstalling DirectX using the regular installer made no difference. Then I found this...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

This is the URL For the most Current April 2006 redistributable for DirectX.

It contains ALL the DirectX files.

You simply download it & then execute & it asks you for a destination folder.

It will extract all the files to that folder .

Once that is done you can then reinstall DirectX from the setup in that folder.

Once I did that I was able to turn on both VMR9 & FSE !! They have been working perfectly for 3 days now so I believe that they will contilue to do so!!


Bruce

[NEOSG]

I can only run FSE for a little bit, and then the screen goes black but sound continues. the sagetv client seems to use up about 185MB of ram pretty quick when i check it in task manager before killing.

This is a dedicated sage client

p4 3Ghz
1 GB of ram
SATA disk
WinXP SP2
Nvidia Decoder
ATI X1900XTX, with omega drivers
Connected to server via crossover GB


This thing should rock, but still craps out if using FSE.

Runs rock stable using Overlay
Runs pretty good using VMR9, with occasional choppiness

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by NEOSG

I can only run FSE for a little bit, and then the screen goes black but sound continues. the sagetv client seems to use up about 185MB of ram pretty quick when i check it in task manager before killing.

This is a dedicated sage client

p4 3Ghz
1 GB of ram
SATA disk
WinXP SP2
Nvidia Decoder
ATI X1900XTX, with omega drivers
Connected to server via crossover GB


This thing should rock, but still craps out if using FSE.

Runs rock stable using Overlay
Runs pretty good using VMR9, with occasional choppiness

This sounds very familiar. Something happened to my laptop (I'm not sure what) and it began to exhibit this same behavior. It would also go black when returnin to the SageTV UI from video playback.

Common thread? We were both using Omega drivers on a radeon.

What's odd is that this problem seemed to develop all on its own, but it may have been lurking there waiting for me, and only shown up when I switched from svideo to DVI.

I tried so many different drivers to fix this problem that I think I shredded my OS. After seeing one too many blue screens, I decided to start from scratch. This time, I avoided Omega drivers. I used the DHCleanTool to hack the ATI release (non-Omega) of the Catalyst 6.5 drivers to allow them on my Radeon 9000 Mobility and just got my first glimpse of SageTV on the fresh OS last night. No more screen going black. FSE is healthy again. I think I'll avoid Omega. The only reason I used them was they for some reason fixed some silly problem that caused the svideo to shut off when the laptop lid was closed.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by salsbst

This sounds very familiar....Common thread? We were both using Omega drivers on a radeon....

Nevermind. My black screens are back when FSE is engaged on the laptop. I think it might have started around the time I installed the April Direct 9.0c release...I'm going to upgrade SageTV to 5.0.2 and if that doesn't fix it, roll back to an image of my machine that I took before the DirectX install. Ugh.

[NEOSG]

I'm trying Cat 6.5 now and still having the same issue. I'll keep digging also.

Funny thing is, when it goes black, I can still hear the sound. if I press stop it takes a minute or so, but the playing stops and returns last sage screen

[salsbst]

I just upgraded to 5.0.2 to see if that helped (it didn't), and now my other client has some goofy Girder behavior. I'm now officially experiencing completely different Sage-related (though perhaps not Sage-caused) problems on each of my three of my HTPCs. Grr.

I haven't mustered the willpower to roll back to pre-directx update, yet, but I'll get there.

In the meantime, what version of Java are you using, NEOSG? I'm on 1.4.2_06 and have considered moving to 1.5 but if you're using 1.5 then I probably wont bother.

[NEOSG]

On the client that this is happening on I am at 1.4.2_10

I've tried 1.5_05, with Cat6.4 and Omega with no luck

[salsbst]

I did a gut check before posting this because I'm a little superstitious....but what the heck...

I've (naturally) messed with lots of things in my system trying to figure out why FSE was crapping out, but the latest changes seem like they might, just might have helped.

a) disable VPU recover in ATI CCC
b) disable fast writes in ATI CCC

I think I've just seen a few videos in SageTV under FSE, and gone back and forth from the SAgeTV UI to the videos, and I think it's working. My fingers are crossed. It seems like this problem has something to do with thread timing, so I'm reluctant to claim success. It's also annoying that I can never be sure that SageTV settings changes will stick until I let the app hang around for a while (long enough for it to decide that properties file changes should be saved to disk). Bottom line: I think I'm on the road to recovery, but I'm not sure.

The other substantial change that comes to mind as I try to remember what I've done is that I installed ATI Tray Tools and played around ever so slightly with settings relating to my LCD HDTV. I don't *think* anything that I did in there is relevant, but anything is possible.

I can't wait for the day when graphics card vendors see HTPC as a market that deserves the same level of attention as the gamers (i.e., it becomes the same market). Until then, we forge on, finding solutions to our problems almost by chance.... that said, though, everything I've read tells me that the two changes I made above are "a good thing" regardless of whether or not you have video problems.

NEOSG, are you VPU recover-free, and have you turned off fast writes?

[salsbst]

Nevermind... again. Attempting to return to SagetV UI from a video just gave me a black screen.

Back to the drawing board.