Picture quality question, also question on delays

[andrew1810]

Hi,

I have the following setup:

Epia M1000, 512Mb RAM, GeForce 2 MX400 (64Mb) connected to TV by S-Video out on graphics card into a composite converter. It is running SageTV 2 on Windows XP Pro and the computer does nothing else.

Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 connected to Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 via composite input.

When viewing video's or live TV for the first time, there is a delay of 15 seconds or so when I just get a black screen and then it kicks in, is this simply how the software works, or is there a way around it?

[dflachbart]

Hi Andrew,

Originally Posted by andrew1810

1) Upgrade PC-TV connection to S-Video to Scart (bypass converter)

So your TV doesnt have svideo in ? I dont know if there is any signal loss between svideo and scart, but I would think that you would definetly get an improvement without the composite converter

Originally Posted by andrew1810

2) Send S-Video signal to Hauppauge via an RGB-S-Video converter box

Could make a difference too ...

Originally Posted by andrew1810

3) Upgrade the graphics card to a newer PCI one

I also have a MX400, and the picture quality with my PVR150 is very good, very close to the original. If I had to choose, this would be my last choice ...

Originally Posted by andrew1810

Also, when viewing video's or live TV for the first time, there is a delay of 30 seconds or so when I just get a black screen and then it kicks in, is this simply how the software works, or is there a way around it?

30 seconds ?? This is definetly not normal, the playback should start immediately (maybe 1 or 2 seconds to tune to the channel) ...

Dirk

[andrew1810]

Unfortunately my TV only has scart inputs (and one set of composites on the front which are faulty), I'll try and get a cable to see if that improves things.

I tried running a recording on my laptop and the quality was about the same as running directly into the TV, so it must be either the connections or the card. I noticed that my mx400 does not have the conexant chip which could partly explain things.

The video delay happens the first time after Sage is loaded, if I click on live tv or a pre-recorded video, there is a long delay with a black screen, then the PC seems to kick in and it all loads up, but with live tv, the picture comes in after it has pre-recorded 5-10 seconds.
I have got used to it so it isn't a massive problem, but if there was a way of fixing it that would be useful. I have a fairly default install with just the FF changed to 10 seconds, otherwise its as it began (although I didn't have the delay then).

Are there any things I should check to stop this happening?

Thanks

Andrew

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by andrew1810

The video delay happens the first time after Sage is loaded, if I click on live tv or a pre-recorded video, there is a long delay with a black screen, then the PC seems to kick in and it all loads up, but with live tv, the picture comes in after it has pre-recorded 5-10 seconds.
I have got used to it so it isn't a massive problem, but if there was a way of fixing it that would be useful. I have a fairly default install with just the FF changed to 10 seconds, otherwise its as it began (although I didn't have the delay then).

Are there any things I should check to stop this happening?

Sorry, I cant think of anything, but maybe others could chime in here ...
I would definitely try to contact tech support about this, because it shouldnt be that way ...


Dirk

[pjwerdna]

Originally Posted by andrew1810

Unfortunately my TV only has scart inputs (and one set of composites on the front which are faulty),

My TV also only has scart sockets. However one of the scart sockets also accepts svideo input. All I needed was an svideo to scart converter, which is actually a svideo socket wired to a scart plug.

Originally Posted by andrew1810

The video delay happens the first time after Sage is loaded, if I click on live tv or a pre-recorded video, there is a long delay with a black screen, then the PC seems to kick in and it all loads up, but with live tv, the picture comes in after it has pre-recorded 5-10 seconds.

Sage's liveTV is always slightly delayed from the actual broadcast signal due to the encoding, buffering and decoding processes required. This delay seems to be 3-4 seconds on my PVR250. With the transmission delays of USB as well I'd expect a longer delay.

When I had my 1GHz via machine as my server changing channels, which causes a file to be closed and another one to be reopened, could easily take 4-5 seconds. Longer if the disc was heavily fragmented.

10 seconds sounds a bit much though adding the possibel delays up it doesnt surprise me.

[andrew1810]

Am still looking into the delay, I have it down to 15 seconds (ish), but this is for pre-recorded video so there isn't any buffering, changing channel etc.

The PC completely freezes for this 15 seconds and the CPU shoots up to 90%.

I switched on logging and this was the output for the time loading the video:

Wed 3/8 22:40:17.633 DShowPlayer setAudioRendererFilter0(VIA AC'97 Audio (WAVE)) called
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.791 DShowPlayer setVideoDecoderFilter0(InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge) called
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.867 DShowPlayer setAudioDecoderFilter0(InterVideo NonCSS Audio Decoder for Hauppauge) called
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.938 DShowPlayer setTimeshift=0 buffer=0
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.944 NATIVE Loading the source file
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.945 NATIVE Setting up the MPEG demux
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.956 NATIVE RenderAudio called
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.956 NATIVE RenderAudio step 1
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.957 NATIVE RenderAudio step 2
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.957 NATIVE RenderAudio step 3
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.958 NATIVE RenderVideo called
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.958 NATIVE RenderVideo step 1
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.959 NATIVE RenderVideo step 2
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.959 Video source pin information:
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.960 PIN is not connected yet!Wed 3/8 22:40:17.960 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_YUY2 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo2
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.960 Progressive video
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.960 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_YUY2 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo2
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.961 Progressive video
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.961 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo2
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.962 Progressive video
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.962 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo2
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.962 Progressive video
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.962 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB32 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.963 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB32 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.963 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB565 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.963 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB565 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.963 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB555 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo
Wed 3/8 22:40:17.964 NATIVE RenderVideo step 3
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.675 Filter Graph Video Renderer Info:
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.675 Video Renderer:CLSID_OverlayMixer
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.676 M type MEDIATYPE_Video S type MEDIASUBTYPE_YUY2 F type FORMAT_VideoInfo2
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.676 Progressive video
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.699 DShowPlayer setVideoHWND(1900602)
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.722 Got the default color key 0x100010
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.723 Got the default overlay color key of 0xf000f
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.723 Setting the color key to 0xf000f
Wed 3/8 22:40:35.724 Returning the color key as 0xff0f000f

Does that mean anything to anyone?