"choppy" playback using nVidia audio decoder

[pgman]

Well, I finally got my HD playback and de-interlacing to look the way it should. The problem I was having was due to the fact that my AUDIO device in Sage was set to "DirectSound Audigy..." and not just plain ol' "Audigy ZS..." With the "Direct Sound" devices selected, I could not get VMR9 rendering to work right. Once I selected the regular "Audigy ZS" device in the "Audio renderer" setup, VMR9 looked fantastic and stutter-free! Why this is, I may never know. I am almost certain that I am running the current driver version fot he sound card and, even though I was on a budget when I built this PC, the Audigy sound quality is actually pretty good - at least for now.

Having solved my original issue, I began to investigate the issue of 5.1 decoding - specifically that there was none. Even on HD shows that I KNOW are 5.1 encoded, all I got was pro-logic decoding. My Audigy sound card does all the audio decodong in hardware, so all I ever want my software to do is to pass the "S/PDIF" audio stream to the sound card. Selecting the "AC3" decoder in Sage does not do this, apparently. So, I started trying other ones. When I tried the NVIDIA audio decoder in Sage, BINGO - I get 5.1 surround decoding on HD channels.

The problem is that, when using the NVIDIA audio decoder, my video playback is "jittery". This is not like before, it is not actually stuttering or breaking up. It is full-motion, with just a barely-noticable choppiness - almost like Max Headroom (if anyone here remembers him), but not that bad.

Any ideas? I am quickly running out. I thought my version of DirectX may be out of date, but I am not sure how to check it.

[pgman]

I guess this one was a little easier. I updated the Audigy driver (Creative FINALLY updated it) and the playback now seems nice and fluid. I am a little suprised that an audio driver would cause a video problem but I suppose this shouldn't be such a suprise. Now, if my system will just hold up until February, I can REALLY hose it up when I load Vista

Does anyone know if there is a way to stop Sage from scanning my removable HDD (USB) at regular intervals? When I click on "Safely remove hardware", it always says the drive cannot be stopped right now - unless I close the Sage Service (always running in the system tray) first. I have my CD collection on this USB drive, but the drive enclosure does not have power management and so the drive runs continuously as long as the power is on. So, I don't turn that drive on unless I want to listen to music and I always turn it off again when I am finished.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by pgman

Does anyone know if there is a way to stop Sage from scanning my removable HDD (USB) at regular intervals?

v6 has an option to disable regularly rescanning imports directories in Detailed Setup -> Customize. Maybe that would help.

- Andy