Playback Performance Issues

[Mirage]

Hi, I am new to Sage and I am having problems with playback performance (previously recorded or live TV).

My specs:
Sage 6.1.8
NVIDIA 7800GS, 93.71 drivers
DirectX 9.0c
HDHomeRun dual network tuner
WinXP SP2
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
1GB DDR DRAM

I can record from both tuners simultaneously with less than 20% CPU load, so recording is working great, but playback is completely unwatchable! This includes just watching live TV.

If I use the Overlay renderer, video is watchable but CPU usage jumps to 95% and the Sage interface becomes almost nonresponsive and I have to kill it. If I use VMR9, CPU usage is about 70%, Sage interface is extremely sluggish (but not totally unresponsive), and playback is totally unwatchable (constant stutter).

This happens with both HD and SD digital sources.

I think my specs should be more than adequate for HD video, especially if the VMR9 renderer would work correctly. Does anybody have some ideas or suggestions?

Thanks!

[Taddeusz]

What MPEG decoder are you using? The one that comes with SageTV isn't necessarily the best. For an nVidia card you can get PureVideo. Cyberlink's MPEG decoder also works pretty well.

[Mirage]

Wow, it appears this was my big problem. I switched to Cyberlink's decoder and now playback is only taking about 25% CPU. Thanks so much!

[mike1961]

If you select DEFAULT for your audio and video renderers, it may drop even lower (to around 10%).

Mike