The definitive working HD playback configuration thread!

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Which AMD CPU are you using? Mine is a single core. Perhaps you have a dual core and could be the big difference. Considering my playback is using up to 60% cpu on a 4000+ single core and a dual core that could translate into more than one core can handle.

Dual core opteron 165, overclocked at that. It gets nowhere near busy on playback, but I am wondering if you have shut off all GPU acceleration and doing software only decode... My previous experience indicated the quality of that approach was not very good, at least not without a lot of FFDShow tweaking.

But it sounds like you aren't using FFDshow?

Thanx
Mike

[ToxMox]

In Avivo I have it set to Automatic Deinterlacing. PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra works fine for me too. Yes I meant the ATI MPEG Video Decoder directshow filter.
in powerdvd I have set hardware deinterlacing bob

[fyodor]

Interesting that he has the sage splitter as the default. I wonder if that makes a difference.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

In Avivo I have it set to Automatic Deinterlacing. PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra works fine for me too. Yes I meant the ATI MPEG Video Decoder directshow filter.
in powerdvd I have set hardware deinterlacing bob

Sorry to be a pain, what exact settings is PowerDVD configured for in it's setup? In the video tab on set up there are a bunch of options. How are yours set? If you click on the advanced button on the video set up tab, what options are set there?

You are using bob mode for deinterlacing? That should result in a pretty lousy picture. Does it look very crisp, especially for things like title credit scenes where you have a what lettering on a dark background. Do you see jaggies there?

What other settings do you have configured in the avivo section of the CC?

If you can post screen grabs of those pages that would be great and would save you typing... :-)


Thanks,
mike

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by fyodor

Interesting that he has the sage splitter as the default. I wonder if that makes a difference.

How do you get that set?

Thanks,
Mike

[fyodor]

I think that there's a a filter manager that will change the relative merits (softella, I think). Not sure if it works with Vista

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Dual core opteron 165, overclocked at that. It gets nowhere near busy on playback, but I am wondering if you have shut off all GPU acceleration and doing software only decode... My previous experience indicated the quality of that approach was not very good, at least not without a lot of FFDShow tweaking.

But it sounds like you aren't using FFDshow?

Thanx
Mike

Everywhere that there is a hardware assist sort of option I have it enabled.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by mikesm

How do you get that set?

Thanks,
Mike

I followed the steps in this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ighlight=1080i

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Sorry to be a pain, what exact settings is PowerDVD configured for in it's setup? In the video tab on set up there are a bunch of options. How are yours set? If you click on the advanced button on the video set up tab, what options are set there?

You are using bob mode for deinterlacing? That should result in a pretty lousy picture. Does it look very crisp, especially for things like title credit scenes where you have a what lettering on a dark background. Do you see jaggies there?

What other settings do you have configured in the avivo section of the CC?

If you can post screen grabs of those pages that would be great and would save you typing... :-)


Thanks,
mike

Screengrab attached. I don't know that changing settings in the actual powerdvd app make any difference when using it as a decoder in Sage. I believe it uses the filter properties. Which you can set when using DSFMgr (DirectShow Filter Manager free download) see cap3.jpg attachment for my settings there.

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

I followed the steps in this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ighlight=1080i

Does the softella filter manager work for you in Vista?

[ToxMox]

I did more CPU load tests. I was previously watching the cpu in a window on top of Sage...now I am doing it remotely and it is more accurate:
1080i show in each of the following decoders:

With FSE Off:
PowerDVD: 27-35%
ATI MPEG Video Decoder: 26-33%
Nvidia Video Decoder: 24-35%
SageTV Decoder: 66-76%

With FSE on
PowerDVD: 18-29%
ATI: 21-30%
Nvidia: 16-29%
Sage: 52-65%

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by fyodor

Does the softella filter manager work for you in Vista?

Yes

[mikesm]

Ok, lots of recent progress! And a new working configuration:

Sage 6.1.9

OS: Vista Business 32 bit
Graphics hardware: ATI 2600pro (MSI fanless model)
Driver used: Catalyst 7.7
Codec used: Cyberlink (PowerDVD 7) OEM version (not Ultra)
CPU: Opteron 165
RAM: 2x512GB, DDR 400 Mhz
Motherboard Chipset: ATI 580 (Abit AT8 32X motherboard)
Audio hardware: ALC 883
Audio driver: Realtek 1.29
Sage configuration: VMR9 with 3D Acceleration ON, FSE ON
Sage Video Codec selection: Cyberlink PDVD7
Sage Audio Codec selection: Cyberlink PDVD7
Display resolution: 1920x1080 (native panel resolution)
Display connection: HDMI via HDMI-DVI adapter (Sony SXRD)

Turns out the issue was the setting in PowerDVD for de-interlacing and video enhancement. I had the CLEV stuff turned on, and that needed to be off. I thought it needed it needed to be on to enable hardware de-interlacing in the advanced tab, which turns out to be wrong.

Every so often (10 mins) on 1080i HD material i see a little judder, but otherwise it's very good. The nice thing about vista is it comes in and out of standby without sage going into the tray... DVD menus however are broken...

thx
mike

[mkanet]

Congrats Mike! I don't think I've ever seen any complains with ATI's display adapter under Vista with 1080i. I guess if I want a completely working configuration under Vista before the new fall TV season, I'll be forced to buying a new ATI display adapter. It does kinda suck to throw away a completely good piece of hardware because of software support.

Thanks for your feedback.

Originally Posted by mikesm

Ok, lots of recent progress! And a new working configuration:

Sage 6.1.9

OS: Vista Business 32 bit
Graphics hardware: ATI 2600pro (MSI fanless model)
Driver used: Catalyst 7.7
Codec used: Cyberlink (PowerDVD 7) OEM version (not Ultra)
CPU: Opteron 165
RAM: 2x512GB, DDR 400 Mhz
Motherboard Chipset: ATI 580 (Abit AT8 32X motherboard)
Audio hardware: ALC 883
Audio driver: Realtek 1.29
Sage configuration: VMR9 with 3D Acceleration ON, FSE ON
Sage Video Codec selection: Cyberlink PDVD7
Sage Audio Codec selection: Cyberlink PDVD7
Display resolution: 1920x1080 (native panel resolution)
Display connection: HDMI via HDMI-DVI adapter (Sony SXRD)

Turns out the issue was the setting in PowerDVD for de-interlacing and video enhancement. I had the CLEV stuff turned on, and that needed to be off. I thought it needed it needed to be on to enable hardware de-interlacing in the advanced tab, which turns out to be wrong.

Every so often (10 mins) on 1080i HD material i see a little judder, but otherwise it's very good.

thx
mike

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by mkanet

Congrats Mike! I don't think I've ever seen any complains with ATI's display adapter under Vista with 1080i. I guess if I want a completely working configuration under Vista before the new fall TV season, I'll be forced to buying a new ATI display adapter. It does kinda suck to throw away a completely good piece of hardware because of software support.

Thanks for your feedback.

Thanks. I have converted over my SFF Intel graphics client too, but I am having a hard time with de-interlacing problems for several kinds of videos sources. HD stuff looks like it lots of jaggies on the edges of shapes etc...

Has anyone seen that before? PowerDVD plays it fine (of course), but Sage has problems.

Thanks,
Mike

[fyodor]

This helped considerably for me, thought it's still not great. It might be worth putting in a sticky somewhere that you can't configure the cyberlink filter by going to the filter settings-you have to go into powerdvd.

Originally Posted by mikesm

Ok, lots of recent progress! And a new working configuration:

Sage 6.1.9

OS: Vista Business 32 bit
Graphics hardware: ATI 2600pro (MSI fanless model)
Driver used: Catalyst 7.7
Codec used: Cyberlink (PowerDVD 7) OEM version (not Ultra)
CPU: Opteron 165
RAM: 2x512GB, DDR 400 Mhz
Motherboard Chipset: ATI 580 (Abit AT8 32X motherboard)
Audio hardware: ALC 883
Audio driver: Realtek 1.29
Sage configuration: VMR9 with 3D Acceleration ON, FSE ON
Sage Video Codec selection: Cyberlink PDVD7
Sage Audio Codec selection: Cyberlink PDVD7
Display resolution: 1920x1080 (native panel resolution)
Display connection: HDMI via HDMI-DVI adapter (Sony SXRD)

Turns out the issue was the setting in PowerDVD for de-interlacing and video enhancement. I had the CLEV stuff turned on, and that needed to be off. I thought it needed it needed to be on to enable hardware de-interlacing in the advanced tab, which turns out to be wrong.

Every so often (10 mins) on 1080i HD material i see a little judder, but otherwise it's very good. The nice thing about vista is it comes in and out of standby without sage going into the tray... DVD menus however are broken...

thx
mike

[GTwannabe]

OS: Vista Business 32-bit
Graphics hardware: Gigabyte passive 8500GT w/ HDCP
Driver used: nVidia ForceWare 162.22, Inverse Telecine Enabled
Codec used: PureVideo 223 decoders, Smart content detection, Per-Pixel Adaptive deinterlacing
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (2.0ghz)
RAM: 1GB DDR 400
Motherboard Chipset: ATI RS482
Audio hardware: motherboard audio via TosLink
Audio driver: current
Sage configuration: VMR9 rendering, FSE disabled, 3D acceleration enabled
Sage Video Codec selection: Default (required for PureVideo decoder tray icon to be visible)
Sage Audio Codec selection: AC3Filter
Display resolution: 1080P
Display connection: HDMI

[fyodor]

How did you enable inverse telecine in the Nvidia Driver?

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

OS: Vista Business 32-bit
Graphics hardware: Gigabyte passive 8500GT w/ HDCP
Driver used: nVidia ForceWare 162.22, Inverse Telecine Enabled
Codec used: PureVideo 223 decoders, Smart content detection, Per-Pixel Adaptive deinterlacing
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (2.0ghz)
RAM: 1GB DDR 400
Motherboard Chipset: ATI RS482
Audio hardware: motherboard audio via TosLink
Audio driver: current
Sage configuration: VMR9 rendering, FSE disabled, 3D acceleration enabled
Sage Video Codec selection: Default (required for PureVideo decoder tray icon to be visible)
Sage Audio Codec selection: AC3Filter
Display resolution: 1080P
Display connection: HDMI

[bialio]

Originally Posted by fyodor

How did you enable inverse telecine in the Nvidia Driver?

In the Nvidia Control Panel. It's under Color Settings or something similarly named.

Note that it's been enabled by default on my 8500GT every time I've gone to check it.

btl.

[jkoutrouba]

Originally Posted by bialio

In the Nvidia Control Panel. It's under Color Settings or something similarly named.

Note that it's been enabled by default on my 8500GT every time I've gone to check it.

btl.

I found it. Under "Adjust video color settings", choose the "Enhancements" tab. There's a checkbox. Mine was not enabled. I have not tested it to see if it will work yet. I get infrequent micro-stutters with VMR9 enabled, so I have been using overlay. Maybe this will help.