Tearing with VMR and Directshow

[megamojo]

For the last 6 months my dedicated Sage computer has been terribly unstable, and with tax season coming near I finally threw some money at the problem and got all new parts. It's a good thing I did too, because on the old motherboard I found several bulging/leaking capacitors so I'm surprised it even worked at all. The transition went pretty well. My discrete soundcard from newegg should get here soon. (Apparently the Dolby Digital Live encoding on my old nforce2 board that I completely took for granted is a pretty cool feature that's hard to find these days. Analog onboard audio really is terrible!) I also finally updated to 6.3.5 from 6.1.19 now that I have stable hardware. This may have something to do with the problem but I doubt it.

Anyways, on to the problem. Now that I've upgraded my hardware, I get tearing when playing back mpeg4 video using Directshow and VMR9. If I use the sagetvplayer (mplayer) and VMR9 there is no tearing, and directshow with the overlay renderer also works fine. The videos I'm playing are just near-DVD resolution xvid .avi's, not anything HD, so performance shouldn't be an issue. This only happens on the mpeg4 video, regular mpeg2 TV recordings playback just fine. This was not a problem at all on my old hardware and is also not a problem on a client computer that I run.

Here's a list of my old and new hardware.
OLD
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (with damaged capacitors FTW!)
AMD Athlon 3200+
512 MB DDR400 (with the bad mobo it ran best with just one slot full)
ATI 9800pro (the original 128mb version)
2 PVR 150s
1 ATI TV Wonder Elite

NEW
Asus M2N-E
AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+
2GB DDR2-800
ATI HD 2400pro
Same tuners as above

As for troubleshooting I did quite a bit last night. As I said above, the sagetvplayer fixes the problem and so does using overlay, but those are both not accceptable. I usually do not use FSE, but enabling it made no difference. To check and see if it was the codec's fault I removed the Divx decoder that I usually prefer and installed the Xvid decoder but that made no difference. I haven't tried ffdsow or anything else, but I have a feeling it wouldn't help. I also ran SageTV 6.1.19 from my backup folder but still experienced the same issue. I initially installed the video card with Catalyst 8.1 but rolled back to 7.12 and did not notice any difference. I have turned vsync to always on in the 3D options but that also doesn't seem to make any difference.

So, any suggestions? Is there another video player out there that can use VMR9 rendering I can use to test and see if this is a sage problem or a system problem?

[Wirenut]

You probably already set it up this way, but are you displaying on the primary monitor/display?

I had similar issues with similar hardware when I neglected to check the monitor preferences. [set up in the Catalyst Control Console.] Rendering with VMR9 on the secondary display yielded a ton of tearing. Switched my viewing display to primary and whammo... worked like a charm.

Just a thought, hope it helps..

Peace,

Wirenut

[megamojo]

I'll check that. I installed and configured it on my regular LCD monitor, but now it's connected only to my TV.

[megamojo]

Well according to the drivers it's the primary and only display. Any other ideas? I'm going to try simple properties file reset with my sageclient.properties file and see if that helps anything. Otherwise I feel a nuke and pave coming on anyways, since I didn't both re-install anything when I swapped out my hardware, and I'm getting a new 750 GB drive that I don't have physical space for in my linux box, which means I'll have to get rid of a 250, which means I might as well swap it with the 200 GB system drive that sage uses.

[rv73]

I'm a new Sage user, but been with MCE for years. I have made the switch to Sage, but two nasty problems have occurred which I have since troubleshooted and fixed, for me:

1.) Tearing in the picture
2.) 'Resume Playback' with DVD's causes Sage to Hang.

Solution/Workaround:

1.) Tearing was the fault of VMR9 rendering. Changing to Overlay fixed this.

2.) The Cyberlink PowerDVD 7.3 decoder causes the hanging when resuming playback of DVD files.
Changing to Purevideo Nvidia Decoder .223 fixes this.


** Keep in mind that MCE doesn't exhibit these problems with PowerDVD decoder, or tearing.
Unsure why Sage does... ?

====
P4 3.2Ghtz, 2G RAM, Nvidia 6600GT-latest drivers, 4x Digital Tuners

[Ryokurin]

The first thing I would try is open up catalyst control center and make sure vsync is set to always on, and possibly turn down some of the 3d settings just in case it can't really keep up with what you are playing. The second applies if you use VNC or similar to remote into the machine. Make sure it didn't install a hook driver under display devices in the system panel. It will still run at great speed over a lan without it.

[meep]

I have the same issue with my Asus P35-VE via HDMI to a sony Bravia.

Switching to overlay fixes but DVD menu highlights then don't display (any solutions to this?)

Would like to get back to VMR.

Peter

[rv73]

As I discovered earlier the only way I could get rid of the tearing was to put the DVD and Multimedia sections into OVERLAY mode.

Update: Putting SageTV into FSE (Full Screen Exclusive) also fixes this, and with VMR9 on.

Summary:
So I have VMR9 + Directshow + FSE = No tearing !
Non FSE though, and tearing comes back
(OVERLAY is fine though)

[megamojo]

Yeah, I tried FSE but that didn't help the tearing, and caused its own issues. Using overlay fixes it, but after getting used to VMR9, I just can't give it up.

[[JiF]Mike]

I am having issues with tearing as well. I have tried all the suggestions here and nothing has fixed it except using overlay. Here's some quick hardware info:

NVidia 5950Ultra
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Hauppauge PVR150
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2
1GB RAM
AMD Athlon XP 3200
MSI K7N2GM-V

Any further hints would be welcome.

[rv73]

ok, seems I was a little hasty in my testing....

FSE still causes tearing in VMR9 mode.

switching to overlay is the only way to stop tearing, and I have tried the Nvidia, Cyberlink and Sage decoders.

I just installed a Nvidia 8600GS with latest drivers, (used to have 6600GT), and still have the same problem.
I test with native Sage TV recordings, DVR-MS files & DVD-video. All exhibit the same tearing with VMR9 enabled.
Although the tearing is reduced a little with the better video card - interesting ?

Note: microsoft's media center does not tear. I am unsure what render mode they use - overlay, VMR9 ?

Please good Sage people, let us use VMR9 and no picture tearing please.

[[JiF]Mike]

Well...I seem have found a fix for my tearing problem, though I have no idea how I found it. I followed the instructions in this post and I don't have tearing with VMR9 enabled. The quality of video even seems better...go figure. I hope this isn't temporary, I just watched a movie and a few shows with no tearing..maybe it'll help you guys!

[rv73]

I found that thread too and trying it out, will get back to you.

I broke AC3filter though, somehow, by increasing the merit using the directshow filter app as mentioned in that thread. (DSFmgr)
All I get now is noisy static from AC3filter ! Tried uninstalling, etc still no good.
I suggest not increasing the AC3filter merit if AC3filter is working fine for you.

[megamojo]

Well, I tried all that and I still get tearing with all my standard def XVID videos. I also checked all the settings I could think of in my 3D drivers. Note that at no point did I have trouble with mpeg 2 recording (all SD for me). I also tried temporarily removing my sageclient.properties file and generating a fresh one, but to no avail. This is really starting to get frustrating, since I had absolutely no tearing issues on much lesser hardware, and my client which uses intel integrated video also has no tearing issues. I suppose this weekend I'll try a re-install of sage, and then maybe a fresh windows install after that. Any easier options I can try before that?

[rv73]

Yep, I found using the default renderer (VMR7 apparently) gives me just a blank, black screen
I still get tearing with VMR9.

As a side, AC3 filter broke because I had Arcsofts theatre installed as I wanted to try out another decoder.

So, anyway Arcsoft, WINDVD, Cyberlink and Nvidia MPEG-2 decoders all cause tearing. ( I was hoping maybe a different decoder might fix it.)

Still seems the only way to fix tearing is choose overlay.
Hoping the Sage people can look at this too.

[megamojo]

I thought of one more thing to try, but it didn't make a lick of difference. I re-installed directx9c to the most recent version.

[rv73]

I have logged a bug, as I have tried everything too.
Only setting SageTV to Overlay fixes the tearing.
No idea why VMR9 would be such an issue, but I consider it a bug and have logged it as such.
Note: I only have the one DVD>HDMI TV setup, as the primary.

[Henki]

What ATI driver are you using for your Radeon HD2400pro? I've the same card and experienced problems with the newest drivers and mpeg4 files like the one you describe. The solution that worked for me was to downgrade to the old ATI Catalyst 7.11. http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/v...1-vista32.html

Maybe that works for you to.

I’m using Vista.

[megamojo]

If that fixes it I'll love you forever. I initially installed with catalyst 8.1, then tried 7.12 as a troubleshooting measure, but I didn't got back as far as 7.11.

Edit: Thank you kindly for the suggestion, but it didn't fix it for me .

[ThickJohnson]

I noticed the same problem....went back to 7.11 and my h.264 channels look much better. Still some stutter...but good.