Tearing with VMR and Directshow

[OldPCGUY]

Originally Posted by ehfortin

Hi,

I've reinstalled everything from scratch. I still have the tearing issue. It's strange that I never got that before and it started about when I first installed WinDVD. Since I just reinstalled everything (SageTV, Arcsoft - HD-PVR edition, Java 1_06_07 and most recent ATI drivers), it seems that it was probably not related.

I'm using overlay, tried 3d accelation on/off. CPU is not using more then 50%, heap memory seems good.

I'm just thinking that I added Cyberlink M2TS decoder in the previous install and did not this time. I would think that it's not related but... I guess I'll have to try it to make sure. Maybe it was that decoder that was used instead of Arcsoft's one.

Is it usually better with XP Pro then with Vista? I have both licences so I can still reinstall back with XP Pro if it can resolve this issue. Until we got EVR support.

Thank you. Will let you know about the M2TS decoder if it helps or not.


ehfortin

I am using XP Pro 32 bit SP3 and I always get Video Tearing when I use VRM9 no matter what decoder I use.

Using Overlay I get very good playback with no tearing.
Video Renderer - Overlay
Video Decoder - Sage Mpeg with Acceleration
De-interlacing is turned off
CPU usesage on ATSC HD playback is under 10% for 720P or 1080i

The embedded font size for Overlay CC is bigger than VRM9 captions so I loaded the CC plugin and I have to generate the smi files. This allows me to set the caption size and color.

[megamojo]

I see the same results, tearing with VMR9 and no or very little tearing with overlay. For me I don't notice it much anymore unless I look for it and I'd rather have the transparent menus that come with VMR9.

[ehfortin]

As promised, here is the follow-up.

I've installed Cyberlink HD.264 pack without success. I've upgraded to SP1 without any change (was thinking I was already at SP1 but... it seems it was not part of all the updates I've applied after initial install). I've added the most recent Vista Pack without getting any better result. I've also tried the ATI registries setting I found in the past (can't remember where, sorry) that was supposed to improve PQ (one of the switch was for H.264 so I was hoping for better result). Tried to change FSE, 3D acceleration, SageTV acceleration, etc all without progress. I've even tried to change resolution from 720P to 1080i and its still the same.

I've tried to change the tv player to Arcsoft without success (always get a message about unsupported file type even if I can open it directly from folder so I guess SageTV is doing something while passing the file to the player (it's a full client/server setup so client can't see the files without passing by the SageTV server).

I'll try the EVRPlay developped by Babgvant to see if I get better result. I've played an old .ts file (before I got HD) with Arcsoft and noticed an horizontal line in the middle of the screen that seems like tearing.

I'm wondering if it would be the ATI drivers. I have the most current one (8.10). Should try to get back to 8.6 or so (I think it was the first driver I installed on this machine) and see what is happening.

I may also try XP Pro (will image the current setup to get back to it if needed).

Any suggestions or ideas of what could be wrong?

Thank you.


ehfortin

[ehfortin]

I see the same results, tearing with VMR9 and no or very little tearing with overlay. For me I don't notice it much anymore unless I look for it and I'd rather have the transparent menus that come with VMR9.

Well, I guess it's not as severe as it is on my system. On a 50" screen, I can have sequence where 3-4" are tearing and it is for a few seconds to multiple minutes. Hard to ignore. I also have time where the display is just kind of cut in two and where there maybe a fraction of a second difference between both parts so it's just like if a part of the screen was a few inches unaligned with the second half of the display.

In my case, it is really annoying and I have wife and kids telling me about it so it seems I'm not alone that notice it. Let say it is not helping WAF here. I'm lucky the live TV is not through SageTV (have a dedicated STB for that because the delay between channels switching and the fact that SageTV was going south now and then was a no go).

Actually, that's something I should search for and/or post about. My SageTV is usually freezing after I do a few sequences (3-4) of watching a recorded show, stopping it, moving to the next one, etc. At some point, it will start to play and then hang there forever until I kill SageTV client and start it back. Than I'm good until I repeat the same sequence (looking for which show to listen too).

Will try going back to ATI drivers revision 8.6 in the next few hours. Will let you know the result.


ehfortin

[Ryokurin]

One thing that I know is rarely mentioned is that you may have to go into your video card properties and enable vsync and triple buffering. I recently upgraded to an 8300 based system and immediately had tearing on hd material until I did that.

[ehfortin]

Originally Posted by Ryokurin

One thing that I know is rarely mentioned is that you may have to go into your video card properties and enable vsync and triple buffering. I recently upgraded to an 8300 based system and immediately had tearing on hd material until I did that.

Is that both for ATI and Nvidia? I have an ATI 2400 Pro and I don't remember having see anything about triple buffering. I think I saw something about vsync however. Do you know where I would see these in the ATI Control Center?

I've made a changed yesterday that I was sure was already done but wasn't. I swap both display (I actually only have one TV but it is connected both with VGA and component cable because component don't display all mode/resolution). I noticed a lot less tearing. I know it was mentionned in one of the first few posts but didn't noticed I had the VGA screen before the HD TV (even if both are the same unit). I think I still saw some tearing but... didn't listen enough to be sure yet.

Let me know about the vsync and triple buffering.

Thank you.

ehfortin

[Ryokurin]

On ATI, its listed as "Wait for Vertical refresh" located in 3d, all settings and toggles between "always off", off, unless app specifies, on unless app specifies and always on.

That should be enough. I just did triple buffering to make sure it worked, and Nvidia had it as an selectable option. ATI dosn't make it a selectable option in CCC, at least on my laptop. but you can do it via 3rd party tools like ATI tray tools, or Riva Tuner if you need to.

[megamojo]

Those 2 settings were mentioned earlier in this thread I believe, around the first page or so. In my case they made no difference at all. I've always had the wait for vertical sync option set to always on, and I just installed ati traytools to check on the triple buffering. Running traytools made my sage shutdown unexpectedly, and it would not start again until I closed traytools. While I had traytools running I checked on the triple buffer option and it was checked, so I assume it's on by default.

It should be noted that I am not viewing HD content, just DVD resolution xvid avi's on a standard def tube TV. Because of that, I'm absolutely sure that CPU/GPU horsepower is not a problem here, but something more fundamental is wrong. If you go back to the beginning of this thread you can read the whole story, but the gist of it is that I've tried absolutely everything I can think of with no success at all. Since I just have a 27" standard old TV I don't notice much, but I can see it as being a huge problem for a nice new large HDTV.

[Beaker]

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I found a solution for tearing on my system. I'm using a nVidia 8600GTS made by Gigabyte (fanless!) Since I built the system it's been a dual monitor setup with my TV being the second monitor.

Tearing was bad from the get-go. I used Overlay in my previous system and had no tearing problems, but Overlay isn't supported on the newer nVidia cards. So I'm running VMR9.

The solution, for me, was to force Vertical Sync on. Here's a click-by-click recipe from my XP Home system:

-Right-click on the desktop and select Properties
-Click the Settings tab
-Click the Advanced button
-Click the GeForce tab (most nVidia GeForce cards with recent drivers will have something like this)
-Click the button labeled Start the NVIDIA Control Panel (new window opens)
-In the left-hand column, expand 3D Settings
-Click Manage 3D Settings
-In the right-hand pane, click the Program Settings tab
-Click Add
-Navigate to your SageTV install directory and select SageTVPlayer.exe
-Scroll to the bottom of the settings list and find Vertical Sync
-Click Vertical Sync and change the setting from Use Global Setting to Force On

Done!

Now, understand that this does create other playback issues, but they are much more tolerable to my eye than large and frequent horizontal tearing. And since this specifies the settings just for Sage's player, it won't affect how your games or other applications play.

[hammers929]

Thats great for nvidia cards.
But I also run an ati 2400 card on my system. The best i can get it to run using VMR is to set every 3d setting to performance apart from wait for vsync. Also I had to disable use FSE as this caused problems when I wanted to watch Divx movies through sage. everything is almost perfect now apart from a very slight micro stutter which only I seem to be able to notice.

Any other tips from fellow ATI 2400 card users that use VMR?

[John@TunerUK]

Originally Posted by Beaker

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I found a solution for tearing on my system. I'm using a nVidia 8600GTS made by Gigabyte (fanless!) Since I built the system it's been a dual monitor setup with my TV being the second monitor.

Tearing was bad from the get-go. I used Overlay in my previous system and had no tearing problems, but Overlay isn't supported on the newer nVidia cards. So I'm running VMR9.

The solution, for me, was to force Vertical Sync on. Here's a click-by-click recipe from my XP Home system:

-Right-click on the desktop and select Properties
-Click the Settings tab
-Click the Advanced button
-Click the GeForce tab (most nVidia GeForce cards with recent drivers will have something like this)
-Click the button labeled Start the NVIDIA Control Panel (new window opens)
-In the left-hand column, expand 3D Settings
-Click Manage 3D Settings
-In the right-hand pane, click the Program Settings tab
-Click Add
-Navigate to your SageTV install directory and select SageTVPlayer.exe
-Scroll to the bottom of the settings list and find Vertical Sync
-Click Vertical Sync and change the setting from Use Global Setting to Force On

Done!

Now, understand that this does create other playback issues, but they are much more tolerable to my eye than large and frequent horizontal tearing. And since this specifies the settings just for Sage's player, it won't affect how your games or other applications play.

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to make any difference with my onboard Geforce 7050pv.
Fortunately It does support overlay, so I can get rid of it that way. But overlay has it's issues too. Oh well, it was worth a try.

[skyeclad]

I have tearing with my ATI 3650 and it can be very annoying but my simple fix is that I enable FSE and make sure that I use the Toggle Fullscreen option not the windows maximize button. This causes a brief, yet annoying, blacking out of the screen and then the video returns with Sage full screen. Playback is smooth as butter with not stutters or tearing after this.

I actually was searching through threads to see if I couldn't find a cure that doesn't require FSE because of the annoying full screen toggle and black out pause. What I don't understand is that PowerDVD and TMT don't seem to employ FSE yet I don't experience any tearing in those apps. I do experience bad tearing with Hulu though.

So, for whatever reason FSE cures this issue for me but it seems to be a problem with the way Sage displays video. Other apps don't seem to require this at all.