Help Please - Bad Strobing on HD100

[meep]

Hi

I'm spending the weekend in one last attempt to get a satisfactory image from Sage and my HD100.

I've installed SageTv on a fresh PC running XP Pro SP2. (3.0GHz Pentium, Radeon X1950, 1GB RAM). I've set up a second drive, formatted 64K and dedicated to sage.

I've got my Sky Digibox connected to a Holograph H3d card giving me RGBS video input which Sage picks up great. Audio is in via a Delta 410 card. Sage is configured for PAL.

On the PC running Sage, I have a rock-solid picture and synched sound. It looks great!

On my HD100, I have a very poor quality picture. It can best be described as 'strobing', a constant flicker or judder, especially noticable on shots where the camera is moving. Ticker text on news channels looks really poor, stuttering along. It's like there's a constant digital ghosting. In addition, when the picture cuts, there is a disconcerting flicker. TV watched on the PC exhibits none of these issues. (display on PC is via a 21" CRT set to 75Hz).

My HD100 has the latest firmware and is set to PAL via the Menu/Down key combo. The unit is plugged into a Bravia 32" set. I can set my HD100 output to 576i, 576p, 720p or 1080i, all exhibit the same issues. If I reset my HD100 to default(NTSC), the problems persist and picture quality is worse.

Anyone got any thoughts on where I can turn next??

Help appreciated.

Peter

[meep]

A clue has appeared;

When I view the mpg files sage makes in it's recording directory, I get different results;

-Viewing the recording in Sage on server, they look fine
-Viewing the .mpg file in Windows Media Player on server, they exhibit the stutter
-Viewing the recording on HD100, they exhibit the stutter.

Any thoughts?

[DigitalMan]

Make a short clip that shows the problem and send it to sage support. I'm sure they will be able to figure it out.

[meep]

Figured it out myself

It was to do with the MPEG encoder in use.

I downloaded the gspot utility and, using that, could render graphs using SAGE mpeg decoders that played back the files perfectly in Windows Media but, when left to it's own devices Windows Media was showing all the judder I was experiencing on HD100.

I could not figure out how to find what encoder was being used or how to change priorities. However, on a previous PC, I remembered I had installed an Intervideo application for creating DVDs that came with the MB. I installed that same program on the current build and hey voila, perfect playback on both the PC and the HD100.

So, whatever MPEG encoder Sage was using to create mpg files was at fault. (I wish there was an easy way to specify this - anyone?)

Just took about 3 hours to figure this one out.

Peter

[doc]

Out of interest, what hauppauge card did you originally try?

I've never heard about the card you're using now, but if you use a hauppauge PVR150,250,350 or 500 they do the MPEG encoding on the card and so your PC doesn't do any encoding at all. In your situation you really need one of these cards as opposed to say, a WinTV Express PCI card, as they don't encode on the card and so your PC has to do a lot of extra work encoding on the fly as you record.

The digital cards, such as the dvb-s and dvb-t cards don't need to encode as they just copy a digital signal straight to your hard drive.

[meep]

Originally used a Hauppauge HVR-1300 with my set top box connected to the composite input. Picture was very poor.

The Holograph H3d card is no longer made. It was manufactured by a company called immersive inc. a couple of years ago and was a high-end ($1k+) card with multiple inputs (component, s-video, sdi), onboard Faroudja(sp?) de-interlacing etc. (just video inout, not a tuner).

It has a very clean picture and can take RGBS (native scart component) thus increasing the pcture quality over composite manifold. The downside is, as you rightly point out, mpeg encoding needs to happen in software - event at that, the set-up produces an excellent image.

It's only by chance that I tried the card at all. I had tried it a year or so ago with sage but it did not produce an image. Something must have changed in recent versions of sage to enable the card (it has a connexant chipset so that probably helps). Since I was having problems with the HVR-1300, I decided to give it one more go, just to see. Hey presto, it worked straight off (albeit with the very bad stuttering as described and now resolved).

Anyone know of a good guide to encoder setup, merits, tweaking etc.? I've searched on here but not come up with much in the way of details.

Thanks

Peter

[doc]

I've just checked the HVR-1300 and it does have a built-in mpeg encoder, so I'd have thought that would be a good card to get working.

Are you using the drivers that came with it on cd or have you downloaded the lastest?

The only thing I've ever changed within sage is to set the recording quality for the tuner to 'best' - under setup - detailed setup - multimedia - recording quality.

The encoder merits in the sage.properties files is used to tell sage which source it should try to use first, so if you only have one source you won't need to worry about it.

[meep]

Indeed, and the HVR-1300 was working. The problem was my only means of connecting it to my STB was composite which looked poor, even at best quality Sage settings.

RGBS into the H3D card is much much better.

Peter