How do I know if I have EVR working?

[AzJazz]

I am running WinXP SP2, and I selected EVR as my Video Renderer in SageTV. How do I know if EVR is working properly/working at all? I haven't noticed any differences yet.

Thanks ...

[gplasky]

EVen if you have it working in XP EVR doesn't allow any hardware acceleration on XP. If you want a better picture move on to Vista or Windows 7.

Gerry

[AzJazz]

Hey, Gerr - It's interesting that you should mention that. I decided to check my CPU utilization between using EVR and VMR9. The CPU utilization appeared to be identical on both (generally 10% or less for both HD and SD content).

One thing that I did notice, though. For the first time since I installed SageTV, my Live HD content playback is not stuttering anymore when I use EVR!

I guess EVR is doing something!

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by AzJazz

Hey, Gerr - It's interesting that you should mention that. I decided to check my CPU utilization between using EVR and VMR9. The CPU utilization appeared to be identical on both (generally 10% or less for both HD and SD content).

One thing that I did notice, though. For the first time since I installed SageTV, my Live HD content playback is not stuttering anymore when I use EVR!

I guess EVR is doing something!

And that's a good thing. And I didn't mean to imply that EVR doesn't do anything, just that it doesn't take advantage of hardware acceleration. On my Vista machine cpu it's around 28%.

Gerry

[AzJazz]

Originally Posted by gplasky

And that's a good thing. And I didn't mean to imply that EVR doesn't do anything, just that it doesn't take advantage of hardware acceleration. On my Vista machine cpu it's around 28%.

Gerry

Hmmm ... Does that mean that I may have accidentally done something with my PC that is giving me hardware acceleration for EVR on WinXP? When I'm watching uncompressed, full HD OTA content, my CPU rarely goes above 15% for SageTV.exe with EVR. Not that I'm complaining ... but if I've done something that could help other folks, I would sure like to help.

[cychou]

Originally Posted by AzJazz

Hey, Gerr - It's interesting that you should mention that. I decided to check my CPU utilization between using EVR and VMR9. The CPU utilization appeared to be identical on both (generally 10% or less for both HD and SD content).

One thing that I did notice, though. For the first time since I installed SageTV, my Live HD content playback is not stuttering anymore when I use EVR!

I guess EVR is doing something!

I just run DXVAChecker on XP sp3 machine to test various decoders on both VMR9 and EVR.

1 For Nvidia decoder, EVR (w/o Hardware decoding) use almost double the cpu cycles.

2. For Cyberlink decoder, both EVR and VMR9 use roughly the same amount of cpu cycles. Even though EVR is not using hardware Decoder Devices. Frame rate is steady at 25 (PAL) for EVR, VMR9 on the other hand is not as steady.

Differences between Nvidia and Cyberlink decoders are quite obvious! So I guess both posters are right!??

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by AzJazz

Hmmm ... Does that mean that I may have accidentally done something with my PC that is giving me hardware acceleration for EVR on WinXP? When I'm watching uncompressed, full HD OTA content, my CPU rarely goes above 15% for SageTV.exe with EVR. Not that I'm complaining ... but if I've done something that could help other folks, I would sure like to help.

No. EVR can't use hardware acceleration on XP. And I'm talking total CPU on the machine. I'm at 12% for SageTVclient. But the PC is around 24-28% on Vista.

It also depends on your video card's drivers and what video card you are using on how well, if at all, you're using hardware acceleration.

Gerry