Problems with Nvidia 180.84 beta and 182.06 drivers.

[redondo_se]

I ran into several problems lately with newer Nvidia drivers:

I use the Source aspect setting because I have a mix of 16x9 and 4x3 channels. With 182.06 only, when I start playback of any 1080i H.264 stream from my R5000 modified Dish VIP 211 (live or previously recorded) I end up with vertical black bars on the left and right that essentially mask the 16x9 content to 4x3. Note that EVERY time I start playback of one of these streams with older Nvidia drivers or even my ATI cards, it always starts out squished into a 4x3, but then stretches out to 16x9. With the 182.06 drivers, it does the same thing, but the black bars remain, masking the display to 4x3, i.e. the 16x9 video is there under the mask. If I bring up the options menu (i.e. hit enter twice) the black bars go away. Note that this only happens with 1080i, not 720p.

With 180.84 beta and 182.06, I have a very annoying "smearing" problem when starting playback of H.264 streams. It happens about 20% of the time. The background of the image is fine, but moving objects are totally blocky and "smear" as they move. If I skip forward, it goes away and stays away. But if I skip back to the start, it re-apears and gets stuck that way as long as I let it play until I skip forward.

Reverting back to 178.24 *appears* to have resolved both problems.

Anyone else had similar problems?

[HelenWeathers]

I have the 9600GT card and am using the 182.06 drivers. I use the HD-PVRs with my DirecTV boxes. No issues with 182.06 drivers here, but I did have to move to the 6.5.11 beta SageTV (with these drivers installed) to eleminate the smear that you described.

The 178.24 drivers were perfect though with my 7900GT card in my XP system. They are the drivers I fall back to if I have issues in XP.

[redondo_se]

I'm glad you had the smearing problem also, only because that means I'm not going crazy It's interesting that 6.5.11 cured it for you. I wonder if Sage explicitly addressed something to fix it, or just got lucky. I don't see anything in the release notes related to that.

I'm running 6.5.11 on my server, but I haven't upgraded my clients. I'm just going to have to leave it be for a while so my wife won't kill me.

[HelenWeathers]

The 6.5.9 made my EVR unuseable and I had to revert to overlay. The demuxer in 6.5.11 beta is the one they used in 6.5.8 beta I think.

EDIT: Here's the quote from the release notes: Windows Updates 1. New MPEG demux w/ accurate seeking is included again.

[redondo_se]

I guess I should have mentioned that I'm using older versions of the client, but I've been using the latest beta demux all along. So, I don't think that upgrading to 6.5.11 would make any difference for me as far as the demux is concerned.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by redondo_se

I guess I should have mentioned that I'm using older versions of the client, but I've been using the latest beta demux all along. So, I don't think that upgrading to 6.5.11 would make any difference for me as far as the demux is concerned.

There may be more to it than just a demuxer issue and it is always recommended to run the same version of the client as the server. And make sure when new video drivers are installed you remove the old drivers and revert to a generic vga driver before installing the new drivers.


Gerry

[redondo_se]

I definitely always uninstall old drivers first. I was and still am running different versions on client and server. I don't see how that could matter as far as playback is concerned. The client is just reading the file off the server's drive and playing it back (I use mapped network drives).

[redondo_se]

I posted this on the R5000 status thread, but I'll post it here also:

Of course I angered the gods by claiming to have figured out the solution, even though I qualified it with "appears." The smear showed up again last night with 178.24 drivers on my 9600GT.

I've been using Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 for H.264. I had tried using Arcsoft the other day, but had some major stutter problems. That was an older version of TotalTheater (.113). I just updated to (.125) last night. I'm hesitant to try newer versions than that because people have reported stutter problems with versions beyond .125.

Initial results show that .125 is working better than .113, but I think I'll wait a while to claim victory again. This is why I gave up using my old Fusion I for HDTV 6 years ago and just bought a HD-Tivo. Too many headaches.

EDIT: I should have also mentioned that I did NOT yet upgrade my client to Sage 6.5.11 beta. That'll be my next step if the Arcsoft decoder doesn't fix it. Helen, what decoder are you using for H.264?

[HelenWeathers]

Helen, what decoder are you using for H.264?

I have the videoframe setting in my SageTV Client properties set for h264 = Arcsoft. I have Total Media Theater installed on that Vista client and the 9600GT card. If you need the specifics (TMT ver or properties line) let me know and I'll check it out when home tonight.

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

If you need the specifics (TMT ver or properties line) let me know and I'll check it out when home tonight.

If you don't mind, TMT app and decoder version would be great. Do you know how to use DirectShow Filter Manager or graph edit to pull up the Arcsoft Video Decoder properties page? If so, could you check the decoder version? I don't remember the decoder version mine shows with TMT v2.1.6.125, but it was dated something like September 10, 2008.


Thanks.

[HelenWeathers]

My TMT version is 2.1.6.129.

In DFSManager properties for Arcsoft Video Decoder shows CLSID B793E9A8-C53E-4845-9DE9-C32326EACCAD and CATID 083863F1-70DE-11D0-BD40-00A0C911CE86. (I don't have Graphedit installed)

In Sage settings Video/Audio I have Video Rendering: EVR and MPEG2 Video Decoder: Arcsoft Video Decoder.

All other SageTV Client settings are defaults from clean install of 6.5.11.

Hope this helps.