HELP with "3D Acceleration" and Tearing

[edbmdave]

Help. I have nailed this down, and have become very frustrated with it.

I have tearing occurring in my playback of video. If I toggle "3D Acceleration" off in Detailed Setup, the tearing STOPS... I have tried disabling all DXMA on all Decoders, Did not help. Only Turning off "3D Acceleration" Fixes it.

I am pretty sure this is NOT a video card issue. I have now tried the three following cards, and STILL see it with out a change in frequency.

ATI All-In-Wonder 9000
ATI Radion 9600 XT
ATI Radion 9800 Pro

I really like the transparency that the "3D Acceleration" gives me, but equally hate the tearing effect in my videos. (I have even seen it in a several lowerbit rate DixVs)

HELP HELP HELP.........

What can I do?

SageTV 2.0/MLBDude 2, AMD 2600, 1.5MB RAM PC3200, 250MB HD ATA/133 7200RPM, Hauppauge MPEG Decoder, Sonic CineMaster DVD Decoder, ATI Video Driver 4.7, XP Pro w/SP1 and HotFixes, Currently ATI Radion 9800 Pro, DivX Pro 5.2, Lame MP3 Encoder, PVR-250MCE, PVR250, and PVR-Roslyn. That All!!

[mlbdude]

VMR9 and tearing is extremely common. What resolution are you running at? The lower the resolution the less chance of it.

When you turn off 3D Acceleration you are dropping to Overlay which does not have this bug.

If you do some searching in these forums for VMR9 you will see lots of issues with it. It is also video card dependant. From that list the 9800 should be the only one to do it well based on other users experiences.

[edbmdave]

I am running at 1280 x 768.

I haven't seen a difference between the three cards. They all seem to do the same amount of tearing and pretty much ( best my eyes can tell) it is consistant as far as where and how it occurs. (Regardless of the 9000, 9600, or 9800).

Is there another way to achieve transparency w/o the tearing? I am having a hard time swallowing that a 9800 which rules for video processing (games, etc..) delivers this poor of a result. I can max the card out on most games and never see any effects. Ask Sage to do 3D and it is consistantly tearing...

Thoughts? Could this be something in Sage itself of how it has implemented VMR?

When I play back a DVD through sonic and have VMR enabled in the decoder I have NEVER seen this. Only when performing playback in Sage.

PS. I tried this with Meedio and Showshifter and it did not occur. I don't know if they are using VMR or not, but Meedio has implemented a transparenacy mode that works. I am pretty sure showshifter does not use VMR.

[salsbst]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...11#post3993411 has some interesting information on what Frey might be able to do to fix tearing. I say it's Microsoft's problem to fix, though.

No, you can't have the partial transparency in SageTV without VMR9. It's possible that DirectX9.0c will help with the tearing. It was released very recently.

[edit: fixed link]

[stanger89]

FWIW, I'm not 100% convinced it's not a bug in ATI's drivers. I mean, I upgraded to 4.7 and it seems better somehow, but no matter what resolution, what content, whatever, I always have tearing. Plus, from time to time, I see tearing just dragging around windows.

Couple that with the fact that there are people at all ends of the ATI scale with tearing problems, non-DX9 ATI cards have been known to do VMR9 just fine, and that on the nVidia side it seems more corrolated to card performance (5200 has a hard time, 5700 is much better)

Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to, or missing problems on the nVidia side, but I know I've had my last ATI board, at least for quite a while.

[edbmdave]

Interesting. I hate to think ATI has flawed, but everyone makes mistakes. Anyone else out there with either an ATI or NVidia card that can report on it?

If it is ATI, Time to start calling and complaining.

[stanger89]

You've inspired me:
VMR9 Tearing Poll

[mlbdude]

I moved from an ATI 9000, to an ATI 9660, then an nVidia 5700. All have tearing. At 640x480 I don't get tearing with the 5700. Anything higher it tears.

FYI DVD playback means nothing in comparison to tearing with VIDEO content. Film content at 23.xx fps for DVD's is much less taxing on the video card that the 29.xx of the Video content that Sage records.

Anyone tried DX9c yet to see if it helps?

[kny3twalker]

Is stuttering the same thing as tearing cause you can enable the vertical sync in sage via the registry
I get really bad stuttering with DXVA on in the decoder
I can turn it off and everything plays smoothly but much more blurry
I have not had tearing since beta

Maybe someone can tell me whether stuttering is the same as tearing
cause I do not understand why you are getting tearing unless you turned off vertical sync in the registry

Also vertical sync is on by default in my video card settings

after all this I think it is a problem with DirectX

but I do get stutters every great once in a while with overlay as well
it happens not only in SageTV but any DVD program with video (not DVD)
mostly during really long panning right to left, up and down, etc....

[edbmdave]

Originally posted by kny3twalker
Is stuttering the same thing as tearing cause you can enable the vertical sync in sage via the registry...

What registry entry? I checked my Video Driver and Video Sync is ON.

I also tried DirectX 9.0c no change, still does it. No improvement that I can tell.

[kny3twalker]

usepresentationinterval set to 1

[edbmdave]

Thanks, I looked and found that I had a value of 80000000 for UsePresentionInterval. I changed it to 0. Rebooted, and short of having a very few frames that stuttered, the tearing is GONE.....

The reg file you attached shows UsePresentationInterval set to 1. Which way should it be?

What does UsePresentationInterval and the other registry settings do? And should I be concerned with them?

"DisableLinearTextureFiltering"=dword:00000000
"PageFlipping"=dword:00000000
"UsePresentationInterval"=dword:00000001

kny3twalker you are AWESOME!! Thanks.

[kny3twalker]

it should be vertical sync (usepresentationinterval)
I get no tearing but no stuttering
I am beginning to think it is something on SageTV's end that is causing this unless VMR9 acts this way with all applications
the fact that we all get under 30 CPU usage and some have 9800 PRO+ video cards yet still get stuttering
it seems that the problem must be Frey's end
I know if you change that value from 1 to 0
you get a little tearing but no stuttering

I would like to know what Frey is running and if they use VMR9
also whether they enable DXVA in the decoder (not the DXVA mode thing Sage) with VMR9 rendering

[mlbdude]

Stuttering is the same thing as the tearing issue. The difference is that when the frame can't keep up with the frame-rate of the movie rather than tear it skips those frames.

[kny3twalker]

I know just wanted to make sure that I am following the topic
also any thoughts as to whether Frey could make some changes
or is all hardware no matter how expensive insufficient