newb tested beyond and sage - want sage but video q isnt as good?

[elitevsx]

I demoed both trials and I like some of the features with sage so I want to really give it a shot but I notice that the video q is better on beyond for some reason. I tried some setting changes like vr9 or whatever but I cant see to get it as clear. It totally looks like its on a PC vs a tv like beyond does. Im sure theres a way to tweak and fix but im not sure how.

Also get a tiny white fizzy like above the tv im watching - not a big deal but it will be if I ever get my setup going with my lcd display.

Any help would be great - some pointers perhaps.

AMD ath64
1 gig mem
6600 PCIe video

[Guyverix]

You might try some different codecs, and also set your default recording quality to a higher rating. (IE bump it up to best)

[elitevsx]

Ill keep playing with the codecs....there are 3 in my list - there is one (cant remember what) but itll freeze or give me a black screen right away.....

ill keep trying....thanks

[stevech]

It would be very helpful to newbies to get better advice than "try other codecs". Between this and "try other video card settings", the trial-and-error process is frustrating and inconclusive.

I am a relative newcomer- and the playback quality is far less than original standard-defintion, with the recording quality set to the highest. The problem is lack of high frequencies - my wife says all the SageTV recordings look like they are playing back with a thin layer of Vaseline on the screen. It seems that WinTV 2000 does much better.

I tried GBPVR - too buggy and bad user interface. BeyondTV looked promising - but I went for the features in SageTV, and good UI. If I could just get the quality up to standard-def. Hauppauge PVR USB2. I don't own any HD stuff.

The UI in SageTV gets good marks from the family.

[folly12345]

elitevsx & stevech -

I think the problem you are having is that you are not giving enough detail for anyone to offer specific helpful hints. I have been at this for going on 2 years and I have always gotten excellent help from the user community when I have given enough details.

The information needed is what hardwware are you using, what version of Sage, what Stvi's have you loaded, what video card are you using, what codecs have you tried, what are your decoder settings, etc.

Don't give up Sage is a great package with a outstanding user community, it just needs some TLC to get it tweaked just so. If you post more details, you will get the help and advice you are seeking.

- Jeff

[Opus4]

Besides setting the recording quality to something higher than 2GB/Hr (I like Best at 3GB/hr), be sure to try overlay instead of VMR9. Some people prefer one over the other... but I can't remember which one is the default. Playback from one media player to another should be the same if they are using the same renderer & decoder.

Regarding the white scrambled line at the top of the video: that is normally cut off on a regular TV because it is in the overscan area outside the TV's picture area. You can adjust that in Detailed Setup -> Multimedia -> Aspect Ratio Settings & change the stretch % values. (The Overscan Settings sounds like it would be the one to change, but that changes the menu size to fit the TV's display area.)

- Andy

[stevech]

My server doesn't have great playback quality, as I described above.
As requested, here's config:

SageTV 4.1. Stock.

Hauppauge PVR USB2. Connected to a USB PCI bus card with no other USB devices on that hub.

Video card: RADEON 9200Se AGP 128MB "Diamond Stealth S80", in 800x600 mode, 32 bits; s-video to TV.

Recording at highest quality setting.

decoders: I've tried the 3 that come with SageTV. Not sure any particular one is superior. Not sure if the Hauppauge encoder is at fault. There are too many variables: decoder, decoder settings, video card settings, etc.

People run HD with this stuff; I'm just wishing I had Standard-Def equivalence or very nearly so.
Complaint: playback quality poor - lacks high frequencies in video; looks like a poor VHS tape.

[elitevsx]

amd ath 64 3000
1 gig mem
6600 PCIe Vcard
Hauppauge 150mce tv tuner
isntalled ffdshow latest version (very confusing lol)
tried different configurations - still SD tv is grainy and doesnt seem to look even as good as my parents 15 year old color zenith lol

I have a 17lcd at 1280x1024.

soon to move a new pc to 1366x768 if I can feel confident enough to get this thing working well.

need any more info?

Can anyone just go into the setup>detailed setup>video/audio and list what in that menu would work better then stock? I know its different for everyone....just some basics to start at.....dscaler for example...? not an option.....disabled....but I see it in FFDSHOW...man i dont know - confusing

[something fishy]

I have never got particularly stellar results when viewing video on the windows desktop. However I have excellent TV out to a SDTV using an nvidia 6200A card. I did the following:
1) Use the nvidia DVD decoders outputting to VMR9 and switched to smart and pixel adaptive deinterlacing (current Catalyst drivers have pixel adaptive deinterlacing for radeons that the nvidia decoder can use, I don’t know if this includes the 9200)
2) Set the desktop resolution to as close to the native res of the TV signals in your area as possible. I live in PAL land so this means 720*576@50Hz for me, for NTSC it would be 720*480@60Hz (I think).
3) Set the aspect ratio controls in Sage to vertical 100% and horizontal 100% and then control overscan in the video card drivers (this combined with 2 should further minimise any problems generated by the deinterlacing and then reinterlacing that is inherent in using any graphics card’s-video out.
4) Using the absolute minimum amount of anti-flicker that you can stand (installing the SageMCE stv will help, those white bars on dark blue of the default Sage interface flicker like crazy).

@elitevsx, obviously much of the above doesn’t apply if you’re using an LCD monitor but you should certainly try the nvidia purevideo decoders (there’s a time limited trial) as they offer the best deinterlacing and will work well with your 6600.

Also
5) turn off all noise filtering and temporal noise filtering on the Hauppauge card doing the recording (details are in these forums search for “cask of amontillado” and PVR150 or Hauppauge tweak tool).

BTW for SDTV I would strongly recommend the 6200A (the native AGP part). It is cheap, passively cooled and silent and has excellent quality TV out with very good driver support. Mine was made by inno3D.

Hope some of this helps

Eric

[blade]

Originally Posted by elitevsx

amd ath 64 3000
1 gig mem
6600 PCIe Vcard
Hauppauge 150mce tv tuner
isntalled ffdshow latest version (very confusing lol)
tried different configurations - still SD tv is grainy and doesnt seem to look even as good as my parents 15 year old color zenith lol

I have a 17lcd at 1280x1024.

soon to move a new pc to 1366x768 if I can feel confident enough to get this thing working well.

need any more info?

Can anyone just go into the setup>detailed setup>video/audio and list what in that menu would work better then stock? I know its different for everyone....just some basics to start at.....dscaler for example...? not an option.....disabled....but I see it in FFDSHOW...man i dont know - confusing

Personally I wouldn't waste my time with FFDshow and Dscaler.

1-Install the latest Nvidia Decoder and Driver for your card.
2-Play a video back in media player, you should see the Nvidia Icon in the tray. Open it up and select Smart and Per-Pixel Adaptive.
3-In Sage go to the video/audio setup and select VMR9, Nvidia Decoder, and everything else to default.
4-If the video stutters or tears then you'll probably have to go to the Advanced setion and enable Full Screen Exclusive Mode. The only problem with turning it on is Sage will sometimes crash or not playback video when switching between windowed and fullscreen.

You may need to calibrate your display and capture cards as well. There are threads somewhere that cover how to do that. Like something fishy said, search for Cask of Amontillado for info on your capture card also there is a guide on capture card color calibration on the wiki. Adjusting the settings for your display and capture cards can make a huge difference.

My picture didn't really clear up until I ran all new coax through the entire house, put new connectors on all of the wire, and installed a signal amplifier; however, straight cable to my HDTVs looked awful to start with. It looked fine on the SDTV's in the house, but higher resolutions really show all the imperfections in the signal especially on larger screens. Of course if the signal looks good on your HDTV with straight cable you should be fine.

[domc]

You'll probly get a lot of replies because everyones situation is different but for me I used a tool called Christweak. http://www.chris-pc.com/tweak/index.html
Turning down to 0 the temperal/Noise and setting the resolution to 640x480 in WinTV (can be done better with this tool) worked for me. I tried the other tools and they just didn't work.

Check out these other threads:

http://www.diy-pvr-dvr-htpc.com/inde..._And_Tips_SDTV

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ghlight=blurry

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ghlight=blurry

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ghlight=blurry

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ight=dot+crawl

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ght=pixelation

[elitevsx]

blade - thank youuuuuu for your reply - very informative. also I tried looking for "2-Play a video back in media player, you should see the Nvidia Icon in the tray. Open it up and select Smart and Per-Pixel Adaptive. " and diidnt see that option...Ill keep digging.

Also domc - thanks. I am going to check out the software further and see what it does....

I think I need to get stv working well on my 17lcd before I go further trying to get this fantastic system going thatll totally flop on me...im gonna KEEP TRYIN! Its all trial and error I guess..and alot of reading here

[blade]

Originally Posted by elitevsx

blade - thank youuuuuu for your reply - very informative. also I tried looking for "2-Play a video back in media player, you should see the Nvidia Icon in the tray. Open it up and select Smart and Per-Pixel Adaptive. " and diidnt see that option...Ill keep digging.

Did you not see the option or didn't see the tray icon? If you didn't see the tray icon the Media Player will use the default (supposedly last mpeg2 decoder installed) to playback your Sage recordings. However, I had to completely uninstall FFDshow before Media Player or Sage would use the Nvidia decoder as the default. You can select Nvidia decoder as the decoder to use in Sage but most likely you won't be able to access the properties from the tray icon unless you're using it as the default decoder. I don't know why, I guess it's just a bug.

If you didn't see the option for per-pixel adaptive it's probably because Media Player is using overlay instead of VMR9. Per-pixel adaptive is only available for VMR9.

Originally Posted by domc

Turning down to 0 the temperal/Noise and setting the resolution to 640x480 in WinTV (can be done better with this tool) worked for me. I tried the other tools and they just didn't work.

The hauppauge tweak tool works for me; however, I have to set the temporal and spatial filters for each individual encoder. The overall setting for all cards has no affect. Also I think the capture resolution can be changed by creating a custom recording profile in the Sage properties file.

One other thing turning the filters too low or two high can cause problems as well for some people. For example turning down the motion blur can greatly reduce ghosting and sharpen the picture, but setting it too low causes the video to become jerky almost like it's dropping frames.

[elitevsx]

blade - lol, dont kill me - your totally helping but I uninstalled ffdshow - and I see the nvidia tray icon but I dont see that option. I went back from the latest nvidia drivers too, to the 78.01 I think it is. I am going to reboot now.

BTW - I have a 150mce version card - will the tweaks work? I found that one site with the few reg changes but I didnt know what the heck I was doing lol.

Man I want sage to work well but its so crappy at the moment and I know I have good hardware...its frustrating but....again....were probably getting close so I thank you.

Gonna reboot..see if that does anything