jerky picture w/ fusion 5 lite and sage

[natethepa]

Hi all,
I previously posted a thread about getting no sound in Sage and ended up doing a clean reinstall of Windows. I then installed all drivers, updates, and critical hotfixes. I then installed the HDTV tuner and watched it for a while which did produce a couple little skips. It is sharing IRQ with video card and I think unless I were to reinstall windows as a standard PC instead of APCI I won't be able to resolve that issue. I have swapped PCI slots and and also tried to assign IRQ in bios (useless though snce APCI automatically assigns IRQ). Thinking that the couple of skips in a half hour wasn't a big deal I went ahead and installed Sage. Again failure set in immediately with playback error and saying that it was unable to use one of the components in Sage and that I should reinstall Sage. I did so with the same result. I had already disabled the MCE services, but when I checked on them it said they were running. Turned them off and disabled. Reinstalled Sage and now I do get picture and audio, albeit VERY JERKY!!! I tried different renderers and filters, some wih worse effects, but none that improved it. Worse yet I tried uninstalling Sage to start over and went to watch some TV with fusion and it is as jerky as it was in sage. Previous experience tells me that ONLY when I uninstall the fusion drivers and reinstall them will fusion work ok again. But this begs the question...

Is there something in sage that exxagerates the dvico fusion ability to share IRQ or is there something in sage that changes setting/drivers in fusion? And can it be resolved? My sage is recording to drive E: that has been formatted in 64K clusters. Otherwise I am at a loss and about to give up on sage altogether and claim a loss of $200 (since the PVR 500 I bought from them doesn't work with my system either). My system is powerful enough to use 3d acceleration, VMR, etc. I just don't understand why this won't work!!!

Appreciate any input. Thanks,
Nate

[blade]

Originally Posted by natethepa

Otherwise I am at a loss and about to give up on sage altogether and claim a loss of $200 (since the PVR 500 I bought from them doesn't work with my system either).

Why won't your PVR-500 work with your system?

Also you gave no hardware specs for your system. Someone might see a problem with your hardware setup that you may have missed. Can you capture and playback SDTV? Is the problem only with HD material? What type of display and what resolution are you running? Are you using a single display or do you have two? What decoder are you using? Overlay or VMR9? If VMR9 are you using FSE?

If you give a little more detail there's a better chance someone can help you. Are you 100% certain the problems are capture related and not playback related?

[natethepa]

Sorry,
I cut and pasted this from another help forum as well and neglected to put my specs.

AMD 3500 Venice
EVGA 6800GS
Abit KN8 Ultra (VIA chipset is reason for not working PVR 500)
DVICO Fusion 5 Lite
1 gb RAM
250 gb HDD (64K Clusters); I also have an 80 gb HDD where all programs are
Samsung 50" DLP @ 800x600 and 60Hz refresh; single display
Windows MCE 2K5 (MCE services off)

I have used all codecs with same results. Presently using overlay, 3d rendering (turning off makes no difference), no FSE.

Last night I "dumbed" my computer down from APCI uniprocessor to APCI PC and then again to standard PC with no change (thinking it is the tuner card). I am quite positive this is a capture related issue as it is now more pronounced when running fusion alone - it is live with no playback as in sage. After loading sage into the system it has caused a significantly exxagerated effect on the jerking/stuttering AND hasn't stopped even after uninstalling sage. Playback is the same way in sage during live and recorded and this is why i believe this to be a capture related issue. I do know that the fusion card is finicky with IRQ, but making all necessary changes in my hardware scheme has not fixed the problem. I am wondering if my mobo is the source of all this evil. What do you think?
Thanks,
nate

[Jeraden]

Not that its incredibly relevant to your specific problem, but I had problems getting a Fusion 5 Lite to work as well. However in my case, I was adding it as a 3rd capture card, already have a PVR-250 and a Fusion 3 Gold-T card. So I wanted this as a second HD recording card.
No matter what I tried, I got stutters with it yet the Fusion 3 never stuttered. Even tried reformats, etc. I never tried just the Fusion 5 alone though, as no matter what I needed the PVR-250 to be present. So for the past 6 months the Fusion 5 has been sitting on a shelf.

[natethepa]

Here is an update on my situation, which i believe is resolved as best as can be expected. First of all I neglected to add within my specs that I have a wireless G internal adapter for internet access. Secondly, my motherboard would only allow the fusion or PVR card to be placed in PCI slots 1 and 3, so I thought. This was because of a couple of capacitors that don't allow proper seating of the card. Well, I know that moving the fusion card in many instances will reassign it to another IRQ. In slots 1/3 it kept assigning the IRQ to the same as my video card. And I had placed my wireless adapter in slot 2. With this arrangement I had all my problems... actually as stated before I had minimal issues when working the fusion card as a standalone, but when loading sage it exxagerated the video jerking.

Last night I decided to try something new, since everything else wasn't working. I forced the fusion card in slot 2. Mind you it is not seated completely, but I thought I would try. It works! In fusion program it works perfectly. And in sage works very well - watched all of CSI and American Idol with a couple of minor stutters - but I don't know if I am simply looking for them more than I ever have. I don't think they are the same issue that I had been dealing with. Now the interesting part... I reinstalled the wireless card in slot one next to the video card and some jerking ensued. AAAARRRGGHHH!! Investigation revealed that IRQ of wireless card has been assigned to the same as the video card. When disabled the fusion card and sage work as before. I will try tonight to place the wireless card in slot three to see if that will help. Otherwise I may have to get an external wireless adapter and attach via onboard LAN/ethernet. This I think will resolve most of my issues. The other thing I might try is using the PVR 500 again, but only enable one of the tuners as I only have my sattelite that I would record from. As a note my satellite has an HDTV tuner for OTA and I have split my antenna signal with one going to the satellite and one to the fusion card. I should be able to record one OTA signal while recording the other, or record two programs broadcast at the same time, I think.

There is a question in all this. Does not having the fusion card seated completely affect my picture quality at all or could it damage the card or mobo? And will the tiny gap left at back of my case cause too much dust accumulation? If so what else could I do? Do capacitors bend a tiny bit, or should I not even try to move them? What effect would they have if I did break them - besides voiding my warranty?
Thanks for all the help,
Nate


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Abit KN8 Ultra
AMD 3500+ Venice
EVGA 6800GS
DVICO HDTV 5 Lite
Hauppauge PVR 500
Seasonic S12 380W
MCE 2K5
SAGE