Odd boxy 'tear' only in top right corner? Anyone else?

[IncredibleHat]

I will have to try to describe this, the best I can, because I find that I cannot take a screenshot of this, as it does not show up during pause... and snaggin a shot during playback of a time its visible, is proving impossible.

Ok, first things first: This only happens under SageTV with recorded TV from the hauppauge pvr150 I have. It does not happen on the desktop (dragging windows around), nor in ZoomPlayer with a DVD, nor with NVDVD. Also, the EXACT same TV show recorded from SageTV, plays fine under ZoomPlayer... so its definately a SageTV playback issue, not a recording issue (I have tried all 6 DVD recording qualities too).

I have tried every video decoder in my list, and have tried every Deinterlacer with ffdshow to remove this small oddity, but it persists no matter what I do. I'm convinved its a bug in SageTV?

Ok.... to explain.

The upper right-hand corner of the video, during quick change of image (usually easily seen during a fast panning movement), gets this odd "boxy" tear. Like, imagine 3 squares next to each other, that appear out of sync, EX:

Red outline shows where

This area gets slightly out of sync, thus, making a 'tear' looking anomaly. It only happens in this corner. The even more strange part, is no matter WHAT my aspect ratio setting is, and how big or small the percantage of zoom is... it is always the upper righthand corner of the video being played back. So, if I zoom the top of the video off the screen, it will still be up in the corner.

I am at a loss what next to try. Like I said, playing every recording in ZoomPlayer, I never see this tear (or any tears). Only when I play things in SageTV. Oh, also, if I play a DVD in SageTV, no tears. It's only on recorded media.

At first I thought it was my Hauppauge card actually recording that anomaly in... but that was refuted when the same recording played fine in ZoomPlayer.


SOOOOoooo... Anyone else see this? Anyone else have any ideas I could try?

Currently I am using the ffdshow video decoder, because it eliminates the jitter of moving objects better than the IntervideoNonCSS, or Sage Decoder, and even the Nvidia Purevideo Decoders. However, I have tried them ALL and they all exhibit this odd boxy tear.

[stanger89]

Sounds like tearing, are you using VMR9? Have you tried enabling Fullscreen Exclusive Mode?

[IncredibleHat]

Yes. I have VMR9 on (also tried with it off). I recently turned on FSE as I was wanting it to be a bit more 'exclusive' (use less CPU, which I am not even sure thats the point of it as I saw no difference in ANYTHING by going to FSE mode).

Either way, the boxy tear exists there, and only there.

Kind of odd really ?

I mean, usually when you see 'tears', they happen anywhere, and across the screen. Easiest seen in games when VSYNC is off. However, what I see in Sage, isn't anything like those. Its almost like a localized unique anomaly. I can't quite put my finger on the cause.

[marneb17]

Aloha,
yes same here.
I have my windows taskbar at the top, and I think that had something to do with the problem.
I'm not sure actually. Just wanted to let you know, that you are not alone. ;-)
It only occured with vmr9 and not with overlay.
Marneb

[IncredibleHat]

My bar is at the bottom.

I'll try overlay again and see for certain. But I swear it still existed... I've been known to hallucenate though

This problem has existed for a long time. Far back as I can remember using Sage 5x... I don't recall if it existed in sage 4, as I was in trial mode then, and when I bought it, sage5 had just come out.

[IncredibleHat]

I have more info on this.

ONLY occurs if I set SageTV Video Renderer to "VMR9". The odd boxy tear, plus a whole slew of other jittery oddness occurs with VMR9 on in SageTV. However, if I set it to "Default"... all is smooth, no tears, and things look better and behave much better. WTF? I thought VMR9 was supposed to be tha-shizzle... apparently they were RIGHT! LOL Its the SHITS!

Anyhow, just wanted to report back on that.

I am not trying to figure out a most confusing conflict between what nvidia is set too, what sagetv is set too, and why ffdshow appears to be running as well, and what exactly is going on. Sage obviously poorly constructed for clarity in the video settings area, that is for sure.

[blade]

VMR9 does look good, but it's very demanding. Your 6150 isn't going to be able to do VMR9 @ 1080i and maybe not even at 720p without FSE enabled.

FSE doesn't reduce CPU usage it reduces the load on the GPU. I don't know or understand all of the technical details though.

FFDshow and the Nvidia decoder can be used together. There have been posts in the past. I think stanger may have made a post or two about it, but it could have been someone else.

Personally I'd uninstall FFDshow and work on getting things working properly with the Nvidia decoder.

[IncredibleHat]

FSE Doesnt appear to do much of anything... or at least it seems that way. I mean, I can pop open the task bar in front of sage, or leave a window open on it... and it still plays the video the exact same as it does if I click on Sage.

I wonder if I can OC my 6150...

Of course... it doesn't make much sense. I can play DVDs perfectly. My CPU usage is very low during DVD playback, and the image and quality are so far smoother and superior than SageTV Cable TV Playback (not really taking 'quality of image' in effect, because my cabletv is grainy and sometimes ugly itself).

And Zoomplyaer is setup to use whatever nvidia decoders are using and VMR9 windowless enabled. Thats why I never though it to be a hardware issue. How could Zoomplayer play a dvd flawlessly... yet sagetv jitters and jumps and has this odd boxy tear in the corner always?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

FSE Doesnt appear to do much of anything... or at least it seems that way. I mean, I can pop open the task bar in front of sage, or leave a window open on it... and it still plays the video the exact same as it does if I click on Sage.

Do you have 3D Accelleration enabled?

[blade]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

FSE Doesnt appear to do much of anything... or at least it seems that way. I mean, I can pop open the task bar in front of sage, or leave a window open on it... and it still plays the video the exact same as it does if I click on Sage.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but FSE only works when Sage is in full screen mode not windowed. Sometimes after you enable it you need to stop and restart Sage before it will take effect.

[IncredibleHat]

3D acceleration (and hardware acceleration) is checked in all the windows and settings menus I have ever come across.

FSE Is on... and I run Sage in fullscreen mode (I dont do windowed). Its just if I hit the 'Windows Menu' key, it pops up the taskbar with the start menu displayed ON TOP of sagetv. I would think that FSE would not allow that, or it would make Sage blank out.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

3D acceleration (and hardware acceleration) is checked in all the windows and settings menus I have ever come across.

In Detailed Setup -> Advanced? (Same place FSE is enabled).

Not trying to be a pain, just trying to make sure something obvious isn't missed.

FSE Is on... and I run Sage in fullscreen mode (I dont do windowed). Its just if I hit the 'Windows Menu' key, it pops up the taskbar with the start menu displayed ON TOP of sagetv. I would think that FSE would not allow that, or it would make Sage blank out.

Yeah, that doesn't happen if you're actually in FSE mode.

[IncredibleHat]

Ok... I think I see what was originally wrong here.

I had set FSE, and saw no difference. Sage had crashed when I was jumping to various decoder setting windows, and I had just started it back up again.

Turns out, all this time, FSE was 'off'... because I guess the setting didnt get saved before that crash. I had assumed it was always on. So, I turned it on again, and as such, never saw a bleeding difference.

So, your comment got me thinking ... I will manually kill sage and reload it.

I send it to windowed mode, then send it to tray, then select it in tray and "Exit Sage TV" (this is the ONLY way I know of stopping sage! there is no QUIT button!). So, I start it up, and it starts up in windowed mode. Bah. So I go to FullScreen mode, and it promptly bombs.

So, I restart the whole machine. Sage loads to fullscreen on boot, so it does this. Now its fullscreen, and the FSE setting appears to be "Enabled". So I set it to VMR9 and go watch some live tv.

Clean! Its smooth, no tearing, no jumps or jitters!

Only problem now... whenever I try to leave Sage to go to Zoomplayer, or a Decoder setting window, or even to view a webradar.... SAGE BOMBS!

50% of the time it bombs... 50% of the time it goes straight to the taskbar as minimized... BUT when it comes BACK from minimized, the video playback is all screwed up again like FSE is off (even though it says its on in settings).

So, either I use FSE and am locked into sagetv PERIOD... or I turn it off, and am able to watch DVDs in the (much better) ZoomPlayer (as well as do other things on the computer), and suffer with crappy video playback.

Something aint right here... this can't be how this works, or they wouldn't have been able to sell this product to so many users...

stanger: thanks for all the help so far... I know it can be tough to diagnose and help. I am normally a smart person... but it seems I am simply fumbling around with this stuff because my logic and commonsense thinking is causing problems!

[Thomas Wischgol]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

I send it to windowed mode, then send it to tray, then select it in tray and "Exit Sage TV" (this is the ONLY way I know of stopping sage! there is no QUIT button!). So, I start it up, and it starts up in windowed mode. Bah. So I go to FullScreen mode, and it promptly bombs.

You can - as with most Windows applications - hit Alt-F4 which terminates Sage just fine. You can even map it to the remote if you want to.

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

So, either I use FSE and am locked into sagetv PERIOD... or I turn it off, and am able to watch DVDs in the (much better) ZoomPlayer (as well as do other things on the computer), and suffer with crappy video playback.

I would expect that Sage still likes to use the graphics card exclusively in FSE mode. Hence, ZoomPlayer cannot grasp the graphics card and especially cannot use any hardware acceleration. Try terminating Sage (see above) and then run ZoomPlayer.

Thomas

[IncredibleHat]

Turns out a lot of people are having this issue:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=19140

Kind of wish I found that article before starting my own.

I am using v81 nvidia drivers, because MSI's Live Update doesn't offer any other but a broken v82. I wasn't sure if the generic v91+ drivers off nvidias site would actually be prudent to use. Although, from the topic, it doesn't look like it helps matters anyway.

From the looks of things, (and a couple other threads), the setup in SageTV is hit or miss, with people having to try this, then that, then some other, and find a golden combination that everyone else reaches too. Seems to me, SageTV needs to fix its software to make this stuff work as expected... not trial and error because nothing works logically.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

stanger: thanks for all the help so far... I know it can be tough to diagnose and help. I am normally a smart person... but it seems I am simply fumbling around with this stuff because my logic and commonsense thinking is causing problems!

Don't worry, things will get better.

[IncredibleHat]

Another post addressing the issue:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=15724

Why havn't the guys at Frey fixed this OBVIOUS problem yet? Instead they add more features we don't really want

[blade]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

Another post addressing the issue:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=15724

Why havn't the guys at Frey fixed this OBVIOUS problem yet? Instead they add more features we don't really want

If it was a simple thing to fix I'm sure they would. FSE works perfectly for some people and not at all for others. I believe Narflex has posted before that it's very hit or miss. I think your hardware, drivers and other software must play a huge role in whether or not it works.

Some people's problems have gone away when they reverted back to java v1.42. Also avoiding windowed mode helps a lot.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

I send it to windowed mode, then send it to tray, then select it in tray and "Exit Sage TV" (this is the ONLY way I know of stopping sage! there is no QUIT button!).

Use NIELM's Exit SageTV Plugin it will let you exit SageTV without all this too. Currently you will also need to install his dynamic menus to select it but I personally wouldn't live without them anyway so that is not a problem.

BobP.

[IncredibleHat]

I just set my button that used to go from Fullscreen to Windowed, too EXECLOSE1 in HIP (I use HIP for my remotes). This closes SageTV so I can go to Zoomplayer, or do other things.

Wish I didn't have to quit Sage out just to do stuff like this... but like blade says, its one of those crazy things that I am sure is driving the developers as insane as the users.

However, the trade off of having ultra smooth playback now... I think is worth the temporary (it WILL be temporary, right Frey? RIGHT?? hehehe) drawback of having to deal with Quitting Sage instead of minimizing.

Its so smooth and nice now with PureVideo... that I don't need ffdshow in Sage. I keep it around though, as I apply a few minor filters on DVD playback in Zoomplayer, that adds just a wee bit of cleaner/richer image quality. Unfortunately I cannot turn off ffdshow in Sage playback completely, because if I do, it no longer works in Zoomplayer. Grr arg So I setup two 'sets' where one activates when the front application is zplayer.exe. Seems to work.