Laundry List of VMR9 vs. Overlay Issues

[Taddeusz]

I would like to use VMR9 mode but I have a few issues. My system is as follows:

Athon 64 3200
1GB RAM (soon to be 2GB, I've noticed an issue where my system will chug away at the hard drive all the while Sage's interface is frozen)
7600GS AGP
Giga-byte GA-K8U-939

I'm not doing HD yet. This is all SDTV. My video is output to a regular TV through s-video. My video card is set to 1024x768. When running in VMR9 I have FSE mode turned on.

The problem I ran into initially with the PureVideo decoder in VMR9, particularly with the de-interlace control set to Smart is that it would stutter quite a lot. I don't know if that was due to the quality of the recorded video or what? I've recently hooked cable tuners via s-video to both my Hauppauge cards which produces much sharper video without all the static. The only recordings I ever really had a stuttering issue with were episodes of Alias recorded off TNT. Changing it to Automatic seems to fix the issue but then I get the following problem.

My other problem with running in VMR9 mode is that it appears to not be deinterlacing the video very well. It appears to be doing a bob on the video as the Sci Fi Channel logo on the bottom of the screen looks kind of broken up. Returning to overlay mode makes things much sharper and the Sci Fi logo has the full curve to it. Actually, using the Cyberlink decoder in VMR9 mode produces the same result.

The other issue I have with VMR9 versus overlay is video brightness and color banding. I've purchased a calibration DVD so now my TV is calibrated. I have yet to calibrate my tuners because I want to get the decoder issues fixed first.

Using PureVideo overlay mode looks correct. Blacks are nice and black and from what I've read are "video black". When I switch to VMR9 mode black turns to a dark gray and everything looks washed out.

I am happy to running in overlay mode however all is not well there either. It was never an issue when I was using my Hauppauge cards' built-in tuners, probably due to more video noise, but since switching to using digital cable tuners I've noticed really bad color banding. Particularly in darker areas. Switching to VMR9 seems to clear this up somewhat but then I run into the brightness and stuttering issues. Using the Cyberlink decoder doesn't produce the color banding but no matter how I run it the video brightness is just not correct.

I will eventually go HD but for now I'm stuck SD until I can scrape up the cash for a new TV.

Any ideas how I can correct any of these issues would be great. Thank you.

[sting7777]

i am having similar issues (see my post above yours) oddly enough - my radeon card works fine with purevideo