Detailed Setup:Video\Audio Settings h.264

[mr_lore]

I thought I would share the settings that worked best for my sagetv setup since it seemed like I had to pour through more than a few threads to make all of this come together for SD Mpeg2, HD Mpeg2, HD mpeg4, and HD h.264 to work perfectly and harmoniously together.

I realize everyone's millage may vary but I still think this will be relevant especially for people running nvidia cards and windows XP. Also to point out I am using the PowerDVD 8 cyberlink decoder for h.264.

Video\Audio Settings:

Video Renderer: Overlay
Mpeg2 Decoder: PowerDVD 8
Mpeg4 Decoder: Directshow
Dscaler Deinterlacer Filter: disabled
Audio Renderer: default settings used
MPEG2 Audio Decoder Filter: default settings used


Sage.properties edits:

videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder (PDVD8)
always_use_dshow_filter=true

Registry changes:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\NumBuffers from 40 to 100 hex


Full system spec's in sig, but in case that changes over time, here it is again for this post:

Sage Server: 6.4.8 w/sageMC , Windows XP Pro SP3, Nvidia 175.19 drivers, DVB Dream 1.4i
Gigabyte 690G, AMD 4400+ X2, 3GB DDR, 8500GT 256MB, 1x M780 dual tuner, Skywalker-1, Technotrend S2-3600
Connected to a Denon 2807, and Panasonic AX100U 720p to a 126" HD Projection


Client 1: STX-HD100 HD Extender on 57" 720p Samsung DLP via HDMI
Client 2: STX-HD100 HD Extender on 42" 1080p Samsung LCD via HDMI

Windows Home Server: (PVR NAS duties) Gigabyte P35, C2D 1.8Ghz, 2GB DDR, 4.27TB, Gigabit Backbone


This took me a while to nail down, hopefully this will shave some hours off the tweaking time for others so they can get to enjoying the awesomness of a SageTV experience.

[BKeadle]

Thanks for this. Even though from 2008, it's relevant to me today.

I get all glassy-eyed with all these decoding options and video formats, etc. and I admit I can't get my mind around all the terminology and options. So I'm hopeful that the settings you provide will optimize my setup.

I see most of the people on these forums have gone to Windows 7 and SageTV 7. For all the time and effort I've put into my existing WinXP SXP3/SageTV v6, the thought of starting over with either Win7/SageTV v6 or Win7/SageTV v7 seems a bit overwhelming, and concerned that my working system and acceptable WAF would be disrupted if I made the jump to get current.

I guess I could just replace the OS drive and start there, and if I can't have a fully functioning HTPC, I can just put back to original OS drive and save the effort for another day?

That said, would I break anything by doing this - would Win7/SageTV 7 change anything on my video drives where my recordings are that would be irreversable that my WinXP/SageTV v6 couldn't handle?