Divx playback in Sage looks terrible...

[robk]

I've been using Sage for several months, and am very pleased with the picture quality even using DVD Long Play to save drive space. My main video source is satellite, so I'm starting with a fairly good picture. Recently I converted a few movies to Divx AVI format using DrDivx, and they look great in the Divx Player v2.6, but if I play the same files in Sage, they look terrible. I'm using Nvidia decoders for video, also installed Divx codecs. Does Sage just not handle Divx well? Or am I missing something?
Thanks,
Rob

[RedR]

Heya,

I pretty much have the same setup via the nVidiaDVD, and using AutoGK to make my XviD or Divx files. The picture quality is great, mind you I am using defaults for divx.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by robk

..they look great in the Divx Player v2.6, but if I play the same files in Sage, they look terrible. I'm using Nvidia decoders for video, also installed Divx codecs. Does Sage just not handle Divx well? Or am I missing something?
Thanks,
Rob

SageTV uses whatever is registered as the highest merit DirectShow DivX decoder. Play a DivX .avi file in Windows Media Player, and while it's playing, go to File>Properties to see what video & audio decoder is being used.. that will be the decoder you need to configure.

I would highly recommend DivX 5.2.x free decoder, with these settings:

[robk]

Thanks for the help. I had the Dixv decoder installed but it wasn't being used in WMP. I read on the Divx forum to download FFDshow and configure it to NOT handle any mpeg4 files, that put the Divx codec in the properties of WMP. How can I be sure the right codec is being used by Sage? I have it set to "default" and the Nvidia icon shows up in the tray (sometimes).
Rob

[korben_dallas]

The Nvidia decoder only decodes MPEG-2 files. Not related to DivX playback at all.

.avi files are a special case for playback in SageTV. The reason is that an .avi file is just a container specification, so you can mix pretty much any video encoding with any audio encoding, and then save it in one file. So long as Windows knows via DirectShow merit in the Registry which decoders to use for the video and audio, then the file will play in Windows Media Player. And if it plays correctly in WMP, 99% of the time it will play correctly in SageTV.

You can tweak the DirectShow merit by making changes in the Registry, but I found that to be too much work (i.e. I'm lazy ), so I just made sure the DivX codec was the only DivX codec on my PC (since Xvid and 3ivx and others can be used for DivX playback).

Unfortunately, SageTV does not have a decoder field specifically for choosing which DivX decoder to use, but I have requested it for version 3 . So if you are using FFDSHOW and other MPEG-4/DivX codecs, then your setup is probably ok now, but I'd recommend having only one DivX capable codec for simplicity sake.

[robk]

I did a little tweaking and the picture quality is almost as good as an mpeg recorded by Sage. I expect a little artifacting, especially in scenes with a lot of motion, but it looks a lot better now that I'm using the proper codec. Thanks for the help! What we need is a utility like DECCHECK that will display and control all decoders, not just mpeg2.
Thanks again,
Rob

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by robk

Thanks for the help!

Glad to have helped.

Originally Posted by robk

What we need is a utility like DECCHECK that will display and control all decoders, not just mpeg2.

Man you aren't kidding!!!

[robk]

Now my only problem is the Divx decoder causes the cpu usage to go near 100% (up from ~25% using Nvidia on mpeg2 files), so remote is sluggish. I'm using a Celeron 2.7GHz with 512 Meg of fast ram - might have to spring for a P4 for that dedicated machine!
Rob

[spaceghost]

Originally Posted by robk

What we need is a utility like DECCHECK that will display and control all decoders, not just mpeg2.

You're not talking about something like this are you?

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by spaceghost

You're not talking about something like this are you?

Hey that's pretty neato! Good find.

One of the moderators should add this to the list of utilities.