New video card, same old PQ problems...

[bash1979]

My old Geforce2 MX400 card finally died on me, so I figured it was time to buy a new video card. I first bought a Geforce 6200, but after some consideration about my lowly SDTV, I decided to return it and go for the cheaper 5200 instead.

Unfortunately, if it's even possible, the PQ with my 5200 is WORSE than it ever was with my old MX400!! After all the positive reviews the 5200 got on this site, I have to assume I have some configuration problems.

My setup is as follows:
-Athlon 1Ghz processor, 512 Mb SDRAM
-PVR-150, using S-Video IN from satellite STB
-MSI Geforce FX5200, w/ S-Video out to a 32" SDTV

I used to run the Intervideo decoder with the Overlay renderer with my old card, and I got pretty decent PQ. Tried the same setup with my new card...WOOF! Massive pixelation and very grainy.

So, I purchased the Nvidia Purevideo decoder that everyone raves about. Made a slight difference in Overlay mode, but still, anything with motion is very pixelated (especially sports...hockey and basketball impossible to watch).

I tried VMR9 w/ 3d acceleration enabled, but found the menus very slow and now difference in PQ. I then played with every combination of decoder and renderer.....in the end, the best PQ was using default renderer and default decoder (which I assume means using the video card as the renderer and the recently installed Nvidia decoder as the default decoder? ...correct me if i'm wrong here). While the PQ was very good in this situation, the picture was extremely jumpy, and stuttered a lot during motion sequences (side note: tried watching the simpsons with this setup, and it looked amazing! of course, it's a cartoon, but still! )

Anyway, I'm at a complete loss here and I'm hoping someone out there has a similar setup and can help me out. I'm not picky on PQ, I just expect it to be at LEAST the same as my MX400 was, if not a little better. The last setup I described (default renderer w/ default decoder) is very acceptable in my PQ books...it's just that stuttering that is driving me nuts!

Any suggestions are very appreciated. Let me know if I left out any information that may help troubleshoot.

Thanks very much in advance!

[Humanzee]

It could be your TV. There is only so good you can get with an SDTV and it will probably never be as good as a dedicated TV tuner or Set Top Box for a number of reasons. I wrote some more about it in this similar thread. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14130

Also, I have a 2Ghz athlon that is taxed pretty good while rendering video. Your machine just might not have enough horse power, especially to run VMR9. Check your CPU utilization while playing a video. Choppy video can also result from running dissimilar audio and vidio codecs. They may not line up correctly and eventually hop to get back in sync with each other.

I think the default video renderer is which ever windows uses by default. If you installed the nVidia codec it is probably set as the default.

There is a microsoft tool that allows you to check this, but I don't remember the name of it.

[bash1979]

Thanks for the reply.

I did happen to check the CPU utilization today while playing a video and it never went higher than 40%, and I'd say it hovered around 32% on average. This doesn't seem too high to me, considering nothing else is running, but I could be wrong. What kind of CPU percentages are you referring to when you say your CPU is "taxed"?

Good call about the audio codecs....i've been fooling around with various audio/video codec combinations, but have had no success yet. None seem to be making a difference. I'll search around to see what the popular choice of audio codec is to go along with the PureVideo decoder.

One other item of note....I don't think the decoding is the problem at all. I was at my regular "upstairs" computer today and played back some of the videos from my Sage machine....everything looked MINT! Great quality, very smooth. So, I think that means that the issue is with my renderer on my Sage machine, correct? From what I've read (and please correct me if i'm wrong), the decoder essentially decodes the video the HD and the renderer displays it for viewing.

So, knowing the quality of the mpeg is good is a bit of a relief....but all that proves is that the PVR-150 is doing it's job, right? My beef is the fact that the 5200 doesn't seem to be outputting anything decent to the TV (and is outputting worse than a WAY older MX400 card!)

Anyways, any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[teedublu]

Make sure DXVA isn't enabled. If you want a video card to do DXVA then buy a board with a faster GPU.

Adjust your set's "sharpness" control so that text isn't "fringing" White text on black background is the acid test. You don't want to soften it too much though so a little is normal with SDTV.

I have good luck with the default sage decoder. It's easy on the CPU load.
I stick with basic Overlay. Works fine with my Athlon XP 1700 CPU and a MSI FX5200.

I also set the video card resolution to 720x480 60Hz.

TW

[JUC]

is your hard drive setup using 64k clusters? Lots of fragmentation maybe on the drive? Your system should be able to output a decent picture with the 5200--what quality are you recording at?

[bash1979]

teedublu: Where do you set the DXVA to enabled/disabled? All I see in Sage is the ability to set it to default, or MPEG mode A, B, C, D. Am I looking in the right spot? Also, my TV doesn't appear to have a "sharpness" setting, but there is a "detail" setting....I'll try fooling around with that.

JUC: Forgive my ignorance, but i'm not quite sure what you mean by 64K clusters....all I know is that my HD is formatted to NTFS. Definitely no fragmentation, as it was just defragged the other day. I'm recording at "great" quality, which I believe is the second best.

On another note, I tried playing back a DVD and the quality is superb. I thought Sage essentially recorded in the same format a DVD is in....so in theory, shouldn't Sage quality come close to what my DVD playback looks like? I mean, they're both being rendered on the same SDTV, right?

Thanks to all for your continuing support!

[lovingHDTV]

bash1979,
Just a word of encouragement. Don't give up!

You will be happy you didn't when it is all finally working

[bash1979]

Thanks for the encouragement!

Giving up is definitely not an option....reading about all the success stories makes me want to get this working! And with the great people on this site, I'm sure that's just around the corner!

[JUC]

i'm not sure about the great quality but you might want to try the DVD standard or DVD long play options. As far as 64k cluster is concerned--it is recommended that the hard drive be formatted in 64k clusters as opposed to the standard cluster size (which I can't remember now). basically, it makes the clusters larger and helps with stuttereing and possible what you are experiencing. BUT--if it was fine before, it shouldn't matter if you just upgraded the video card. Also, are you running the latest drivers for your card? although this too shouldn't matter because your DVD played fine. Good luck and I am sure with the wealth of knowledge on this forum you will be satisfied and up and running fairly quickly.
JUC

[lovingHDTV]

One suggestion would be to adjust the color calibration for the new card. I just installed a new FX5200 on one of my machines and did this. I think the picture is much better. This card replaced a Geforce 2/mx.

You can get to this by:
display properites
settings
advanced
GeForce FX5200
(then the little window pops out the side)
tools
display optmization wizard.

Follow the wizard and see how it looks when you are done. I do it a couple times to make sure I've converged.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by bash1979

What kind of CPU percentages are you referring to when you say your CPU is "taxed"?

I only mentioned it because you said that the menus were really slow with VMR9. I had a problem with VMR9 and nearly 100% cpu utilization when I changed video cards. I updated my motherboard chipset drivers, which dropped it back down to the 40-50% range. I might update all of your hardware drivers. I tend to forget about the chipset drivers when trouble shooting. However, It doesn't sound so much like cpu power is an issue for you.

Try this, you said that the video looked great on another machine. Try disabling the tv out and just using a regular computer monitor. Generally the better you can get the PQ on a computer monitor the better it will show up on your TV. If picture quality is great on your computer monitor then it probably isn't your settings. Probably the TV, and or the card combination. My tv likes the 6600gt, but I couldn't get it to work at all with an old Asus GeForce3 V8200 I had laying around. I just got a bunch of garbledgook.

I've come to the realization that my TV just sucks and needs to be sent to the bin. But it works for now.

Try that color calibration too, sounds like a good idea.

[teedublu]

When you said DVD playback looked superb, did you mean you played the DVD on your PC And thru sage? If so then it seems that something with the video card driver may be impacting your hard disk performance. All this started after you installed the new card from what I understand. I have had problems using the latest generic NVIDIA driver. Recommend using drivers from the video card Mfg (disk or their website, which often isn't the latest, but this card has been around a while, so you don't need the latest).

Also bear in mind that movies on DVD are not encoded on the fly like a TV program is. Plus their source material is noise free, which impacts MPEG encoding. So to get quality comparible to "store bought" you'll have to record a low noise digital channel (from your digi cable or sat box), and you'll probably still have to resort to a higher bit rate to get comparable quality.

As for DXVA, Default should take care of disabling acceleration on the card.

TW

[bash1979]

Thanks to all for the help.

After combining all of the suggestions, I think I have the PQ back to an acceptable level (at least back to where it was before).

Basically, what I did was:
-Adjusted TV set's sharpness and set all DXVA settings to DEFAULT in Sage...one was set to MPEG Mode B for some reason (thanks to teedublu...by the way, to answer your DVD question, yes I was playing the DVD thru Sage)
-Changed recording quality to DVD standard (thanks to JUC)
-Adjusted colour calibration (thanks to lovingHDTV)
-Updated chipset drivers (thanks to Humanzee)
-Played around with Hauppauge tweak tool, and adjusted temporal & spatial filters (thanks to searching this forum! )

After all that, I just finished watching some TV and I must admit, it looks pretty darn good. There is still a bit of stuttering during a hockey or basketball game, but I guess that can be expected due to all that fast motion. I'll keep tweaking, but overall, I'm quite pleased with the "new and improved" PQ. Not bad at all for an SDTV....although, this whole experience makes me want to go by an HDTV to see how good the PQ can REALLY get!!

Anyway, thanks again to all who helped out...couldn't have done it without you!

Happy weekend to all!