Menu on 2nd screen, audio problems, stuttering

[sweathtpc]

I am fairly new to sage and like a lot of the ease of use it has, but I have been having a few problems.
1) I have a two monitor setup and want to split the video from the menus. Is this possible, and how???

2) Also, something is really weird with the audio. Playback via theatertek is perfect with my toslink out on my mobo. But there is a very hollowy echo sound whenever I put audio through sage. I have tried to use all the different audio renderers but something seems really strange. Any ideas?

3)I cant use vrm9 wout slight stuttering. It plays perfectly with ffdshow when I play DVDs through theatertek. I definitely feel I have enough power even though I do use a 6200tc nvidia card (I have borrowed a 6600 and the same exact problem. So therefore I am relegated to overlay. Going from dualview to single monitor doesnt seem to change the problem either.

4) Is it better to use the rg6 coax from my digital cable box into my pvr250, or to use the svideo? Will there be much quality difference and which is better?

Thanks for your help!!!
Dan


P4 3.2 800mhz Hyperthreading
Intel D925XBC Mobo
2 gig of ram
Haup pvr250
geforce 6200tc
60gb Maxtor ide hd (programs) 7200
400gb SATA Hitachi HD (videos, recordings) 7200
Windows xp home sp2
Theatertek 2.2
Nvidia Codec 8.89 (newest)

[Humanzee]

4.) Theoretically, you should be better off using the S-Video or even composit video from your Set Top Box, but don't forget to plug the audio into your 250 also. Note: I had to adjust the volume in my Set Top Box's configuration, it was so loud that it was clipping when recorded on my 250.

3.) I had problems with VMR9 and DirectX9c until I updated my motherboard chipset drivers. FWIW, DirectX works better on the primary monitor. Running in cloan mode, I noticed that video only played on the primary screen for some video types. Menus appear on both screens however.

2.) Are you running the nVidia PureVideo codec? I think your card supports it. (you have to buy it) I believe it includes an AC3 codec that should work with your toslink, but I don't know for sure. There is a trial version available.

1.) Depends on what you mean by "two monitor". If you have two computer screens, I dont think it is possible.

If you have a computer screen and a SDTV, I dont think it is possible with your hardware. However, if you really really want this feature and want to buy more hardware + add a tuner, I used to use the hardware decoder TV output on a PVR-350. If you do this without enabling the OSD, it will split the menus on your pc monitore from the video on the TV monitor. If I recall correctly your menu window on the computer screen may be limited to 720x480, but that might only be if you run the 350 as the exclusive decoder.

If you attempt the 350 method and still want to use your toslink you will likely have an audio syncronization problem. I.e. its difficult to syncronize the hardware video decoding with the software audio decoding. I'd recommend reading a lot before buying a 350 though. If you decide that you want to enable OSD there are known issues.

[sweathtpc]

1) I should have been more specific. I have a philips bcool xg1 DLP projector as monitor 1, which I show my movies and tv on. And a 17" lcd touchscreen monitor that I use to control programs. They are both connected via vga from the 6200 video card. I would like the menus to open on the lcd touchscreen and the video on the projector.....is this possible??

2)I dont believe I am running the pure video codec. I didnt think I needed it. However in the setup screen I do have a plain "AC3 codec" that doesnt do any better at sound than the others. Sounds works fine from every other source but sagetv.

3)I run the projector and monitor in dualview not clone. I will have to see if there is any new drivers for the motherboard chipset and test it out. Just seems strange that I can do vrm9 with ffdshow in theatertek without stutters and not be able to do it with vrm9 w/o ffdshow with sage.

4)I did just try the svideo and I do think it is a bit better pq. Thanks!!

Dan
P4 3.2 800mhz Hyperthreading
Intel D925XBC Mobo
2 gig of ram
Haup pvr250
geforce 6200tc
60gb Maxtor ide hd (programs) 7200
400gb SATA Hitachi HD (videos, recordings) 7200
Windows xp home sp2
Theatertek 2.2
Nvidia Codec 8.89 (newest)
Philips Bcool XG1 DLP Projector
Philips LCD 17" Touchscreen monitor
Denon 3803 Receiver
Motorola Digital Cable Box

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by sweathtpc

2)I dont believe I am running the pure video codec. I didnt think I needed it. However in the setup screen I do have a plain "AC3 codec" that doesnt do any better at sound than the others. Sounds works fine from every other source but sagetv.

Just set it to nVidia for both Audio Decoder and Video Decoder (in both DVD and playback settings) and it should work just like TT.

[sweathtpc]

I have tried using the nvidia audio and video decoders but still have this really noticeable echo, hollow sound effect. Not sure where the problem is in the system. Any ideas of where I should check.
Thanks,
Dan

[stanger89]

If you play a SageTV recorded MPEG in TT does it sound the same way?

[sweathtpc]

When I play the recording through TT2.2 they still have the bad echo/hollow effect.

[stanger89]

Then it's not a playback problem it's a recording problem, and/or it's an issue with the settings on your processor.

You're using S/PDIF correct? What's your processor/reciever say when it's playing a Sage recording?

[sweathtpc]

I will check that out, but now I have another problem. I downloaded the trial of nvidia purevideo and cant get anything to work. TT just shows a bright magenta screen when I try to playback and sage gives me a video error. Maybe I should delete the purevideo. Does purevideo help anything anyways since I dont use media center or windows media player?

Dan

[stanger89]

Theatertek provides the same decoders you just downloaded. You'll probably have to uninstall both the decoders ( you DL'd) and TT and reinstall TT.

[sweathtpc]

ARGGGG,
You were correct, I did have to uninstall everything and start over, loading theatertek, getting it to work right, and then sage again. However I do have the same audio (hollow, echo) problems. However I did notice something when I loaded theatertek again. At first it produced the same hollow, echoy effect. Then I went to the audio tabs in the config menu and changed the output to sp/dif and everything sounded great. However I cant specify sp/dif in sage. Is there any way to do this?
Thanks,
Dan

[stanger89]

It should be using the TT settings.

[Humanzee]

3) I discovered the other day that slight stuttering can be aleviated in VMR9 if you enable Full Screen Exclusive (FSE) mode is Sage Detailed Setup. You can read about it in the manual, but I think it makes directX take control of the Sage window and treat it like a video game. It improves VMR9 performance. However, I don't know if you can use it with dual view. It works in clone mode however.

Do you have PC speakers? It could be that both your sp/dif output and your pc speakers are working. This can creat an echo. I spent an afternoon tracking a similar this problem down when I was using a hardware decoder. Simultanious sound from the tv and my computer but not quite synchronized. The PC speakers were not quite loud enough to catch my ear directly. When I finally got irritated enough ot turn off the TV I realized what was going on. I felt pretty stupid, but luckily nobody else was around to rub it in.

Check your sound card settings, sometimes you can set an exclusive output method. It almost sounds like TT took control of a sound card options and turned off your PC speakers when you selected the SP/DIF. They both may be on by default.

[sweathtpc]

I actually dont have any pc speakers. I just have a toslink cable output to my Denon 3803 receiver from the output on my mobo. I know its probably some little checkbox or something easy.....I just cant figure where that little change needs to be made. Until I figure out how I can get sage to output correctly to the spdif output, I cant really use it. Its always the little things that make the biggest problems!!!!
Any other settings or ideas....please let me know!
Thanks,
Dan

[Commodore 64]

Perhaps you've got the audio stream running through some effect processor in your onboard audio settings?

I didn't have any luck using the nVidia Audio renderer on my system with SageTV. I ended up using AC3Filter and the Direct Wave Out audio renderer to mitigate my issues (Admittedly, my issues were slightly different than yours)

[stanger89]

Sounds like it's getting decoded before being piped out the S/PDIF. But I don't know why.

[sweathtpc]

Well Im not sure what made it work, but I downloaded the latest chipset driver and audio drivers from intel........and it worked. Hmmmmm....I just did that a few weeks ago, but figured it wouldnt hurt since I tried everything else. Now my digital audio is great out of my htpc.

Back to stuttering with vmr9.....I still have it. It shows my cpu ranging from 24-35% with hyperthreading below that. So it seems my cpu still has plenty of power, but I still get stuttering.

What is also interesting is that I have 2gb of ram and the memory usage goes really high. Currently I have been watching sage for about 20 minutes and my memory usage is already up to 1036mb. Im not sure if is maxed out yet, but that seems really high for this program. Does anyone elses ram memory usage go significantly high with sage?
Thanks,
Dan

[Opus4]

I didn't read everything in the previous posts -- but are the recordings being stored on a drive that was formatted using a 64K cluster size?

Regarding non-stop memory increase: do you have an AntiVirus scanner running? Set it to exclude the recording dirs from auto scans. I know that Norton AV caused such problems because it kept scanning the videos.

- Andy

[sweathtpc]

Yes the hd is formatted in 64k. I will change my norton av settings and see if it changes. However, I did notice that when I went into overlay mode, the ram usage dropped considerably to under 650mb. In VRM9 mode the ram usage topped out about 1240mb. I have 2gb of ram, so I am not using it all, but that was with nothing else going on in the computer at the same time.
Thanks
Dan

[stanger89]

Doesn't really help, but thats WAY too much memory usage, something's not right there. Sage generally uses about 100-150MB, so unless you've got something else eating 500MB, somethings not right.