ATI AVIVO

[Mahoney]

Hello all,

I'm in the usual quandary of trying to get decent image quality. I read some detailed stuff at http://www.firingsquad.com which strongly suggested that the new ATI AVIVO with Radeon X1x00 hardware was the way forward, better than nVidia's PureVideo decoders. So I bought a Radeon X1600 card and got hold of the ATI (actually CyberLink) decoder. Checking with DECCHECK the ATI decoder is the default one, and I've set Sage to use all the defaults (except for Overlay rather than VMR9, because there were issues with VMR9).

Output is to a 19" LCD monitor; files are digital OTA (so no issue with the recording quality - the BBC kicks out reasonable quality MPEG2 for its prime channels) at 1024*576 (PAL widescreen).

And it looks a bit pants. Lovely on my TV using the MediaMVP, mind you, but not so hot via a client computer onto a PC monitor, whether using Sage or Windows Media Player to play back.

The thing that's really bothering me is that I can't get any decent feedback as to whether AVIVO's being used - nothing as nice as the nVidia icon in the notification area which shows you the decoder is in use and lets you check that it is using hardware assist and change various things. Obviously I can go into the Catalyst stuff and play around, but to no great effect...

And whgen in Windows Media Player I open the properties of the file it says the decoder is "Sage MPEG Decoder". Does that mean it is still using the Sage decoder? I'd hoped it was some artifact in the creation of the file, but as it's actually being recorded by Anders' SBDARecorder not Sage that suddenly seems less likely.

I'm concerned as to whether I need to pay to get ATI/Cyberlink's h.264 decoder in order to get the AVIVO good stuff, despite not decoding HD content...

So, anyone got a how-to on setting up AVIVO? Thanks!

[StephaneM]

Hello,

Some general comments before advice :

* AVIVO is only the name of hardware features of Radeon card, it is not a software, and they are working when you play any video (though during playback hardware function known as DXVA must be enabled).

* You'll not achieve the same visual feeling on a computer monitor / HDTV display like and what you can see on a regular SDTV (unless you don't upscale the video to the native resolution of your display).

Now, how can you improve your picture quality:

* I have noticed that when you install SageTV, SageTV register a MPEG Splitter with a higher merit of the standard one and this somehow breaks the default selection of the decoder (but it only impact the audio part). So this is optionnal, don't do it unless you want to. Download RadLight Filter Manager and under the "DirectShow Filters" search for the "SageTV MPEG Splitter", change its merit to "MERIT_DO_NOT_USE", then log out your windows session and log back in.

* You'll have also to download an efficient DVD Decoder, the ATI DVD Decoder is good (Cyberlink one) when it is really used to decode MPEG2. You can also download the NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder (as you said, at least there is a taskbar icon that let you select if you use Hardwarde acceleration and what deinterlacing method to use).

* To verify the MEPG2 codec in use, either play an MPEG2 video in media player and Media Play will tell you what decoder it use, or download graphedit. In the "File" menu of Graphedit, you have a "Render Media File" entry where you can select an MPEG2 video, it will then construct the default graph the system use to play MEPG2 video.

* Depending on what default decoder is used, you can use again RadLigh Filter manager to raise the merit of the filter you want to use (MERIT_PREFERRED or MERIT_PREFERRED+1), you can also check that DECCHECK has correctly done its job by raising the merit of the default decoder. You'll also want to check if another MPEG2 decoder don't have the same merit as the one you want to use.

* Once you have the right decoder selected by default, you can again use graphedit to load the default graph for an MPEG2 video. Then you can right click on the video decoder used and select the "Properties" entry in the contextual menu. This will let you choose some settings for the video decoder; mainly if it should use DXVA (hardware acceleration) and what deinterlacing method to use. You'll have to enable DXVA and preferabiliy force the BOB deinterlacing method (you can try other options to your liking).

* After that open an MPEG2 file in Windows Media Player and check that the right MPEG2 decoder is used and the quality is good (select "High Quality Mode" in the video options of the player).

You'll the be able to configure SageTV to either use the "Default" decoder or force SageTV to use the ATI decoder (both methods work).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mahoney]

My strong understanding from reading the (very extensive) firingsquad analysis is that the Cyberlink/ATI decoder is the only decoder able to take advantage of the AVIVO hardware capabilities enabled by Catalyst 5.13 and higher.

Thanks for the tips about the MPEG splitter and graph edit. I'll give it a go to check what is going on.

How do you check which decoder is being used in WMP? I haven't managed to find that bit of information.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

My strong understanding from reading the (very extensive) firingsquad analysis is that the Cyberlink/ATI decoder is the only decoder able to take advantage of the AVIVO hardware capabilities enabled by Catalyst 5.13 and higher.

Maybe... I cannot tell you for sure. I'm using a Cyberlink decoder and video is very good. I had some issue with nvidia decoder (like wrong deinterlacing method applied with some channels, and massive motion compensation ghosting when using adaptive deinterlacing methods => but this maybe only my system though).

How do you check which decoder is being used in WMP? I haven;t managed to find that setting.

The same way you did : check the "Properties" on the file during playback, in the properties window you'll see "Audio codec" / "Video Codec".

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mahoney]

OK, so it is using the Sage decoder with no extra filters - that would explain the poor quality and the choppiness! Thanks.

[stanger89]

It's best to just never use "Default" as there's no guarantee what filters you're using with that setup.