Deinterlacing doesn't seem to work

[JohnnyCapslock]

I have a Hauppauge PVR-250.
When I had showshifter, I could never get deinterlacing to work and I found out it was because descaler did not support the cheepo video capture on my geforce video card.
So I was looking forward to being able to finally deinterlace with the hauppauge.
Unfortuneatly, no matter what I set it to it does not seem to make a difference. It's very evident with vertical panning of a scene.
I tried the Intervideo non-css buillt in deinterlacing and none of the 3 modes does anything.
I then installed elecard decoder and the dscaler directx filter. I changed the decoder in sage to elecard and it opened up the options for descaler. I tried many different settings and none of them seemed to make anything different.
Am I doing something wrong? Can the PVR 250 recordings not be descaled?

I came across another thread about windvd platinum 5 and a new descaling technique called progressive. So I downloaded the trial and tried it and it did a beautiful job. However, it doesn't seem like there is anyway to integrate its decoder into sage. So it won't help me with timeshifting which suffers the same problems.

Thanks for helping a sage newbie.

[mikbro]

The PVR-250 just encodes the video source you give it (cable, satellite, etc.) and produces the mpeg file(s) Sage then plays back. It has nothing to do with how the video is played by Sage through your video card (deinterlaced or otherwise). You will either need to get a better video card, or try more tweaking of you present video card and or TV to get acceptable results.

The PVR-250 does give you high quality encoding without taking up CPU resources, so it is still a worthwhile purchase, it just doesn't directly address you concern.

If you do decide to upgrade your video card, I have gotten excellent results with an Nvidia FX5200 ~$75. If you search the forums you will see this is a popular card with others as well.

[mlbdude]

You can't turn off deinterlacing on the Intervideo codecs that come with the Hauppauge. So you are deinterlacing. Deinterlacing causes lots of video smearing and ghosting on moving images. For a standard TV you actually would want to output witout deinterlacing but most TV out cards don't support that perfectly (so far only Matrox). If you are outputting on a digital TV you definately want to deinterlace. Weave is usually the best for video.

[JohnnyCapslock]

Is there something wrong with a geforce4 video card? I know it cost me quite a bit about a year ago, and I find it is very high quality with everything else.
I tried turning off deinterlacing all together, tried turning it on, intervideo, elecard, I watched it on my monitor, I watched it on my TV (svideo output), it didn't seem to matter. The most noticable were scenes where the camera panned down from the skyline to the street. It looked like a slinky or rush hour traffic if that makes sense. Very jerky. Also slow panning to the right in another scene.
At any rate that WinDVD platinum progressive deinterlacing does seem to do an extremely good job. Anyone else try this out? No bluring, interlacing is almost completely gone. The slinky effect that I mentioned above is totally gone. In fact I watched a few nascar clips just to make sure I wasn't seeing things and they turned out very clear. Just wish there was a way to integrate it with sage for timeshifting.

[mikbro]

Take a look at your CPU usage, especially when you have these problems, make sure your cpu is not maxed out. You should find it remains fairly constant, anywhere between 10-30% depending on the speed and type of cpu. If you are seeing it spike to 100% it may mean that the codec you selected it overtaxing your system or that something else may be to blame.

FYI My cpu usage is around 10% with the intervideo codecs and I get a very nice picture, with no stuttering of video/audio.

If it were me, I would start from scratch with the pc, ie fresh install of the OS, update my mainboard bios, load a minimal amount of programs (only what is necessary to get Sage working) and make sure I am using the latest drivers from the manufacturers. Of course this may be too drastic for you, but I have spent enough time working with PC's to know that you can spend hours chasing a ghost, when you can kill it altogher with a fresh install.

[Narflex]

Check out this post:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...=&threadid=284

Also, any changes you make to the video settings don't get applied until you restart Sage or put it to sleep and then wake it up again.

[JohnnyCapslock]

Thanks for the reference to the thread. I have already enabled that. I also see all over the place the tip of putting it to sleep or closing and reopening, so I was doing pleanty of that last night.
However, I will be fresh tonight and will retry this all. I guess if all else fails I can use it is a replacement VCR and just use windvd platinum if it bothers me that much.
Hey I do have a 1.3 gig athlon with 200mhz fsb. I was thinking that by getting a pvr-250 it would eliminate my need to upgrade, but how much of a role could that be playing in deinterlacing? I know it's processor intesive, but I don't think I'm close to maxing out. Perhaps, though, they are using an algorithm that scales to the cpu and guarantees that no matter what you use your utilization will stay in a reasonable range. I've noticed that a lot of people that have no problems are running 2.4 gig systems and above.

[stanger89]

Most of what you describe doesn't sound like interlacing artifacts. Interlacing artifacts are generally combing on horizontal pans/movement. Check this out, it's a good reference on interlaced/progressive video:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...e-10-2000.html
Also do you have DXVA turned on? Your Geforce doesn't have much for hardware acceleration, so you might be better off with pure software decoding. On the other hand if you don't have DXVA enabled, you might get a smoother picture if you enable it and take a little load off you CPU.

[JohnnyCapslock]

Well you won't believe this, or probably you will. I will learn to not work on this stuff when I'm tired. I came home and the thing is working beautifully. The only thing I changed was rebooting the computer this morning before work. So I evidentally did not put sage to sleep between settings.

I turned DxVA on last night, but it most likely didn't apply then. I have it set to Intervideo non-CSS, mode d, bob and weave and it has greatly improved the deinterlacing.

I have now moved onto some fun stuff. Had a break through. I enabled nview on my geforce 4. Set it to extend mode to extend desktop. I set my tv as the primary display for the overly. I put sage on that screen. And the breakthrough comes where I found an advanced section where I can move the icons and taskbar to the secondary monitor. So as we speak I am writing this on the secondary monitor whil timeshifting on the primary (TV).

Great stuff, I believe I will be buying this when the trial is up next week.

Thanks for all your replies!

[stanger89]

Glad to hear everythings working great.