What de-interlacer do you use in ffdshow?

[IncredibleHat]

After spending too much time getting frustrated with a stuttery playback, I started digging into various decoders, filters, settings, and all that jazz.

The stutter wasn't being caused by low cpu, or inadequate graphics. It simply was just but-ugly deinterlacing.

For the longest time I used the "InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge" because it provided a much 'sharper' image than the horrendous built in Sage decoder. However, it would seem to stutter (or jump) the image during pans, or when people would walk across the screen etc. Movement was ass.

At first I thought it may be cpu or graphics... but while playback, watching levels of usage, they never climbed above 20%. I even overclocked the machine a lot, and it did not help. Also, the "frames skipped" number would never increase.

Then recently I had installed ffdshow, as I was cleaning up DVD playback images (sharpening them up a bit) (dvd playback never exhibits this skipping either... only TV in SageTV). Well, I noticed I was also now able to select ffdshow as the video decoder in sagetv!

I have since been messing with various de-interlacer settings (as well as a few other noise, blur, shapens etc... my cable quality is really crap). Not really finding any that were decent to MY taste, but found one that seems to remove all the stutter I was most griping about. The "Kernal deinterlancer". With "2-way" and "Linked luma and chroma motion" settings on.

But.... I was wondering, what do other people use? Some of the deinterlacers bring the playback to a crawl... others don't appear to do much of anything.

So, whats your take?

[stanger89]

Have you tried the nVidia decoders in DXVA mode? I've found nothing software based that can match good hardware (accellerated) deinterlacing.

Otherwise TomsMoComp, MoComp2, have been popular. Might want to try the AVISynth MVBob, but you'll need a good bit of CPU power for that one.

[IncredibleHat]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Have you tried the nVidia decoders in DXVA mode? I've found nothing software based that can match good hardware (accellerated) deinterlacing.

No... I have not. I thought that's what the decoders did by default when you selected Nvidia Decoder instead of Nvidia Purevideo Decoder.... gah.

So how do you do that ? LOL.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Otherwise TomsMoComp, MoComp2, have been popular. Might want to try the AVISynth MVBob, but you'll need a good bit of CPU power for that one.

Hmm.

Yeah, one of those in there caused it to pretty much come to a crawl. Slideshow.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

No... I have not. I thought that's what the decoders did by default when you selected Nvidia Decoder instead of Nvidia Purevideo Decoder.... gah.

So how do you do that ? LOL.

Pick them in Sage (not the Post Processor) and make sure they're set to DXVA/Hardware Accelleration in the decoder settings. You should be able to find a thread/post with more detailed instructions.

[IncredibleHat]

Interesting. I have a bit of confusion here...

When I turn SageTV from Use "VMR9" to Use "Default", all of a sudden, ffdshow is running along with the nvidia decoder (both show up in my task bar)! Huh?

This is a shot of whats on
This is a shot of Sage settings

When I bring up the nvidia decoder panel, its already set at "Use Hardware" and "Prefer VMR9".

When I set SageTV to "VMR9", and select "Nvidia Video Decoder", I get the odd boxy tear (mentioned in other thread) and the screen is jittery (panning objects tend to skip and jerk across the screen in a slightly subdued and annoying way). This uses 20% CPU.

When I set SageTV to "Overlay", all those problems go away and it is very smooth. In fact, it uses only 5% CPU to play full screen TV.

If I set SageTV to "Default", cpu shoots up to 50%, and it is all very smooth like overlay mode... but I am confused what is actually going on with a setting of "default" ???


MY QUESTION IS:

If the nvidia control panel is set to Prefer VMR9, and SageTV Video Renderer is set to "Default" instead of "VMR9"... is video playback actually being displayed in VMR9 ?

Also... how do I turn off ffdshow in SageTV when having Nvidia Video Decoder selected with "Default" set for everything else? AGH!

Crap this confusing!

EDIT:
Oh, and I have had this set for as long as I can recall:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...read.php?t=284

I used to use the IntervideoNonCSS decoder... but it has that same jittery behavior as the nvidia decoder does. I wonder if this is the same result... the decoder is being set to use VMR9 internally, but setting sage to use vmr9 makes it double vmr9 and it all goes to hell...

EDIT 2:
Settings comparison
I noticed when I set sage from VMR9 to Default and back, the top of the ffdshow taskbar icon would change. Does this mean these are the sorts of junk being used for the current playback? Is there another way you can get at these settings? Like, a singular utility that lists all the control panels of all the filters and the like. Reason I ask is, whenever I try to open ANY of those from the ffdshow tray icon while Sage is running (which it has to be in order to even SEE that tray icon), sage constantly 'pops' in front of the panel, before I can see it or make any changes. Really fricken annoying.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

Interesting. I have a bit of confusion here...

When I turn SageTV from Use "VMR9" to Use "Default", all of a sudden, ffdshow is running along with the nvidia decoder (both show up in my task bar)! Huh?

"Default" means Sage lets Directshow handle the rendering of video after the decoder, that means DShow will throw in whatever it wants, including ffdshow if you have ffdshow setup like that. The renderer will probably be VMR7.

When I bring up the nvidia decoder panel, its already set at "Use Hardware" and "Prefer VMR9".

Prefer VMR9 does nothing as far as I can tell.

When I set SageTV to "VMR9", and select "Nvidia Video Decoder", I get the odd boxy tear (mentioned in other thread) and the screen is jittery (panning objects tend to skip and jerk across the screen in a slightly subdued and annoying way). This uses 20% CPU.

Sounds like your 6150 might not be up to VMR9, give FSE a try in Sage, if that doesn't help you may have to give up on VMR9.

When I set SageTV to "Overlay", all those problems go away and it is very smooth. In fact, it uses only 5% CPU to play full screen TV.

Overlay is the "old" way to render video, and is less CPU/resource intensive. But it introduces it's own issues, there have been threads here and at AVSForums about VMR9 vs Overlay if you're interested.

If I set SageTV to "Default", cpu shoots up to 50%, and it is all very smooth like overlay mode... but I am confused what is actually going on with a setting of "default" ???

See above.

MY QUESTION IS:

If the nvidia control panel is set to Prefer VMR9, and SageTV Video Renderer is set to "Default" instead of "VMR9"... is video playback actually being displayed in VMR9 ?

Probably not, "Prefer VMR9" has no effect in Sage.

Also... how do I turn off ffdshow in SageTV when having Nvidia Video Decoder selected with "Default" set for everything else? AGH!

Disable "Raw Video" in the codecs section of ffdshow.

Oh, and I have had this set for as long as I can recall:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...read.php?t=284

I used to use the IntervideoNonCSS decoder... but it has that same jittery behavior as the nvidia decoder does. I wonder if this is the same result... the decoder is being set to use VMR9 internally, but setting sage to use vmr9 makes it double vmr9 and it all goes to hell...

Actually sounds like maybe your 6150 isn't up to hardware accelleration.

Like, a singular utility that lists all the control panels of all the filters and the like. Reason I ask is, whenever I try to open ANY of those from the ffdshow tray icon while Sage is running (which it has to be in order to even SEE that tray icon), sage constantly 'pops' in front of the panel, before I can see it or make any changes. Really fricken annoying.

Radlight Filter Manager will get you to most filter control panels.

[IncredibleHat]

Thanks for the info.

Hmm.

I bought this Board with onboard 6150 graphics because SO MANY people on HTPCnews claimed it would be ample enough to even do 1080i HD content viewing... but may be 'difficult' to use ffdshow to resize to 1080p with sharpness filters enabled (which it does have trouble with).

Oh well... looks like I have to look into building another HTPC... I doubt my selected components will work well by just putting in a new video card.

[stanger89]

They should work great with just a new video card.

[IncredibleHat]

I posted a followup in the other thread. These two threads basically have resulted in the same root problem. So I am going to continue only in the other thread for now on:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=19432