poor dvd quality

[chadman]

I was using the new version of Sage to play a DVD and the quality did not look good. It is watchable, but I see jagged edges on lines. I have it setup for vrm9 and nividia filters. When I play it using Zoom it looks fine. Am I doing something wrong? Chad

[chadman]

Well I have messed with it a few times and I am not sure why the quality looks so bad now. When you see the credits of a movie the text is a little jagged. When I play it with Zoom it looks fine. I am using the same filters and resolution, so I am not sure why. any ideas? Chad

[Razillian]

A little more info would be helpful:

1) What is your screen resolution that your are playing back on set to?

2) What type of video card and driver version?

3) You said you are using nVidia decoders (I think), are you selecting the nVidia decoders directly in Sage, or are you selecting default in Sage and setting the nVidia decoders to default for Windows Media?

[chadman]

1) What is your screen resolution that your are playing back on set to?
1152X648
2) What type of video card and driver version?
7950 card with driver 6.14.10.9371
3) You said you are using nVidia decoders (I think), are you selecting the nVidia decoders directly in Sage, or are you selecting default in Sage and setting the nVidia decoders to default for Windows Media?

using Sage to pick the decoders. It looks like it is working because I see the sys tray icon when I start a dvd. The quality is not really poor, but you can really see a difference between Sage and Zoom and I would not think I should since they both use the same decoders. Chad

[Razillian]

A couple things you can try/check. With your video card, make sure that "Image Sharpening" is not turned on at all in the display control panel(usually there is a slider, so make sure it is all the way off). Image Sharpening can lead to jagged edges.

Second, fire up a DVD (not MPEG) in windows media player. How does it look compared to Sage? If it is about the same, pause the DVD and right click on the nVidia decoder icon in the task bar to select the Decoder Properties. Your "likely" best settings should be the following:

Display Type: Content default
Hardware acceleration: Checked
De-interlace Control: Automatic
De-interlace Mode: VMR default
Enhanced nView Support: Either Prefer Overlay or Prefer VMR9, depending on which you selected in Sage.

You can play around with the settings a little to see what displays best for you, but the ones above should get you into the ballpark. Word of warning: I have heard some funky things with selecting "Smart" as the De-interlace Control (CPU spikes, stuttering, etc), although for some it runs perfectly.

If the DVD displays flawlessly in windows media player, but not sage you might have another problem.

[chadman]

Well I tried it in media player and it looks fine. I do see that when I use Media Player I do not get my little Nvidia icon in the systray. I also think it is using the ac3 decoder for audio. I am not sure how to change decoders with Media player since I never use it. When I use Zoom I see the Nvidia icon on the systray. I also see this when I use Sage, but Sage still gives me a poor picture. Still stuck with a bad picture in Sage, but not sure why. Chad

[Razillian]

The way I see it, you have two options:

1) If you like the playback quality in windows media player, you need to figure out which decoder it is using to render the video and set Sage to use the same.

2) Set your windows media player to use the nVidia decoder and tweak the decoder settings to get it to playback at the desired quality level. Setting the nVidia decoder as the default decoder also has benefits in Sage (more tweakability: from my understand of it, selecting nVidia decoder in Sage = not working right, versus Default in Sage with the nvidia as the default is what allows the settings changes to take place and stay in place).

Either way you will want to download the DECCHECK utility from Microsoft. Installing and running this will allow you to change what your default decoders are, and to see what ones are currently being used and/or installed.