Codecs and BBC HD

[jaminben]

Hi,

I've just got round to setting up my HVR4000 DVB-S tuner and was trying to get BBC HD wroking so I could watch the football tonight in HD
However when I try and watch the channel it says I dont have the correct renderer for playback. All other DVB-S channels work fine but I assume thats because they are Mpeg2 and BBC HD is Mpeg4.

If I leave the channel running / recording so theirs enough on the recording drive to copy and paste elsewhere I can then open the clip and watch it with no problem using media player classic and CoreAVC codec.

So I think I need to make sage use the CoreAVC codec for playback but how do I do this?
I have changed a few lines in the Sage properties file -
always_use_dshow_player=true
videoframe/mpeg4_video_decoder_filter=CoreAVC

All other HD content I have (H.264 etc) works fine and I think uses CoreAVC.

If I use the supplied software from CyberLink (Power cinema 5.1) it will work but with a stutter. It also installs Cyberlinks dodgy software which is very annoying as when inserting a dvd or playing various other media types it will start Cyberlink and run over the top of Sage.

So ideally I'd like to just use CoreAVC. I have read a few other post's but havent found one with a specific answer.

Many Thanks

[HawgGuy]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Hi,

So ideally I'd like to just use CoreAVC. I have read a few other post's but havent found one with a specific answer.

Many Thanks

BBC HD probably using PAFF interlacing. CoreAVC will work well for this, just not in SageTV. I tried...hard. Several go-arounds with tech support and forwarding of debug logs ensued to no avail.

Cyberlink PDVD 7.3 works well too. Like you, I had problems with stuttering in Sage with this (none outside of Sage). The fix for me was to increase the number of bufers (I think it was Mpeg2DeMux) in the registry from 40 to 80. Smooth as glass now. You should be able to do a search in the forums to find the proper registry seting to change.

[jaminben]

Thanks for the quick reply

I'll give that a try tonight.

[jaminben]

I installed the latest trial version of Cyberlink PDVD and found the post which tells you where increase the number of bufers and it works ok for about 20 seconds then the picture seems to lag, its not unwatchable but not ideal.

Any ideas how to remove the lag?

Didnt get to watch the footie in HD not that I needed HD to watch that shower of S**t.

[HawgGuy]

Originally Posted by jaminben

I installed the latest trial version of Cyberlink PDVD and found the post which tells you where increase the number of bufers and it works ok for about 20 seconds then the picture seems to lag, its not unwatchable but not ideal.

When you say lag, do you mean stutter or do you mean A/V synchronization is off?

[jaminben]

Its a bit hard to explain, its not a stutter but its not out of sync. The picture seems to be slow especially when you get a quick screen pan.

I've been reading http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23853 and tried a few of the sudgestions but still no joy.

I'm running it via a server and the client is a Mac Mini (Win XP installed). I'm fairly confident that its not a hardware performance issue as it will play a recorded clip fine with Windows Media Player Classic using coreAVC or Cyberlink PDVD.

I've tried Overlay & VMR9, incresed the buffers from 40 to 60, 80, and 100 also increased the buffer size to 2000. Dont know what they do but it doesnt make any diffrence.

Cheers

[HawgGuy]

Originally Posted by jaminben

I'm running it via a server and the client is a Mac Mini (Win XP installed). I'm fairly confident that its not a hardware performance issue as it will play a recorded clip fine with Windows Media Player Classic using coreAVC or Cyberlink PDVD.

Unless your server is headless, I would, for the time being, take the client out of the picture, and see how it plays straight from the server. I have been unable to play PAFF encoded h.264 files on my Macs (QT, VLC, Flip4Mac you name it).

Originally Posted by jaminben

I've tried Overlay & VMR9, incresed the buffers from 40 to 60, 80, and 100 also increased the buffer size to 2000. Dont know what they do but it doesnt make any diffrence.

If the number of buffer change had zero effect, I'd go back to the stock settings. Can you render a BBC HD file with graphedit, and will it play in graphedit? If so, do a screen capture of the displayed filters so that we can look at this aspect of your playback.

videoframe/mpeg4_video_decoder_filter=CoreAVC

did you change this back to PDVD?

[jaminben]

ok, I've figured out that by pausing the show for a second and then resuming sorts the problem out. Not an ideal solution but it works very nicely now.

I've also been playing around and found out that the channel will work fine from a restart of the Mac as long as I goto BBC HD first, if I change to an SD channel and back again it will start to lag, thats until I pause the channel.

I'm sure I've seen this probelm before on the forums so I'll keep looking around for now.

But at least I can now enjoy the one and only free HD channel in the UK.

Thanks for the help

Regards

Ben