HD-PVR recordings break up after rewind or fast forward

[otakucode]

Is anyone else having a problem with the crappy Arcsoft decoder breaking up and macroblocking like crazy on playback of recordings from the HD-PVR after doing any rewinding or fast-forwarding? If you don't share this problem, have any idea of what I could try to remedy it? I tried switching Sage to use CoreAVC, my preferred h264 decoder, but it doesn't deal as well with the HD-PVR recordings for some reason. SageTV ends up spiking CPU usage. That's particularly strange because CoreAVCs claim to fame is its miniscule CPU usage... I use it to play back all other h264 stuff (by editing the Sage.properties file) and it flies even with 1080p content, but it just chokes and chugs on the HD-PVR recordings. So, I've stuck with Arcsoft for now. But it's quite annoying to not be able to fast-forward through commercials. If I try, the video starts to macroblock like crazy and is mostly unwatchable. The only way to fix it is to play a different recording, which will play fine, and then go back to the original.

Thanks for any help!

[Kimper]

Sounds like we have the exact same problem. I just installed HD-PVR today. Everything is flawless unless I ff or rw at which point all screen motion becomes pixalated. I just started working on it. Let me know if you figure anything out and I will do the same...

BTW with the beta firmware everything is flawless on the HD extender! So must be codec issue on main PC

[Kimper]

Ok, got it fixed.

I opened up the Arcsoft player and noticed the same exact thing was happening with it as well (all smooth until ff or rw). I opend the config options inside of Arcsoft and turned off hardware acceleration. That fixed the problem in Arcsoft. Next I closed Arcsoft, opened Sage, tried it and the pixalation disappeared.

I have no idea why this worked inside of Sage and truly it seems like it shouldn't have.. but it did.
Arcsoft and the HD-PVR seem to have some sort of incestious link..

Good luck.

You can read my full install story over in the install story thread once I get over there and post it!

[ryttingm]

I also have this issue. Do you happen to have an ATI card? I have an HD3450. I believe it's a bug in the hardware acceleration for the ati drivers. The exact same behavior happens in powerdvd as well so I don't believe it is an arcsoft issue. I've been working on resolving this issue for weeks without much success. My computer does not have the horsepower to turn off hardware acceleration per your suggestion. I paid for a card that does hardware decode, I want to use it.

-Mike

[Kimper]

yep, ATI card (Radeon HD 2600) with latest drivers.

The weird thing is hardware acceleration is flagged as on in Sage and off in Arcsoft, but I think Arcsoft trumps the Sage setting.. and yes my system is very fast so I don't really notice a difference except a small framerate lag when first tuning live TV that was not there before. Of course, not being able to fast forward or rewind without losing picture quality basically makes the whole system useless. I wonder if this issue has been bug reported?

[ben_95sl1]

This must be the behaviour I am seeing as well: ATI 3450 + HD-PVR and having lots of crazy artifacts, all my recordings are unwatcheable in sage. It 'seems' to be ok in other players like wmp, but sagetv and the codecs I have tried have been a nightmare. I will disable hw accel and I hope this fixes it. (I have tried both PowerDVD and Arcsoft and upgraded to v8.6 ATI control center drivers = no luck).

What a pain, with hw accel, cpu usage was like 5%!

Ben

[ben_95sl1]

Can someone please tell me how to disable Hardware acceleration for PowerDVD and Arcsoft IN SAGETV?

Any help appreciated!

Ben

[phelme]

Since you guys are using ATI I thought I'd try to hijack this thread.

Do any of you get HD-PVR .ts files to work within SageTV using the CyberLink decoders (v7 or v8)? I can play .ts files wonderfully outside of SageTV using a graph or MPC on my 1650XT, but just not within Sage itself, no matter what I change in the properties file. It's like for H.264, CyberLink & SageTV just don't talk the same language.

[ryttingm]

Originally Posted by phelme

Since you guys are using ATI I thought I'd try to hijack this thread.

Do any of you get HD-PVR .ts files to work within SageTV using the CyberLink decoders (v7 or v8)? I can play .ts files wonderfully outside of SageTV using a graph or MPC on my 1650XT, but just not within Sage itself, no matter what I change in the properties file. It's like for H.264, CyberLink & SageTV just don't talk the same language.

Same problem here. Doesn't work with my ati 3450 or with my nvidia 9600GT. I have gotten the arcsoft decoder to work in sagetv with my 3450, but I see the problem described in this thread. My current setup has me using the 9600 GT with power dvd installed and using the powerdvd to watch material recorded on my HD-PVR. If I install arcsoft then my blu-ray playback in powerdvd stops working.

-Mike

[ryttingm]

Originally Posted by ben_95sl1

Can someone please tell me how to disable Hardware acceleration for PowerDVD and Arcsoft IN SAGETV?

Any help appreciated!

Ben

I have just brought up the arcsoft application and disabled hardware acceleration under the video configuration tab. In addition, you can use radlight filter manager to edit the decoder properties directly and disable hardware acceleration.

-Mike

[ben_95sl1]

RANT: I don't know how anybody gets H.264 to work in Sage, let alone the ts files from the HD-PVR. I have overcome what seems like 1000 problems with an HTPC, but have spent more time (months) then I would ever have imagined just to playback h.264 files, and somehow I am even further away from getting it to work.

PowerDVD 8 and windows media player with hardware accel off seems to be without issue for me for both 720p and 1080i HD-PVR recordings. BUT in Sage, it's gardbage, and then with hardware acceleration it a little worse and fails even more miserably. And now the mkv don't play properly in sage anymore (sage occasionally crashes, hooray), but again, was fine in windows media player. I have seen numerous issues even with windows media player and various codecs and resolutions, but they were all watchable, unlike sage. Unfortunately, my HD-PVR is just an expensive doorstop at the moment.

I think they are just sabotaging the software to sell more HD100

I will reinstall Arcsoft again....argh....and try yet again.

[Razillian]

I haven't gotten my HDPVR yet, but tested a few times using the demo HD files posted in the HDPVR thread. I couldn't get PowerDVD 7.3 to work at all in Sage with the HD recordings. Just a moment of stutter and then black. Apparently that is the only version of PowerDVD that Sage support doesn't have to test with.

I downloaded the Arcsoft TME 15 day demo and have been able to get the demo files to play back beautifully (GeForce 7600GT video card). I did have to edit my sageclient.properties file and change the videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter line to use the arcsoft decoders. I, however, still have no audio with the videos, but I think that is just my tweaking the decoder merits.

[phelme]

Well, if I can get the lowly 6150 graphics to play HD-PVR files I should be able to get a higher powered ATI card to do so as well. Aargh!

[Taddeusz]

I don't have an HD-PVR yet but all the sample files I've gotten play fine on my SageTV Client using PowerDVD 8 Ultra's H.264 decoder with hardware acceleration in the filter turned on. Of course, I've done some filter merit tweaking and uninstalled some other filters to get it working properly. I also have my client set to always use dshow. And I believe I might have the Cyberlink decoder set as the default H.264 decoder. But it's been long enough that I forget what all I did to finally get a consistent graph within my client. I do remember that CoreAVC looked like crap in comparison (I think for some reason it was trying to deinterlace everything).

I can't wait till I get my HD-PVR so I can start making my own HD recordings. :-D

[phelme]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I don't have an HD-PVR yet but all the sample files I've gotten play fine on my SageTV Client using PowerDVD 8 Ultra's H.264 decoder with hardware acceleration in the filter turned on. Of course, I've done some filter merit tweaking and uninstalled some other filters to get it working properly. ...

what card do you have? Is it a 38xx class?

I think you're right about having to mess with the filter merits. ArcSoft is a mess where this is concerned, especially with the audio codecs (check out the audio filter chain in MPC for example). i'm going to play with unregistering them today as someone said somewhere this was a trick to make it work.

also there was recently an update to the ArcSoft package, so everyone should pick that up as well.

[Taddeusz]

Yes, my client has a Radeon 3870 running on Vista x64.

[ben_95sl1]

I seem to have it fixed. Power DVD 8 is not working right for me, but Arcsoft decoder without Hardware Acceleration seems to be trouble free, fast forwarding etc. Hooray!

Of course it's stressing out my X2 3800 cpu, so I overclocked a little to give some headroom. This renders my Ati HD3450 somewhat useless, and I can no longer open mkv files in sage as it simply crashes.

Ben

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by ben_95sl1

I seem to have it fixed. Power DVD 8 is not working right for me, but Arcsoft decoder without Hardware Acceleration seems to be trouble free, fast forwarding etc. Hooray!

Of course it's stressing out my X2 3800 cpu, so I overclocked a little to give some headroom. This renders my Ati HD3450 somewhat useless, and I can no longer open mkv files in sage as it simply crashes.

Ben

Do you have the latest updates for your PowerDVD 8? I know the latest update for my PowerDVD 8 Ultra added a hardware acceleration option for the DirectX filters themselves. Previously you could only get hardware acceleration by running PowerDVD.

[ben_95sl1]

Yes, the version I have does have that setting, i have latest update...the only way I could try to get it disabled in sage is by disabling the Hardware Assist in Ati drivers themselves, with reg settings. Not sure if that actually worked though, because it still wouldn't play properly.

So how does someone disable hardware accel in sagetv for powerdvd 8 when it has a video player specific hardware setting (setting it in media player/radlight does not seem to transfer to other programs).

Update:
Also, while playback is watcheable now, ffwd or rew renders it useless again (major stutters, or just plain stops, no sound, or maybe high pitched squeaks)...random number of ffwd/rew and eventually it will start playing correctly again. I have submitted a bug report to sagetv, maybe they have some idea what's going on. It seems a number of people are struggling with this.

Ben

[ben_95sl1]

Success! Despite the fact that arcsoft decoders were the default, sage was using powerdvd 8 audio codec for some reason (i got it to crash and it referenced claud.ax which is powerdvd). I inserted arcsoft video decoder and audio decoder into the properties file, disabled hw accel, UNINSTALLED powerdvd, and seems perfect now.

So, the audio codec I think was the issue. Earlier in my travels, I had an issue where the arcsoft audio codec refused to relinquish mpeg2 files and made them stutter. I can't believe how much trouble the audio part has caused me.

Now, on to getting hw accel to work! Hope this is helpful for others.

Ben