Another HW accelleration & HD-PVR thread

[sleonard]

So, I gave up on the ATI cards and went out and got an nVidia 9600GT by PNY. Installed it and the latest drivers from nVidia's website.

Arcsoft Theatre:

Gives me studdery video but only 3% CPU. Turned off HA in the setup and it gives me perfect video but 60% CPU.

Sage: Dshow = Arcsoft decoder. I have not installed any other decoders at all.

Dshow, VMR9, and 3D accelleration gives me studdery video but only 3% CPU.
Dshow, Overlay and 3D accelleration gives perfect video and only 3% CPU. (*)
SageTV Player, VMR9 OR overlay, and 3D accelleration gives good video but 60% CPU.


(*) that was until today. When I got home from work I changed the settings back to Dshow and overlay from SagePlayer and VMR9 and I no longer get HA. CPU stays at 60%. It was working fine yesterday before I tested the Sageplayer.

S

P.S. - I'm really starting to get frustrated at all the problems I've had trying to get the HD-PVRs working. I've had an order of magnitude more issues the last two months than the previous 5 years combined. If I had any hair I would have pulled it out weeks ago.

[JetreL]

I feel your pain also. I had to buy a HD100 to resolve the issue.HD-PVR Videos work great now. ...ehh

[Taddeusz]

What speed processor do you have and what OS are you running?

I have the client in my signature running HD-PVR files just fine using the Arcsoft decoder in 3D and VMR9. I had to make sure the following settings in the properties were set:

always_use_dshow_player=true
mplayer/use_for_all_mpeg4_playback=false

Then I used DSFMgr and GraphEdit to ensure that the Arcsoft decoders get default priority over all the other filters. Just know that SageTV always uses it's demuxer to play HDPVR files. There doesn't seem to be any way to change that.

[sleonard]

Core2 Duo @ 2.13 GHz, XP Pro SP3, nVidia 9600 GT latest driver release, Arcsoft decoders are the only decoders installed besides what came with Sage.

I had hardware accelleration working just fine with Dshow + overlay. Then I tried testing the Sageplayer with both overlay and then VMR9. When I switched back to Dshow I had no HA anymore.

S

[Taddeusz]

I don't know how to explain that. The only thing I can suggest is to make sure your MPEG4 playback is set to DirectShow.

[sleonard]

Well I figured it out. I had unchecked the box for hardware accelleration while in Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre. Apparently that turns it off across the board in whatever app is using the Arcsoft decoder including Sage.

I also installed the latest beta drivers from nVidia and the studder with DShow and VMR9 went away.

S

[sleonard]

It turns out it not that easy after all. After watching three recordings that played perfectly with the arcsoft decoder, VMR9, and HA working I started watching Weeds and not only was the studder very bad the de-interlacing was horrible.

I tried playing it in TotalMedia Theatre and it played perfectly.

So, I tried some more experimentation with Sage settings and found that it would only play correctly in Sage using the Arcsoft decoder with HA turned off and using overlay.

Another interesting thing I noticed was that the SagePlayer used 3% CPU if I chose overlay but 60% if I used VMR9. In either case the playback was terrible for this recording.

I'm getting confused. Is there any free tools that will analyze the h.264 video and help me figure out if there is an issue with the recordings themselves? I feel like I'm spinning my wheels trying to figure playback problems while my HD-PVR's could be spitting out the occasional bad capture.

S

[TallMomof2]

I've discovered the same things as you (with the help of this forum). Use the ArcSoft decoder and Overlay. I also had to switch from 1080p to 720p on my set top box. So far I'm having no problems with recording and playback.