Bad news: EVR doesnt work with 6.5.1 beta

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by babgvant

What decoder are you using? Did you go into the client application (PowerDVD, TMT) and enable HWA? The Cyberlink VC-1 decoder requires a registry change (in case you're having trouble with that as well) to enable HWA even if you enable it in PowerDVD.

What is the registry change that needs to occur? I have hardware acceleration turned on in the PowerDVD application but I don't get a silky smooth picture (e.g. ticker on cnn does not scroll smoothly).

[redondo_se]

First, a big thanks to sage developers for working on this. Thanks for listening to our wants. After registering the new sage EVR dll, I have EVR working in Sage.

Sorry for the following length of this post, but I'm trying to supply as much detail as possible.

It seems to have improved mpeg2 playback. I've had a really troublesome 2 1/2 men recording for a long time that has really weird video issues without EVR on ATI cards. In fact I switched out the 2600XTs in my 2 primary TV client PCs for Nvidia 8600GTs because of all lots of problems with mpeg2 (my office pc is still running a 2600XT). The new beta with EVR has made that problem dissapear on the ATI card!

Now the bad news. For some reason, I'm still not getting H.264 acceleration with EVR in SageTV (on both machines with ATI and Nvidia). In fact, something is not right about the way SageTV is using EVR. I use FFDSHOW audio decoder which allows you to right click the icon in the task bar see the currently loaded dshow filters and pull up the properties dialog for each filter. When I try to pull up the EVR dialog when playing back anything in sage (mpeg2 or H.264), I get the following error dialog 5 times:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/atta...1&d=1226805900

After clicking OK 5 times, I get the EVR properties dialog, but the quality tab shows really strange numbers (examples shown in images below).

Notice the following in the next image:

• This is SageTV playing back an H.264 sample using the Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 H.264 decoder
• The cpu usage is 28% on a Core 2 Duo E6750 with ATI 2600XT
• Notice the strange numbers in the quality tab of the EVR properties dialog
• The FFDSHOW context menu shows the loaded filters
• Obviously you can't see this in a still image, but the ticker plays back very choppy

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/atta...1&d=1226805900

The next image shows the same clip with the same filters being played back in graphedit. Notice that:

• CPU usage is 0%
• EVR quality tab shows reasonable numbers
• You can't see this, but the ticker is smooth as silk and looks great. However, if you compare the text of the ticker to the last image, you can see that it's much sharper in graphedit than in SageTV.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/atta...1&d=1226806891

The same holds true with the Arcsoft H.264 decoder. The one extra thing to notice in these images is that the Arcsoft decoder dialog shows DXVA2.0 greyed out with SageTV whereas it is enable with graphedit. Unlike the Cyberlink hardware acceleration checkbox, this one actually means something. If it's not greyed out then Arcsoft is using it.

SageTV:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/atta...1&d=1226805900

Graphedit:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/atta...1&d=1226805900

Thanks again for you hard work!

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by wayner

Do you watch sports? I never noticed stuttering at all on TV shows or movies. But once hockey season started I really began to notice it.

Soccer, both SD (EPL) and HD (UCL). No stutter with VMR9; but I put a quad in the box a couple months after getting the HDPVR (the x2 couldn't do live detection).

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

What is the registry change that needs to occur? I have hardware acceleration turned on in the PowerDVD application but I don't get a silky smooth picture (e.g. ticker on cnn does not scroll smoothly).

the reg change is just for VC-1. I didn't need to do anything for h.264.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by babgvant

the reg change is just for VC-1. I didn't need to do anything for h.264.

Which registry key needs to be updated? Trying to get to the bottom of this.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Vaskill

Sadly, when trying to execute the proposed EVR resolution I get the following Regsvr32 error:

LoadLibrary("STVEVRPrstr.dll") failed - The specified module could not be found.

My system is installed on drive F: in the standard folder (F:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\).

I did a debug log on the install and found no obvious anomalies.

Any suggestions would be appreciated?

are you using x64 vista? if so, you will need to use the x86 version of regsvr32 (C:\Windows\System32) to register the dll.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Which registry key needs to be updated? Trying to get to the bottom of this.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cyberlink\Common\clvc1dec]
"UIVMode"=dword:00000001
"UIUseHVA"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cyberlink\Common\CLVSD]
"UIUseHVA"=dword:00000001

[Vaskill]

Originally Posted by babgvant

are you using x64 vista? if so, you will need to use the x86 version of regsvr32 (C:\Windows\System32) to register the dll.

No, XP SP3.

[Jesse]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Is this a Vista box (the clients in your sig are are XP)? I'm not sure if HWA works with the EVR on XP (the documentation is promising though).

I like to use GraphEdit (or GraphStudio) to debug these kinds of issues, if it works there then an unwanted filter is probably joining the playback graph.

Build the graph like the one pictured below (which does not demonstrate HWA working btw, G45 IGP ).

http://babgvant.com/images/g45acrsoft.jpg

For HWA to work the decoder filter has to be connected directly to the renderer, filters like ffdshow that do post-processing disable HWA because they join b/w the two.

Hi babgvant,

Sorry for the lack of details. My test machine is using Vista ultimate 32 bit, a Q6600, 4 gigs of ram and a pair of 8800GT's. I have no other decoders besides ArcSoft and sage installed.

Thanks again.

Jesse

[mkanet]

Yeah, there's definitely somethign wrong with CPU usage when using EVR. I dont think anyone has gotten the CPU usage you would expect when using WMP or graphedit with EVR.

[ToxMox]

Are captions working for anyone using EVR? They don't work for me. Can't even enable them.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Hi babgvant,

Sorry for the lack of details. My test machine is using Vista ultimate 32 bit, a Q6600, 4 gigs of ram and a pair of 8800GT's. I have no other decoders besides ArcSoft and sage installed.

Thanks again.

Jesse

HWA seems a bit inconsistent for me now too. I wonder if they are selecting the best video processor mode each time the graph is rewired.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Are captions working for anyone using EVR? They don't work for me. Can't even enable them.

Sage does CC?

[Ryokurin]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Sage does CC?

Yes. there is a CC options in sage.properties. It only works with certain hardware, and is not officially supported I believe but its there. I doubt that it will work right with accelerated EVR however since technically things like subtitles get into the middle of the decoding to rendering phase and that's not allowed. Programs like Media Player Classic get it done by placing the subs as early as possible as a workaround, something that the average splitter/filter can't be placed.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Ryokurin

Yes. there is a CC options in sage.properties. It only works with certain hardware, and is not officially supported I believe but its there. I doubt that it will work right with accelerated EVR however since technically things like subtitles get into the middle of the decoding to rendering phase and that's not allowed. Programs like Media Player Classic get it done by placing the subs as early as possible as a workaround, something that the average splitter/filter can't be placed.

You can do CC with the EVR (MS does it with VMC), I'm not sure how though.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by babgvant

You can do CC with the EVR (MS does it with VMC), I'm not sure how though.

Sage adds "Line 21 decoder 2" between video codec (intervideo and cyberlink) and VMR9 for CC. Works very well.

CC in EVR can be done the same way, by adding "Line 21 decoder 2" to the graph.

VMC uses a different method with filters that don't work outside of VMC.

[mkanet]

On top of the excessive CPU usage under sageTV + EVR under a Vista machine that ues EVR correctly with almost no CPU usage under PowerDVD/WMP, there are audio synch isses.

As much as I like EVR to work under SageTV, it seems this beta is not too useable for me. Hopefullly, there will be a significant update soon to address these weird issues with EVR; including getting CC to work gain.

[Ryokurin]

I'm not for sure how vista does it, but I do want to clarify how media player classic HC handles vobsubs. It inserts them after all rendering and post processing has occurred, which is going to be different than how a traditional filter like ffdshow or gabest's vobsub filter would work. I imagine that Vista MCE does something similar.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by mkanet

On top of the excessive CPU usage under sageTV + EVR under a Vista machine that ues EVR correctly with almost no CPU usage under PowerDVD/WMP, there are audio synch isses.

As much as I like EVR to work under SageTV, it seems this beta is not too useable for me. Hopefullly, there will be a significant update soon to address these weird issues with EVR; including getting CC to work gain.

Ditto. I'm going back to good old Overlay until the kinks get worked out. But that's what a beta is for right! Let's keep the dialog going to make EVR support rock solid in future builds.

[grooves12]

My guess is from the looks of things... nothing has actually changed in the rendering path with EVR enabled for h.264 streams.