FIX for EVR Support in V6.5.1

[Clift]

That was the trick! it worked!

[briands]

Originally Posted by Clift

That was the trick! it worked!

Ditto that - MP11 got it working... but at what cost? Is there any thing bad in MP11 - not that I really use MP on this machine.

[zakrzep]

Do you need to enable anything in Sage to use the EVR? How can you tell if it is using EVR?

Thanks

[mscrivo]

Originally Posted by briands

Ditto that - MP11 got it working... but at what cost? Is there any thing bad in MP11 - not that I really use MP on this machine.

WMP11 is a great app, absolutely nothing wrong with it.

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by zakrzep

Do you need to enable anything in Sage to use the EVR? How can you tell if it is using EVR?

Thanks

Just select it as your renderer in the SageTV settings. You can enable debug logging by adding this setting to the sage config file ("sageclient.properties" I think it's called) while SageTV is not running:

debug_logging=TRUE

then you can look at the log file and search for renderer.

[Clift]

Originally Posted by redondo_se

Just select it as your renderer in the SageTV settings. You can enable debug logging by adding this setting to the sage config file ("sageclient.properties" I think it's called) while SageTV is not running:

debug_logging=TRUE

then you can look at the log file and search for renderer.

Well, also if Sage lets you select EVR and you go to liveTV or playback of any recorded content and it works, then EVR is working. Otherwise you will get a black screen or an error message.

[Evil_Attorney]

Works great for me in Vista. CPU went from 50-60 w/out EVR and 15-20% with EVR.

I noticed that my NVIDIA decoder looks like crap with 1080i MPEG TS from my HDHR. Is EVR Causing this? I tried switching to Cyberlink 7 and 8 decoders, but they crashed on 720p MPEG files. I settled on the Arcsoft decoder for now, but it's picture quality is not as good as NVIDIA in VRM9.

[Razillian]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

I noticed that my NVIDIA decoder looks like crap with 1080i MPEG TS from my HDHR. Is EVR Causing this?

The nVidia decoders do not support EVR, which is why nVidia recommends other decoders (Cyberlink I believe) for Vista. Of course Cyberlink doesn't work well with Sage, or rather is difficult to get working.

[Evil_Attorney]

Is there any alternative to Arcsoft for MPEGs that may produce a better image quality with EVR and work with Sage? The Sage decoder has even worse image quality than Arcsoft.

[gplasky]

I had bought Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 and I think it is awesome with EVR. Also provides hardware accelerated h.264 whicj works well for me.

Gerry

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Is there any alternative to Arcsoft for MPEGs that may produce a better image quality with EVR and work with Sage? The Sage decoder has even worse image quality than Arcsoft.

Intervideo, and it has great closed captions.

[Evil_Attorney]

Gerry,

Both Cyberlink 7 and 8 decoders crash when I watch 720p MPEG shows recorded with my HDHR. Sage just immediately closes. Do you have this problem? I never tried them in earlier versions because NVIDIA decoders have always worked so well. However for 1080i MPEG content, Cyberlink 8 looks great.

I have Cyberlink 8 set for h.264 and was occaisionally getting a weird "hardware studder" where the screen would go green for about two seconds and the last few miliseconds of audio would studder a few dozen times.

[gplasky]

No I don't have that issue. I have a HDHR and use Cyberlink on all 3 PC clients without that issue. Make sure you never loaded any codec packs on your PC. If you have you may want to uninstall those and check out the Zoomplayer site for a good way to use Zoomplayer to basically clean out any of those remnants and basically set your PC back to a default state with no decoders. Find it here: Clean Start and scroll down to "Clean Start". Then install what you need. Update to the latest DirectX (Nov 2008). And maybe reinstall PDVD 8 and make sure you have updated it to the latest patches.

Are you sure it is the decoder crashing? Maybe it is your video drivers giving you issues. make sure those are updated. And check the Event log in Windows for any clues.

Gerry

[Evil_Attorney]

Thanks for the tips. I performed a fresh install about a month ago with the latest NVIDIA and Cyberlink drivers (not sure about DX), but I'll try updating everything to see if that helps. I do know that last night with the beta it was crashing with both cyberlink 7 or 8 in EVR or VRM9 mode, but only with 720p MPEG content. Cyberlink with 720p h.264 content looked super.

[Clift]

Gerry,

How is the stability timeshifting? With the beta demux i was having all sorts of issues in XP. I'm upgrading to Vista tomorrow and I want to know how stable the system is. Thanks

[gplasky]

I'm on Vista and the wife's client is XP and she does all kind of FF and REW and she hasn't reported any issues. And believe me if there was an issue I would have heard it. I'll check tonight but we're doing commercial skipping and I've jumped between 2 or 3 segments with no issues on my Vista client. I had planned to upgrade the wife's client to Vista to take advantage of the EVR.

Gerry

[Clift]

Okay well I tried 6.5.1 in XP yesterday and did the rewind test... Three clicks of REW-1 and then hitting LiveTV button (I have an MCE remote) gave me the spinning circle of death. I don't get this with the old demux... Maybe a fresh install will fix the issue. Regardless I am moving forward with Vista and EVR.

[Ryokurin]

The only problem I'm having with Cyberlink codecs is that PowerDVD 8 seems to have trouble determining a deinterlacing strategy specifically when it comes to 4:3 content on a 16:9 HD channel. It switches back and forth making the picture look like it jittery. I don't notice it on 16:9 content. PowerDVD 7.3 didn't seem to have the problem so I may end up rolling back, despite the fact that I think that 8 displays a better image overall.

[Evil_Attorney]

Last night I updated my NVIDIA drivers, confirmed that DX and Cyberlink was updated and did a clean instal of the Sage 6.5.1, but still have crashing with Cyberlink 7 and 8 decoders. When I look at the Sage debug log, there are no errors. The last entry says something like rendering video. That's when Sage simply closes. There must be something on my Vista system that Cyberlink doesn't like. Oh well, I guess I'll settle for Arcsoft for now.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Last night I updated my NVIDIA drivers, confirmed that DX and Cyberlink was updated and did a clean instal of the Sage 6.5.1, but still have crashing with Cyberlink 7 and 8 decoders. When I look at the Sage debug log, there are no errors. The last entry says something like rendering video. That's when Sage simply closes. There must be something on my Vista system that Cyberlink doesn't like. Oh well, I guess I'll settle for Arcsoft for now.

I have an ATI card but I have the Cyberlink 8 decoders working fine with EVR in SageTV on my Vista x64 box. No crashing. I did have crashing when I was using the Arcsoft Audio Decoder. But since I began using AC3Filter as my audio decoder no crashing.