Video Settings Explained?

[blwegrzyn]

Hello,
Does anyone knows any external link or can explain the video settings for sage?
1. What is the video renderer and what is the best one to use?
2. What is overlay and what is VMR9?
3. What is the recommended mpeg2 codec to use?
4. What do the descaler settings do? What is the best filter to use?
5. What is the recomended renderer and code for playing DVDs?
6. Many video cards have some hardware acceleration settings, where to I set or tweak any of those?

thx

Bart

[GKusnick]

The video renderer is the software component that actually draws the decoded video on screen. Some graphics cards have a dedicated hardware buffer for video rendering; that's called Overlay. Using it can give better performance on older graphics hardware, but you give up some effects such as transparency. VMR9 uses DirectX to render video the same way that games render their graphics. You get all the fancy effects, but it takes more graphics horsepower to do it. If you have a gaming-quality graphics card, try VMR9. If you can't get good performance that way, fall back to Overlay.

Regarding codecs, the bundled SageTV codec is pretty good these days, particularly if you turn on DXVA acceleration. If you have Nvidia graphics hardware, you might also try the Nvidia codec. Other people may have other codecs to recommend, but those are the two I've used and either one is acceptable.

I don't use Dscaler and don't have much to say about it other than that you can get perfectly good results without it.

For DVDs I use the same codec and renderer as I use for recorded TV. (But I don't play a lot of DVDs through Sage.)

How you fine-tune your graphics card's features will depend on what hardware and drivers you're using.

[blwegrzyn]

thanks for quick reply,

You said "If you have Nvidia graphics hardware, you might also try the Nvidia codec." Where do I get those codecs from? I don't see any option to chose nvidia codes? Do I have to install them?

Does DXVA acceleration make the picture better or it just uses more hardware then software for video processing?

Also, when VMR9 is used are there any necessary tweakings outside sage?
(WINDOWS Direct X settings)

thx

[blwegrzyn]

I found this interesting post:
http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60

[blwegrzyn]

Just curious, what does the default video renderer setting means?
Does it use DirectX9?

thx

[cychou]

Originally Posted by blwegrzyn

Just curious, what does the default video renderer setting means?
Does it use DirectX9?

thx

On XP machine, default video renderer means VMR7 which is one generation older than VMR9.

DScaler option is only intend for older video cards so you can use software advance deinterlace for better result, but this will require more CPU speed. The DScaler included in Sage is quite old though.

Generally speaking, modern video cards do a better job in deinterlace and scaling in hardware. You usually tweak their settings in the Dispaly control panel. Although this still depends on your driver version though!