VMR9 vs EVR

[Underfunded]

OK. What is the difference and which should you use?

I know that is pretty vague but I am not finding a lot of information out there on EVR. In my case I have a C2D e8500 with 4GB RAM and an ATI x1800 video card. I am using CyberLink PowerDVD 8 for my video codec with AC3Filter for Audio and can not get EVR to work. When I select EVR the channel is tuned and the system starts playing the channel but I get no video. Interestingly enough if I pause the channel it updates my blank screen to whatever it would have paused on and when I press play it stays on that screen.

Should I worry about getting EVR to work? Does it provide a benefit beyond VMR9? Any thoughts on what my problem might be?

Thanks,
Underfunded.

[Underfunded]

OK. I'm not sure what fixed it but I am now running with EVR fine. I still am wondering what the 'advantages' of using it are?

[Ryokurin]

EVR is the default rendering method for video for Windows Vista, although it does exist for windows XP. Its important for Vista because other rendering methods have basically been depreciated, or is actually translated on the fly, which can sometimes cause slower performance. It also can allow some formats to be hardware accelerated in Vista, not windows XP.

If you are running Vista, you may want it so you can use your video card to view h264 or VC1 content in high definition, but if you have a powerful system you may not care about it. XP is nice, but you may have better luck with using VMR9.

[babgvant]

If you're using Vista, select EVR. If you have reasonably modern hw there is no good reason that I can think of to use VMR9.

On XP generally you'll want to use VMR9, but there are some scenarios where a different renderer might be preferred.

[hechacker1]

According to a slide I found:

DXVA2 – Video Processing
Single step conversion, scaling
and composition
Vendors can optimize
HQ output to match output device
Deinterlacing
Stream metadata given to renderer
More input formats
RGB inputs


Video Processing
Colorspace conversions
Enhanced input/output colorspace control
High quality output control
Gamma, colorspace, Y’CbCr and fp output, ‘studio RGB’
Output filtering and ProcAmp
Extensive linear processing and progressive RGB output support

Renderers
Enhanced video render
New render supersedes OvMixer, VMR(7), and VMR9
Video mixing, output timing scheduling
Many enhancements
Composites to output – non-square pixel, colorspace support
Pluggable mixer and presenters
Pull based
Advanced presenter – synchronized with monitor
Automatically handles output mode
Tear free windowed output, DWM support, fullscreen support
Glitch resilience – MMCSS, deep queuing, timeline mapping
Application integration
EVR available in Media Foundation and DShow
Stand-alone Mixer MFT
Not dependent on DXVA decoding

What I gather is that it's a better render because it supports more features. It also does synchronization better than vmr9 (less tearing? smoother video with Vista's DWM).

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by babgvant

If you're using Vista, select EVR. If you have reasonably modern hw there is no good reason that I can think of to use VMR9.

EVR doesn't work for me with my DVDs in VOB/VIDEO_TS format but it does with other imported videos. That's one good reason to use VMR9, for me.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

EVR doesn't work for me with my DVDs in VOB/VIDEO_TS format but it does with other imported videos. That's one good reason to use VMR9, for me.

That's probably more of a decoder problem than a renderer problem.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by babgvant

That's probably more of a decoder problem than a renderer problem.

Same (pdvd8) decoder. *shrug*

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

Same (pdvd8) decoder. *shrug*

Strange, I use the pdvd7 one...

[S_M_E]

Yeah, I can't explain it but it is what it is...

EVR+PDVD8 in Video / Audio setup works.
EVR+PDVD8 in DVD setup doesn't work.
VMR9+PDVD8 in DVD setup does work.

I'm just glad that everything works.

[gplasky]

You may need to look a little deeper. I'm running Vista64 as a Sage client.

EVR + PDVD8 + AC3Filter in Video/Audio setup works.
EVR + PDVD8 + AC3Filter in DVD setup works.

And I get hardware acceleration in both with a ATI HD3300 IGP.

Gerry

[S_M_E]

It gets even weirder too, to get VC-1 sample clips to work I had to reinstall my Nvidia Pure Video decoder and switch back to VMR-9 for Video / Audio. I don't have AC3Filter installed yet. I just now upgraded my ATI driver to 9.1 so I'll have to do more testing.

Pantergast has a thread open where he's been having issues with VC-1 files on ATI HW here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37379
So I'll post my results there. I'm sure he'd be happy to see your results if you can play VC-1 files too...

Strange days indeed...

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

It gets even weirder too, to get VC-1 sample clips to work I had to reinstall my Nvidia Pure Video decoder and switch back to VMR-9 for Video / Audio. I don't have AC3Filter installed yet. I just now upgraded my ATI driver to 9.1 so I'll have to do more testing.

Pantergast has a thread open where he's been having issues with VC-1 files on ATI HW here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37379
So I'll post my results there. I'm sure he'd be happy to see your results if you can play VC-1 files too...

Strange days indeed...

I have a 780G system that handles VC-1 just fine. If you're using Vista, you shouldn't be installing the Nvidia decoder (which is just MPEG2 btw), it was never updated to work properly with the EVR.

Sage includes AC3Filter in its installer.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by babgvant

I have a 780G system that handles VC-1 just fine. If you're using Vista, you shouldn't be installing the Nvidia decoder (which is just MPEG2 btw), it was never updated to work properly with the EVR.

Sage includes AC3Filter in its installer.

Interesting, Nvidia says the decoder works on ATI cards too but, you're right, it doesn't claim to play well with EVR. I think I'll uninstall it and see what happens.

I've never noticed an AC3Filter option but I've never had sound issues so I either leave sound set to default or DirectShow device.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

Interesting, Nvidia says the decoder works on ATI cards too but, you're right, it doesn't claim to play well with EVR. I think I'll uninstall it and see what happens.

I've never noticed an AC3Filter option but I've never had sound issues so I either leave sound set to default or DirectShow device.

On XP, Nvidia's decoder is [one of] the best (esp for TV content), but when MS released their own decoder for VMC Nivida didn't have a reason to put any effort into updating it for Vista.

I think AC3Filter is the default decoder for Sage. They install it with AC3Filter's insanely high merit so it pretty much joins the graph for everything unless you change it explicitly. If you didn't change anything, chances are you're using AC3Filter.

[S_M_E]

Well, uninstalling NPV decoder helped a little but I still can't play DVDs with EVR+PDVD8 and only some imported videos work with EVR. VC-1 files still do not. I suspect it's a codec conflict issue. I don't have a lot of codecs installed but I do have a few needed ones for AVI/MKV/etc. Perhaps re-installing PDVD8 would help too. I could remove all codecs and PDVD8 and start over but I'm not sure that will help.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

Well, uninstalling NPV decoder helped a little but I still can't play DVDs with EVR+PDVD8 and only some imported videos work with EVR. VC-1 files still do not. I suspect it's a codec conflict issue. I don't have a lot of codecs installed but I do have a few needed ones for AVI/MKV/etc. Perhaps re-installing PDVD8 would help too. I could remove all codecs and PDVD8 and start over but I'm not sure that will help.

It shouldn't be necessary to start over. Get a copy of GraphStudio, and try this.

Sage creates videoframe/mediatype entries in the sageclient.properties file every time it discovers a new one. There should be one for VC-1 that you can set to the Cyberlink VC-1 decoder.

If your VC-1 content is in MKV, you will will need to change it to another container (like m2ts) because Haali doesn't expose the right media type to connect to Cyberlink's or ArcSoft's VC-1 decoders.

[S_M_E]

I don't have any mt2s files, I haven't made the leap to blu-ray yet. My VC-1 files are .wmv samples that I got from MS to test because panteragstk was having similar issues with some file types, in the thread I linked above. They play fine in WMP11 just not in Sage while using EVR. They do play in Sage using VMR-9 The graph, dragging and dropping that file, says it uses the WMVideo decoder DMO but I don't know what Sage uses for that one.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I don't have any mt2s files, I haven't made the leap to blu-ray yet. My VC-1 files are .wmv samples that I got from MS to test because panteragstk was having similar issues with some file types, in the thread I linked above. They play fine in WMP11 just not in Sage while using EVR. They do play in Sage using VMR-9 The graph, dragging and dropping that file, says it uses the WMVideo decoder DMO but I don't know what Sage uses for that one.

If you delete the default video renderer in GraphStudio, add the Enhanced Video Renderer from the filter list and connect the pins does it play?

For VC-1 in WMV, AFAIK the DMO is the only filter that will connect, but it doesn't do HWA so even though ATI (and Intel) support VC-1 in hw it doesn't get utilized (this is the problem I was referring to earlier w/ mkv).

I'm not sure if m2ts supports WMA, but if it does it would be an interesting exercise to change the container and see what happens.

Btw, WMP plays WMV using Media Foundation not DirectShow (what Sage uses), so that may explain the difference.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by babgvant

If you delete the default video renderer in GraphStudio, add the Enhanced Video Renderer from the filter list and connect the pins does it play?

Yes, it does play via graphstudio...

For VC-1 in WMV, AFAIK the DMO is the only filter that will connect, but it doesn't do HWA so even though ATI (and Intel) support VC-1 in hw it doesn't get utilized (this is the problem I was referring to earlier w/ mkv).

I'm not sure if m2ts supports WMA, but if it does it would be an interesting exercise to change the container and see what happens.

Btw, WMP plays WMV using Media Foundation not DirectShow (what Sage uses), so that may explain the difference.

Now I'm lost again but you can test the file I'm using to test:
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...g_Sea_1080.exe (self-extracting .wmv inside)