Help with correct codecs, etc

[keodark]

Hi All,

I'm still trying to get my trial SageTV set up well enough to convince my wife to drop $150/mo Cable TV, and pay the $80 for Sage... however, I keep running into problems. I thought maybe if someone could step me through which codecs I should be using, I might be able to avoid some issues, like the following from the latest problem (black video but good audio on all channels until restart of --client--):

Thu 4/2 7:03:18.324 DShowPlayer setVideoRendererFilter0({CD8743A1-3736-11D0-9E69-00C04FD7C15B}) called
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.328 DShowPlayer setVideoDecoderFilter0(SageTV MPEG Video Decoder) called
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.328 Using DXVA Enabled SageTV MPEG-2 Video Decoder
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.329 WIN32 FAILURE HR=0x80004005 FILE=.\PlaybackGraph.cpp LINE=103
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.329 VideoDecoder DXVA enabled 1
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.329 VideoDecoder Postprocess 0
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.330 VideoDecoder ShowErrorFrames 1
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.330 VideoDecoder EMC_Deinterlace 4
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.330 WIN32 FAILURE HR=0x80004005 FILE=.\PlaybackGraph.cpp LINE=144
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.330 DShowPlayer setAudioDecoderFilter0(SageTV MPEG Audio Decoder) called
Thu 4/2 7:03:18.331 DShowPlayer setTimeshift=1 buffer=0

When I read this, it occurred to me that maybe I should seek advice on which codecs to install/upgrade. I'm mostly using stock everything - latest video card drivers, latest ATI HDMI audio driver...

So here's an exhaustive summary of my setup and my settings. I would be very appreciative of any advice for where I might be going wrong in the codecs & decoders department:

I'm recording and watching HD OTA programming (no cable). Signal strength on all channels is at least 80%, most of them are flawless.

- HDHomeRun x1 on a wired network
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e 2.6GHz cpu
- Gigabyte GA-MA78GM motherboard with onboard audio (RealTek), onboard video disabled
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR4 video card, using HDMI out (using ATI HDMI audio driver so the onboard sound output goes to the tv on the vidcard's HDMI out)
- 2gb DDR2-800 sdram
- 1TB HD, two partitions (one OS & apps, one for recordings)
- No heat problems

Windows XP Pro, clean install
SageTV running as a Service. comskip mod installed. No placeshifters, extenders, or networked clients.

Sage settings:
- Quality: DVD Standard Play (mpeg2 max was causing glitches in recorded video)
- Video Renderer: VMR9
- MPEG2 Video Decoder Filter: SageTV Video Decoder Filter
- Use DXVA? Yes
- Mpeg4 playback: DirectShow
- DScaler: Disabled
- Audio Renderer: Default
- MPEG2 Audio Decoder Filter: SageTV MPEG Audio Decoder
- No DVD. (no dvd drive)
- 3d Acceleration on menus (adv setup): Disabled
- Enable MPEG4 Timeshifting: Yes
- Always Tune Channel: Yes

I do not have any specific DVD player software installed (no dvd drive). I have VLC installed, WMP11, DivX Player.

Here are my questions:
- Should I consider using the ATI mpeg decoders? Should I install 3rd party ones?
- How can I be sure that my video card is doing the post-processing, deinterlacing, and so forth to take as much load off of my low-wattage CPU as possible?
- Should I consider other Renderers? I switched from Overlay to VMR9 when I had my first video playback issues...
- Should I install any codecs? ffdshow? cyberlink? It's possible that I'm missing files that other users take for granted...

Thanks!
-Keo

[SWKerr]

I use the ATI 3200 from a 789G motherboard which should be a rough equivalent to your setup. I assume that we are just talking about HD s and that analog would not be important. (I don't do analog anymore). These comments are for XP but I have found Vista to be just about the same. EVR on Vista looks good out of the box but Overlay is still just about perfect for me.

I have found my best HD mpeg-2 playback with the Cyberlink 7 codec. (Don't have version 8) The nVidia codec is also not bad but I end up with a small gray bar at the bottom of the screen. (Has anyone else seen this?) The ATI codecs suck and I have never got the Sage codec to work quire right. the ArcSoft codec is great for h.264 files (BluRay, HD-PVR) but it sucks for MPEG-2 files.

I use Overlay for everything at this point. If I use VMR9 I get tearing. I have found using Full Screen exclusive mode will fix this in VMR9 but I have to restart Sage every time I go out of Sage to watch an online show. (Netflix, Hulu etc., Pain in Butt)

h.264 is different codecs different opinion but post if you want advice on those as well.

[keodark]

I'll try out Cyberlink, thanks.

I guess my frustration stems from the fact that I don't know enough about codecs and decoders to know which ones to use, and the default settings for Sage are giving me problems. This either means that the codecs/decoders/settings I have are causing instability, or Sage itself has bugs that are causing my problems. I'd like to think it's the former.

-Keo