Newbie - help please ! MVP DivX playback wobbly & image edges lost

[MHAD]

Hi all,

I'm brand new to the forum and have been trying out SageTV for a few months. I'm using an MVP for now so that I can try out Sage, see what WAF I get and generally get things running how I want them before investing in an HD200 or even what comes next.

Here's my setup:

HP MediaSmart EX475 running SageTV for Windows Home Server
- RAM upgraded to 2Gb
- CPU upgraded to AMD LE-1640 2.6Ghz with 1Mb L2 cache
- 3Tb storage
- drives formatted to 64k sectors
- FFDShow codecs on the server revision 2946, 15th May 09
- 1Gbps LAN on the server, connected wired to the switch
- DHCP provided my my ADSL router

Netgear 1Gbps switch
Hauppage wMVP model 86018 Rev3
- scart connection to 22'' LCD TV which is 16:9
- connected Wired to the switch, not wireless

SageTV
- software version 6.5.9.204
- SageMC STV version 6.3.9
- Java version 1.6.0


My video collection is mainly DivX/XVid - and I have mixed results with one recurring problem - apart from this everything runs fine.

The problem is with the playback of DivX/XVid movies. TV Shows are fine. Movies have a distinct wobble to the image - this is very noticable when, for example, at the start of a movie the production company logos appear, and continues throughout the movie.

I think I'm narrowing down the cause of the problem but I have no idea on how to fix it.

My TV shows are 624 x 352 pixels, which is 16:9
My movies tend to be 720 x 304 or similar, which isn't 16:9...

I'd expect a black bar at the top and bottom of the screen to handle the different ratio, however this isn't happening. What's happening is the image is stretched "beyond" the screen, so that an edge of the image is lost on all sides. And the image wobbles...

In the Sage setup where the circle is adjusted to be a circle, that's all OK (it's been some time since I did that at setup, can't remember excatly where it is now).

I haven't tried any of the features in FFDShow for aspect ratio correction - everything is set to default. This will be the first place I start to see what settings have an effect.

If anyone has any advice on what else I can try I'd be very grateful !

Cheers

[MHAD]

To follow up, I found this informative post here

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42136

and tried a few things.

I've used avidemux to add top and bottom black borders to make the aspect ratio of the final image 16:9, however this had no effect when playing back on the MVP. The playback was the same - wobble and missing around the edges. Playback on a PC was successful.

I'm now trying again, this time adding black borders to take the image to 720 x 480 to see what effect that has.

Adjusting the settings in FFDShow has no effect. Perhaps I should have known that !

[jbarr]

If I understand the process correctly, tweaking FDDSHOW will have no effect on MVP playback because the MVP handles all video/audio decoding. Tweaking FDDSHOW will affect PC-based playback, however.

I'm not sure what you mean by "wobble" but it may have to do with video settings. For PC playback, try playing with the "overlay" and "DirectX" settings in the SageTV settings. Maybe that will help things? I don't think this can be adjusted any for MVP playback.

That said, our observations seem to be consistent about the MVP. I have come to the conclusion that the MVP playback renders video dimensions based primarily on the HEIGHT, not the WIDTH of the source video.

Initially, I expected the MVP to render the source video full-width with letterboxing added to the top and bottom to compensate for the differences in height. That seems the most logical to me as it would then render all aspect ratios properly regardless of the original source and output format (4x3, 16x9, etc.) However it appears to be just the opposite. It looks like the MVP is rendering the source video at full height and then cropping anything that doesn't fit the width.

This is, of course, pure speculation based solely on my observation of how various video aspect ratios play.

I highly suggest that you contact SageTV support directly and post these questions to them. I have not done so, but will.

I'm not sure how the new HD Theater box handles the rendering. If it handles it the way I expect, then I'll gladly drop the money for one, but if it renders the same way as the MVP, then I'm at a loss. Any input from HD Theater users?

[MHAD]

Thanks for the reply Jim, much appreciated.

I'll contact SageTV and ask for help - anything I get I'll post back here.

Cheers

[_Demo_]

Originally Posted by jbarr

I'm not sure how the new HD Theater box handles the rendering. If it handles it the way I expect, then I'll gladly drop the money for one, but if it renders the same way as the MVP, then I'm at a loss. Any input from HD Theater users?

The MVP doesn't support other video formats than MPEG2-Video. When playing back other formats the video is converted on the fly by the server. If you want to try getting better quality you can try to preconvert the video file to MPEG2 but if there are major issues with the on the fly conversion please submit the problem to support.

The HD Theater doesn't have those conversion issues since it can playback the video files directly.

_Demo_

[MHAD]

Originally Posted by _Demo_

The MVP doesn't support other video formats than MPEG2-Video. When playing back other formats the video is converted on the fly by the server. If you want to try getting better quality you can try to preconvert the video file to MPEG2 but if there are major issues with the on the fly conversion please submit the problem to support.

The HD Theater doesn't have those conversion issues since it can playback the video files directly.

_Demo_

Thanks for the reply _Demo_

I was aware that Sage would be converting on the fly but I was thinking in terms of the source avi, not the conversion by sage itself. Does that suggest then that my problem is related to whatever Sage uses to convert on the fly.... are there any settings anywhere that I can check? It seems that divx / xvid avi's that are close to 16:9 aspect ratio don't have this problem at all - they convert on the fly just fine. It's avi's that are of a (significantly) different aspect ratio that have this problem.

I've submitted the problem to support and await their input.

I'd like to get an HD200 but I want to be sure it will play back without these kind of problems before I invest !