HDPVR H.264...Is it really this difficult?

[Skirge01]

I hate to say it, but are you sure you installed the native recording patch correctly, with the update, the extra files since update 10, and registering things correctly? I actually forgot about that patch when I listed the guide I mentioned.

Also, I forgot about the guide I wrote. Check out Day Two to ensure you did all that, in order. That was where I had messed up.

[sportera]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Also, I forgot about the guide I wrote. Check out Day Two to ensure you did all that, in order. That was where I had messed up.

WOW!!! Is this posted somewhere as a sticky??? Oh how I wish I would have found this back when I moved from XP to Windows 7 64. The only difference was that I did a complete wipe of client hard drive and installed total fresh system.

One question though, is there someway to print this guide without the sidebars?

If this isn't a sticky, it should be....

[davephan]

If you have a version of Windows 7 that includes Windows Media Center, is that turned off?

Have you tried downloading a HD h.264 file and playing it back with SageTV? This could help isolate the problem, in case there is a problem related to HD h.264 you record with your HD-PVR.

Dave

[texneus]

Success (sort of!)

In desperation I grabbed a PNY GT240 based card and installed it. Rolled the system back to an image that was before installing Catalyst and built it back up exactly as before, only instead using NVidia stuff. Now the stuttering was far worse. Taking a hint from Fuzzy, I simply uninstalled AC3 Filter and Reclock. Stutter gone! Using only the Native Patch & windows 7 drivers for both audio and video!

I had only originally installed AC3Filter & Reclock because during evaluation of Sage this was the only way I could consistently get the audio to work. As of today, possibly with a combination of driver and Windows 7 updates, audio seems to works fine without having to resort to this sort of trickery.

Now this is the strange part, before I removed the ATi card, I tried the same thing and it had no effect. I will pull the GT240 and reinsert the ATi 4670 and see what happens, only this time I will roll back to a point before AC3Filter & Reclock and see if this helps, and I'll take it from there.

To answer specific questions since my last appearance:

Fuzzy: Yes, I have actually tried this without the native patches. I could not get any H.264 decoder to work at all without them. MPG2 was no problem, as even the Windows 7 decoder will work without the patch, but anything H.264 gave me a blank screen or a rendering error. Could have been a setup error I suppose (I'm not beyond that possibility!), but I gave up on not using the native recording patch pretty quickly.

lobosrul: I'm aware of CoreAVC but they don't seem to offer it as an evaluation. I do hear lots of good things about it though. In one of my attempts at resolving this, I tried the directshow stuff (found that in another thread) to no effect. I googled the command itself and I can't find anything that tells me what (if anything) this is supposed to do. Just lots of recommendations to use it. Are you sure it is a legitimate command?

Jerry: Windows 7 Home Premium (x86). All updates and patches are applied.

Skirge: I'm reasonably confident the patch is installed correctly. I have the 10th version as well as the updates to 10. No, I guess I can't say for sure if they are being installed correctly as up until late late late last night this was an exercise in frustration. Have not read your guide yet but will check it out shortly.

Davephan - Windows Media Center has been removed from this install of Windows 7 (using add/remove windows features). I had considered the possibility of a faulty HDPVR, however I can record a program and play it back in Windows Media Player with no issues what so ever. This to me points to a Sage issue. I guess at this point I'm most suspicious of Reclock. Somehow it grabs onto the system and knows if it's building a graph without it and gives you the option of inserting itself. Possibly this is being done in a way that SageTV doesn't like...not sure at this point.

[Fuzzy]

I can say that I use ReClock with no problems on my system, so it CAN work. Just not sure what was causing your issues...

[texneus]

Wow, I can't believe this. I have finally figured it out and I can even get it to skip "on demand". I was never quite happy with how it turned out last night, and in fact immediately after I posted that it was solved I had a huge let down in the form of skipping SageTV . Fuzzy, I think you are right, this has nothing to do with AC3Filter or Reclock, they were just red hearings. What is it? OK, ready for this? Can you say USER ERROR?

Here is what I have finally figured out. If I maximize sage with the windows "square" it skips. When I maximize sage with Sage's control, it's perfect. Every time I have tried. You can go back and forth without even stopping the video, and it will do it every time. Maximize with windows control=skip. Maximize with sage control=great. Apperently in the past I just never used Sage's control. Last night I happend to. Life is like that, sometimes...

This is still with the GT240, although I very much suspect it would be fine with the HD4670. I'll try later today...

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by sportera

If you use windows to enlarge the small windowed screen to a larger windowed screen and then switch back to full screen, I get a black horizonal bar extending from the middle of the left side of screen to the middle of the screen.

I have this bar also, right clicking, bringing up the menu and selecting close, clears the horizonal bar. (forces a redraw of the area)

Yes, it is worth upgrading to Windows 7 just for the Microsoft DTV-DVD decoders.

This thread would make a great sticky, for everyone who wants the upgrade.

Now if someone could enable the zoom functions of this decoder, the same as in Windows Media Center? That would be nice.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by jerryt

Now if someone could enable the zoom functions of this decoder, the same as in Windows Media Center? That would be nice.

You can use the autoaspect.stvi for this purpose. It contains for settings that can be customized (which is better, since the ones for media center cannot be customized)

[texneus]

Just a quick follow-up, HD4670 works fine. Now I need to decide which card I want to keep. The GT240 is a sweet card, it seems to render the video a bit "smoother", gives a proper HDTV refresh rate (59.9 something Hz) without having to resort to a hack, and the driver is definitely easier to work with. For now I've put the GT240 back in...

Thanks all!!!

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by texneus

Just a quick follow-up, HD4670 works fine. Now I need to decide which card I want to keep. The GT240 is a sweet card, it seems to render the video a bit "smoother", gives a proper HDTV refresh rate (59.9 something Hz) without having to resort to a hack, and the driver is definitely easier to work with. For now I've put the GT240 back in...

Thanks all!!!

I don't think this is/was your problem per se, but I also found that a lower-grade splitter (technically within specs of my system) would allow, for lack of a better term, reproducible tiling, stuttering, and dropouts in HD-PVR recordings, which I called "blowback" when that splitter also supplied some analog tuners in my Sage server. I finally put my STB, locked at 1080i (720p not an option), on it's own "private" cable line, and that issue disappeared for me for good, both within Sage and Total Media Extreme.

Just a thought if you get that tiling creeping back in on an intermittent basis. I could literally move my RG6 patch cable around close to other things and make the tiling happen at will until I put it on its own splitter I got from the cable companie's local office.