Windows 7 HD Codec Playback

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by frizat

I get what seems to be some jerkiness every 30seconds or so.

Run DPC Latency Checker and see if it is caused by your Bios settings.

[frizat]

ran it and it showed no issues it said "this machine should be able to handle real-time streaming of data and/or video without drop-outs"

[jerryt]

Do you have a different video card you could try ?

[frizat]

unfortunately not, this is my main and only machine and it gets crisp perfect playback with Windows 7 Media Center, so I know that it can handle it. SageTV 7 must be doing something where it's not rendering or displaying the data properly, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

Last night I tried PowerDVD 10 Codec and confirmed that I am getting HA (CPU 8-15%) on Live TV, but for example watching NCAA Basketball the player movements are jerky and transitions are slow.

The audio is fine though, so I got that going for me.

[jerryt]

I installed FFDshow and tested if Microsoft DTV-DVD video decoder is normally grayed out in the system tray during perfect playback, and ..

Yes, it is normal to be grayed out.

You can click on EVR and go to the Quality tab and see how many dropped frames you have.

[slowpoke]

Originally Posted by frizat

unfortunately not, this is my main and only machine and it gets crisp perfect playback with Windows 7 Media Center, so I know that it can handle it. SageTV 7 must be doing something where it's not rendering or displaying the data properly, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

Last night I tried PowerDVD 10 Codec and confirmed that I am getting HA (CPU 8-15%) on Live TV, but for example watching NCAA Basketball the player movements are jerky and transitions are slow.

The audio is fine though, so I got that going for me.

I have the same issues as you - the Windows 7 decoder is perfect in Media Center but has high cpu usage in sage... same with using ffdshow. Would love to use the Windows 7 decoder because it puts out a very nice picture.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by slowpoke

I have the same issues as you - the Windows 7 decoder is perfect in Media Center but has high cpu usage in sage... same with using ffdshow. Would love to use the Windows 7 decoder because it puts out a very nice picture.

Are running 32 or 64 bit windows 7 ?

I know it works great for me with 64 bit.

[slowpoke]

Originally Posted by jerryt

Are running 32 or 64 bit windows 7 ?

I know it works great for me with 64 bit.

I'm running Windows 7 32 bit with a Nvidia 7600gs video card - not the greatest card but it handles the HD very well with 7MC...

[frizat]

Originally Posted by jerryt

I installed FFDshow and tested if Microsoft DTV-DVD video decoder is normally grayed out in the system tray during perfect playback, and ..

Yes, it is normal to be grayed out.

You can click on EVR and go to the Quality tab and see how many dropped frames you have.

When I click on EVR it shows 0's across the board for frames dropped but it also shows a 0 for Frames Processed? Does this mean my EVR isn't getting the frames? or even being used?

Also, just did some digging around in graphstudio and it seems that EVR was set to DISABLED. I enabled that and some of the tearing has gone away. The CPU usage isn't as low as WM7 and the quality isn't as sharp but it seems to be a step in the right direction.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by frizat

When I click on EVR it shows 0's across the board for frames dropped but it also shows a 0 for Frames Processed? Does this mean my EVR isn't getting the frames? or even being used?

Also, just did some digging around in graphstudio and it seems that EVR was set to DISABLED. I enabled that and some of the tearing has gone away. The CPU usage isn't as low as WM7 and the quality isn't as sharp but it seems to be a step in the right direction.

Opening EVR property page appears to be like a snapshot. First time I opened it it had numbers but after that it was all zeros.

Wonder how EVR would get set to disable...

[frizat]

no idea how it happened but it has cleared up my CPU usage issue, now if i can find a way to clear up the stutter/jitter that all the video's have i'll be in the clear

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by frizat

now if i can find a way to clear up the stutter/jitter that all the video's have i'll be in the clear

Try uninstalling the Shark007 codec pack...

Turn off speedstep (EIST ?) in bios...

Installed 64 bit version of win 7...

[frizat]

well, now after eating up most of day fiddling with this I think i've run out of ideas

Formatted HTPC installed Win7 x64, only installed SageTV, still completely Jittery video. Turned Power Settings to High Performance from Balanced, no change in video.

The only time I can get nice clean video is if I use the Overlay video renderer. Unfortunately this causes my machine to use 40-50% CPU which is unacceptable. Still VERY confused how W7MC runs with so low CPU and such a great picture and for the life of me I can't get SageTV to come even close.

Has anyone else had Win7 issues? I dug around the forums but I couldn't find anything simliar to what I'm experience with HA.

[jerryt]

I had the HA problem on multiple installs with UAC installed and ATI video cards.
My fix was to turn off UAC before loading any drivers, ans that was the only fix needed.

Also had the minor stutter every 30 seconds, and reinstalling the OS. While keeping added codec to a minumum was the fix for the stutter.

You may need to try some different hardware.

It would be OK if sage uses a little more CPU then MC, because Sage uses a different directshow playback graph.

Another idea would be to try older Nvidia drivers, or check for setting regarding your card. (or look for a cheap Nvidia card, like the 210)

EDIT - Make sure you install your Motherboard device drivers, not just the drivers installed by Windows.

[frizat]

Finally a breakthrough and success!

After almost giving up yesterday, I decided to install Hauppagge WinTV 7 to see if the jerkiness was a SageTV issue or a computer issue. WinTV 7 had all the same issues as SageTV. I checked the settings for WinTV and it has an option for "use hardware acceleration when possible", clicked that restarted WinTV, no difference.

I finally rebooted and when the comp came back up, WinTV was showing 2-7% CPU usage! Decided to test my luck and go figure, now SageTV is showing full hardware acceleration and very little CPU usage.

No idea why WinTV helped solve my dilemma but hopefully this helps anyone else that is having issues as well.

thanks to everyone for the help! Much appreciated

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by frizat

Finally a breakthrough and success!

After almost giving up yesterday, I decided to install Hauppagge WinTV 7 to see if the jerkiness was a SageTV issue or a computer issue. WinTV 7 had all the same issues as SageTV. I checked the settings for WinTV and it has an option for "use hardware acceleration when possible", clicked that restarted WinTV, no difference.

I finally rebooted and when the comp came back up, WinTV was showing 2-7% CPU usage! Decided to test my luck and go figure, now SageTV is showing full hardware acceleration and very little CPU usage.

No idea why WinTV helped solve my dilemma but hopefully this helps anyone else that is having issues as well.

thanks to everyone for the help! Much appreciated

Great news, I am glad you kept at it.

Can you post a screen shot of this setting? Thanks

Also can you check if you have this registry entry?

"Disable hardware acceleration in MS DTV-DVD Decoder
If you want to disable hardware acceleration in the Microsoft MPEG2/MPEG4 decoder, open regedit and browse to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Scrunch\CodecPack\MSDVD
Create a new DWORD named DXVA2 and set its value to 0 (zero). Hardware acceleration will now not be used. This might be useful if your graphics card has problems accelerating certain video streams, or if you just have general stability issues with DXVA acceleration."

Another method would be to search the registry for the key word "DXVA2" and check each returned item to see if it was for Microsoft DTV DVD video decoder with the DWORD set to "0".

I wonder if the Nvidia driver was setting this registry to no HA.

Here is a registry change
To force enable HA in WMP:
in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo
create DWORD value "DXVA" and set it to 1

Just did a registry search on my main HTPC for "DXVA2" and there are no entries. No entries would result in the default setting of HA being "on".

[frizat]

Here's my WIN7 settings

[panteragstk]

Find these two entries in your .properties file to turn on dxva. 1 is on 0 is off.

videoframe/dvd_dxva_mpeg_mode=1
videoframe/dxva_mpeg_mode=1

EDIT: you can use this option also, but I just use the above. This will make dxva options show up in the ui.

ui/dxva_enable_options=true

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by frizat

Here's my WIN7 settings

I wonder what exactly that check box is doing?
There is a program called "Whatchanged.exe" which can show what changed before and after checking that box...
Must be a registry setting.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Find these two entries in your .properties file to turn on dxva. 1 is on 0 is off.

videoframe/dvd_dxva_mpeg_mode=1
videoframe/dxva_mpeg_mode=1

EDIT: you can use this option also, but I just use the above. This will make dxva options show up in the ui.

ui/dxva_enable_options=true

I thought that those settings were for the sage video decoder?