Setup Help ... Picture is choppy

[digitalgm]

All,

I have had Sage up for a couple weeks on the machine that was running as my desktop for a year or so. It performed flawlessly... the video quality was great. Well, today I had the day off work and I decided to rebuild the machine and now I am having a significant problem with the choppiness At first, I was using the FFDshow, then I downloaded the InterVideo codec thinking that would be better but I still get the same choppiness. Its not VERY choppy, just enough for you to notice and it annoy the hell out of you .... especially in action scenes.

Can someone help?

AdamR

PS - I have played around with the quality settings and they ALL look the same =(

[digitalgm]

Details below

[kny3twalker]

try using sonic cineplayer or DVD decoder pack

winDVD uses the same exact decoder that comes with the card
but can be used for DVDs as well

and what video card? and what are the setting you set for video and audio?

and forget ffdshow
if you have choppy playback they will not help at all

[digitalgm]

My video card is an ATI Radeon 6800 and had zero problems before I reinstalled the OS. Now, there is literally nothing installed besides what is absolutley needed to run the machine. Is threre a way to get the Sonic pack trial? I dont want to pay $20 and not have it fix my problem. I say this because I KNOW that I did not have the sonic pack installed before.

AdamR

[kny3twalker]

the trial will not work in SageTV
but there are of course cracks and hacks out there

but if it does fix your issues then I would hope you will purchase it
(just have to say that since I mentioned cracks/hacks)

uninstall ffdshow though first
that may clear up the playback issue

and what decoders do you have installed?

[mightyt]

Are you using VMR9?

Are you using 3D Acceleration?

T.

[digitalgm]

I would most certainly spend 15$ to get this working... I just dont want to spend it if it isnt going to do me any good, you know?

As far as FFDShow, I installed that first and started having the problems with that. Besides that decoder, i have the intervideo WinDVD one from a trial copy. Still no luck.

As far as VMR9, I do not have that setting on and I do not have 3d accel on either

AdamR

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by digitalgm

I would most certainly spend 15$ to get this working... I just dont want to spend it if it isnt going to do me any good, you know?

As far as FFDShow, I installed that first and started having the problems with that. Besides that decoder, i have the intervideo WinDVD one from a trial copy. Still no luck.

As far as VMR9, I do not have that setting on and I do not have 3d accel on either

AdamR

Hmm ... I had a similar experience with choppiness when I had 3d Accelration turned on. Turned it of and all was well.

I also use WinDVD 6 and have no choppiness.

Noty sure if HD block size can impact HD reads and cause choppiness, but just to check you did format with 64k clusters?? Right... ?

T.

[rich_l]

i just started having a similar problem. Audio is fine. Video stutters or drops frames every second. Reinstalled video drivers, hauppage drivers, and sage. Also tried in win tv 2000. I bought the sonic decoders today and it is still skippy. I had ffdshow installed and dscaler, but it worked fine for awhile (before i bought the sonic decoder). I had been running since may just fine. Last week i upgraded motherboard, cpu, and ram and it worked fine until yesterday (Friday) while i was watching American Hot Rod. (hehe.. i am saying fine quite a bit)

It does this with live tv in both programs so i am thinking it is something with the tuner card itself. I tried playing the file through windows media player it and stuttered as well.

I also tried reclock.. I use vmr9 and when it is off it still skips. I had 3d acceleration on, but now it is off. No luck.

hehe. While typing this sage froze and had to be forced closed.

sigh. If its not one thing its always something else. Tomorrow i will move to a different cable outlet to see if that is the problem but i doubt it..

Sorry for the clutter in this thread. Just tired and annoyed this decided to stop working.
System...

Amd xp 3000+
asus a7n8x-deluxe motherboard and using onboard sound.
Sapphire tech 9600xt passive cooled
hauppage pvr 250
512mb ram
enermax whisper psu. 431W i think. Its been ahwile.
System temps are fine and gradually getting lower as i the thermal paste bonds to the cpu better.

[mightyt]

One thing I noticed ... When I upgraded my XP to SP2 it had a very negative impact on Windows Media Player 10 and the WinDVD software when playing MPEG's through them?? Slower and choppy. This didn't happen prior to the SP2 upgrade and with Media Player 9 and WinDVD.

Note this is on my client PC and did not affect playback on SageTV Client. My server is still on SP1a.

T.

[digitalgm]

No luck with playing around with 3d accel and putting VMR9 on and off. InterVideo is not registered though, does that matter? Also, the machine does NOT have SP2 on it.

AdamR

[rich_l]

Well, i got my problem fixed for now. In my bios, the video card was set to pci instead of agp. I switched that as well as turning off some more of the on board features that i dont use and it seems to be fine for now(Cant remember the exact settings). Could have freed up memory addresses in it. It works so i am happy again.

I also reverted back to the original stv from nielms.

[digitalgm]

Well nothing in the BIOS has changed because this WAS working before I re-installed windows and re-formatted.

AdamR

[johandm]

I am having the same problems like rich l described above. Every once in a while, I find that some of my recordings play back very choppy. Video stutters and seems to drop frames every second, audio is OK.

When it happens, it is usually one of my three PVR250 cards that got into this weird mode, and if I just reboot my machine, it is good again (for maybe one or 2 weeks and then it happens again). Must be some conflict or bad driver for the Hauppage cards...

I found that those recordings in fact do play (a little) better if you just open them in Windows Media Player 9. You do get a little pixelation every second, but not the stuttering...

If anybody else who has had this problem was been able to fix it, I'd be interested to know how.

Thanks!