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direct x video renderer - help..


windflower

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Hardware is:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+

MSI K9N6PGM2-V

2gb 800mhz/pc2-6400 Memory

Nvidia 8400GS

 

Technisat Skystar HD2

 

DVBViewer pro.

 

Connection is HDMI to a samsung lcd TV.

 

Viewing BBC HD and other SD channels.

I have a question about video renderer. Sorry if the question really indicates complete ignorance..

 

Setting video renderer to the default setting overlay mixer, causes a very dark image, poor contrast, jerky movement etc.

VMR 7 & 9 & EVR cause lots of bad pixels, and a crash or two.

 

The only thing that seems to work is System default renderer.

 

The picture seems OK at this setting but the CPU usage is very high, both running at 70%+, rarely there is a slight flicker.

 

No idea how much work the Graphics card is doing

 

Is there any way to get the CPU load down? Is "System default renderer" the best way to be??

 

Thanks in advance for any help that you may give.

support.zip

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Hi windflower,

 

VMR 9 is supposed to be the best video renderer possible on windows XP.

 

Jerky pictures and crash may indicate your CPU or GPU or both are close to their limits. You may use GPU-Z at http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to see GPU activity.

 

Also - do you have hardware acceleration activated (DXVA, should appear on properties box of your codec) ?

Have you tried other codecs ? (CoreAVC, Cyberlink, DivX 7 are supposed to be the best for HD)

 

Good luck, let us know how it goes

 

Ben

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Thanks Ben.

Used an Nvidia utility.

With system default renderer.

 

Watching SD GPU usage is 16%, the cpus <20%.

Watching HD the GPU usage is about zero. Both CPUs 70%.

 

I have the mainconcept drivers DTV decoder pro , that came with the technisat card.

In the h.264 settings and MPEG2 settings hardware acceleration is on.

 

Clearly it isnt in h.264.

 

I'll have a go with another codec like you suggest.

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tried div x 7, CPU load went down, still no GPU usage in h.264..

maybe something to do with the graphics card..

 

This card is supposed to support h.264 hardware acceleration, the reason that I chose it, maybe someone out there knows different?

 

Some particular codec needed to work with this card?

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I might be wrong, but I don't believe that card has HD capability. That's why you're not seeing GPU activity. I did a little research before buying my card and found out that you need either the 8600 GT or the 9600 GT. The 8400, 8800, 9400, and 9800 do not assist with HD decoding. This was my interpretation anyway, but I could be wrong...

 

plawlor

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The quick look-up I did indicated that the 8400GS DID have H.264 hardware decode.

I have an ATI 3200 on-board my Gigabyte mobo. Again, I used various codecs, including the Mainconcept ones that came with the card, but CPU usage on HD material varied from 40% - 80%. I have a dual-core AMD 5050e. HD performance on BBC HD and ITV HD is ok, but the CPU is pretty stressed.

 

The only codec that has worked for me is the Cyberlink PowerDVD8 trial which uses DXVA properly and off-loads the decoding to the ATI GPU. My CPU usage on HD material is now less than 10% typically. I'm using XP and I use the overlay mixer with the PowerDVD codec. The VMR9 renderer doesn't seem to work too well with PowerDVD8.

Edited by fat-tony
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Thanks Fat Tony

 

Certainly all the documentation for the 8400GS claims H.264 hardware decode. It's not the best card - I was too mean to spend more. But it should work.

 

Looking around at the German pages last night it seems that I am not the only one asking how to get hardware h.264 decoding. The answer seems to be in the very few codecs available which support this reliably (and at reasonable cost).

 

The Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 trial seems about the only one that is working for people. But for the full paid for version only for releases before patch 2217a. If I understood correctly. I should have paid more attention in my German lessons at school. It seems that after that the codecs disappeared from view for 3rd party applications using direct show. So if it is working for you don't touch anything.

There was also some comment about problem with PowerDVD 9.

 

There's discussion about what happens at the end of the trial period, but the conclusion is not clear, what happened to you?

 

There is a standalone open source h.264 decoder at MediaPlayerClassic Home Cinema which some people claim to have had sucess with in DXVA mode. But not all. I downloaded that last night but only played with it for a few minutes, it did not seem an instant fix.

 

I'll have a go with finding the trial version of PowerDVD 8. Might be back on here later asking where you found it.

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That did it.

Powerdvd 8 trial. v2217

cpus down to 20-30%

GPU whirring away.

 

Only gripe is that loading the Cyberlink codecs seems to have screwed up graphedit, that was working fine last night but now crashes whenever I try to look at the directshow filters. Some comment elsewhere indicates this is a deliberate attempt to prevent reverse engineering?

 

 

Anyway it's working; what happens at the end of your trial period?

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Good you found a solution... so this was DXVA after all

 

I don't know what happens after trial period. I would assume you can't use PowerDVD anymore but that the codec is still active, hopefully.

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I've built my HTPC recently (Athlon X3, HD3200 built-in video card-very unstable + ATI 4850 + Skystar HD2 and Sony 46W4500) So HD works with best quality with Powerdvd7-8-9 codecs but, picture crashes sometimes, Meiaconcept Works much more stable but quality is much lower.

 

My question is: How to achieve best picture Quality on ATI cards because of deinterlacing effect on picture passage which affects on picture sharpness on BOTH SD (more visible) And HD (picture is not smooth).

 

As for this time, I am not satisfied of >$1000 cost HTPC because of picture quality is lover than on my prior (DIGITAL 4100 receiver $30 cost).

 

What would you recommend me.

It would be nice to make some kind of manual aimed to achieve best Picture quality.

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Hi Bormoley,

 

Picture Quality is very subjective and personal, so it is hard to give generic answers. All I can tell myself is what I have done so far on my system, for a result that I like :

- config is Core 2 Duo E8200 + 2 Go RAM + ATI 4650 fanless + DVBViewer 4.0 + Power DVD 7.3.4407 + Windows XP SP3

- I use Cyberlink codec for both SD and HD, with DXVA on, and VMR 9 renderer for HD TV. Source is 1080i interlaced, I have Cyberlink codec on "auto-select" for de-interlacing, and ATI Catalyst on "bob" deinterlacing (pixel vector adaptative is best, but not available on my card's BIOS).

- I calibrated my TV (Samsung LE 52A676) with calibration tool out of AVS forum (www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=948496).

 

BluRay picture is (in my opinion...) outstanding. TV picture is very good, even though not as good as blu ray. There are micro-stutters on TV image, when both CPU% and GPU% go down (I don't know why) then come back up. But this is hardly noticeable.

 

I found that Cyberlink codec was "better" (ie gave results I liked better on my system...) than CoreAVC or DivX7. I recently watched a Blu Ray on a friend's Sony 46w4000 with PS/3 - frankly, I liked my picture better.

 

On your system, is your built-in 3200 disabled ?

 

Good luck

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Thanks Benjamin D. for such an exhaustive answer.

 

I'll try to calibrate my system this weekend.

I to have PS3 and picture quality on it is much better without calibrating comparing to PC's one (no artifacts).

As for my integrated video card - I did not found an option for disabling it in bios but I can't see it neither in device manager nor in CCC.

 

What is interesting that analyzing system temperatures (with hwMonitor for example) Shows about 50 degree on chipset like it is working!

 

I've found my Video Card has "Splendid" - the asus brand option for video image postprocessing (i think). Does this feature really better picture quality? (as for me, it just controls over standard picture options like brightness and so on)

 

And one more, maybe stupid question, why everybody uses Windows XP/not Vista? Is it more stable or something else?

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Never heard of the ASUS "splendid" feature, so I can't tell. I love their mother boards (already 2 bought and no issue), but don't know their graphic cards.

 

As far as XP vs Vista... I find it like ATI vs NVidia or ATI vs Intel, ie some people just like one more than the other... I never tried Vista myself, heard and read on the forums it was "less" stable, so never wanted to try.

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For a very long time CyberLinks's codecs remained "The Best" for me, both for MPEG2 & HD. But now I regard ArcSoft video codecs as #1 for me.

Try it hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/197399381/ArcSoft.TotalMedia.CODECs.v2.25.175.64.rar

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  • 1 month later...
It does not support Enhanced renderer. With wmr9 works fine. But I did not see it was better in SD channels (HD once did not checked yet)

hi all just built htpc with skystar hd2 its all working with DVBViewer 4.1.1.1 but i am getting the odd stutter in picture swaped around with the renders and the default works best as the others are realy stuttery any 1 have any ideas got latest klite codecs powerdvd9 and mainconcept thanks

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I find CoreAVC works best personally for HD content and any Nvidia users may find gains from the CUDA feature... Unfortunately for me i have an ATI HD3650!!

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  • 7 months later...

Just chiping in on this old conversation with a question reg. the different overlay versions, as on my system which is brand new i can´t use VM9 or Vm7 without my system crashes which seems a bit odd. Can anyone point out what it takes to get these to work as i feels like that WM9 should be better than overlay or am i wrong??

 

My setup:

ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO with integrated GPU ATI HD4200

AMD Phenom II x2 550 BE 3,1 Ghz

1 GByte ram

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Can anyone point out what it takes to get these to work...
Update the video card driver (as it is integrated better to download latest from ASUS site: go to support section and look for downloads for you MoBo) and eventally also chipset driver (same site/page) and after that update the whole DirectX (look how in this post)...

 

:stupid:

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Just chiping in on this old conversation with a question reg. the different overlay versions, as on my system which is brand new i can´t use VM9 or Vm7 without my system crashes which seems a bit odd. Can anyone point out what it takes to get these to work as i feels like that WM9 should be better than overlay or am i wrong??

 

My setup:

ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO with integrated GPU ATI HD4200

AMD Phenom II x2 550 BE 3,1 Ghz

1 GByte ram

Did you change hardware on an old system and kept the old WinXP install running it with the new hardware? If so format and reinstall your OS from scrath.

Otherwise this post might be intresting for you.

http://www.DVBViewer.info/forum/index.php?...st&p=280975

 

I had the crashing issue as well (if we are talking about the same issue of course) and got my system stable without format and reinstall WinXP (so far, i have to add, three days without crashing which is a record for me with Catalyst 9.12.)

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No it´s a new build with a recovery version of XP though. I don´t know it that makes any difference. Another problem i have is that i have had some problems installing Catalyst ( well now the problem is that i have succed in isntalling the lastest version which is 9.12 but i can´t find the dir nor the CCC)

 

What i´m doing now is using a ATI tool instead which gives me the same features an control as CCC (don´t remember the exact name of this tool)

 

And my problem is that i can´t use VMR 9 without a crash (or to be specific DVBV just turns off and must be started in safe mode so my system doesn´t crash, just DVBV )and i don´t know it that is due to codec problems. In overlaymode i runs smootly and stable (besides the CCC problem which isn´t the real topic here)

 

I have a pretty good picturequa but i would be nice to evalute the VMR 9 to see if this is better but frankly i don´t no the pro/cons between WMR 9 and overlay so please point me to a direction where i can learn this.

Edited by Stevieg_73
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new build with a recovery version of XP though
What did you mean with "recovery"? ;)

If you meant that XP was installed on a (at least HW) different machine then you can't never expect much from this PC but errors and blue screens...

 

In this case my suggestion is to reinstall XP over the actual (to don't loose data, progs and settings), reinstall ALL correct HW driver for chipset, audio, lan and so on (remember: always download the drivers form the same hw builder site!), update XP form MS, restart, update again, restart... again and again, until they end up; at this point you can install the proper graphic driver (read around about which version: the latter aren't always the best!), update again from MS and finally install DirectX redist...

 

:(

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Well it is a full version of xp (including a recovery disk and full xp disk) which never been installed or used before. The discs comes from my company who uses these discs to "downgrade" Vista machines to XP.

 

I don´t have any problems with my XP installation and for now DVBV and everything works ok and the picture qua is pretty good but as i said, testing VMR 9 would be nice, maybe it won´t result in a better picture qua. But reinstalling everything just to found out that it didn´t make any difference isn´t worth it. I accidently installed the whole package of catalyst 9.12 without uninstalling my old drivers as i thought that it was only the CCC.

 

Is it possible to use driver cleaner and only remove files concerning CCC without touching the display drivers (chipset, north and southbrife, HDMI drivers etc) and try to reinstall an older CCC without the drivers or should i stick with ATI tray tools and leave th systems as it is????

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In this case my suggestion is to reinstall XP over the actual (to don't loose data, progs and settings),

 

Is this really possible? Will i not end up with 2 different XP settings which makes me choose 1 from the startup meny everytime i restart my computer??

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In this case my suggestion is to reinstall XP over the actual (to don't loose data, progs and settings)

I did try this on a friends PC and it was not possible cuz he had updated WinXP to SP3. Install manager refused to install anything cuz it thought the XP version in the PC was newer than the version on the install-CD. Maybe its works reinstalling over existing XP with SP1 or SP2 i dont know, but with SP3 it was a no go.

 

Is this really possible? Will i not end up with 2 different XP settings which makes me choose 1 from the startup meny everytime i restart my computer??

Yes, it is possible (if you havent updated it with some Microsoft Service Packs) and you will not end up with two XP installs and settings.

Im afraid the best option for you is a total C: format and install a fresh WinXP. You seem to have little too many issues going on and it is REALLY time consuming trying to fix each and every issue separate. I think you will save time in the end with starting over from the beginning. Something is serious wrong with your system. When VMR9 and several renderers stops working and PC goes black and blue and what not, due to some strange issues, then its time to start fresh.

Edited by majstang
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Maybe its works reinstalling over existing XP with SP1 or SP2 i dont know, but with SP3 it was a no go
You're probably right, I've never tested with SP3 (anyhow here's a MS KB on How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP)

So maybe the better move is to reinstall only Sp3 (tested by me a couple of time with good results, but I'm not sure that it can resolve such a DirectX issue...)

 

But I think Stevieg_73 has just "confessed his crime" ;) :

I accidently installed the whole package of catalyst 9.12 without uninstalling my old drivers...
and probably a thorough cleaning of the graph driver can be resolutive: so dig ATi site about it, dwnld the right drivers from ASUS site and remember to finally reapply the DirectX redist...)...

 

Good luke!

 

:(

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