Hi,

I purchased an X1600 for my box in order to use AVIVO to play back video. I installed the Cyberlink ATI decoders as I believe they are the only ones that can use the AVIVO technology, and the latest (6.4) Catalyst driver.

I get my input from a DVB-T capture card - PAL 16:9 MPEG2.

On some things it doesn't look good at all. For instance MI:2 was on last night on ITV. Moving images leave weird shadows or smears - kind of like mouse trail if you enable it. They can stay for quite some time, and are expecially noticeable in dark areas of the screen. Definitely not just LCD response issues!

Anyone have similar experiences? Found a fix?

I have deinterlacing set to automatic and 3:2 detection enabled in Catalyst. I have hardware acceleration enabled in the Cuberlink decoder preferences page (which I had to use Radlight filter manager to find!). Using Windows Media Player 10.

Hi,


On some things it doesn't look good at all. For instance MI:2 was on last night on ITV. Moving images leave weird shadows or smears - kind of like mouse trail if you enable it. They can stay for quite some time, and are expecially noticeable in dark areas of the screen. Definitely not just LCD response issues!

Anyone have similar experiences? Found a fix?



Yes I had the same thing. You need to use set Deinterlace to bob in Catalyst Control Centre and go to WMP and set it to use VMR High Quality Mode and playback your clip with WMP10. PowerDVD itself always uses the overlay and so can't be forced to not user AVIVO automatic deinterlacing. I had the same thing with both PowerDVD and nVidia's PureVideo decoder. I got it to work with those two settings with the PureVideo decoder. I'm guessing it should work with PowerDVD as well.

I think it may be an issue with 25 fps MPEG-2 clips, as that's what's used in most, but not all PAL countries.

I've created a support ticket with ATi regarding this. For the time being I'm using my nVidia card.

Alternatively, you could disable hardware acceleration in PowerDVD. This should also fix it, but you lost AVIVO as well as all the ghosting trails.

I wanted to try ATi as the nVidia AGP 6600 GT had broken WMV HD playback, to see if it was working. On the ATi card WMV HD works perfectly, however MPEG-2 playback is less than ideal.

OK, thanks. Makes sense that it would be a PAL specific thing, given the lack of noise about it! I'll try your suggestions. Thanks for raising the support ticket, too. I might do the same.

when you set deinterlace to BOB, you throw away half the vertical lines.

when you set deinterlace to BOB, you throw away half the vertical lines.

That's why I'm using a Geforce 6600 GT AGP. Turning off hardware acceleration is the best thing for the Radeon.

BTW, Setting the deinterlace mode in CCC to vanilla "Adaptive" also works ( as opposed to vector adaptive or motion adaptive ). However, scan lines tend to pop up and its nowhere near as good with jaggies and stuff.

Hi There,

I'm getting this with TheaterTek in VMR9 mode, it was particularly noticeable in some of the stargate SG1 season 8 (PAL) i was watching the other night. At first i thought it was a problem with my projector and having some form of phospher persistance by having the brightness/g2 set high, but dropping from the DVD window to windows itself and the pictur instantly cleared.

Cya,
Lee

Is this a pal problem? I just purchased this card, also have a twinhan DVB card, and heard the picture quality was the best with it. But I dont use pal, is this a pal problem?

Is this a pal problem? I just purchased this card, also have a twinhan DVB card, and heard the picture quality was the best with it. But I dont use pal, is this a pal problem?


Yes it appears to be a 25 fps problem.

Yes same here,

Its the new 6.4 drivers creates some some soft smearing of the HD video.

I upgraded windvd7 and cat 6.4 at the same time, bad move, to try to find the problem

I'll go back to 5.13 and windvd 7 december build its the best combo so far.

I made some clips out of my PVR's recordings and sent them to ATi as part of my support ticket. They have been able to reproduce the problem but said they don't have a fix for it at the moment.

'tis just a matter of waiting for it to be fixed.

I have the same issue here in Australia.

I have found that using overlay is better than VMR7 or 9. And also VMR9 Renderless (Exclusive) does not have the issue (or its alot less noticeable anyway).

I'm very happy to see others with the exact same issue as I have been going crazy trying to work out why it looked so bad when the 9200se I had before had a clearer picture.

I was going to raise a ticket myself. I probably suggest the more people who do the greater the priority that will be given to the problem.

EDIT: I have raised a ticket as well.

EDIT: I have tried drivers 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5. They all exibit the problem and it's still pretty bad in overlay mode as well. 6.3 seems the best of the three but theres not alot of difference.

I have also sent a sample capture to ATI and will try out 5.12 and/or 5.13 to see if they are any better in the mean time.

Hi, any news about this damned ghosting ?

Have also posted ticket with ATI. They told me it was a display setting that was causing the problem, they were not specific as to what it was. Have re-posted with them but they seem to be in denial.

Is ghosting my problem as well? Where it seems deinterlacing is not being done, there is a blur of jaggies?

No its not a blur of jaggies, more like persistance in an old crt display. Smearing and trails in motion etc. Really bad in dark scenes and flesh tones tend to blend into each other.

ATI told me their engineers are working on it. They also said it will be added to the knowledge base a known issue. I kept checking and its still not there. This coupled with my understanding that ATI are generally 2-3 drivers ahead of time, ie catalyst 6.7, 6.8 would be in testing now gave me the feeling we are talking months not weeks.

I applied to be a beta tester (to get a fix quicker) but got no response.

My response has been to buy a nvidia gs7800. Will be installing hopefully tomorrow. Not the answer you are looking for but I cant wait for year for them to sort it out.

If it helps anyone a reasonable workaround is as follows.....

Record SD and HD either in different formats or at least set your system up such that the extension is different. I record SD as dvr-ms and HD as .ts (transport stream). I use Meedio as my htpc front-end and it allows custom graphs for playback (zoomplayer and mpc do too BTW). You could also make SD .tp & HD .ts for eg.

Install ffdshow but set its merit to do not use. Then setup your player so that it always puts ffdshow into the graph for SD content only (dvr-ms in my case). This will mean that for SD files dxva will be disabled so rendering will be software only. No avivo features but no smearing either. For me its much better this way.

You get.....

1. No smearing of SD content.

2. Even a low spec CPU can handle decoding SD in software.

3. You can use ffdshow to resize or add filters etc if you want.

4. Full Avivo on HD content so your CPU does not die and also no smearing as it does not seem to happen on HD files.

Hope this helps.

this sounds like the problem i have. could someone take a screenshot of it so i can see (explaining in words is hard)?

this is what my problem looks like:http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/2936/1bad0yh.jpg

i found a fix for my problem, as odd as it sounds it works everytime, maybe it will help you.

open ATI CCC, go to the deinterlace setting page, change setting to weave, hit apply, change to auto hit apply, hit ok, then test.

Your problem looks alot more like combing/feathering. What decoder are you using?
If you are using dscaler you need to set the output colorspace to NV12 or else the AVIVO functions don't work leading to the effect you are experiencing.

The fix that works for you is also disabling all the AVIVO deinterlacing advantages. With the driver set to weave you may as well be using a 9200SE.

But I understand that you have to do what works to get a reasonable output.

It shouldn't be this way though.

I have installed my Gainward 7800GS+ Bliss and it is... (Bliss that is).

Beautiful output quality (better TV out). Perfect Mpeg2 SD and HD with no smearing/ghosting.

I will admit that I think the AVIVO deinterlacing was slightly better that NVidias Purevideo but not at the expense induced by the denoise filter on SD content.

PS. and no more CCC, I will not miss that either.

i get it using any DXVA decoder when not set to weave, its the result of deinterlacing film based 1080i and scaling to 1024x768, strangely it you cant see the problem at higher resolutions.

Interesting - seems like another bug. I would raise a support ticket with ATI.

This is a different issue to the ghosting/smearing.

I never had any deinterlacing issues with any settings at 800x600 (TV out) or 1280x720p (projector) with my ATI x1600agp unless the decoder was not outputting NV12 colourspace.

Good Luck. JC.

i have raised a support ticket, but ATI has been unable to reproduce the issue. ive even been able to get the problem on a nvidia card with purevideo, so its probably not an ATI specific issue.

Just to add my $.02:

I have the same problem with 30fps NTSC. I have an X1900XT running on a Pentium 4 3.4GHz, and the smearing problem in dark scenes is pretty much unbearable. So it's not just a PAL problem.

I also have lousy deinterlacing on 30fps material. It's very jerky in motion scenes. It's at its worst when using FFDShow with or without any processing. If I use just PowerDVD by itself, it's a little better. In the end, I've just started using my regular DVD player for this stuff.

I see it most watching the Alias TV DVDs (season 1). This show tends to have a lot of dark, low contrast scenes.

With the 6.6 drivers I get the smearing when using hardware mode. Going back to the 5.13 drivers fixed this for me when playing 1080i material with PowerDVD. For reference, I have a X850Pro.

Anyone know which driver release actually broke the 1080i playback?

Dave G.

ATi have marked my support ticket as resolved. But there doesn't appear to be a fix for the problem. Could someone report on whether Cat 6.6 fixes things for them?

Well, as I said above, I switched from Cat 6.6 which had problems. I don't know if it's exactly the same problem or not, but sounded like it from the descriptions.

Dave G.

My support ticket was marked as resolved weeks ago. Their resolution was that ATI engineers are working on it. It still is not in the known issues yet and I would expect that Catalyst 6.7 and 6.8 are already in beta testing so I wouldn't expect a resolution until September or later?

The best workaround I can give is to use software mode for SD material. This can be automated by variuos players by adding NVPP or FFDSHOW to the filter graph for SD content. Otherwise you can by Nvidia or wait & wait & wait.

ATi have acknowleged the MPEG-2 smearing as an open issue with the Radeon X1k series in Cat 6.7.

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=22814

It's taken them three months just to officially acknowledge their motion adaptive noise reduction failure. I sure hope they fix it.

ATi have acknowleged the MPEG-2 smearing as an open issue with the Radeon X1k series in Cat 6.7.

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=22814

It's taken them three months just to officially acknowledge their motion adaptive noise reduction failure. I sure hope they fix it.

Thanks for the update. I just tried 6.7 and there's certainly no improvement.

Dave G.

Catalyst 6.8 is out and ATi claim to have fixed the issue with MPEG-2 smearing.

"Playing an MPEG2 video clip on a system running Windows XP and containing an ATI Radeon® X1x00 product no longer results in corruption being noticed during the playback of the MPEG2 file. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22814"

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst_68_release_notes.html

You can get the driver from here:

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=89

Unfortunately I no longer have my Radeon X1k card. Could someone comment on whether 'tis fixed?

My problem is gone, but I bought a Nvidia card. :)

Dave G.

My problem is gone, but I bought a Nvidia card. :)

Dave G.


Same here. Oh well. I'm thinking of buying another ATi card, just to see how things are. But I guess 'tis proly best at stage to wait until HDCP's more common and the next gen DX10 cards com out.

Same here. Oh well. I'm thinking of buying another ATi card, just to see how things are. But I guess 'tis proly best at stage to wait until HDCP's more common and the next gen DX10 cards com out.

I did a complete upgrade to a C2D system with the MSI 7600GT (the one with the HDCP chip). Great system, processor is awesome (E6300 running at 2.8Gig).

Dave G.

PowerDVD 7.0.1xxx does an excellent job doin AVIVO decoding in hardware, so apparently they've solved whatever problem is going on using the decoder alone.

For some reason to my eyes on my X1800XT, PDVD's hardware decoding looks much better than any other decoder, that includes all the filters available I've tried using Media Player Classic and VMR9.

Along with AVIVO on, I also set hardware Smart Deinterlacing to Weave. This is the best setting for PowerDVD 7, DVD and HD. Only thing is I can't get rid of the annoying gray line on the bottom of a lot of HD streams (even after running them through mpeg2repair).

PowerDVD 7.0.1xxx does an excellent job doin AVIVO decoding in hardware, so apparently they've solved whatever problem is going on using the decoder alone.


I pretty much doubt that. I tried PowerDVD 7 Deluxe, PowerDVD 6, WinDVD 7 Platinum and the PureVideo decoder. 'twas the same with all of them.

Only some DVDs are affected by it. On the other hand just about every one of my HTPCs recordings* suffered from this problem to varying degrees.

After they acknowledged the problem in Cat 6.7's release notes I updated my ticket and asked them about it and they admitted 'twas a problem with the noise reduction picking up motion as random noise.

* As captured by a Hauppauge PVR-250.

Along with AVIVO on, I also set hardware Smart Deinterlacing to Weave. This is the best setting for PowerDVD 7, DVD and HD. Only thing is I can't get rid of the annoying gray line on the bottom of a lot of HD streams (even after running them through mpeg2repair).

That grey line is due to some of the broadcasts being 1088 pixels high, rather than 1080. I couldn't find a way to get rid of it using PowerDVD either. Theatertek and DScaler 5 do not display it though.

Dave G.

Hello,
Could someone comment on whether 'tis fixed?
For me the problem is not resolved at all, I still see the trails. I've come to the conclusion that those artefacts are a direct consequence of noise removal (temporal) during deinterlacing.

The only Catalyst set without these artefacts are for me the 5.12 (with 5.13 the ghosting occurs but only on the top two third of the video :D)

(I also noticed that the Catalyst 5.12 is the only Catalyst set that does enable H.264 hardware acceleration with Cyberlink decoder in PowerDVD 7)

Regards,
Stéphane.

I have actual screenshots with Cat 6.8 and the Cyberlink decoder:


First frame: notice the red circle on the middle monitor:


http://sparrowhawk.no-ip.info/downloads/stsmearing2.PNG

and now notice it in the next frame I've marked the area around it:

http://sparrowhawk.no-ip.info/downloads/Copy%20of%20STsmearing.PNG

'tis not so readily apparent in this, but on a TV out via component 'tis readily noticeable.

Here is a brightened image ( via the GIMP ):
http://sparrowhawk.no-ip.info/Downloads/STsmearing enhanced.PNG

Notice that you can see the Excelsior crewman in the bottom right hand and his console.

The smear trail lasts a while because the next few frames are Kirk being stationary.

I've still got the exact same problem with the latest drivers as well. Starting to get a little bit tired waiting for ATI to fix this.

I mostly watch films so it's easy to "fix" by setting DVD software to film output which seems to cure the problem - so long as it's a film you're watching. If it's video then you obviously don't get any de-interlacing, so you have a choice between jaggies or ghosting.

Pretty poor choice if you ask me. :(

Here's an update to my ticket from ATI, they have asked me to complete an RMA form as they say the card could be faulty. Unfortunately, as I told them, my card is a Saphire so it is not eligible for the ATI warranty service and also that plenty of others are having the same problem. Sounds like they've got the slopey shoulders on.

I have asked them to confirm that this is a hardware fault so that I can pursue it with Saphire.

Watch this space.

Here's an update to my ticket from ATI, they have asked me to complete an RMA form as they say the card could be faulty. Unfortunately, as I told them, my card is a Saphire so it is not eligible for the ATI warranty service and also that plenty of others are having the same problem. Sounds like they've got the slopey shoulders on.

I have asked them to confirm that this is a hardware fault so that I can pursue it with Saphire.

Watch this space.


Send them some screenshots in VMR mode. Also send them some brightened images.

[EDIT] Allegedly Cat 6.9 released yesterday seems to have imroved things or so I've been told. I'll try and post some screenshots this weekend.

Just installed 6.9, now have bsod reset loop.... aaaarrrggghhh :mad:

That's it for today, I'm turning it off now before I throw it out the window.

Hi guys, this is my first time posting to this particular thread, but I noticed a significant difference in image quality with the 6.9's. So much so that I thought I would post and see if it helps someone out. I think that I may have discovered this by accident, but here goes.

Using the MCE Decoder check utility, I changed the preferred Decoder to the "ATI Multiplexer" shown in the list. In the past this had proven to be unstable but now I get now errors and things seems to work flawlessly. I personally am not to sure what it does or means but it was showing up as a decoder so I tried it.

Once this was done, the image produced for recorded HDTV programming and DVD playback got what seems to me to be a hefty boost in quality. De-interlacing seems to have improved by a wide margin with the new CAT’s. The image looks a lot sharper and seems to be free of a lot of the "noise/artifacts" of previous drivers. And dare I say looks better than what my old 7 Series card Did with Purevideo Installed.

I have Power DVD 7 Platinum installed along with WinDVD 7 so both decoders were in the list. While the "Multiplexer" was selected as the preferred decoder, the one that seemed to be in action was the Cyberlink. Or maybe it's a combination of the two. I had uninstalled the Purevideo Software Package before doing this.

I used to have a 7900GT installed and now I use an x1800xt 256MB from Sapphire.
In the past I dreaded the decision due to the fact that Purevideo was way better on a NVIDIA card than AVIVO was on the ATI card for DVD Playback/ HDTV Programming. But now I can clearly state that the 6.9's via the "Multiplexer" is producing what in my opinion seems to be an equal or maybe even better image than the 7900GT/Purvideo combination.

Can any body confirm this??? Image quality is so subjective, so I don’t want to believe it until someone else here has confirmed the difference that I perceived.

Keep in mind I uninstalled all previous video related items including the Purevideo Decoders from my system.
I have installed:
Power DVD 7
Win DVD 7
Cat 6.9's (Main Driver and WDM Drivers)
AVIVO Decoder 6.9's
AVIVO Encoders and Parental Control 6.9's
New Theatre 550/650 Drivers.
New Theater 550/650 TV Control Panel

Allegedly Cat 6.9 released yesterday seems to have imroved things or so I've been told. I'll try and post some screenshots this weekend.

I installed 6.9, and I see no improvments. Back to 5.12 for me...

Hello,

I have this same problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate ATI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And they have notice:
"Playing an MPEG2 video clip on a system running Windows XP and containing an ATI Radeon® X1x00 product no longer results in corruption being noticed during the playback of the MPEG2 file. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22814"

IT´S RIDICULOUS!! They haven´t solved this problem yet!!!!!!!!!
I´ll try the catalyst 6.9 today, but I have no hope in this version (like others)

WHEN A NEW VERSION WILL FIX IT??

Catalyst 6.9 does not improve the ghosting.
Has anyone confirmed that it is a hardware problem. My card is a HIS 1600, not an ATI.
Has anyone opened/renewed the ticket with ATI letting them know that the problem still exists?

Catalyst 6.9 does not improve the ghosting.
Has anyone confirmed that it is a hardware problem. My card is a HIS 1600, not an ATI.
Has anyone opened/renewed the ticket with ATI letting them know that the problem still exists?

I opened a new ticket letting know the problem still exists!
I´m waiting for a response!!!!

I seem to have accidentally cured this problem but I don't know why or how it works, so if anyone else wants to try then here goes.... by the way, this is with a Saphire X1300 AGP, MCE2005, PowerDVD7 with hardware acceleration (ATI Avivo) on and automatic de-interlacing on in catalyst control centre.

Start a dvd playing in MCE, go to the MCE start screen, settings, dvd, audio, video, video enhancement then click arrow next to top box until it scrolls through all the options ie; none,clev,theater,bright,vivid then back to none and exit. Thats it! mine now works! Like I said I don't know why or how it works but it just does does.

Be interesting to know others experiences, also if anyone can figure out why this might work.

.../... scrolls through all the options ie; none,clev,theater,bright,vivid then back to none and exit. Thats it! mine now works! .../... also if anyone can figure out why this might work.
I guess by doing so you simply disabled hardware acceleration: because when you selected "CLEV" the Cyberlink decoder must use software only and if it works like the configuration in PowerDVD just selecting "Vivid" will not restore hardware acceleration, you have to select it again.

I guess by doing so you simply disabled hardware acceleration....

Had me thinking there for a bit but just double checked and hardware acceleration is still enabled.

Also I'm not using 'vivid' I'm using 'none'

ATi now have a registry hack to fix it:

"Here is the workaround for this issue. I have tested this personally and it works great.

WORKAROUND:

Important: Please back up your Windows registry before making any changes. For more information please click here.

1. Download the ATI-Registry-Tool (https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/hotfix/findreg.exe) and save it to your desktop.
2. Run the findreg.exe file and location in the Windows registry will appear.


https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/parature/support/images2/737-22853_01.jpg

( Alternatively look here:
Launch regedit and determine the current primary display card by
looking in
HKey_Local_Machine\Hardware\DeviceMap\Video
and note the GUID (global unique identifier assigned by Windows),
which is the long string in brackets { } at the end of the entry
"\device\video0".)


Note: Please note that location above might differ depending on the graphics card installed.
3. Click Start, and then click Run.
4. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
5. Locate and then click the subkey that contains the value that you want to edit. It will be in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/parature/support/images2/737-22853_02.jpg
6. Make a right mouse click in the right window and select New and then DWORD Value.
7. Call the new DWORD value TRDenoise
8. Right click and modify the TRDenoise DWORD and give it a value of 0 (hex)
9. Restart the computer and play your video clip."

Won't let me download the tool, but I do have a ticket open.

My problem is gone, but I bought a Nvidia card. :)

Dave G.

nVidia shows the same effect with card/drivers which support denoising. You may not see it with drivers 91.47 as sharpening/denoising settings got reset every viewport switch (eg. from windowed mode to fullscreen or at the end of playback). But with drivers 91.31 you may observe the smear trails lasting hundereds of frames if denoising leve is set around 90-100.

Temporal denoising (as any other processing) has it's advatnages and disadantages. I would like to see the driver which allows to change denoising level on the fly without issues and the decoder which uses such feature for adaptive denoising based on content. It may solve issue with tradeoffs between noise level kept after filtering and trails resulted by such filtering.

The only issue with AVIVO I could see - ATi doesn't provide user-friendly interface to change settings for video post-processing, which means you should rely on their judgement about picture quality.

Added: And issue with nVidia drivers release 90 (either 91.31 or 91.47 or 92.91 or 92.92) - their new control panel (where they put interface to post-processing settins) is so buggy and non-robust that I can't use it and have to edit registry manually anyway.

if you can't download the tool try on this page

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=22853

if you can't download the tool try on this page...

Link tells me that the support session has expired. Anywhere else where I can get it from?

Thanks.

search the ticket #737-22853

I'm trying to modify my registry, but it doesn't look as shown.
I'm using Xp.

I get as far as hkey_local_machine/hardware/devicemap/video
and I see an entry \device\video0, but it is on the right not left side and I can't add a TRDenoise DWORD.
Help!

the dword must be added in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\............ not int hardware\devicemap\......

The modified registry works. thanks a lot for your help.
Does anyone know if ATI will include any modifications to their drivers to make this change?

The modified registry works fine. Thanks a lot for the information!!
But I can´t find this information in ATI home page.

has anyone tried the new 6.10 drivers ?

No improvement for me. It's official, I now passionately hate ATI.

no change
the 6.10 beta ..just the same driver as 6.10 whql

most optimisations in all new ati drivers are for idiotic "battlefields" and 3D benchers :mad:

6.11 are out.... does anyone tried them ?

Tried them last night - reluctantly, and guess what, problem still there.

Can't be bothered to rant. Big thumbs down ATI.

Any improvments with 6.12 ?

Any improvments with 6.12 ?

I tried out 6.12 and there are no improvements. Although, the TRDenoise registry workaround from earlier in the thread fixes the problem and I am happy with the picture.

The registry trick worked well for me, too. Did updating the driver reset the registry key?

The registry trick worked well for me, too. Did updating the driver reset the registry key?

Yes, if you uninstall the previous drivers before installing the new ones (which is what you are supposed to do each time.)

Tried the ATI registry hack, but it had no effect for me. Probably because I'm using Vista Media Center and the ATI Catalyst beta Vista drivers. I don't think anyone else using that combination have seen success?

It's affecting live and recorded TV playback severely. Ghosting that may last for several seconds makes the experience pretty bad.

Any other ideas to try?


Allan Hvass
Vista Media Center on Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E, ATI X1300, DVB-T reception

Installed NVidias PureVideo and that fixed the ATI bug for me - display is now beautiful. Ironic, isn't it? :cool:

Allan Hvass

I had (and have) the same issue with my x1950PRO with Cat 6.12 in PowerDVD 7.0 for DVD and SD (NTSC) content.

Based on one recommendation I tried WinDVD 8.0 and it (AVIVO) works just fine.
I selected auto deinterlace and 3:2 detection in CCC and selected "h/w support" to enable in WinDVD.

So, go figure what's wrong with PowerDVD.
Also, I tried 7900GS with PowerDVD and it worked just fine, even better then AVIVO as I selected more sharpness for SD content and I don't see anything like that in AVIVO (where is it?).


I use 1920x1080 (1080p) LCD via DVI.

do you think that NVidia cards are better for HTPC then ATI?

Picked up a Radeon X1950 Pro yesterday and was shocked by the overblown noise reduction. The regedit guide posted here fixed this for me though.

There is, however, a similar problem that doesn't seem to have been mentioned anywhere yet: when hardware acceleration is enabled, AVIVO is adding masses of horrible edge enhancement to DVD playback. Here is a shot from the "Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes" DVD in PowerDVD with hardware acceleration disabled:

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/ee-none.jpg

And here is the same shot when hardware acceleration is enabled (notice the ringing around the black outlines, especially the eyes):

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/ee-yes.jpg

This is not a PowerDVD fault. I can reproduce it in multiple video players that use hardware acceleration (e.g. WinDVD, TheaterTek, Windows Media Player), and the problem didn't exist in my previous card. ATI actually boasts about this edge enhancement as a "feature" of AVIVO and yet doesn't seem to think that anyone will want to disable it. Presumably this could be done with a registry edit similar to the one for disabling the noise reduction, but so far ATI have been unhelpful.

Any suggestions?

Hi,
And here is the same shot when hardware acceleration is enabled (notice the ringing around the black outlines, especially the eyes)
I may be wrong but the first picture (without hardware acceleration) seems to be blurred whereas I cannot see evidence of edge enhancement in the other picture (usually EE will create some halo or double edge effect)

So in my opinion when you do not apply hardware acceleration in PowerDVD the deinterlacing is not as effective as with hardware acceleration and leads to this blurring effect. Whit hardware acceleration the picture seems to be fine for me.

You may want to make comparisons by using something else than PowerDVD as the player (ZoomPlayer + FFDShow for instance), so as to be certain of what effects are applied to the video (with PowerDVD you can't really know).

Otherwise I do not know any registry settings regarding the EE feature of the Radeon (it was rather difficult to have the one about denoising => about 6 months...)

Regards,
Stéphane.

Hi,

I may be wrong but the first picture (without hardware acceleration) seems to be blurred whereas I cannot see evidence of edge enhancement in the other picture (usually EE will create some halo or double edge effect)

So in my opinion when you do not apply hardware acceleration in PowerDVD the deinterlacing is not as effective as with hardware acceleration and leads to this blurring effect. Whit hardware acceleration the picture seems to be fine for me.

You may want to make comparisons by using something else than PowerDVD as the player (ZoomPlayer + FFDShow for instance), so as to be certain of what effects are applied to the video (with PowerDVD you can't really know).

Otherwise I do not know any registry settings regarding the EE feature of the Radeon (it was rather difficult to have the one about denoising => about 6 months...)

Regards,
Stéphane.
Hi Stéphane,

Edge enhancement is definitely being applied when hardware acceleration is being enabled (this much cannot be denied: it is a "feature" that ATI added with a recent driver update and they boast about it in the release notes - I would go back to an earlier driver but that would also mean losing inverse telecine and all manner of other good things): this is one of the few discs I own that has no edge enhancement on it at all, and I'm frankly surprised that you can't see the white ringing in the second shot: look how harsh the outline is around the eyes. The ringing is also present in Avia test patterns, which should definitely not be the case.

I've tested it with several players (as I mentioned in my previous post) and all of them show this ringing when hardware acceleration is enabled, but it disappears when I disable it. And yes, you're right in saying that you need to apply hardware acceleration in PowerDVD to get good deinterlacing: that, however, does not manifest itself as softness so much as bobbing lines during movement.

Here's a shot of Avia's sharpness test pattern with hardware accleration turned on:

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/avia.jpg

And without:

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/avianoee.jpg

and I'm frankly surprised that you can't see the white ringing in the second shot: look how harsh the outline is around the eyes.
Nope, I don't see it :D

Here's a shot of Avia's sharpness test pattern:Ok for this one, I can see EE.

What driver version are you using? I personally stopped at 6.9 (I was tired of updating drivers for H.264 Hardware accel and MPEG2 noise bug, I was constantly updating to 6.x, reverting to 5.12 boring). So I really haven't noticed if I do have EE on my HTPC, it seems not. I'm not sure if I would notice the EE on the Avia test pattern without paying attention; and if ever I notice it after another glorious driver update : I'll go mad :D (purchasing such expensive hardware just for viewing video and it can't even do it right).

Anyway, my advice is to keep pressure on AMD with very detailled bug report (usually with ATI the conversation is becoming a real conversation after the 6th exchange with them... the same goes with Cyberlink : it's even worse)

Regards,
Stéphane.

Nope, I don't see it :D

Ok for this one, I can see EE.

What driver version are you using? I personally stopped at 6.9 (I was tired of updating drivers for H.264 Hardware accel and MPEG2 noise bug, I was constantly updating to 6.x, reverting to 5.12 boring). So I really haven't noticed if I do have EE on my HTPC, it seems not. I'm not sure if I would notice the EE on the Avia test pattern without paying attention; and if ever I notice it after another glorious driver update : I'll go mad :D (purchasing such expensive hardware just for viewing video and it can't even do it right).

Anyway, my advice is to keep pressure on AMD with very detailled bug report (usually with ATI the conversation is becoming a real conversation after the 6th exchange with them... the same goes with Cyberlink : it's even worse)

Regards,
Stéphane.
Stéphane, I'm using the most recent drivers - 6.12 - but the edge enhancement is present in everything from 6.4 onwards, when they first added this "feature" (I've tested several different drivers). To be perfectly honest, I'm livid about this: by all means include an edge enhancement feature in your drivers, ATI, but give users control over it if you do so. I've fired off a ticket to the ATI/AMD knowledge base, but was sent a generic reply within 15 minutes, pointing me to their display FAQ. I've replied again but haven't heard anything in 24 hours (presumably because it's the weekend). I'll keep at it, though, because as far as I'm concerned this situation is completely unacceptable.

I've fired off a ticket to the ATI/AMD knowledge base, but was sent a generic reply within 15 minutes, pointing me to their display FAQ. I've replied again but haven't heard anything in 24 hours (presumably because it's the weekend).You have a long way to go before talking to someone that will take note of the problem (also it's understandable, they must filter messages)

ATI finally SHOULD us give control over noise reduction in future drivers

If you dont use FFdshow like me ... I find activated HW acceleration is a Must with a 1950 and interlaced content


people with dvb/s sat cards can make a simple test : use a news channel with ticker tapes

perfect denterlacing , smooth as silk with dxva on

without dxva : bad deinterlacing , studder

I live in a Pal country and the display is set to 50,000 @ native resolution

7.1 are out !!!

Yeah, got them last night. Unfortunately they make no appreciable changes to anything apart from fixing various Crossfire issues.

Argh!
Nothing in the release notes mention Vmr9 being fixed.
Under customer care search for 737-23586
I put this ticket in on 9/26/2006 :(

The registry Hack works fine!!!

BUT there is still a Problem with PowerDVD 7 ultra! Cyberlink and ati promiss that ATI x1xx Radeons will be able to hardware accelerate h.264 avc media! But every time i tried playing Apocalypto trailer (h.264 mpg4) 1080p and HD DVD stuff the "hardwareacceleration avivo" field in configuration ist beeing reset in the moment i press play!

My CPU is still in 80% usage and the ati GPU remains untouched.

When i Stard a normal DVD mpeg2 avivo and powerDVD will work togather using the GPU which gains Temp of 4° C which means GPU is processing/accelerating the mpeg 2 media.

Why the f*** won´t it work with mpg4 h.264 when it is in the documentation of Cyberling....

im using newest drivers ...

THX

it seems like ATI doesnt set the AVIVOS free Public for h.264 or what??? So why did I payed 60 Bucks more fpr the ULtra edition??!!!

7.2 are out...

7.2 are out..........and they don't fix the issue.

I am running Vista Ultimate with an X1950 Pro ATI card and a Hauppauge dual PVR-500 and I have the ghosting issue as well. This only occurs when watching live TV or playing back a live TV recording. Playing a DVD, DIVX or XVid (or any other video file) does not have the ghosting problem.

On a side note, I am also having a problem with the screen going black after a period of time. I originally thought this was a power saving feature, but I have them all off and the power settings are set to maximum performance(I can't remember the actual name of the Vista setting). It appears to be like the "turn off monitor or display" after a period of time like in XP, but I don't have that enabled. All screensavers and power saving features have been disabled. Not sure if this is related, but it's most likely not.

Hmm, interesting. I've been using 7.2 with win XP since it came out and have not had the ghosting problem. I wonder if it is a vista problem.

There's a registry setting you can use to disable the noise reduction feature in the driver, which is what's responsible for the ghosting. Changing a registry setting may not be convenient but it's hardly the end of the world. I have no ghosting at all on my x1950 pro.

It wouldn't surprise me it it was a vista problem.

That said, I also have an XP system with the identical config and it doesn't have a ghosting problem......but the image quality is very grainy.......or at least more so than the Vista system. The only difference between the systems is the motherboard. It's Asus Barebone with the Xpress 200 chipset so it's integrated video.........but still ATI.

This is VERY frustrating.......

I am currently waiting on my PCIe Dvico HDTV Tuner (BRAND NEW PCI Express) so I am curious if the ghosting issue will appear with that card as well. I will be doing OTA HDTV.

There's a registry setting you can use to disable the noise reduction feature in the driver, which is what's responsible for the ghosting. Changing a registry setting may not be convenient but it's hardly the end of the world. I have no ghosting at all on my x1950 pro.
Indeed, getting rid of the ghosting is as easy as pie. I'm much more concerned about the edge enhancement it adds to every image, which doesn't seem to be removable, short of disabling hardware acceleration completely (which means saying goodbye to motion adaptive deinterlacing, 3:2 pulldown detection, etc.).

What is the reg hack for disabling noise reduction? Is it in this formum and I missed it?

Indeed, getting rid of the ghosting is as easy as pie. I'm much more concerned about the edge enhancement it adds to every image, which doesn't seem to be removable, short of disabling hardware acceleration completely (which means saying goodbye to motion adaptive deinterlacing, 3:2 pulldown detection, etc.).
The EE is just on SD isn't it? I use DScaler + FFDShow for DVD playback anyway, so I already have HW acceleration off.

I had the same problem with my nVidia card and solved it by reducing noise reduction percentage in control panel.

I had the same problem with my nVidia card and solved it by reducing noise reduction percentage in control panel.
Yes - this is a feature I really wish ATI would include.

Ok, I found the registry fix for the noise and ATI cards in a different forum. I did this and it did fix my problem. NO MORE GHOSTING!!!!!!

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Media Center/Service/Video/Tuners/DVR

Look for a key named DefAvgBitRate with a value of 20000000 - change the first number to 6
(select the key - double click it - choose decimal value and change it)
Reboot the machine afterwards

This will raise your BitRate for the TV feed...

Ok, my above post is accurate, however; the image quality was still not good. I have since RMA'd my PVR-500 card to Hauppague and put my older PVR-150 (both MCE) in my Vista media center......and WOW.....what a difference. The image and clarity is amazing. I couldn't beleive the difference. Considering these cards are really the same and the 500 just has 2 tuners of the same kind on it (except for the Samsung crap now), the difference is pretty obvious. This is bad for Hauppauge and I really question their quality testing.....and the reason they went to the samsung chips to begin with.

I am currrently waiting to find out what they will do with my RMA'd card. As previous posters have mentioned, the Samsung tuners are the only tuners used now with Hauppauge cards.....at least with the 500's. I would beware of the 150's now though. Customer service and tech support have been great....but if they make crappy products, that will only go so far to help them.

Oh...and by the way. I did try the LNA setting as they suggested. It does work with Vista, but the first tech I spoke with didn't know the procedure to install it correctly on Vista and I had to call back. The files are the same, but due to security within Vista there are a few different and extra steps to get it to work. All in all though...it was a waiste, it didn't really help anything.

I recently replaced a GeForce 7300LE with a Radeon X1950 Pro, and I am very disappointed by the video quality in Vista Media Center (the afore-mentioned ghosting). The TRDenoise setting doesn't appear to do anything with the Vista drivers, but I noticed under CurrentControlSet\Video\{xxxxxxxx}\UMD\DXVA\ there are a whole host of entries, of which one is Denoise. I have tried setting various values in there (31 00 00 00 for example) but it never appears to have any impact on the excessive denoising (how on earth ATI consider this acceptable quality I don't know - it looks awful).

Has anyone had any success in changing this setting?

PS: A strings search on the ATI Vista driver doesn't bring up any references to TRDenoise but it does bring up the settings under UMD\DXVA.

I got an X1650XT and have been largely satisfied using XP MCE with it.

The TRDenoise registry fix in that OS for me worked perfectly on the latest Catalyst drivers.

However, the edge enhancement spotted by Whiggles earlier in the thread is a little annoying. It would be very helpful if we could locate a registry fix for this one as well.

I'd like to echo the sentiments on the avivo edge ehnhancement.

I've made an ATI ticket on the issue of edge enhancement, we'll see what happens. http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894 it's there if you can view it.

If people power has an impact or something feel free to copy my text:

In a 6.x driver release ATI released some notable AVIVO changes. Unfortunately a lot of these cannot be adjusted by the end user.

You have responded to criticism over the issue of noise reduction in the driver and have given information how to use the TRDenoise registry fix to edit it.

I'm contacting you in the hope that ATI will reveal a similar setting for edge enhancement within the Catalyst driver for AVIVO products. The present level of edge enhancement is excessive and spoiling the picture quality through AVIVO hardware decoding.

To demonstrate the problem, the first image shows the impact of AVIVO hardware acceleration on versus the second without hardware acceleration.
http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/avia.jpg
http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/avianoee.jpg

The edges are clearly being enhanced at the cost of picture quality. The end user should be given control over this setting.

AVIVO is a strong competitor to nVidia's offering, but there needs to be far more functionality in the drivers.

This is a known issue with ATI since I beleive the 6.4 drivers. Unfortunately, I didn't see any of this information until after I purchased my new X1950 Pro ATI card. I am also running Vista.

this is rather annoying......especially since I haven't had a response from ATI.

ATI 7.3 Catalyst drivers NOW AVAILABLE!!!!!!!!

Let's see if they learned anything. :)

Is it better with 7.3?

Actually, I'm out of town so I haven't been able to try. Planning on trying it tomorrow. I will update the forum.

Hopefully this helps my HD Channel issue (1 channel only) but I doubt it.

Hi all,

I had not had time to run all tests.
Where I spent 1 hour for installation it.
Check for my post at AnandTech (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=2026641&forumid=1)

Hi,

About registry tweak to disable dxva denoising in ati drivers: in ATI Tray Tools there is possibility to add key setting and change it without restarting computer. Here is how to do this:

You can manually add this to the "Video Tweaks.dtb" database in Database folder. Open that file with note pad and add as last line this one

Value11=TRDenoise,Denoise,1,0,0,

And it will show in advanced video teaks in ATT. Mark it grey and it will turn denoising on, mark it black or unmark it and it will turn it off.

Now we must find out how to disable ede enhancement.

Regards
Piotr Wozniak

This is really becoming a joke...

From Catalyst 5.13 this noise reduction bug is still not resolved : I don't consider a registry edit as a resolution and it doesn't work in Vista. However I had some hopes for Vista as you can see some settings in registry that suggest that ATI may include some controls over noise reduction and edge enhancing.

So I reopened my ticket on the ATI/AMD support site and asked them how to turn noise reduction off in Vista as you can do it in XP.

Here is the response :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
We haven't seen any plans to try and offer this in Vista.
For something of this nature, best to have those affected by the problem fill in the Catalyst Crew web form.

You can turn off deinterlacing in Vista, set the option to Bob or Weave.

(using Catalyst Control Center)
Video,
all settings, scroll down
deinterlacing, use the pull-down menu.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm very sad. So either you choose to have a jagged picture or a ghosted picture... This is very nice.

So everyone that does suffer from this should use the "Catalyst Crew web form" and report the problem.

Regards,
Stéphane.

That is disappointing to say the least, I guess we have to put the pressure on, because no one else will.

Just submitted a report to catalyst crew, they need to fix this :)

Catalyst 7.5 are out...

Catalyst 7.5 are out...
...and it's still not fixed, and there's still no workaround for Vista users.

Actually, it looks like the Vista drivers DO respond to changes to those settings under the DXVA key.

For example, open Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{x xxx.....xxxx}\000x\UMD\DXVA

Find the Denoise value, and delete it. Re-create it as a string value called Denoise. Give this a silly high setting of say 32. Next open Catalyst Control Center and change the Deinterlacing mode to something else, click Apply, change it back and click Apply. View a video using VMR9 (e.g. in Vista Media Center) and the temporal denoise will be VERY noticeable. However, changing it to zero doesn't appear to turn it off completely, it is still there (in fact, it simply looks like the default setting).

Perhaps this will lead someone else to a solution...

For example, open Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{x xxx.....xxxx}\000x\UMD\DXVA

Find the Denoise value, and delete it. Re-create it as a string value called Denoise. Give this a silly high setting of say 32. Next open Catalyst Control Center and change the Deinterlacing mode to something else, click Apply, change it back and click Apply. View a video using VMR9 (e.g. in Vista Media Center) and the temporal denoise will be VERY noticeable. However, changing it to zero doesn't appear to turn it off completely, it is still there (in fact, it simply looks like the default setting).




Try setting it to a negative value to disable it. Some of the Catalyst control centre options use 0 as the middle value and -100 as the other extreme.

This is very encouraging news! Fantastic stuff!

Let's just find the range and we've got this problem completely sorted!

Over at the Rage3D boards an ATI Catalyst Beta Tester has requested ATI look into making edge enhancement and noise reduction available as options to edit.

Hopefully he will have more success than we have enjoyed.

Over at Rage3D, the ATI Beta Tester, Spyre, has had some success.

ATI are interested in helping us, but they need screenshots.

Pick some sort of DVD movie that will show off the issue best (hopefully not something obscure that I've never heard of so maybe a popular movie) and then I need

A) Before and after shots with with registry values altered (well the alterable ones that is) to show the quality difference

B) Shots of what good edge enhancement should look like and that sort of thing.

C) if you really wanted to push the boat out then screen captured movie clips with FRAPS or whatever showing the visual differences (they only need to be a few seconds long each I guess)

We've got some pictures highlighting edge enhancement, and there used to be a great shot showing the noise reduction problem.

The Rage3D thread to contribute to is here: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33893058

We can get this resolved.

Hi Mr. M, that's great that some headway is finally being made. However this part of the post makes me wonder if ATI really understand the issue here:

B) Shots of what good edge enhancement should look like and that sort of thing.
It's not a case of "good" and "bad" edge enhancement, but having the ability to turn it off completely! In my opinion any features that alter the video beyond its original state should be easy to disable.

Yeah I agree in principle, but let's get that beta tester screenshots to give ATI.

I don't know how to take screenshots of DXVA run video, but there were pics earlier in the thread showing the denoising in action on a film. If we can get those back that would be great.

Please everyone who cares about this sign up at Rage3D and contribute to the thread. This could be our only chance to make a difference on this.

Actually, it looks like the Vista drivers DO respond to changes to those settings under the DXVA key.

For example, open Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{x xxx.....xxxx}\000x\UMD\DXVA

Find the Denoise value, and delete it. Re-create it as a string value called Denoise. Give this a silly high setting of say 32. Next open Catalyst Control Center and change the Deinterlacing mode to something else, click Apply, change it back and click Apply. View a video using VMR9 (e.g. in Vista Media Center) and the temporal denoise will be VERY noticeable. However, changing it to zero doesn't appear to turn it off completely, it is still there (in fact, it simply looks like the default setting).

Perhaps this will lead someone else to a solution...
I've looked into this a bit more, and it doesn't seem to work. No value seems to remove the denoising artefacts, and it looks as if the over-the-top denoise when setting 32 was just a fluke - keeping the value consistent and playing the same clip gives different results each time. Sometimes the NR is really bad, others it's noticeable but only on dark backgrounds. It's never gone completely.

Hi gang,

I have been searching everywhere for a fix to the ghosting and excessive edge enhancement within Vista with ATI X1xxx cards and finally!! I have my system working properly with extremely good image quality!!

Here is how you do it (I have copied this from my posting at http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/post/192696.aspx):

"For others finding this I'll try to clarify exactly what I did as well as provide some other ATI registry tweaks I have found:

1. Start "regedit"

2. Look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\VIDEO and find the GUID (number between the {} brackets) located in the key \DEVICE\VIDEO3 (with XP it was always \DEVICE\VIDEO0, but it seems Vista does things a little differently. I'm not positive it will always be VIDEO3).

3. Using the GUID from above go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000\UMD\DXVA.

4. Add the string value "TRDenoise" with the value "0" to fix the ghosting issue and greatly improve the video quality (if you're having the ghost/smearing issue). Note with XP you had to create a DWord with TRDenoise (plus its in in a different registry location) and with Vista you must use a string value to make this work.

5. Add the string value "DXVA_DetailEnhance" with the value "0" to turn off the excessive edge enhancement (if this bothers you).

6. If you want to attempt to turn on DXVA for WMV (GPU hardware acceleration for video decoding), delete "DXVA_WMV" and recreate "DXVA_WMV" as a binary value and give it the value "31 00". In my case it didn't make any difference though (still no hardware acceleration).

7. If you want to use the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) to enable and disable DXVA for WMV (which allows you to set DXVA_WMV line above), go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000 and change the value for the key "DXVA_WMV_NA" to "0". After this you need to restart the Catalyst Control Center using the start button on the lower left of the screen; executing "All Programs\Catalyst Control Center\Restart Runtime". Now you'll find a Windows Media Acceleration button in "Video, All Settings" within CCC.

Although DXVA isn't working yet, playback of Recorded TV and other SD content now works perfectly on my system with Vista."

The original source for this fix was: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33893058

I hope it works for the rest of you.

I've looked into this a bit more, and it doesn't seem to work. No value seems to remove the denoising artefacts, and it looks as if the over-the-top denoise when setting 32 was just a fluke - keeping the value consistent and playing the same clip gives different results each time. Sometimes the NR is really bad, others it's noticeable but only on dark backgrounds. It's never gone completely.

BTW, it turns out the value 31 is ascii for 1 and 30 is asci for 0. I tried (previously) creating the values for -1 (7E 31), but it didn't work either.

Luckily using a string for TRDenoise = 0 in the DXVA key does actually work.

Just a note. My posts above are specifically for Vista.

For XP, the old TRDenoise DWord set to 0 in the Video contol registry location works (as previously mentioned all over the web).

What is new for XP is you can also turn off the edge enhancement by creating a DWord with DXVA_DetailEnhance set to 0 in the same registry location as the TRDenoise entry.

With XP you need to reboot the system for these changes to take effect. With Vista you simply have to exit the video application and start it up again.

I find it simply amazing that these essential fixes took so long to "leak out" (and that they had to leak out instead of being official). I wonder how many 100's or 1000's of nVidia video cards were purchased because ATI didn't officially release this stuff months/years ago. Even my 5 year old kept complaining how bad the image quality was with Recorded TV within Vista, yet ATI tech support, even today, insists there are no video quality issues with their drivers and hardware. The very first day I replaced our nVidia 6800 with the ATI X1950Pro, my wife insisted I return it to the store because of the horrible image quality too (until I found the TRDenoise hack on the web). Unreal!!

No feedback/No interest? Did the registry tweak I posted above fix your image quality?

My Vista install now has excellent image quality - no more ghosts. I for one am extremely pleased to have this fixed (as are my wife and children).

No feedback/No interest? Did the registry tweak I posted above fix your image quality?

My Vista install now has excellent image quality - no more ghosts. I for one am extremely pleased to have this fixed (as are my wife and children).
Sorry I didn't reply sooner. Thanks very much for discovering this - I'm an XP user, so haven't had the ghosting problem for some time, but the edge enhancement fix is much appreciated. There is still a little edge ringing, but I think this is probably the result of scaling rather than intentional image manipulation.

4. Add the string value "TRDenoise" with the value "0" to fix the ghosting issue and greatly improve the video quality (if you're having the ghost/smearing issue). Note with XP you had to create a DWord with TRDenoise (plus its in in a different registry location) and with Vista you must use a string value to make this work.

5. Add the string value "DXVA_DetailEnhance" with the value "0" to turn off the excessive edge enhancement (if this bothers you).
I can confirm that these do resolve the respective problems. I replaced a GeForce 7300LE with a Radeon X1950 Pro and I still don't think it looks as good. It is slightly better than the X800XL (in terms of deinterlacing errors) but overall it looks very similar and somehow the 7300LE looked better (at least for DVB-t broadcasts).

It looks like there's another setting called "DXVA_ColorEnhance" (based on a strings search on the driver file) but I can't see what effect changing it has on the video quality.

Hypocrites:
http://www.dailytech.com/AMD%20Alleges%20NVIDIA%20Cheats%20in%20HD%20HQV/article8608.htm

AMD alleges NVIDIA optimizes its drivers with an aggressive noise reduction algorithm that causes visible ghosting. AMD also claims its noise reduction algorithm reduces noise but does not leave any visible ghosting, preserving picture detail.

Hypocrites:
http://www.dailytech.com/AMD%20Alleges%20NVIDIA%20Cheats%20in%20HD%20HQV/article8608.htm

How ironic...

For well over a year (has it been two years yet?), ATI has had an excessive denoise issue with their drivers that creates massive amounts of ghosting. The ghosting is so bad that my 5 year old daughter complained about "the ghosts" and my wife wanted me to get rid of the new X1950Pro and go back to the Nvidia 6800 to get rid of the ghosting issue.

Without properly fixing the issue yet, ATI is now accusing Nvidia of having this exact issue. To make this even more unreasonable, Nvidia's drivers provide complete user tune-ability of denoise, while ATI forces the customer to resort to unsupported registry hacks to get the denoise under control.

Hopefully the publicity generated by this will get ATI to implement either reduced (reasonable levels) of denoise or control of denoise in the driver.

We should all post comments at daily tech. ATI will surely be reading and maybe, just maybe this will get ATI to give us control...

Received my HD2600XT Ultimate last week and having the same problems. However the registry hacks posted here fix the problem, but IMHO a decent noise reduction would be desirable at least for DVB content. I also opend a support ticket about that issue providing also a link to this thread.

I don't think this will ever be fixed. It has been around for so a long time and nothing happened. My next card will be NVidia as noise reduction can be applied continous or disabled at all via control panel there.

grubi.

Now thats a good one.

I buy an ATI 1600 and can't watch it because of the horrendous ghosting.

No fix in site (at the time) so I have to buy an Nvidia card instead and have no problems.

2 years later and no official fix from ATI/AMD and AMD accuse Nvidia of ghosting. Maybe they should have a go at Nvidia for having a green logo as well.

I had to dig up this old thread and chalk it up to should have done more research before buying a new vid card.

I recently purchased an x1650 Pro 512 as an "upgrade" to my GeForce 7200 so I could move the 7200 to my Ubuntu box. I use SageTV 6.3 on an XP SP2 box. I have set it to use VMR9 and the ATI built in decoder for Mpg4 and use the pig-tail s-video to component adapter. I'm on an older CRT rear projection HDTV that doesn't have DVI. This yielded the "best" picture I could manage out of it.

5 minutes after installing the "upgrade" ATI card I was hating life.

I couldn't even watch a football game the ghosting was so bad. And anything with a dark scene to it had so many problems you couldn't distinguish the video from the artifacts/ghosts/lack of contrast/etc...

So after much research I found this post. I did the TRDenoise setting and it is now slightly better on the ghosting, but any type of action or dark scenes still look like total crap.

I'm going to try the DXVA_DetailEnhance hack tonight, but I don't have high hopes and may end up going back to the 256mb 7200 card.

Are there any optimum settings in the CCC for a DVR application? Are there some basic steps I may be missing or not understanding in the root setup of the driver?

Thanks.

GndPrx: Did any of the above 'hacks' help at all? I've got the same problem HERE (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1025852). Screenshots inside... Does EVERYONE who owns ATI cards have this problem? Or only some of us?

Video performance is horrid but I've tabled it until I can just switch to a new computer. I'll just go back to NVidia at that point and not look back.

Separate issues I think. EViS's screenshots were of a DVD, and ATI drivers switch off denoise for progressive material.

Does EVERYONE who owns ATI cards have this problem? Or only some of us?
EViS, I've replied to you in the thread you created about your problems with instructions for how to cure them. The bottom line is that, with a minimal amount of tweaking, they can be fixed.

EViS, I've replied to you in the thread you created about your problems with instructions for how to cure them. The bottom line is that, with a minimal amount of tweaking, they can be fixed.

I have just implemented your fix (and replied to you there). The bottom line is, your fix has worked tremendously!! Thank you ever-so-much!

Separate issues I think. EViS's screenshots were of a DVD, and ATI drivers switch off denoise for progressive material.

What is the reason for this?

What is the reason for this?

I guess the theory is progressive=film, and you don't want to denoise film (since noise is a video thing).

I know this is a very old thread, but I am having this exact problem with my Radeon X800 Pro using BeyondTV with a HD HomeRun tuner. I tried some of the things listed in this thread, and a list of registry settings another user used to work with their ATI card. Has anyone solved this problem with an X800 Pro?

Cheers,
Scott

I know this is a very old thread, but I am having this exact problem with my Radeon X800 Pro using BeyondTV with a HD HomeRun tuner. I tried some of the things listed in this thread, and a list of registry settings another user used to work with their ATI card. Has anyone solved this problem with an X800 Pro?

Cheers,
Scott

It is a bit tricky to find the correct location to place the various registry changes.

Recently Arfster suggested I look at DXVAChecker.exe for assessing DXVA performance, and I discovered that it also enables easy access to the various ATI registry settings for ATI cards.

Download DXVAChecker (http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/dxvac/DXVAChecker_1900.zip) and run it as Administrator. Right click on the background and select "Video Acceleration Settings". Scroll down to the setting you want to change and set TRDenoise to 0 and UseBT601CSC to 1.

If you are running XP, reboot; if you are running Vista, restart your video playback application.

There are other ATI registry tweak tools that will probably work, but these were specifically written with the 2X00 and 3X00 series cards in mind.

Same here. Oh well. I'm thinking of buying another ATi card, just to see how things are. But I guess 'tis proly best at stage to wait until HDCP's more common and the next gen DX10 cards com out.

Yep , I gave up and installed my old 7800GT and picture is great again in TV & DVD playback. CPU just takes a larger load during BD playback. I kept reading how ATI was better generally in the HTPC enviroment. RMA'd thePalit 3870 and if I do buy something newer most likely 9500/9600/9800GT will be my next card in my HTPC. The 3870 did do a very good job about off loading the blu ray playback load off my CPU. When I tested a 9600GT CPU was around 50% while my 7800GT runs 80-90% CPU. WIth my new Q9300 CPU/MB/RAM upgrade I think I will just try the 7800GT and see if I can get another year out of it for HTPC use.

I know this doesn't help much but figured I would chime in with another person unhappy with the video quality of the ATI and found Nvidia to be easily better out of the box.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video\{xxxx-xxxx}\000x\UMD\DXVA

Set value of "Denoise_DEF" to "0"

gray field is activated now!

(ATI HD4850, Vista)


Greetings from Germany!
Ben

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video\{xxxx-xxxx}\000x\UMD\DXVA

Set value of "Denoise_DEF" to "0"

gray field is activated now!

(ATI HD4850, Vista)


Greetings from Germany!
Ben

Hi there! What do you mean by "gray field"? Is it that, after this hack, the card does not clip Above White and Below Black signal? (I hope you mean that :rolleyes:)

All denoise_def does is what the name suggests: controls the CCC default for the denoise on/off tickbox.

If you don't want clipping, the only method is to set ccc/video/basic colour brightness & contrast to 18/86. That retains btb and wtw cos it's applied before the YUV>RGB conversion, which is where expansion comes in (while if you use the dongle or the main desktop color control, it's afterwards and thus you get clipping as btb/wtw are expanded outside 0-255, the Windows limits).

All denoise_def does is what the name suggests: controls the CCC default for the denoise on/off tickbox.

If you don't want clipping, the only method is to set ccc/video/basic colour brightness & contrast to 18/86. That retains btb and wtw cos it's applied before the YUV>RGB conversion, which is where expansion comes in (while if you use the dongle or the main desktop color control, it's afterwards and thus you get clipping as btb/wtw are expanded outside 0-255, the Windows limits).

Thanks! I will give it a go...

In CCC the option to set the DENOISE manually was disabled (controlfield set to grey = unavailable), the function itself permanently enabled an the slider was set to a value of "64". No change possible...
All software using AVIVO was denoising the video-output. Especially BluRay in PowerDVD looked awful.

Changing the registry-value of DenoiseDEF to 0 swiched off the denoising and made manual changes possible (field changed from grey to white).

In CCC the option to set the DENOISE manually was disabled (controlfield set to grey = unavailable), the function itself permanently enabled an the slider was set to a value of "64". No change possible...
All software using AVIVO was denoising the video-output. Especially BluRay in PowerDVD looked awful.

Changing the registry-value of DenoiseDEF to 0 swiched off the denoising and made manual changes possible (field changed from grey to white).

What version you are referring to?
Here (CAT 8.8) denoise can be set via control panel. No need to do anything in the reg.

grubi

Quick question, is there a colorspace (0-255) selection in Catalyst, or is the reg entry the only way still?

Quick question, is there a colorspace (0-255) selection in Catalyst, or is the reg entry the only way still?

Are you referring to output colorspace?
This has been added since 8.11.
However it seems that it does not work for everyone (including me) as the setting does not stick after reboot.

Are you referring to output colorspace?
This has been added since 8.11.
However it seems that it does not work for everyone (including me) as the setting does not stick after reboot.

Yeah that is what I am talking about. Can you tell me where in catalyst it is located? I have 8.12. I just looked through it all and couldn't see it. (BTW, I am connecting to my LCD by DVI.)

Yeah that is what I am talking about. Can you tell me where in catalyst it is located? I have 8.12. I just looked through it all and couldn't see it. (BTW, I am connecting to my LCD by DVI.)

AFAIK this is only available for HDMI connected devices.
There you can choose between:
RGB Full Range
RGB Limited
Ycbcr 4:2:2
Ycbcr 4:4:4

AFAIK this is only available for HDMI connected devices...Well, my video display device (TV) is HDMI, but my card has only DVI outputs. I use a DVI-to-HDMI cable to connect the two. Is this why I don't have the pixel format/colorspace options? Can one only get them on a card with actual HDMI output connectors?

I believe I have a serious issue with PowerDVD 8 & Radeon HD4850 when it comes to deinterlacing. First screenshot is taken from PowerDVD:
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/92/beztytuurm2.png

With these settings:
http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/8200/powerdvdma4.png


This one is taken when hardware acceleration is unchecked (other settings not changed):
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/1543/powerdim2.png


CCC is set to "Use automatic deinterlacing" and "Pulldown detection".


Also, I get moire:
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/4975/morayy2.png

although I think Radeon should handle it...

Can anybody help?