ATI Radeon HD 2X00 (2400,2600,2900) series owners thread [Text View] - Page 11

millerbrad

10-11-07, 10:58 PM

I get an error when I access this site (no permission). I did find the file elsewhere though and have installed the avivo codecs (according to the installation software anyway)

When I run deccheck I now see 2 new entries:

ATI MPEG video decoder (atidvcr.dll)
ATI CC multiplexor

I was expecting AVIVO in the codec name. More, I don't seem to be getting any hardware acceleration on mpeg 2 or 4. It remains the only HW acceleration I can get is via powerdvd for mpeg 4.

Am I missing something?

Nope. Nothing missing. The ATI MPEG video decoder is the AVIVO codec.

And I don't think the AVIVO codecs even support HW acceleration. Awesome, huh?

millerbrad

10-11-07, 11:00 PM

Where in the settings for Media Center is this? The way i have it now is that it uses ffdshow to do the audio work.

Oops found it: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/using/setup/surroundsound.mspx

Is it the same thing you are talking about?

Not too familiar with XP MCE (I have Vista), but that seems to correspond with the Media Center setup screens I was referring to.

millerbrad

10-11-07, 11:03 PM

Never had it myself, so no idea, sorry.

None of the standard HTPC bugs have changed: expansion, deinterlacing selection oddities etc. They're still mis-spelling Felshtone_DE_MAX and Felshtone_DE_DEF within atiumdva.dll also.

Three months now since I reported the HD expansion issue.

But these "Shoot-em-Up" drivers sure do a good job with games... Who cares about HTPCs? :rolleyes:

millerbrad

10-11-07, 11:06 PM

Unfortunately the link does not work, even getting to it via the homepage. Is this mirrored anywhere?

Hmm.. Try going to softella.com, and click the link on the left to download the "DSFM" software.

Or maybe try Googling DSFMgr.zip... (http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=dsfmgr.zip)

originalsnuffy

10-11-07, 11:16 PM

Hey now good people...

Just installed 7.10. Did not do anything fancy. Did not even uninstall the old drivers before installing the new.

PowerDVD, even on my wimpy 2400 and wimpy notebook CPU, now is working fine (at least so far). No little flashing lines on the screen with HD DVD playback (tested three movies so far). The BBC h.264 files that I have still are a bit jerky in quicktime...no better or worse. But PowerDVD is the most important test for me...and so far this passes!

red5goahead

10-12-07, 04:29 AM

good. in Ati 7.10 an issue has been fixed! :) Under Vista with kmplayer using evr rendered when start evr on 2° monitor from first monitor (there is an usefull option in kmp) an error occour on atikmdag.sys (the ati kernel).
I test this problem with 7.8 , 7.9 and 7.9 hotfix.

this is the video of error:
http://www.4shared.com/file/25464699/76c7f511/kmplayer_crash_into_Vista_when_display_on_second_monitor.htm l?dirPwdVerified=f1c1905

a problem remain in dxva mode. evr seems not work on second monitor. but could be a related kmp problem.

Nyria

10-12-07, 07:49 AM

I'm having serious issues with the 7.10 drivers.

1. The picture starts shaking like i'm watching an earthquake.
2. The picture goes black sound stops, tv reports "Non suported Mode", and a few seconds later the picture comes back again.

Did notice the "use hardware acceleration" in powerdvd stays on again while playing mpeg2 files, so thats an improvement.

I will be sticking to 7.9 for now.

hapklaar

10-12-07, 07:57 AM

told, you... i'm new at this...i turned off dxva in powerdvd and gpu dropped to 20%... CPU jumped to 100%...

What do you use to measure GPU load?

eagleone

10-12-07, 08:34 AM

What do you use to measure GPU load?
I keep the ATI CCC open in Overdrive page where GPU load is shown. Task manager is enough for me for CPU load.

mitcheal

10-12-07, 08:39 AM

What do you use to measure GPU load?

rivatuner

graham_h

10-12-07, 09:18 AM

Hi Gents and ladies

First post but needing some expert help.

MSI Radeon X2600XT 512mb
hooked upto benq 19" LCD desktop display
and a sony bravia XBR 46" LCD via HDMI (using a converter)

I have it all "working" but just can't figure the correct settings.

I'm using the 7.9 drivers and just installed power strip.
I'd like the benq to stay at native res and never change.
And I'd like to be able to use the Sony in the mode that is compatible with what ever media I may be watching.

So 1080p for blu ray, hd dvd.
720p for TV eps etc.

I'll be damned if I can figure this out. Every time I set res for the Bravia it buggers up the benq and vice versa.
Should I even bother with powerstrip ?

Sometimes no desktop icons show on the bravia.

All I want is to be able to switch display and have them work as I want.
Pc is running XP pro if that makes a difference.

I'd also like to know more about overscan and 1.1 pixel mapping.

Thanks
G

topcaser

10-12-07, 09:32 AM

ATITool 2.7 beta. With this tool one is able to control the fan
:cool:

Beefcake

10-12-07, 09:35 AM

graham, I'll try to help.

The way you want to do this is to find the native resolutions for BOTH displays and leave each display at that resolution no matter the source material. Your video card will do a better job of scaling than the TV.

For desktop items, whats going on is the desktop is being "expanded" to fill the other screen as well. You won't ever see the desktop items on both screens.

I don't believe you will need Powerstrip for anything. the ATI drivers should be able to drive what you need.

Overscan and 1:1 pixel mapping.

Overscan is when the desktop image doesn't "fit" on the viewable TV screen because it is Over-Scanned and being displayed larger than the TV screen. ALL TV signals (HD and SD) are normally displayed on a TV with some amount of overscan. I don't want to get into why. Now, with your HDTV, you can use the ATI driver to adjust the overscan/underscan of the image being displayed. This is done in the CCC software.

1:1 pixel mapping is when source resolution = display resolution. Most importantly, I think you want to keep the display resolution set to the display's native (best) resolution. All HDTVs convert all incoming signals to some common resolution. Say you have a 1080p TV and are feeding it a 720p signal from your STB or computer. Sure, the TV can handle it, but it does so by converting it to its native 1080p interal format. Same thing with 1080i.

I hope this helps and most importantly I hope I'm right in the way I describe things. Of course, there are always expects to every rule, so remember that too. I try to use the "most common" approach to explaining things.

-Brian

graham_h

10-12-07, 09:39 AM

Excellent Brian, thank you.
Admittedly I haven't sat down and actually tried to set it up yet. More like kept bashing away and forcing the issue.

I'll get rid of power strip and go back to basics. Then I should be all good.

FerPhobos

10-12-07, 11:53 AM

Hello.

Let me ask you some basic questions about the excellent work of ExDeux and arfster concerning to the ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks.

These Tweaks apply both to the software and hardware acceleration modes of PowerDVD Ultra, or only with the hardware acceleration is active?

When arfster say:

"VForceMaxResSize 2800000 (aka SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps in Cat7.7 and earlier) = this sets the PDVD HDDVD/Bluray max render size in pixels, but the default setting is so small that it can't fill a 1080p screen."

means that if you send a 1080p HD file from an HTPC to a 1080p display there is not a 1:1 maping, and instead there is some kind of scaling in the ATI card or the display?

Thank you very much in advance.

arfster

10-12-07, 11:55 AM

When arfster say:

"VForceMaxResSize 2800000 (aka SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps in Cat7.7 and earlier) = this sets the PDVD HDDVD/Bluray max render size in pixels, but the default setting is so small that it can't fill a 1080p screen."

means that if you send a 1080p HD file from an HTPC to a 1080p display there is not a 1:1 maping, and instead there is some kind of scaling in the ATI card or the display?

Yes, it scales it down within the PDVD window, so when fullscreen on a 1080p display you get black bars to left and right. Setting it to the value above fixes this.

mike infinity

10-12-07, 11:58 AM

I don't believe you will need Powerstrip for anything. the ATI drivers should be able to drive what you need.

Powerstrip can get you 1:1 mapping if you use it to compensate for overscan. The CCC drivers compensate for overscan by clipping the pixels. So a 1280x720p display gets clipped by CCC to eliminate overscan. With powerstrip, you can adjust the pixel clocks to get 1:1 with no overscan.

My problem is that if I use powerstrip for customized timings, I get juddery video output from the 2400 or 2600.

karrih

10-12-07, 12:04 PM

Is posterization fixed

No change in my testclip. Oh well, maybe next month...

ditcho

10-12-07, 12:20 PM

gtgray

10-12-07, 12:25 PM

Powerstrip can get you 1:1 mapping if you use it to compensate for overscan. The CCC drivers compensate for overscan by clipping the pixels. So a 1280x720p display gets clipped by CCC to eliminate overscan. With powerstrip, you can adjust the pixel clocks to get 1:1 with no overscan.

My problem is that if I use powerstrip for customized timings, I get juddery video output from the 2400 or 2600.

My problem is that if I use CCC to control overscan I get some weird scaling artifacts that just look like random noise. So I am setting the scaling to 0 and using Studio mode (Dot by Dot) and just letting it overscan. I loose some desktop but at least I am able to get at the start icon and can see the edge of the taskbar. Not really much of a problem in VMC or PowerDVD Ultra. I hope there is a better solution down the road. The 6600GT and 7600GT cards I had before were recognized by the HP DLP as DVI and it automatically adjusted the desktop to have zero overscan and there were no scaling artifacts. When displaying TV or Movies I would change the TV's aspect ratio from PC to Studio. The HP DLP does not recognize the ATI 2600 as PC input via DVI/HDMI and make the necessary corrections.

originalsnuffy

10-12-07, 12:48 PM

Other than CCC; how does one adjust overclocking with the 2400? I can't get clocking adustments to "stick" since 7.7.

ExDeus

10-12-07, 01:07 PM

ok exdeus...answers to your questions
I'm talking about GPU usage. it hits 100% when playing mpeg2. CPU is averaging 25%.
In my experience, that really shouldn't happen, but it seems your real question is about how to turn off DXVA, which you figured out in PowerDVD with the checkbox to enable hardware acceleration (ATI AVIVO). What are the specs of the MPEG2 stream (resolution, progressive/interlaced, framerate)? Does this happen with every MPEG2 stream? What deinterlacing mode is selected in CCC? Have you tried a different mode?

hardware accelration is on. dxva is on. so based on your post, i need to disable dxva... where can i do that?
Hardware acceleration = DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration).

Is the idea to disable dxva when playing mpeg2 and on when paying hddvd?
No, you shouldn't need to disable it. Perhaps you have a defective card.

also, would you recommend the registry changes?
Well, yes. I use all of them except VForceMaxResSize and SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps (they do the same thing, depending on the driver version you use). I don't have a 1080p display, so I don't need it.

You can read arfster's explanation (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11659897&postcount=2121) to see which ones you want to use. Personally, I don't want artificial picture enhancements, i.e., detail/edge enhancement, color/fleshtone enhancements, or denoising, but I do want consistent level expansion b/w HD and SD. arfster's registry tweaks make that all possible.

mike infinity

10-12-07, 03:43 PM

If your display overscans, you can never have 1:1 pixel mapping and no overscan without losing visible pixels.

I'm not much of an expert. I suppose 1:1 is possible on powerstrip adjusting for overscan on CRT type displays...correct?

Right now I would be happy if I could get rid of the green flashes and juddery playback at 1080i on my 2x00 card.

my Hitachi screen actually looks best when it downsamples 1080i output to 720p (I think it actually resamples 720p signals before displaying them natively...I get what looks like interlacing jitters on horizontal lines at 720p, but not from downsampled 1080i).

JackBee

10-12-07, 04:30 PM

Have the 2600 XT, using the 7.7, 7.9, newest Omega drivers and 7.10, using HDMI i cannot get 1:1 pixel mapping on 1360x768. It is overscanned by ~10% regardless of what i do, and the overscan option in CCC is greyed out. I tried powerstrip and it refuses to adjust anything. Uncanny. 1280x720 works and i can over/under scan it to fit the display fine but i want 1:1 pixel mapping. My old X1300 card worked fine in this regard. Same display on both cards. Anyone have any ideas?

mitcheal

10-12-07, 07:20 PM

In my experience, that really shouldn't happen, but it seems your real question is about how to turn off DXVA, which you figured out in PowerDVD with the checkbox to enable hardware acceleration (ATI AVIVO). What are the specs of the MPEG2 stream (resolution, progressive/interlaced, framerate)? Does this happen with every MPEG2 stream? What deinterlacing mode is selected in CCC? Have you tried a different mode?

Hardware acceleration = DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration).

No, you shouldn't need to disable it. Perhaps you have a defective card.

Well, yes. I use all of them except VForceMaxResSize and SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps (they do the same thing, depending on the driver version you use). I don't have a 1080p display, so I don't need it.

You can read arfster's explanation (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11659897&postcount=2121) to see which ones you want to use. Personally, I don't want artificial picture enhancements, i.e., detail/edge enhancement, color/fleshtone enhancements, or denoising, but I do want consistent level expansion b/w HD and SD. arfster's registry tweaks make that all possible.

ok,you're noty gonna believe this. it's an mpeg 4, H264.... i didn't realize that... i'll try and find an mpeg2 file... how does the card handle that file?

karrih

10-13-07, 02:29 AM

No change in my testclip. Oh well, maybe next month...

In fact it seems that 7.10 drivers are somehow incompatible with my XP setup. I have tried uninstalling first 7.9 with ati uninstall utility and also upgrading from 7.9. Both ways of installing 7.10 will put my pc into real crawl, just starting up will take minutes. Catalyst CC will not open either most of the time.

I guess I could try full reinstallation starting with XP, but as the posterisation, my major source of annoyance, has not been fixed yet, I believe I will stay with 7.9.

augiedoggy

10-13-07, 12:24 PM

this is driving me nuts.....I have tried just about every version of the drivers on my eah2400pro card and even the registry tweaks......nothing is a working combination.....the drivers with the built in registry tweaks worked the best on powerdvd with HD-dvd but then my option to watch hd mpeg streams in mediaportal either from my dvbs or recorded files from atsc tuner was broken....When I would try to view such a stream I would get a windows error or mediaportal would just close....and this is with hardware accel off on the directshow filters mpeg decoder I use. If I turn hardware accel on I cant get it to play any hd video in mediaportal at all...it just crashes even without the tweak on a full uninstall and fresh reinstall of the latest drivers.This is sooo agreivating. Does anyone know if the hardware accel will work with a nivdia 8500 card when switching to and from different types of video in mediaportal?
I acually get the same results from mytheatre with hadware accel on...if I open the program and it was already tuned to an hd channel it plays in hardware accel mode but as soon as I switch to a channel thats playing a different format (example 1080i to 720p or 480i ) i loose video. Seems like this is a vmr issue only but I need that to work.

VegasF6

10-13-07, 06:07 PM

I hate to over simplify this question, but can someone please tell me how to test and see if hardware acceleration is working for me?

Visiontek 2400hd agp card
Amd 64 3200+
MSI neo fisr motherboard
Vista X86 ultimate
Power DVD 7

I have installed the .9 reg tweaks, although I don't imagine I needed them if the card isn't working right.

I have installed cat 7.10 from visiontek's website. The drivers from visiontek are more than twice the size of ATIs so I have no idea what they did to them. When I download any drivers from ati arena they don't seem to support my card. Is that normal? When I was running XP they would tell me device not found, and in Vista, they run, but they only thing they install is the cat install manager and free games offer.

I installed the vivo package from ATI website.
I have run both deccheck and VMCD and after installing vivo I finally see ATI decoder and have set it for preferred in vista MCE.
I am running various players, zoom player, VLC, media player classic, and powerdvd 7.2

I am trying various test files. I frankly don't know which files the card should accerate and which it shouldn't.
I have a .ts mpeg 2 file from discovery earth. Several h.264 demo files I have downloaded as trailers. And, a .mkv file that claims to hold .264 video in 720P and is supposedly in blu ray format.
Zoom player freezes on some of these. Media Player classic plays them all. VLC plays them all. Power DVD plays all of them but the 720P MKV file, it just freezes (this is after renaming it from .mkv to .h264)

In particular, the 1080i .ts file is the only one that plays on everything so I have mostly been concentrating on it.
GPU usage stays in the 10-20% range, CPU maxes out at 100% mostly, and video stutters and drops frames.

In powerdvd configuration I have enabled hardware acceleration, but if I go the information tab it shows Video Accelerator: DirectX VA (not in use)

Again, I don't expect anyone to spend too much time trying to figure this out, but can you at least point me in the right direction of what video files I should be concentrating on and which player to start with to just get this thing working?

I was on the phone with visiontek support for about a half hour and they are just morons. They claim that I shoud be able to use ATI's drivers instead of the one on there website, but as far as I can tell, they don't support AGP and visiontek doesn't even know this. Had me run through various things that made no sense. Mostly I called them about blank screen in XP MCE and they had never heard of it. So, that is why I installed the card in my vista machine instead. Final solution was they would send me a cd of 7.9 cat because I must be downloading corrupted files.... whatever. Or, I was free to return the card they told me. Great. Except I already cut off the UPC.

ExDeus

10-13-07, 06:57 PM

ok,you're noty gonna believe this. it's an mpeg 4, H264.... i didn't realize that... i'll try and find an mpeg2 file... how does the card handle that file?
Well, no, I believe it. But it still doesn't explain 100% GPU.

The HD2600pro handles H.264 better than MPEG2, because the DXVA is handled by the UVD chip rather than in stream processors. It should support H.264 @ 1080i/p no sweat. It should also handle MPEG2 @ 1080i/p, but will use more GPU.

Perhaps you have a problematic stream in that file. You need to test a variety of different files for each video format, as there are catches with each format. For H.264, one such catch is that H.264 files encoded by x264 with certain features enabled will not work with DXVA. This doesn't seem to be the case with your file, since GPU is pegged at 100%, but you may have a problematic file of another sort. Try some others.

B Leisle

10-13-07, 07:20 PM

Don't know if anyone posted it, but the Catalyst 7.10 drivers seemed to fix the display driver crash I had with 7.9 when playing the HD DVD disc Galapagos. If others are having problems, you may want to apply the new drivers. The main menu video is still a little wonky - it gets choppy - but once you start the main feature, it's fine.

ExDeus

10-13-07, 09:00 PM

When I download any drivers from ati arena they don't seem to support my card. Is that normal?
Yes. Sometimes the driver files don't get updated, so you can update them yourself, or use the VisionTek drivers. See http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/#AGP.

I am trying various test files. I frankly don't know which files the card should accerate and which it shouldn't.
I have a .ts mpeg 2 file from discovery earth.
Yes, DXVA should work.

Several h.264 demo files I have downloaded as trailers.
What container format are they in? In TS, they should work. In MKV, if they were encoded with x264 with certain options (not sure which ones), then DXVA will not work. Otherwise, they should work. Other formats, i.e., MOV, I haven't tried.

And, a .mkv file that claims to hold .264 video in 720P and is supposedly in blu ray format.
There is no 'BluRay format' for H.264, only a container format to hold H.264. If you have an MKV file, then MKV is the container format. I assume "BluRay" is in the title of the file, which simply indicates the video was re-encoded from the file on a BluRay disc. If the x264 codec was used, then like I mentioned, DXVA will not work if some options were used when encoding. You just have to try it to find out.

Zoom player freezes on some of these. Media Player classic plays them all. VLC plays them all. Power DVD plays all of them but the 720P MKV file, it just freezes (this is after renaming it from .mkv to .h264)
ZP and MPC have interfaces to select the DirectShow filter used for playback. VLC and PDVD use their own internal codecs. In ZP and MPC, which DS filter is selected for H264 video? You want to use the Cyberlink decoder to get DXVA. See my post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11772733#post11772733) on configuring ZP to make the Cyberlink and ATI AVIVO decoders available.

Also, PDVD does not read the MKV format. The .mkv file extension indicates the file is in the MKV container format, whereas the .h264, .264, or .avc file extensions indicate a file is raw H.264/AVC video without a container. Changing the file extension will not help PDVD play the file.

In particular, the 1080i .ts file is the only one that plays on everything so I have mostly been concentrating on it.
GPU usage stays in the 10-20% range, CPU maxes out at 100% mostly, and video stutters and drops frames.

In powerdvd configuration I have enabled hardware acceleration, but if I go the information tab it shows Video Accelerator: DirectX VA (not in use)
It doesn't seem DXVA is working for you then. I would try different driver versions, like Catalyst 7.6, 7.7, 7.9. As for my experience, I swapped the 2400 for a 2600, b/c I could never get any H.264 or VC-1 acceleration working. MPEG2 was the only format that would work.

VegasF6

10-13-07, 11:37 PM

I sure appreciate the respone, it will be immensly helpful. I will concentrate mostly on the .ts file right now and I will peruse your other posts soon, then post back.
Yes, the other file contains bluray in the title and is in the x264 format, and does not appear to be working. The source on that one is a little dubious so we will leave it at that. But, I am more certain on the .ts file so I will be able to concentrate on it.
Also, if I re-install my hauppauge 1600 hybrid card, I think I can capture in native .ts, if not that one, then my fusion hdtv card certainly will. They are not installed in this computer they are in another.
All the trailers I have found I think are in .mov or quicktime links to streaming videos even so hardware acceleration may not work on them either.

In zoom player under video I am using vmr9 renderless and I chose a custom renderer, CyberLink Video/SP BD-HD Decoder (PDVD7.x)|{E4913A80-54B7-45DF-AC7B-568FD1CF95EE}.

I will need to read your how to setup zoom player to see if I am doing it wrong, I have chosen about every option I could see.
I am not sure how to tell which direct show filter is enabled, if I right click on the screen and choose filters after loading the file, the only video filter I see is Dscaler mpeg 2 video decoder, so I imagine this is wrong.

I started this PC with a 6600GT and I had to steal it for another computer. I then bought a 7600LE from newegg and returned it because I hated it. Restocking fee. I then bought this 2400 ati and I don't want another restocking fee, besides which like I said I cut the UPC already. I really don't want to buy ANOTHER video card, but I am certainly wishing I had gone with the 2600 now. Or am I just doomed trying to use an AGP card?

ExDeus

10-14-07, 01:01 AM

In zoom player under video I am using vmr9 renderless and I chose a custom renderer, CyberLink Video/SP BD-HD Decoder (PDVD7.x)|{E4913A80-54B7-45DF-AC7B-568FD1CF95EE}.
That may work; I'm not seeing that decoder on my system, though. The one that works for me is {F2E3D920-0F9B-4319-BE87-EB94CCEB6C09}|CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder (PDVD7.x), and I'm using the standard overlay.

f I right click on the screen and choose filters after loading the file, the only video filter I see is Dscaler mpeg 2 video decoder, so I imagine this is wrong.
Then yeah, it's using Dscaler instead of Cyberlink. Dscaler and ffdshow are meant to be software implementations in lieu of DXVA. You need to look at the various MPEG2 program/transport stream filters in ZP to make sure you have the right decoder selected, and make sure you enabled Smart Play. You also have to close/reopen ZP after changing filters to get the changes to take effect, or press Shift+J to reload the file.

I really don't want to buy ANOTHER video card, but I am certainly wishing I had gone with the 2600 now. Or am I just doomed trying to use an AGP card?
I feel your pain. I consciously held off on the rebate for my 2400 until I saw everything working. I opted to return it for the 2600, but that doesn't mean that it won't work for the 2400, I just don't know what the magic configuration is. I am also on XP, so YMMV on Vista.

grubi

10-14-07, 05:49 AM

Is posterization fixed

It is not.
:mad::mad::mad:

ExDeus

10-14-07, 06:03 AM

Unfortunately, the red-shift problem isn't fixed in 7.10, either.

ygre

10-14-07, 09:07 AM

Mike_Stuewe

10-14-07, 10:03 AM

grubi

10-14-07, 11:23 AM

Unfortunately, the red-shift problem isn't fixed in 7.10, either.

What is best to reduce the problem?

From what I found disabling noise reduction (TRDenoise=0) reduces is but to get rid of it you also have to set deinterlacing to simple adaptive.

Any other observations or tips?

Thanks
grubi.

airbedman

10-14-07, 11:40 AM

.... Mostly I called them about blank screen in XP MCE and they had never heard of it. So, that is why I installed the card in my vista machine instead. Final solution was they would send me a cd of 7.9 cat because I must be downloading corrupted files.... whatever. Or, I was free to return the card they told me. Great. Except I already cut off the UPC.

Did you ever solve the blank screen in MCE problem?

BertM

10-14-07, 12:06 PM

What is best to reduce the problem?

From what I found disabling noise reduction (TRDenoise=0) reduces is but to get rid of it you also have to set deinterlacing to simple adaptive.

Any other observations or tips?

Thanks
grubi.

If by red-shift you mean the colour displacement of the picture:

use ffdshow as your decoder for MPEG.
set the output colour space to NV12 (deselect all other options) and select "Set deinterlacing flag in output media type to BOB", which activates the complete postprocessing and vector adaptive deinterlacing (if selected in CCC, that is...)
activate the Offset & flip filter in ffdshow properties window. I have set it to luma vert. offset of -2 and horz. offset of -1.

Chroma and luma now perfectly overlap, while maintaining the advantage of VA deinterlacing, anti-aliasing, edge-enhancement (which we luckily can turn off in the registry) etc. from the postprocessor. Of course now you don't use the MPEG2 decoder in the card, but ffdshow's libavc and libmpeg do a very good job at decoding the picture.

I have submitted a ticket some time ago with ATI; they acknowledged the problem and are working on it. Think it might be some time into 2008 before we see a solution... But who cares, the ffdshow solution is nearly perfect

regards,
Bert

arfster

10-14-07, 12:24 PM

Bert: does this only affect mpeg2? Also, only with dxva?

I never watch mpeg2 HD cos it's all h264 here, and the only time broadcast SD mpeg2 goes through the machine is watching sports/news in a tiny desktop window, so likely I'd never notice. DVDs are still via ffdshow for subtitle reasons, which kills dxva.

Will have a look at this later, and see if there's anything can be done in the registry.

BertM

10-14-07, 12:58 PM

Bert: does this only affect mpeg2? Also, any idea whether it exists with vista/xp, or both?

I never watch mpeg2 HD cos it's all h264 here, and the only time SD mpeg2 goes through the machine is watching sports/news in a tiny desktop window, so likely I'd never notice.

I only use XP, I can't get the picture right in Vista (using DVBViewer) so I really don't know whether it (vista) exposes the same problem.

It affects both MPEG2 and H264, it's probably a bug in the postprocessing pipeline. A neat way to show this is by having ffdshow show OSD info about the signal: the colour of the font is shifted when the luma shift filter is enabled, while the colour in the background (MPEG) picture is on spot. (Well, thinking of it, there's no way it can be a bug in the MPEG decoder itself; when using any of the picture filters in ffdshow the hardware decoder isn't (cannot be) used, so it has to be the postprocessing; it even shows up in the CCC waving flag demo)

Since I cannot view H264 through ffdshow in DVBViewer (I have to use the cyberlink thingy) the colour shift remains there in H264 (and it wouldn't make sense here: with my core-2 6600 even mainconcept produces judder in h264, with dxva the picture is perfectly smooth).
So BBC HD and the three German FTA channels still show colour offset, but less visible as vertical resolution is higher. Euro1080 HD1 is back to MPEG2 so doesn't suffer from colour shift (but suffers from repeating the same show for months... but I think I can't blame ATI for that)

H264 files should be fine when played through the ffdshow decoder and luma shift enabled.

(BTW, I found that luma shift is the better option to use; when using luma shift, the picture becomes juddery with fast motion... and vertical shift has to be an even number, which makes sense with 4:2:0)

Update:
colour shift isn't present with progressive material (tried some vc1 and h264 720p files) so here the shift option in ffdshow introduces a colour shift... And gives us the the source of the shift: motion or vector adaptive deinterlacing.

regards,
Bert

ygre

10-14-07, 01:27 PM

arfster

10-14-07, 02:05 PM

I bought the xbox 360 hddvd drive that is connect direct to my pc.For the moment i
only want hddvd playback, so with all the problems since the beginning of these
pages.For king kong audio is correct but i got diaporama image one each min.With the
patch mention above , the movie is now perfect cpu average from 50 - 70 % with some
peak of 90 and gpu 20 to 30 on acc dxva.No need to upgrade my pc for now.
king kong is mpeg 2 right so... just add the patch.

King Kong is VC1, but your problems are fairly common - you were using a really old PDVD version before. The patch you put on there isn't even the newest, it's 2 months old. Here's the new 3319 version:

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/patch/enu/index.jsp

RichB

10-14-07, 02:07 PM

King Kong is VC1, but your problems are fairly common - you were using a really old PDVD version before. The patch you put on there isn't even the newest, it's 2 months old. Here's the new 3319 version:

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/patch/enu/index.jsp

I am sometimes just getting a blank green screen with 3319. I have to reboot to get a picture. Anyone else seeing this?

Update: It green screens the display and crashed my Vista32 Ultimate system when started after Sleeping. Time to System Restore to 3104a ;)
I guess we know why this version has not been released.

- Rich

rtiangha

10-14-07, 03:24 PM

For those with problems with the AGP versions of this card, there's an article in the knowledge base (737-29894 (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=29894)) that may apply to you:

737-29894: Radeon HD 2xxx AGP Series - High CPU usage or system crash during HD playback

The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):

* PowerDVD, ZoomPlayer
* Catalyst Display Driver 7.9
* Radeon™ HD2900 series
* Radeon™ HD2600 series
* Radeon™ HD2400 series
* Windows Vista 32-bit Edition
* Windows Vista 64-bit Edition
* Windows XP Professional
* Windows XP Home Edition
* Windows XP Media Center Edition
* Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Symptoms:
On AGP versions of the above mentioned graphics cards the Hardware Acceleration does not get enabled. High CPU usage, stuttering HD playback or even system crash are expected behaviours, although DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) is enabled by the application.

Solution:
Currently there is no solution.

ATI Engineering has been advised of this issue and is investigating. Any updates will be published when they become available.

217698

If there are others (like me) who seem to have this problem, I urge you to write ATI support about it, otherwise they may not do anything about it (doubtful as these are new cards, but they could in theory pull an Nvidia later on and say that UVD doesn't work on AGP just like Nvidia said that the AGP 6600GT didn't accelerate WMV HD even though their marketing materials said so and silently removed all mention of those AGP features from their site).

In any case, here are my specs, for those who are curious:

MSI K7N2 Delta2-LSR (nforce 2 based, BIOS B.5 2005-01-20)
Athlon XP 2500+
Diamond Viper 512MB DDR2 HD2600pro AGP (Model: 2600PRO512ASB)

Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP
Device ID 9587
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID 0028
Subsystem Vendor ID 1092

Bus Type AGP
Current Bus Setting AGP 8X

BIOS Version 010.051.000.002
BIOS Part Number 113-AB31200-100-IT
BIOS Date 2007/08/31

Memory Size 512 MB
Memory Type DDR2

Core Clock in MHz 601 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 405 MHz

Primary Display Yes

1 GB DDR RAM
DVI or VGA connection (my monitor supports both)
Windows XP SP2
DirectX 9c (Aug 2007)
No exclamation mark in device manger, but unknown PCI Device which is probably the HD HDMI Audio device.
AGP Aperture currently set at 512MB (used to be at 128), but it can also be set to 32, 64, 128, and 256 as well.

I also don't get any Direct 3D acceleration (according to dxdiag) in any version of Catalyst 7.8 or higher (am currently running 7.7 (one version below what shipped on the CD) just to get VMR9 to work).

ExDeus

10-14-07, 04:23 PM

amd athlon 3500 (2200 mghz) + ati 2600 ht download beta 7.10 + REG TWEAKS STILL HA DISENGAGE AT PLAYBACK .I FUGURE MAYBE IT IS POWER DVD .I GO AT CYBERLINK IF AN UPDAT WAS ARRIVE AND I FOUND A PATCH CYBERLINK 3104 _R1_EVR_LOGO_DVD70614_02 VER 4.0.100.1190 NOW PLAYBACK WITH HA ALL WAY LONG ENJOY !
RUN WIYH XP ON AN AQUOS 52" 1080P

what?
Not to worry, I speak gibberish.

With an HD2600 and 7.10 beta drivers, he applied the reg tweaks but DXVA still wouldn't work in PowerDVD. He checked for an update at Cyberlink, and discovered that patch 3104 had been released. Now DXVA always works.

Had he read a page or two of the thread here, he might of discovered this some time ago.

Our friend is obviously communicating via babelfish or some internal wetware equivalent. Let's cut him some slack.

ExDeus

10-14-07, 04:46 PM

What is best to reduce the problem?

From what I found disabling noise reduction (TRDenoise=0) reduces is but to get rid of it you also have to set deinterlacing to simple adaptive.

Any other observations or tips?

Thanks
grubi.
I've always had denoising off, and I've still had it. I haven't tested it myself, but it was also reported (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11675596#post11675596) that turning off pulldown detection can also resolve the issue.

I have pulldown detection on and deinterlacing set to vector adaptive. I might test some other combos.

ExDeus

10-14-07, 04:58 PM

If by red-shift you mean the colour displacement of the picture:

use ffdshow as your decoder for MPEG.

I'm seeing it on SD MPEG2 (special features) on an HD DVD, which leaves me two options: PDVD or Nero Showtime. Showtime works for sh*t, so that leaves me PDVD with the built-in Cyberlink decoder.

It affects both MPEG2 and H264, it's probably a bug in the postprocessing pipeline.
I haven't seen that. I only see the red shift affect SD MPEG2 --- not HD MPEG2, or H264 or VC-1. I haven't tried any SD or interlaced H264, so it's possible it would crop up if I did, but I do watch 1080i MPEG2 without the problem.

Update:
colour shift isn't present with progressive material (tried some vc1 and h264 720p files) so here the shift option in ffdshow introduces a colour shift... And gives us the the source of the shift: motion or vector adaptive deinterlacing.
I will have to see if I tested 480p or 480i... I thought I saw it on 480p on HD DVD. That may mean it is not isolated to adaptive deinterlacing, but also affected by pulldown. Still related to framerates and frame detection.

VegasF6

10-14-07, 05:44 PM

Nope, the original plan was to put it in my vista machine just to eliminate a hardware problem, then I got into other issue's with it. So, I plan to get it running perfectly in Vista, then re-installing it on the XP-MCE machine. But, after all this trouble if I get it running I doubt I will want to switch it back frankly.

I have seen a few others post about the black screen in MCE, but no solutions.

sosuke3

10-14-07, 08:26 PM

robgrobg

10-14-07, 09:10 PM

I reported a while back about how my on-board audio "up-and-left-town" after installing a Gigabyte HD 2600 Pro video card. I have an HP a1740n pc, Vista Home Premium, with on-board Realtek HD audio device. I was running with the latest Realtek driver, version 1.79 - everything just great. I then installed the video card and, just like that, the only audio device I have in the system now is an HDMI device, something to do with ATI's bizarre ability to send audio out the DVI ports of the video card. Maybe it's working or maybe not - haven't connected it to a HT receiver to test it. I don't really care about that at present - I just want my damn desktop speakers to work.

Any (new) ideas/thoughts on this problem out there? I just don't get how my on-board audio device can suddenly disappear. Windows is usually pretty good at recognizing hardware. It's like the presence of the video card with it's goofy audio capability has swapped itself in to replace my on-board device, masking or hiding its existance. Tres weird. Any help appreciated. Thx.

VegasF6

10-14-07, 09:14 PM

Has anyone else had problems with PowerDVD causing a BSoD on ativvaxx.dll? I have catalyst 7.10 installed with my 2600XT; I tried with hw accel on and off and it's the same no matter what. Seems to be ok windowed but as soon as I go fullscreen with powerdvd it blue-screens... and it only seems to happen with HD-DVDs. I tried a regular DVD and it was fine. Anyone have any ideas? I installed the latest update for powerdvd and that didn't help either.

Note, I just installed this card today so I haven't tried 7.9 drivers or earlier. It was working fine with my nvidia card but I figured it was time for an upgrade.. guess not...... Also I've been watching a bunch of h264 stuff in zoomplayer since I installed this card with no problems, so it seems to only be powerdvd/HDDVDs that are having issues.
Just a shot in the dark, but do you have read it clearly enabled? I have been having some issues with it on full screen. Not BSOD but picture shrunk and upper right quadrant just a green mess of pixels. I enabled it and disabled it several times, still the same thing. But, if I enable and also turn on high performance mode, it seems to work ok.

originalsnuffy

10-14-07, 10:52 PM

Sosuke3--I think 7.10 is great; but common wisdom is that the most trouble free version is 7.7. You could also try the arfster pack....but I actually had better success with plain old 7.7.

rtiangha

10-15-07, 04:19 AM

Has anyone else had problems with PowerDVD causing a BSoD on ativvaxx.dll? I have catalyst 7.10 installed with my 2600XT; I tried with hw accel on and off and it's the same no matter what. Seems to be ok windowed but as soon as I go fullscreen with powerdvd it blue-screens... and it only seems to happen with HD-DVDs. I tried a regular DVD and it was fine. Anyone have any ideas? I installed the latest update for powerdvd and that didn't help either.

Note, I just installed this card today so I haven't tried 7.9 drivers or earlier. It was working fine with my nvidia card but I figured it was time for an upgrade.. guess not...... Also I've been watching a bunch of h264 stuff in zoomplayer since I installed this card with no problems, so it seems to only be powerdvd/HDDVDs that are having issues.

Just curious, but do you have an AGP or PCI-E card? And could you list your specs and OS? If it's an AGP card, it might be related to 737-29894 (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=29894).

Beefcake

10-15-07, 07:49 AM

robg ->

you should be able to just re-install your realtek drivers (go to website to check latest version). I had a similar thing happen and this fixed it for me. YMMV, but good luck.

-Brian

sosuke3

10-15-07, 08:36 AM

I'll take a look at 7.7. I might also just try the drivers that came with the card.

Card is PCI-E Gigabyte 2600XT
OS is XP SP2

What is high performance mode? I don't remember seeing an option for that anywhere.

robgrobg

10-15-07, 10:00 AM

robg ->

you should be able to just re-install your realtek drivers (go to website to check latest version). I had a similar thing happen and this fixed it for me. YMMV, but good luck.

-Brian

Thanks, but the problem is that I no longer have a physical device to load the drivers against. Prior to installing the video card I have a device called "Realtek High Definition Audio Device" in the Sound, Video and Game Controllers" section of the Device Manager. After I install the video card, before I put the Catalyst software on or anything else, that device disappears and is replaced with "High Definition Audio Device" (similar name, yes, but distinctly different) and in the Control Panel Sound app that device identifies itself as HDMI-specific. I know it represents the HDMI device because it only offers playback control... the "Recording" tab is empty, since it's really output only.

I started out with the latest v1.79 driver in the first place. Everything was great before adding the video card. If I try to manually add the missing device, or update the driver of the device that's there now, I always get a BSOD reset - I think I get about 6 or more different .inf files to choose from when I try to do this... how am I supposed to know which is the right one? None that I've tried has resulted in success anyway.

Rew452

10-15-07, 10:10 AM

Just reloaded and completely updated WinXP Pro and I have one issue with this new video board. I enter Safe Mode and all I get is a black screen with Safe Mode in all four corners and a mouse cursor which moves but is jerky and no matter how long it sets there it does not Finnish loading in Safe Mode.

I saw this in my old WinXP installation as well and thought it would be fine on a clean install. But not--

My old ATI AIW X800 worked without a hitch so I am sure it has something to with HD 26600xt and or drivers which are now 7.10.

Can anyone share some ideas on what may be wrong and how to remedy?????

My system:
HD 2600xt AGP
Asus P4c800e deluxe
3.2Ghz P4
Bios 1023
1gb Ram

s174955

10-15-07, 10:49 AM

Hi, I read about enabling the Catalyst drivers for AGP versions of the cards,
by adding the HWID of the agp card to the .inf file in the installation directory.
Tried this for mine MSI 2600pro at Vista 32-bit, but didn't succeed.

Only drivers I can install are the 7.7 (latest at MSI site) or a 7.9 beta, which only supports AGP versions.
Hacking the .inf files doesn't work her.

Anyone succeeded?

Besides that the card works quite OK.
Two issues remaining are:
- 20 fps bug (with .mkv files and hardware acceleration)
- no aspect ratio changes possible when using HA (I have a 1024x768 plama-> 4:3 resolution with 16:9 dimensions. Can't get 2.35:1 movies displayed correctly with vga connection)

BertM

10-15-07, 11:11 AM

I will have to see if I tested 480p or 480i... I thought I saw it on 480p on HD DVD. That may mean it is not isolated to adaptive deinterlacing, but also affected by pulldown. Still related to framerates and frame detection.

Hmm, maybe another issue: the behaviour appears to be different on 50Hz and 60Hz source material. I live in 50Hz land, were of course no pulldown is ever needed.

As I mentioned before, the shift is barely visible in 1080 source material 'cause of the small offset. With SD, being scaled to 1080lines, the shift is very obvious, but only in interlaced source material being motion/adaptive deinterlaced.

hamish b

10-15-07, 11:48 AM

getting some progress with a slight annoying occasional judder on my 2600xt
thought id post in case other people are having same probs

at 1920 1080p 48hz with powerstrip ive been getting this frame jump every15 to 30sec. thought it was ati drivers but worked out its powerstrip

for some reason powerstrip will only force 48hz on 1920 1080 not actually write it into the regestry for the card which usually results in a reboot. what i think its doing is just using the 25i or 29i on the ati reg and messing with that setting.

what i did was create a cusom res on powerstrip for 1920 1082p at 48hz and using pwerdvd to keep aspect ratio. this should scale it back to 1080p with2 left over blank lines,
powerstrip did a reboot and now with 1082, 48hz is in the ccc refresh box

so far its improved the judder a lot, still not 100% but a great improvement.

just now have to work a way for powerstripto do 1080p 48hz and put the refresh into the reg

nstelmach

10-15-07, 11:49 AM

Hmm, maybe another issue: the behaviour appears to be different on 50Hz and 60Hz source material. I live in 50Hz land, were of course no pulldown is ever needed.

As I mentioned before, the shift is barely visible in 1080 source material 'cause of the small offset. With SD, being scaled to 1080lines, the shift is very obvious, but only in interlaced source material being motion/adaptive deinterlaced.

I live in PAL land too, and I mainly watch SD-digital TV (MPEG2) and I was plagued with the red shift for a long time too.
It was most obvious on channels with a red logo or news channels with red news ticker boxes, as you would see red items shift up and then down again every once in a while while the rest of the picture remained in place/sync.

Now I saw this with my desktop scaled to 1080i 25hz with no overscan correction as I thought less processing would give better picture quality at the time.
But one day I decided to try the overscan correction in ccc and all of the sudden I had a much sharper picture on my 50" plasma (DVI) and most important the red shift has disappeared since that day no matter what I play in my HTPC.
I'm not sure exactly why, or if this would influence any others with this issue, but I suspect a hardware bug in the R(ed) vertical sync is causing this on some, but not necessarily all displays and HDTVs at different vsync rates.

This is just my 10-cent, Im far from an expert in this area.

I'm using:
HD 2600XT
7.10 + all reg. hacks
AVIVO MPEG2 decoder.
Vector adaptive DI.
VMC for playback
Connection to TV is DVI @ 1080i 25hz with overscan correction: 1832x1028.

ExDeus

10-15-07, 12:07 PM

Has anyone else had problems with PowerDVD causing a BSoD on ativvaxx.dll? ... Seems to be ok windowed but as soon as I go fullscreen with powerdvd it blue-screens...
Have you used my program to apply arfster's registry tweaks? Perhaps it's related to VForceMaxResSize not being set.

ExDeus

10-15-07, 12:11 PM

Hi, I read about enabling the Catalyst drivers for AGP versions of the cards ... Hacking the .inf files doesn't work her.

Anyone succeeded?

What happens when you try to install? Someone else contacted me about tweaking the INF file, but they were getting a 'Not enough space to install' error. I don't know what that error's about, but the change to the INF file is simply to allow the driver to support your card, so it only fixes a 'This card not supported' error.

ryang

10-15-07, 01:45 PM

Kinda solved the problem:

I installed the PDVD decoder as the 3rd mpeg decoder on the system (MS, AVIVO then PDVD), and now VMC will jump to the PDVD decoder for DVD instead of giving an error message, when AVIVO is preferred decoder.

But I would still have preferred to have VMC jump to the MS decoder as I don't really like PDVD (and all its bugs). I suspect it has something to do with the merrits of the decoders, but I can't figure out why VMC is behaving like this.

I agree; I wanted avivo to handle everything except dvds which I wanted the MS decoder to take care of. I didn't want any extra decoders clogging up my HTPC. You're right, it does have to do with the merits of the decoders. This is how I got it to work:

You'll need the following:
DSFMgr.zip (You'll need to google it)
DECCHECK (From Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DE1491AC-0AB6-4990-943D-627E6ADE9FCB&displaylang=en))
VMCD.exe (http://mediacenterexpert.blogspot.com/2006/07/vista-media-center-decoder-utility.html)

1) Remove any decoders you don't want on the system (NVidia, PowerDVD)
2) Download DSFMgr.zip (I had to google it to find it)
3) Extract and run DSFMgr.exe
4) Find the Microsoft MPEG2 Video Decoder and click "Show Filter Properties"
5) Set the filter merit as high as it will go and click "Set New Merit"
6) Close that window
7) Find the Microsoft MPEG1/DD Audio Decoder and do the same as above
8) Close that window and exit the program
9) Open DECCHECK.exe and the Microsoft Video Decoder should be at the top of the list and the ATI Decoder right below it. If not, repeat the steps above.
10) Set the ATI decoder as the preferred decoder in DECCHECK.exe
11) Open VMCD.exe and choose the ATI decoder as the preferred video decoder and Microsoft MPEG1/DD decoder as the preferred audio decoder. Close it.
12) Open DECCHECK.exe and set the Microsoft Video Decoder as the preferred decoder. Close it.
13) Just to check, open up VCMD.exe and verify that the ATI decoder is the preferred video and Microsoft MPEG1/DD is the preferred audio decoder.
14) Now open up VMC and you should be able to view ATSC with no green screens and DVDs w/o the dreaded "Decoder Error".

I've found that if the Nvidia decoder or other dvd decoders are installed, they interfere with the dvd burning in vista. This allows me to compress and burn without any problems. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

ryang

mike infinity

10-15-07, 02:41 PM

Thanks, but the problem is that I no longer have a physical device to load the drivers against. .

I had to reboot my machine, enter cmos before startup, and re-enable the on board audio from there. After a re-boot, vista could now see the realtek audio device again.

mike infinity

10-15-07, 02:49 PM

I'm using:
HD 2600XT
7.10 + all reg. hacks
AVIVO MPEG2 decoder.
Vector adaptive DI.
VMC for playback
Connection to TV is DVI @ 1080i 25hz with overscan correction: 1832x1028.

I get stuttery playback with this same setup (except the TV is 1080i at 30Hz with overscan correction)....especially on camera pans, etc. I have to use 720p to get decent playback with any player (especially powerdvd with HW accelerated h.264 material).

Is it just me?

Gaizka

10-15-07, 02:51 PM

Hi,

I have try anything: reinstall Windows XP, install Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.. but not hw acceleration in H264 content.

My CPU is Atlon XP 2000+ with 1Gb of RAM and 2400 Pro AGP version.
PowerDVD Ultra patched and drivers on 7.7 package.

Avivo accelaration checked on powerdvd but dxva "not in use" in information tab.

100% CPU usage and 20-30% GPU at 525Mhz on H264 movie trailers for example

I think we need BIOS update for this cards

Regards

nstelmach

10-15-07, 05:27 PM

I agree; I wanted avivo to handle everything except dvds which I wanted the MS decoder to take care of. I didn't want any extra decoders clogging up my HTPC. You're right, it does have to do with the merits of the decoders. This is how I got it to work:

You'll need the following:
DSFMgr.zip (You'll need to google it)
DECCHECK (From Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DE1491AC-0AB6-4990-943D-627E6ADE9FCB&displaylang=en))
VMCD.exe (http://mediacenterexpert.blogspot.com/2006/07/vista-media-center-decoder-utility.html)

1) Remove any decoders you don't want on the system (NVidia, PowerDVD)
2) Download DSFMgr.zip (I had to google it to find it)
3) Extract and run DSFMgr.exe
4) Find the Microsoft MPEG2 Video Decoder and click "Show Filter Properties"
5) Set the filter merit as high as it will go and click "Set New Merit"
6) Close that window
7) Find the Microsoft MPEG1/DD Audio Decoder and do the same as above
8) Close that window and exit the program
9) Open DECCHECK.exe and the Microsoft Video Decoder should be at the top of the list and the ATI Decoder right below it. If not, repeat the steps above.
10) Set the ATI decoder as the preferred decoder in DECCHECK.exe
11) Open VMCD.exe and choose the ATI decoder as the preferred video decoder and Microsoft MPEG1/DD decoder as the preferred audio decoder. Close it.
12) Open DECCHECK.exe and set the Microsoft Video Decoder as the preferred decoder. Close it.
13) Just to check, open up VCMD.exe and verify that the ATI decoder is the preferred video and Microsoft MPEG1/DD is the preferred audio decoder.
14) Now open up VMC and you should be able to view ATSC with no green screens and DVDs w/o the dreaded "Decoder Error".

I've found that if the Nvidia decoder or other dvd decoders are installed, they interfere with the dvd burning in vista. This allows me to compress and burn without any problems. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

ryang

I actually figured it out yesterday and posted an update to one of my initials posts 3 hours ago hehe;), but I must say this is a great summary for others who want a simple and clean codec setup in VMC. Good work man!

I must say with my setup I'm close to perfection for TV, DVD and XVID/DIVX, but then again I haven't really started on the whole BD/HD DVD thingy yet...

robgrobg

10-15-07, 05:55 PM

I had to reboot my machine, enter cmos before startup, and re-enable the on board audio from there. After a re-boot, vista could now see the realtek audio device again.

Hmm, thanks for the tip. Not sure if I checked that first time around or not. Would seem strange that it would get disabled automatically, but I guess stranger things have happened. thx... -Rob

Holy crappolla!!! It worked! Thanks a ton, eh!!! I'll tell you how I missed it the first time thru... the default setting in the BIOS for the on-board audio is "AUTO", and I figured "good enough". Obviously when the BIOS detects the HDMI device it then decides to disable the on-board sound. I changed it to "ENABLED" and order is restored.

You guys rock. Thanks to all for the tips... especially that last one. :-)

sosuke3

10-15-07, 10:27 PM

Have you used my program to apply arfster's registry tweaks? Perhaps it's related to VForceMaxResSize not being set.

Just tried it. Still bluescreens.

s174955

10-16-07, 01:33 AM

To my question on hacking the .inf Catalyst files for installing AGP cards:

What happens when you try to install? Someone else contacted me about tweaking the INF file, but they were getting a 'Not enough space to install' error. I don't know what that error's about, but the change to the INF file is simply to allow the driver to support your card, so it only fixes a 'This card not supported' error.

I don't get an error, after hardware detection, the installation just only allows me to install the 'catalyst install manager'.

Gaizka

10-16-07, 04:09 AM

For AGP version, catalyst 7.9 and 7.10 drivers need .inf file modifications.
I have install 7.9 and 7.10 on windows XP SP2 correctly but overdrive does not work and can't overclock the card.

mefromfl

10-16-07, 06:43 AM

digitlman

10-16-07, 11:35 AM

I am glad that ATI has finally admitted theres issues with getting software to play h264 with avivo acceleration working on AGP cards.

However i just wanted to re-interate to people that the AGP cards do accelerate hd-dvd and bluray movies, VC1 and Mpeg4-AVC both play flawlessly on my agp card in XP with my old slow 1.8ghz cpu i have 15%cpu on vc1 and higher 60-80% on 35mbit AVC.

even though powerDVD accelerates movies perfectly it does not do any file acceleration.

this is simply a software issue that there are no programs out there that use avivo on H264 files. at least none that i can find....

BertM

10-16-07, 11:59 AM

Arfster:

Here's the example of the colour shift issue, from screenshot you made earlier this year.

I think this clearly shows the problem.

regards, Bert

wozio

10-16-07, 02:34 PM

BertM:

Are you sure this is red shift? For me it looks like strong edge enhancement.

regards
Piotr

mjcumming

10-16-07, 03:31 PM

ExDeus

10-16-07, 05:49 PM

Hmm, maybe another issue: the behaviour appears to be different on 50Hz and 60Hz source material. I live in 50Hz land, were of course no pulldown is ever needed.
Arfster:

Here's the example of the colour shift issue, from screenshot you made earlier this year.

I think this clearly shows the problem.

regards, Bert
BertM:

Are you sure this is red shift? For me it looks like strong edge enhancement.

regards
Piotr
Yeah, I'm sure it's red-shift I'm seeing with my setup. It's clearly related to framerate detection, and it's not nearly as slight as in those screenshots. I will try to get a screenshot of my own.

I tested 480i NTSC video (29.97fps) content with pulldown detection ON, and I saw huge, intermittent flashes of red-shift. I turned pulldown detection OFF, and I saw normal playback without red-shift.

I haven't seen the same effects on 1080i content, but for the most part I watch telecined film content requiring pulldown, whereas the video content just needed simple deinterlacing.

Changing deinterlacing methods or turning auto on didn't affect the red-shift. So as reported before, when using NTSC material, it appears to be caused by pulldown detection.

ExDeus

10-16-07, 05:59 PM

For AGP version, catalyst 7.9 and 7.10 drivers need .inf file modifications.
I have install 7.9 and 7.10 on windows XP SP2 correctly but overdrive does not work and can't overclock the card.
For Vista, the INF file requires modification to work for AGP cards.

For XP, the INF file and two INI files require modification.

Did you modify the INI files to make sure all driver components were installed correctly?

ExDeus

10-16-07, 06:04 PM

Hi, I just upgraded to the latest driver for the my 2600hd, When i use spdif on powerdvd, my video is moving very slowly, like frame skipping. When i don't use spdif on my powerdvd then video plays fine. I don't know if this a ati driver issue or powerdvd. I have reinstalled powerdvd and still same result, i'm using powerdvd 7.3.3 What is the best software for playing dvd by the way?
Did you install the HDMI audio driver? If you want to use SPDIF, it's best not to have the HDMI audio device.

Either way, make sure in Device Mgr, under 'System devices', the Microsoft UAA Bus Driver is disabled. When it was enabled, I had numerous hardware interrupts that consumed all available CPU cycles.

I prefer PowerDVD for HD-DVD/DVD playback.

ExDeus

10-16-07, 06:29 PM

even though powerDVD accelerates movies perfectly it does not do any file acceleration.

this is simply a software issue that there are no programs out there that use avivo on H264 files. at least none that i can find....
Not sure what you mean by 'use avivo on H264 files'. If you mean a DirectShow player that will use the AVIVO H264 decoder, then any DS player will do, you just need a file that reports "H264" as the FourCC. The AVIVO decoder does not support "avc1", "h264", or "x264" FourCCs. avc1 is the most common FourCC for H264, and MKV files, by default, don't report a FourCC because they use an internal CodecID. Try an AVI file with a FourCC of "H264".

On a related note, I have gotten DXVA to work with the Cyberlink decoder for (some) MKV and TS files, though only TS in PowerDVD.

ExDeus

10-16-07, 06:45 PM

Hi all,

I have the 2600XT. I am trying to get an image to show up on my Westy 37" LCD via HDMI without any luck.... :(

VGA works without any problem. Trying HDMI, Vista and the ATI Control Panel see the Westy (or if I run it via my Denon AMP HDMI for switching). But there is no image showing up. Do I need the ATI HDMI adapter... or will a DVI to HDMI cable work (what I am trying now).

Also, does audio work over HDMI using Vista?
If you are using two displays, go into the CCC and make both are enabled in the Display Mgr (right-click on the monitor icon and select Enable, if not).

If you only have the Westy connected, make sure you have the HDMI input for the PC selected on the TV and reboot the computer. The ATI card will detect the connected displays, and for some TVs/swicthes, the correct input needs to be selected while booting to Windows and logging in.

If you want audio over HDMI, then you will need the ATI HDMI adapter. Vista will have the required HD Audio bus driver, but you will need to install the HDMI audio driver. If you just want video, then any DVI->HDMI adapter will do.

tinners

10-16-07, 06:48 PM

Sorry for being a bit stupid but I am pretty new to this game. (Hence this is my first ever post :))

I am trying to get ripped m2ts movie files from my Bluray discs to play in my directshow player (eventually MCE but currently just trying Media Player Classic).

I have applied the reg tweaks (thanks!) and want to know if there's a way to ensure my 2400XT accelerates the file playback. I have a mix of VC1, Mpeg2 and Mpeg4

I have been using the instructions here
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=129030

But am just getting the following:
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/4427/vc1kb4.th.jpg (http://img142.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vc1kb4.jpg) http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/3834/mpeg4jg7.th.jpg (http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpeg4jg7.jpg) http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/4023/mpeg2bc1.th.jpg (http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpeg2bc1.jpg)
Thanks

ToughRowToHoe

10-16-07, 11:08 PM

Yeah, I'm sure it's red-shift I'm seeing with my setup.

I have red shift also.

speedyrazor

10-17-07, 01:36 AM

Hi, I have just purchased an ATI HD 2400 PCI-E graphics card for use on my Media Centre, Mediaportal, PC and my 32" HD ready LCD. As I am in the UK I want my ATI graphics card to output either 720p50 or 108025i, unfortunatley I only have the option to select either 720p60 or 108030i. So I opened a support ticket with ATI and this was their response:

"Unfortunately, the driver only has support for 720p60 and 1080i30. Please provide feedback to the Catalyst Team to request a feature for future releases of the catalyst driver."

This, quite frankly, STINKS. I don't rea;;y want to go down the Powerstrip road, I only want 720p50 or 108025i support from within ATI control panel. Could somebody post a tweak of some kind to enable this feature please?

Kind regards,
Kev.

karrih

10-17-07, 10:25 AM

This, quite frankly, STINKS. I don't rea;;y want to go down the Powerstrip road, I only want 720p50 or 108025i support from within ATI control panel. Could somebody post a tweak of some kind to enable this feature please?

At least I am using 720p50 mode with Sapphire HD2400Pro. Can't recall doing anything special, there was some selection for 'partially supported modes' that I enabled, or perhaps it was forcing HDTV modes that did the trick for me.

digitlman

10-17-07, 10:52 AM

Not sure what you mean by 'use avivo on H264 files'. If you mean a DirectShow player that will use the AVIVO H264 decoder, then any DS player will do, you just need a file that reports "H264" as the FourCC. The AVIVO decoder does not support "avc1", "h264", or "x264" FourCCs. avc1 is the most common FourCC for H264, and MKV files, by default, don't report a FourCC because they use an internal CodecID. Try an AVI file with a FourCC of "H264".

On a related note, I have gotten DXVA to work with the Cyberlink decoder for (some) MKV and TS files, though only TS in PowerDVD.

when i said Avivo, i meant hardware acceleration. i can not play a h264 encoded or wmv9 file and have my 2600 card accelerate it.

if you have it working could you PLEASE share your settings with us?

arfster

10-17-07, 10:53 AM

Hi, I have just purchased an ATI HD 2400 PCI-E graphics card for use on my Media Centre, Mediaportal, PC and my 32" HD ready LCD. As I am in the UK I want my ATI graphics card to output either 720p50 or 108025i, .....

Using a Sagem 50hz 720p screen with cat7.7:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/921/clipboard01ke1.th.jpg (http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clipboard01ke1.jpg)

I've never had to do anything with any driver, it's just another standard resolution

BertM

10-17-07, 12:06 PM

BertM:

Are you sure this is red shift? For me it looks like strong edge enhancement.

regards
Piotr

It is red shift, or better colour shift (every colour is affected).

I am using overlay to watch video, so I can't take screenshots, but I can take some photo's...
Avivo.jpg is a shot from a German SD channel showing the colour shift.
ffdshow_chroma_shift.jpg is the same picture, but now with the earlier mentioned luma shift (vertical -2, horizontal -1) enabled.
The picture is of course awful due to screen resolution and camera resolution, but still the difference in colour shift is obvious.

We're talking 50Hz SD, 720*576i upscaled to 1920*1080p.
DXVA_DetailEnhance is enabled, Detail set to 1 on a scale of 1 - 100. But the effect is exactly the same with DXVA_DetailEnhance set to 0. TRDenoise set to 0, no picture enhancements on the TV.

ToughRowToHoe

10-17-07, 02:53 PM

It is red shift, or better colour shift (every colour is affected).

Just red on mine.

speedyrazor

10-17-07, 05:06 PM

OK, I changed the connection to my TV from VGA to HDMI and after a reboot all the PAL HDTV resolutions appeared..... so much for the ATI support, they know nothing.

ExDeus

10-17-07, 07:00 PM

It is red shift, or better colour shift (every colour is affected).
Just red on mine.
Just red here, too.

mdv

10-17-07, 07:31 PM

Which card do you have?

Mark

I am glad that ATI has finally admitted theres issues with getting software to play h264 with avivo acceleration working on AGP cards.

However i just wanted to re-interate to people that the AGP cards do accelerate hd-dvd and bluray movies, VC1 and Mpeg4-AVC both play flawlessly on my agp card in XP with my old slow 1.8ghz cpu i have 15%cpu on vc1 and higher 60-80% on 35mbit AVC.

even though powerDVD accelerates movies perfectly it does not do any file acceleration.

this is simply a software issue that there are no programs out there that use avivo on H264 files. at least none that i can find....

rotelmania

10-17-07, 07:45 PM

I asked this question few months ago but nobody answer my question yet. I would like to know if you can get the true HD or dtsHD audio when you connect the HDMI on the graphic card to a receiver that can decode trueHD or DTS HD signal?

Valnar

10-17-07, 08:10 PM

I usually don't do this, because I hate to be the newbie on any given topic, but this thread got too big to start from the beginning.

I just now bought an ATI (Sapphire) HD2600 Pro in AGP. This is to revitalize a P4 2.8Ghz Intel HTPC. My current card is an older ATI 9600 Pro running whatever release of ATI drivers that made the thing sing at the time. I use SageTV and TheaterTek normally, but bought the latest PowerDVD for the HD capabilities. It's running WinXP SP2.

Can somebody recap please the best drivers and/or mods to make this card work best in XP with hardware acceleration? I assume I would want to load the modified/corrected drivers from the beginning, so I'm asking now before putting the card in.

Thanks,
Robert

kk_nadella

10-18-07, 02:00 AM

Rick Guynn

10-18-07, 09:03 AM

h8redv2

10-18-07, 09:26 AM

mike infinity

10-18-07, 09:58 AM

I am trying to get ripped m2ts movie files from my Bluray discs to play in my directshow player (eventually MCE but currently just trying Media Player Classic). I have applied the reg tweaks (thanks!) and want to know if there's a way to ensure my 2400XT accelerates the file playback. I have a mix of VC1, Mpeg2 and Mpeg4

for my m2ts files (from a sony hd handycam), only powerdvd will accelerate the playback (and shows a huge improvement in video quality...perfectly smooth as long as my output is set to a progressive mode). I believe windvd will do the same.

Unless I am missing something (and i hope I am), there are no other programs that will use HW acceleration on these cards.

If someone can enable HW acceleration in MPC or other players (not just the avivo codec), I would really appreciate some guidance.

madshi

10-18-07, 10:43 AM

for my m2ts files (from a sony hd handycam), only powerdvd will accelerate the playback (and shows a huge improvement in video quality...perfectly smooth as long as my output is set to a progressive mode). I believe windvd will do the same.

Unless I am missing something (and i hope I am), there are no other programs that will use HW acceleration on these cards.

If someone can enable HW acceleration in MPC or other players (not just the avivo codec), I would really appreciate some guidance.
Using MPC here and it accelerates my h264 Blu-Ray and HD DVD rips just fine. Doesn't work for VC-1, though. And I haven't even bothered to check MPEG2 cause its a walk in the park for today's PCs, anyway.

gtgray

10-18-07, 10:50 AM

I have a question for ASUS EAH2600Pro owners... Have any one of you tried to connect it to a HDTV using a DVI-HDMI cable, successfully?

I have this wierd issue that I dont get any display until VISTA logon screen when I use a DVI-HDMI cable. But when I used the DVI-HDMI adapter provided with the card and a HDMI-HDMI, I am able to see all the messages right from the BIOS screen. Is this is a common problem with this card?

Thanks in advance,
Kiran.

I can't speak to the ASUS card but I had a very similar experience with an 8600GTS and my HP DLP... It would scramble the bios and text screens but make video in Vista. Even in Vista though it would not do 1920x1080P at 60HZ. It would do it at 50Hz which caused its own set of problems. I would check to see if you have the lates bios for your card. I had a 7600GT that worked fine in the bios screens and worked fine in XP but had the same issues with Vista as the 8600... so bios, drivers, os, and your particular TV set may all introduce compatability issues.

gtgray

10-18-07, 10:57 AM

I´m in 50 Hz land too and I´m getting this dreaded red color shifting.
Running a dvb-c card in my htpc, using vista and screen is 1080p @ 50hz.

Tried all kinds of deinterlacing none makes any difference.

Can someone elaborate why changing to 24p and watching a hd-dvd I experience judder every 2 seconds ?

When switching to 24p. I can see the mouse becomes a bit slow in it´s reactions, when panning across the desktop.

But movie playes fine, exept the occasional juder.

Does 24hz require extra horsepower ?

Intel 3.4 Ghz, 2GB DDR2, ATi HD2600xt

It could be an issue with the implementation of 24P on your particular display. My HP DLP gets some tearing and judder when fed 24P a supposedly supported frequency. I have not tried 48P as I am not quite sure how to go about implementing that with the ATI drivers. I have seen 50hz and that did weird judder things and I know my diplay is pal compliant.

gtgray

10-18-07, 11:06 AM

mike infinity

10-18-07, 12:01 PM

Using MPC here and it accelerates my h264 Blu-Ray and HD DVD rips just fine.

I can't get this to work with my h.264 mt2s handycam files (get 80%+ cpu using mpc and juddery playback when panning). The Cyberlink pdvd acceleration works flawlessly on the same files (less than 5% cpu, buttery smooth playback at all times).

I am uncertain if MPC is accelerating other file formats, but because it doesn't work with my h.264 m2ts files I figure its decoding is SW only.

Any advice on MPC settings? I have tried everything I can think of to enable hw accelrated playback...nothing yet

kk_nadella

10-18-07, 01:08 PM

I can't speak to the ASUS card but I had a very similar experience with an 8600GTS and my HP DLP... It would scramble the bios and text screens but make video in Vista. Even in Vista though it would not do 1920x1080P at 60HZ. It would do it at 50Hz which caused its own set of problems. I would check to see if you have the lates bios for your card. I had a 7600GT that worked fine in the bios screens and worked fine in XP but had the same issues with Vista as the 8600... so bios, drivers, os, and your particular TV set may all introduce compatability issues.

Glad to hear that you are getting atleast something!! The problem I am facing is that I dont get any BIOS display at all. It is totally blank until I see the login screen. I dont even see the Windows Energy logo just before the login screen comes up. :mad: But after it comes up, I was able to everything (1080p, 720p) etc...

I have checked out Asus site for BIOS updates to the card. None available. (May be thats why there is a $10 rebate on the card!). Prior to this I had a sapphire 2400 pro, which worked just fine with the DVI-HDMI cable I mentioned in my previous post. I am beginning to wonder if ASUS is using some kind proprietary interface, which works only with the supplied ATI DVI-HDMI adapter.

I have even updated the BIOS on my MB... No use... The card (EAH2600Pro) refuses to show BIOS prompts with a DVI-HDMI cable. Which makes me wonder if there are differences in DVI-HDMI cables itself... Like may be 1.1 1.2 1.3...

madshi

10-18-07, 01:10 PM

I can't get this to work with my h.264 mt2s handycam files (get 80%+ cpu using mpc and juddery playback when panning). The Cyberlink pdvd acceleration works flawlessly on the same files (less than 5% cpu, buttery smooth playback at all times).

I am uncertain if MPC is accelerating other file formats, but because it doesn't work with my h.264 m2ts files I figure its decoding is SW only.

Any advice on MPC settings? I have tried everything I can think of to enable hw accelrated playback...nothing yet
It's not MPC or PowerDVD which is doing the acceleration. It's the h264 decoder you're using. Please check which h264 decoder MPC is using on your PC. Try adding the PowerDVD h264 decoder to the "external filters" setting and set it to "preferred".

kk_nadella

10-18-07, 01:31 PM

Is it just me or does the CPU usage actually go down when one makes a switch from HD2400 to HD2600 (for playing WMV VC-1 content)?

I have an E2140 running @2.4Ghz. Earlier (with 2400 + 7.10 + Vista + arfster's tweaks) I observed that my CPU usage used to hit the roof (90-95%). Now I recently swapped it out with an EAH2600pro and now I see the CPU usage hovering in the 50-60% range for the same WMV VC-1 content!!

mike infinity

10-18-07, 02:03 PM

Try adding the PowerDVD h264 decoder to the "external filters" setting and set it to "preferred".

I did this (in fact, I had done it some time ago). Still getting no HW acceleration from MPC. At least thats what I assume since powerdvd gives me <5% cpu and smooth playback on mt2s from my HD video camera while MPC gives me 60%+ cpu and juddery playback on exactly the same files.

I have just installed a gigabyte 2600xt to replace my 2400pro. I still get the same jittery playback whenever the card is set to 30i output regardless of the player/codec.

Any ideas?

arfster

10-18-07, 02:23 PM

ExDeus

10-18-07, 02:44 PM

when i said Avivo, i meant hardware acceleration. i can not play a h264 encoded or wmv9 file and have my 2600 card accelerate it.

if you have it working could you PLEASE share your settings with us?

Unless I am missing something (and i hope I am), there are no other programs that will use HW acceleration on these cards.

If someone can enable HW acceleration in MPC or other players (not just the avivo codec), I would really appreciate some guidance.

Can somebody recap please the best drivers and/or mods to make this card work best in XP with hardware acceleration? I assume I would want to load the modified/corrected drivers from the beginning, so I'm asking now before putting the card in.
DXVA will work for H264 with the AVIVO or Cyberlink decoders in a DirectShow player, but not necessarily on all files encoded with all codecs. Perhaps Sony AVCHD files cause issues similar to some x264 files, preventing DXVA.

No special magic for the HD2600 (I never got the HD2400 to work):

Download drivers. I have had good luck so far with the ATI 7.10 drivers. DXVA works and I haven't had any VPU crashes when browsing the web (which previously was a persistent problem). If you need to install them for an AGP card, see my page (http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/#AGP) for instructions on how to edit the driver package. Download ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks as well, and run it after you install the driver but before you reboot.

Set your DS player to use your chosen decoder. Brief instructions for MPC were posted above, I posted instructions for ZoomPlayer (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11772733#post11772733) where I added the AVIVO, Cyberlink, MainConcept and Nero decoders.

madshi

10-18-07, 02:44 PM

I did this (in fact, I had done it some time ago). Still getting no HW acceleration from MPC. At least thats what I assume since powerdvd gives me <5% cpu and smooth playback on mt2s from my HD video camera while MPC gives me 60%+ cpu and juddery playback on exactly the same files.

I have just installed a gigabyte 2600xt to replace my 2400pro. I still get the same jittery playback whenever the card is set to 30i output regardless of the player/codec.

Any ideas?
My first idea would be that you read my comment again and answer all my questions... :) E.g. you didn't answer this one:

"Please check which h264 decoder MPC is using on your PC."

Having the PowerDVD decoder setup as preferred doesn't guarantee that it's really used.

Furthermore as arfster said, you need to use EVR in Vista. In XP hardware acceleration also works with VMR9 (that's what I'm using). Also make sure the hardware accerelation is activated in the Cyberlink h264 decoder inside of MPC.

Valnar

10-18-07, 02:51 PM

DXVA will work for H264 with the AVIVO or Cyberlink decoders in a DirectShow player, but not necessarily on all files encoded with all codecs. Perhaps Sony AVCHD files cause issues similar to some x264 files, preventing DXVA.

No special magic for the HD2600 (I never got the HD2400 to work):

Download drivers. I have had good luck so far with the ATI 7.10 drivers. DXVA works and I haven't had any VPU crashes when browsing the web (which previously was a persistent problem). If you need to install them for an AGP card, see my page (http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/#AGP) for instructions on how to edit the driver package. Download ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks as well, and run it after you install the driver but before you reboot.

Thanks for the reply. I'll try this all out tonight. 'Seems to simple for a 88 page thread. ;)

-Robert

ExDeus

10-18-07, 02:55 PM

ExDeus

10-18-07, 02:57 PM

Thanks for the reply. I'll try this all out tonight. 'Seems to simple for a 88 page thread. ;)

-Robert
It's taken 88 pages to make it that simple. ;)

kk_nadella

10-18-07, 03:04 PM

I would say DXVA wasn't working with the HD2400.

Did you mean I was not able to enable it in the 2400? or is it a problem with 2400 in general?

kk_nadella

10-18-07, 03:11 PM

Has anybody been able to use EVR Custom Spec successfully in MPC?

Even when I set the output to EVR Custom Spec or EVR (Vista / .Net), MPC ends up using VMR9 Renderless. I dont have a clue why this is happening!

EDIT: Now I know why... I thought I had replaced all copies of MPC 6.4.9.1 with MPC MC 1.0.11.0 but I didn't. I was playing the videos with MPC 6.4.9.1, which doesnt have support for EVR

mike infinity

10-18-07, 04:24 PM

If you're in Vista, you need to use EVR as the renderer for h264 acceleration. In PDVD that's the default so it would be working regardless.

Sorry if this has been done to death and I just can't find it...but how can set EVR as the default renderer in MPC or VMC or wmp?

I am using vista.

Thanks

arfster

10-18-07, 04:26 PM

Sorry if this has been done to death and I just can't find it...but how can set EVR as the default renderer in MPC or VMC or wmp?

I am using vista.

Thanks

In WMP EVR is always used, and I think in VMC also (can't test that though). In MPC you select it under options, playback/output, select EVR/Vista.

salajm

10-18-07, 04:46 PM

mike infinity

10-18-07, 05:00 PM

In WMP EVR is always used, and I think in VMC also (can't test that though). In MPC you select it under options, playback/output, select EVR/Vista.

I am using 6.4.9.1 MPC. I don't see an EVR/Vista option on the list in playback/output. I am also not getting HW acceleration for my m2ts h.264 files under vmc or wmp while it works for the same files in powerdvd.

topcaser

10-18-07, 05:03 PM

I have asked this before, now I am trying again.

Has anyone been able to fit a quiet 3rd party fand to an HD2600PRO? I tried to download the ATITOOL 0.27b beta as suggested earlier but this is a dead link. This Visiontek card has the loudest fan in my house short of my AC system which btw is rediculously loud.
I have got a Palit 2600XT and it is controlable via AITTool 2.7beta. google for this version. It is worth to search for it. Decrease the speed of the fan to 30% and it is not hearable anymore. Temps are reasonably at 65-67degrees then.

arfster

10-18-07, 05:24 PM

I am using 6.4.9.1 MPC. I don't see an EVR/Vista option on the list in playback/output. I am also not getting HW acceleration for my m2ts h.264 files under vmc or wmp while it works for the same files in powerdvd.

Ahh, sorry, you need a newer version. They're now called "MPC Home Cinema" in sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170561

If you're not getting acceleration in WMP it's probably not using the cyberlink h264 codec (PDVD almost always uses its own codecs, other apps might not). In MPC you can easily see what codec is in use, and force a particular one to be preferred.

The Jedi

10-18-07, 06:04 PM

I asked this question few months ago but nobody answered my question yet. I would like to know if you can get the true HD or dtsHD audio when you connect the HDMI on the graphic card to a receiver that can decode trueHD or DTS HD signal?
No.

So, looking at ATI's Support Knowledge Base, this page (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=28948) indicates that this audio is simply SPDIF. It supports two channel lossless PCM, or 5.1 channel AC3. F'n A, all this HDMI hype for nothing more than SPDIF. I guess yeah, it might be synchronized better using one cable, but that may be all there is to say about it. So they get us to buy it this year, and then next year (hypothetically) they'll come out with graphics cards with an actual approved 16-pin HDMI Audio link header to support what the motherboards have now.

I was looking at this Zotac brand of GeForce cards with the same kind of SPDIF through DVI through an HDMI adapter idea. (They can't even be found in the USA.) But I figured I needed to go with a Radeon HD to get the full Blu-Ray / HD-DVD audio support. I guess the Radeon really is no better.

I guess the state of PC high def disc audio is "maybe updated software will come out supporting it" and "maybe the nicer graphics cards will eventually support an HDMI audio link".

mike infinity

10-18-07, 06:47 PM

DXVA will work for H264 with the AVIVO or Cyberlink decoders in a DirectShow player, but not necessarily on all files encoded with all codecs. Perhaps Sony AVCHD files cause issues similar to some x264 files, preventing DXVA.

The Sony AVCHD files work like a charm under powerDVD in vista. As it does with powerDVD in xp on my nvidia 7800 gs agp card with purevideo HW acceleration.

mike infinity

10-18-07, 06:49 PM

Ahh, sorry, you need a newer version. They're now called "MPC Home Cinema" in sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170561

Thanks!

I tried it...now the CPU utilization is down to 5-10%...but the video is HORRIBLY choppy and full of what look like de-interlacing artifacts.

Mr.M

10-18-07, 07:08 PM

A cry for help to those of you in PAL land:

Are you all able to get perfect playback with hardware acceleration in interlaced SD at 50Hz in Vista Media Center? (for UK users, can you watch BBC News 24 or Sky News without the tickers jumping at all?)

I've never had any problems in XP MCE using the PowerDVD 7.3 decoder, but I can't do it for love nor money in Vista Media Center. I'm very worried that there's some issue with playback at 50Hz in Vista Media Center when using AVIVO, as I've got the same results with the MS, ATI and PowerDVD decoders.

I'm happy to leave Vista until I upgrade the card, but I'd like some reassurance that it works for you all with the newer generation!

pc1984

10-18-07, 07:24 PM

"Originally Posted by gtgray
I have asked this before, now I am trying again.

Has anyone been able to fit a quiet 3rd party fand to an HD2600PRO? I tried to download the ATITOOL 0.27b beta as suggested earlier but this is a dead link. This Visiontek card has the loudest fan in my house short of my AC system which btw is rediculously loud."

According to this site
http://www.quietpc.com/ie-en-eur/products/ati-vga
If you really want quiet, the Zalman VNF100 Fanless Heatpipe VGA Cooler fits.

You can see the cooler here:
http://www.quietpc.com/ie-en-eur/products/ati-vga/vnf100

mike infinity

10-18-07, 10:19 PM

Update:

I have finally resolved the HW acceleration and the AVCHD m2ts h.264 files with MPC. (with thanks to arfster). I'm sure this has been done before and posted here somewhere, but here it is:

I had to install the new MPC cinema and enable the vista/evr setting. I then had to set the deinterlacing in CCC to vector adaptive. It now works in MPC as it does in powerdvd.

The downside: Now MPC hangs when I try to playback .mkv files (for example). Back to the drawing board for that issue...talk about a convoluted world of codecs. Anyone else get this?

arfster

10-18-07, 10:26 PM

The downside: Now MPC hangs when I try to playback .mkv files (for example). Back to the drawing board for that issue...talk about a convoluted world of codecs. Anyone else get this?

That's a standard bug, unfortunately. It's not mkv as such that's the problem, but x264 - hardware acceleration of (almost all) x264 content either results in the 20fps bug, or a hang. The exact same thing happens with the Nvidia 8500 and 8600. Normal h264 content is fine.

Opinion is divided on whether this is a timing error with the powerdvd codec, or nonstandard encoding from x264. It's kinda hard to find out, because no codec other than PDVD's can do VLD h264 acceleration (ie total offload, as per the ATI 2400/2600 and Nvidia 8500/8600).

uzziel

10-18-07, 10:26 PM

mike infinity

10-18-07, 10:29 PM

This Visiontek card has the loudest fan in my house short of my AC system which btw is rediculously loud."

You should have a listen to the diamond 2600xt...you almost need ear protection like those guys use on the tarmac at the airport....way too annoying for HTPC (especially since the fan seems to always be at a maximum rpm, regardless of the application)

I returned mine and purchased the gigabyte 2600xt with the passive cooler...No noise at all (and it was cheaper).

Gaizka

10-19-07, 09:45 AM

Hi there,

i'll try Windows Media Classic with EVR/.net 3.
Remember i can't HW videos with h264 on my 2400Pro AGP card
I don't have Blueray nor HDDVD player so i just open Trailer Movies files.
My actuall configuration is: XP sp2 Powerdvd 7.3 Ultra patched

dicko2

10-19-07, 09:49 AM

I've scanned through this entire thread and to say I'm confused is an understatement.

Here's the situation.
I'm using vista Media Center primarily to watch OTA ATSC TV.
I bought a 2400pro card. Iworks OK, picture is far and away better quality than the 7900GT video board I used to use. However, it has de-interlace problems. Horrible combing whenever there's any kind of horizontal motion.

I'v ebeen trying to figure out how to turn hardware acceleration and read all about the DVXA_NOHDDECODE reg hack. Adding that key, in several places in the reistry did nothing for me. GPU is around 30% w & w/o the hack. Maybe there's more fluctuation in the reading with the hack in place.

So I decide the board isnt powerful enough and I buy a 2600xt. Low and behold I get the identical problem only it seems to be much worse with the more powerful card. Not to mention that the fan sounds like a jet engine. GPU is still around 30%.

So whats going on here?
How do I tell if hardware decoding is really enabled?
I see for the reghack that for the 2400 card the nohddecode entry is recommended, but for the 2600 it isnt. Does this mean the 2600 has it turned on by default?

As it stands now, interleave problems are killing me. any suggestions?

-dickm

Edit: I should haveadded that I'm using the ATI Avivo decoders. The microsoft decoder gives me the green screen problem.

Also, CPU loading is hanging at around 30% too, with or w/o the noddecode reg change.

mike infinity

10-19-07, 10:12 AM

I've scanned through this entire thread and to say I'm confused is an understatement.

I hear you...I will give you my 2 cents...hopefully others will chime in. It would be nice to have a single post that summarizes everything for the new card owner. I am still suffering from 'codec dysphoria', so I won't be of much help.

Others are sure to chime in...but I can tell you what I have pieced together:

However, it has de-interlace problems. Horrible combing whenever there's any kind of horizontal motion.

Check your software that you are using to display the video. If it passes the deinterlacing to avivo, then set the de-interlacing in avivo (via CCC) to vector adaptive.

GPU is around 30% w & w/o the hack. Maybe there's more fluctuation in the reading with the hack in place.

As I understand it, the 2400 doesn't do mpeg 2 acceleration. I believe broadcasters for DTV exclusively use mpeg2. Not that it matters, I find that SW decoders handle this adequately.

Not to mention that the fan sounds like a jet engine. GPU is still around 30%.

If you want a 2600 and can return your card, get the gigabyte version with the passive cooler (as long as your CPU case has adequate space).

How do I tell if hardware decoding is really enabled?

I have used CPU usage as well. I know when I am getting ~5% for mpeg4 that it is working. I havn't bothered much with mpeg2 video. But I want to give a couple of OTA HD stations a shot.

I hope that helps a little.

bluesy

10-19-07, 11:06 AM

arfster

10-19-07, 11:07 AM

I see for the reghack that for the 2400 card the nohddecode entry is recommended, but for the 2600 it isnt. Does this mean the 2600 has it turned on by default?

Yup. The exception is with 7.10, where the 2600 needs dxva_nohddecode=0 for HDmpeg2 acceleration also (possibly a bug, as they also seem to have broken bluray mpeg2 acceleration completely with 7.10).

Try using ex_deus script to set registry tweaks, you may be putting the tweak in the wrong place. See the link in my sig, there's a further link on there to the script.

Likely this is the source of all your problems, as without hardware acceleration, you get no hardware deinterlacing, and the picture suffers.

Edit: it is possible with ffdshow and bitcontrol to have hw deinterlacing without hw acceleration, but that's a little more complicated and frankly unnecessary for a 2600 owner. For 2400 owners it can be worth doing though if the card is maxxed out.

dicko2

10-19-07, 01:50 PM

So just how do I tell if the registry tweaks worked and hardware decoding is enabled? Will the GPU utilization go from its present 30% to something higher? Will the CPU utilization drop to below 30%?

-dickm

arfster

10-19-07, 01:58 PM

millerbrad

10-19-07, 03:02 PM

did anyone find a solution to the stereo (no 5.1 sound) problem?

after writing with Ati they concluded that i will only be able to get 5.1 sound from the hdmi if i connect it to a receiver, if you connect it to a tv then you will only get stereo.

Well if you ask me that is strange, since my tv (samsung m86) is able to take the surround sound from hdmi and use it in the stereo speakers or pass it through the audio out it has (toslink) to a receiver so i have the surround sound there.

So did anyone get 5.1 working when connecting the hdmi to a tv?

It won't work on my TV either. I have a Panasonic TH-58PX60U plasma. If I were to take a guess, I'd say the MPAA probably has a hand in this.

Basically, the only time my TV outputs 5.1 sound is when watching television through its own tuner. If I run any PCM multichannel source to the TV, the sound is downmixed to 2.0 when it comes out of the TV's toslink output. If I run AC3 multichannel sound to the TV, I get nothing.

If you want a solution, do what I did. Buy a second DVI-to-HDMI adapter from ATI and use two HDMI cables: one to your TV, and one to your receiver. As long as you're running the 7.7 Catalyst drivers, both audio & video will output simultaneously from both ports on the card (dual-HDMI was disabled starting with the 7.8 Catalysts). That way, you can watch your HTPC in 5.1 over HDMI.

If you never plan on watching TV with your receiver off, you could always just output sound from your motherboard's onboard sound with toslink.

EDIT: Just noticed that you said that your TV apparently passes 5.1 from external sources. Try installing the Realtek ATI HDMI Audio drivers, and make sure that you've enabled Dolby Digital and DTS compatibility in the Sound options in Control Panel. Also, make sure you have Media Center configured for 5.1 sound in Media Center's audio setup screens. Also, it's possible that your TV will only pass multichannel PCM from external sources, and not AC3, which is what this card outputs.

jim808

10-19-07, 05:59 PM

Just thought I'd post this for those looking for a passive cooling solution for HD 2x00 series card.

I have a sapphire HD 2400 pro. My temps ranged from 62-82. The heatsink is the biggest POS ever. I replaced the stock heatsink with Arctic Cooling's Accellero S2. Fits perfectly. Dropped my temps down to 34-45.

Just be careful if you have a PCI slot next to your PCIE, the heatpipes may get in the way due to higher height of the pci slot.

Wicked Klown

10-19-07, 11:02 PM

With the new 7.10 Cats, can you now center your desktop. Right now I'm running the 7.9 Cats and my dekstop is a little to the left and towards the top. If I scale it to get rid of the black bar on the right I lose most of my start button and all my X to close things out.

gtgray

10-19-07, 11:36 PM

augiedoggy

10-20-07, 12:22 AM

kk_nadella

10-20-07, 12:54 AM

I read somewhere in this thread that WMV acceleration is possible only in XP (not in Vista). Is that still true? (with 7.10 I mean)

Will setting DXVA_WMV_NA to 0 have any effect Vista at all?

kk_nadella

10-20-07, 06:03 AM

MPEG2 acceleration on the 2xxx series cuts the CPU usage a bit, but not greatly, whereas h264/vc1 chops to near-nothing. On faster processors it's not that obvious from cpu use whether mpeg2 acceleration is on or not.

Best way is to play some mpeg2 through MPC Home Cinema (google for it), set the renderer to evr, right-click on the playback window, filters, evr, pin info tab. Look down a few lines, if it's in software mode it'll say this:

Video: YUY2 1280x720 23.98fps

If it's in ahrdware mode it'll say something like this:

Video: DXVA 1440x1088 (16:9) 25.00fps

Hi arfster... I am unable to get acceleration work for WVC-1 content (in Vista or XP) using any driver set (7.7 7.9 or 7.10) and have been using your registry edits as well... I am just going nuts... re-installing OS's... Could you please post how one can get acceleration for WVC-1 content...? I also tried using MPC HC / EVR, as you suggested.

It always displays YV12 1920x1080 29.97 fps... Never DXVA...:(

ChuckKahn

10-20-07, 08:57 AM

The problem I am facing is that I dont get any BIOS display at all. It is totally blank until I see the login screen. I dont even see the Windows Energy logo just before the login screen comes up. :mad: But after it comes up, I was able to everything (1080p, 720p) etc...

I don't get any BIOS display either. This is with a Visiontek HD2600 Pro AGP in an ASUS A7N8X v2.0 deluxe motherboard. I didn't get any video at all until I installed the drivers that came with the card. (Which I did "blind" via a VNC connection to my computer.) Then Windows magically appeared on the screen after a long, dark reboot. (The only reason I knew I was booting up at all in this darkness was to see my USB devices light up -- mouse, soundcard, keyboard.)

Is upping the aperture a fix for this? The only way to make BIOS adjustments is to put in my old Radeon 9600SE card so I can see what I'm doing. (Unfortunately, BIOS can't be seen via a VNC connection.)

augiedoggy

10-20-07, 08:58 AM

well now that I installed the latest pdvd patch (3319) to watch transformers my hd channels no longer play in mediaportal as well as the recorded hd mpeg2 stuff so maybe the latest patch performed one of the registry hacks itself? These are the same results I had after performing the reg hacks and I had to system restore and reinstall my drivers to get it to work again....I really wish I new what I was doing when it comes to this vmr stuff...

kk_nadella

10-20-07, 01:37 PM

Is upping the aperture a fix for this? The only way to make BIOS adjustments is to put in my old Radeon 9600SE card so I can see what I'm doing. (Unfortunately, BIOS can't be seen via a VNC connection.)

Hi ChuckKahn... All I had to do to solve this problem was to use the ATI HDMI-DVI adapter supplied with the card. I am not sure about the aperture etc...

tman247

10-20-07, 04:44 PM

arfster

10-20-07, 05:42 PM

kk_nadella

10-20-07, 05:45 PM

arfster

10-20-07, 05:51 PM

Vista32, Cat 7.7 + driver tweaks in my sig, PDVD 3319. For media files I tend to use MPC in EVR mode, with the cyberlink codecs and ffdshow audio.

IanD

10-20-07, 11:52 PM

I've been running arfster's 7.7 cat's since I've had my 2600XT, and found them very reliable. I use them for OTA SD using VMC and blu-ray HD using PDVDU.

I'm loathed to change them because at the moment everything works. All HD is accelerated, and I get no crashes. I have noticed some AA (stepping) issues with the 7.7's though, and the pic is a little soft in SD.
I abandoned my 2400Pro for Nvidia in order to get 72Hz refresh readily without playing with utilities. However, whilst I had it, I noticed AA (stepping) issues and the pic did seem both soft and edge enhanced and there was some sort of dithering/posterisation happening with colours.

With Nvidia, I'm also noticing the same AA issues with an 8600GT and a 8400GS, but not a 7600GS. I'm not having the same PQ issues with Nvidia though as with ATI, but it has its own gremlins.

I can only conclude that it's PowerDVD creating the AA problem.

Hopefully that info will save others going on a wild goose chase with drivers trying to solve that particular problem.

I'm really curious why a 7600GS is the only graphics card I have used which doesn't suffer from AA issues in HA mode.

IanD

10-21-07, 12:00 AM

Hi arfster... I am unable to get acceleration work for WVC-1 content (in Vista or XP) using any driver set (7.7 7.9 or 7.10) and have been using your registry edits as well... I am just going nuts... re-installing OS's... Could you please post how one can get acceleration for WVC-1 content...? I also tried using MPC HC / EVR, as you suggested.

It always displays YV12 1920x1080 29.97 fps... Never DXVA...:(
Whilst I'm no longer using a 2400Pro, I discovered that the WMV9 decoder needs a registry setting changed to enable DXVA acceleration.

Have a look at: http://www.citizeninsomniac.com/WMV/ and download the WMV Powertoy: this utility provides a way to enable the registry setting in the WMV9 decoder to use DXVA acceleration.

I don't think the problem is a driver issue, but the fact that hardware acceleration has to be enabled in each software application that uses it (and WMV9 decoder is an application) rather than being a global setting in the driver. However, I expect there is a driver global setting to completely disable DXVA full stop.

ToughRowToHoe

10-21-07, 12:26 AM

If you want a 2600 and can return your card, get the gigabyte version with the passive cooler (as long as your CPU case has adequate space).

MSI has a passive heatpipe design on their 2600 XT that works pretty well. Same disclaimer, as long as your case has room. I like the MSI pipes. Because they take the heat to the other side of the card, the radiator is sitting in front of my case vent.

kk_nadella

10-21-07, 03:40 AM

Whilst I'm no longer using a 2400Pro, I discovered that the WMV9 decoder needs a registry setting changed to enable DXVA acceleration.

Thanks for the prompt reply! I tried enabling WMV acceleration in WMV Powertoy but itseems to have no effect :(

I remember someone mentioning that ATI still doesn't support WVC1 acceleration (only WMV3). May be that is the reason why I am unable to get the acceleration to work!

tman247

10-21-07, 06:23 AM

I've never upgraded from 7.7 on my HTPC. From 7.8 onwards they broke mpeg2 deinterlacing using the cyberlink decoder and EVR, which means PDVD can't deinterlace mpeg2 properly anymore. In 7.10 they broke mpeg2 Bluray acceleration as well.

Unless you have a specific need for a feature in the newer drivers, I'd say stick with 7.7.

Thanks arfster. Sounds like there's no good reason to 'upgrade' cat's at the moment then, and as ATI don't seem to be interested in fixing the broken features in later versions, I'll wait until they finally get their act together (8.x maybe).

Seems odd that even though the HD2400/2600 range are not really gaming cards, ATI just seem to concentrate full tilt on the fps performance of the 2900 series with their drivers, rather than the HD decoding abilities of the other cards. Didn't they even sub-title the 7.10's as 'shoot-em-up' drivers. Maybe we can hope a future version will be called 'hd-perfection' :) ATI are missing the boat a bit at the moment, and run the risk of alienating purchasers who bought these cards purely for decoding abilities.

On the subject of PDVDU, did you find the latest 3319 patch caused any issues? Sounds like a few people have problems with this. I'm still running 3104a, and it seems to work for most things. Are their any noticable improvements with 3319?

mefromfl

10-21-07, 06:43 AM

Is using the hdmi on the 2600 to output 5.1 sound better then using my azutech meriderin spidf to out put sound to my recieve? What do i have to setup to use the hdmi instead of my sound card to out 5.1 hdmi to my reciver?

arfster

10-21-07, 08:56 AM

Seems odd that even though the HD2400/2600 range are not really gaming cards, ATI just seem to concentrate full tilt on the fps performance of the 2900 series with their drivers, rather than the HD decoding abilities of the other cards.

Yeah, it's a bit lame. Unfortunately it looks rather like the 2400/2600 were made to fill a market niche and sell a few extra products, but driver support is made for the entire range as a whole - and that means a focus on gaming to the exclusion of all else.

On the subject of PDVDU, did you find the latest 3319 patch caused any issues? Sounds like a few people have problems with this. I'm still running 3104a, and it seems to work for most things. Are their any noticable improvements with 3319?

Some Bluray discs that didn't work with the older ones now work - new keys and BDJ support I guess. Unfortunately even if they don't add features or fix stuff we're all forced to upgrade eventually, cos older players will stop working or choke on new discs. The fact the update is on the aacsla site and yet not on Cyberlink's patch page says it all.

It didn't add any new features or fix other bugs afaicr though.

shepP

10-21-07, 10:53 AM

Help!

2400pro on a fresh install of mce 2005 xp with all rollups/updates etc.

As soon as I install the drivers and reboot it gets stuck on a BSOD and in an infinite loop due to a problem with ati2dvag. Only way to get back into XP is to go into safemode then remove all the ati software and driver, then reboot. Tried the newest drivers on a fresh install and the oldest drivers from the cd on a fresh install, all to the same result.

Even tried taking it out, cleaning and reseating it and moving the card next to it to another slot to give more air space.

The machine was running Vista, but I wiped it and want to back to XP MCE 2005 because vista was far to unstable. Prior to Vista the machine was running the same hardware with XP MCE 2005.

Any suggestions? I'm pulling my last two hairs out here!

Gaizka

10-21-07, 12:20 PM

Hi

I have XP and CCC 7.10 and i can't overclock to my 2400 pro since CCC 7.7 drivers.

When i move slider on overdrive setting and pick "test custom clock" the slider returns to 525mhz and i can't accept clock changes.

I try overclock the card with Ati Tool 0.27 beta 2 and same problem..

Any idea what is wrong?

originalsnuffy

10-21-07, 12:22 PM

Gaizka;

I have the exact same problem. I would like to hear from our experts on this issue also!

Rico66

10-21-07, 01:37 PM

Crash with 64 bit Vista.

I recently modified my HTPC (vista64 based) and added a 2600 pro card to my system (I was using 6150 based onboard previously). Everything seemed to work fine, with regards to installation. But that didn't last very long, as soon as I started watching 1080i based channels media center crashes pointing to a problem with atiumd6a.dll. The same happened with 1080i content in the 64 bit version of WMP, whereas the 32 bit version seems to work fine. 720p and SD content plays fine.

I was using version 7.10 and I also tried 7.9, but the crash happened with both.

Did anybody else notice such driver problems with 64 bit vista (and is there potentially a work around, besides using vista32 instead)?

madshi

10-21-07, 02:58 PM

A question to the experts:

The Avivo h264 decoder only accepts the H264 FourCC. Now I tried to workaround this limitation by "renaming" the FourCC through a little DirectShow filter in real time. It works a bit: The Avivo decoder now connects to Haali Media Splitter for h264 MKVs, Blu-Rays and EVOs. But playback stalls. Same with any other video decoder. If I change the FourCC from "avc1" to "H264" all the h264 decoders stall with playback. So seemingly those two formats really differ somehow? I originally thought they were identical - apart from the name, obviously.

Robert Simandl

10-21-07, 03:17 PM

ChuckKahn

10-21-07, 05:25 PM

Hi ChuckKahn... All I had to do to solve this problem was to use the ATI HDMI-DVI adapter supplied with the card. I am not sure about the aperture etc...

I don't have an HDMI connection on my LCD monitor, only DVI, so that wouldn't work for me.

PainBreak

10-21-07, 05:55 PM

New owner of an HD 2400 Pro...but I wouldn't preface it with the word "Proud."

I have a P4 2.8ghz, 1gb ram box, AGP only, no PCI-E, and I use it for SageTV, outputting to a projector with a native res of 1024x768 and a VGA/RGB input, no component or DVI, and run XP Pro. I'm in the US, so everything is NTSC/ATSC.

Before I bought the HD 2400 Pro, I was using a 7 year old Radeon VE, and in overlay mode with the MPEG2 codec from Cyberlink's PowerDVD 7.2 SD and HD was working smoothly, but I felt SD MPEG2 Picture Quality could have benefited greatly by hardware deinterlacing, as it appeared to me that Cyberlink's drivers were halving the vertical resolution on video and then doing a proper 3:2 pulldown on film.

Enter the ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro that was on sale at Best Buy last night. I'm never more pissed off at anything than when technology doesn't function as advertised, although in my profession as a technician, it helps me maintain employment. But damnit, I bought this card, and it's for me, at my house...so it should work perfectly, right?

First things first, I pop in the card and download the newest Catalyst drivers, 7.10. Oh, cool, ATI's drivers think that I don't actually have a card that these drivers can support. That's reassuring... So, I put in the CD, install the driver package, and it also installed the ATI MPEG2 codec and CCC. Cool... load up SageTV, switch it to VMR9, tell it to use the ATI MPEG2 codec, load up a standard def station...looks *awesome*. I'm happy. Switch to an OTA HD channel that does 720p...looks sweet! Switch to an OTA HD channel that does 1080i...and it's like watching a slideshow. I'm particularly sensitive to jerkiness/choppiness anyhow, but this is freaking awful. What's worse? The football game is on CBS today... Good thing I bought my dad's Christmas Present early...a 42" HDTV. Rabbit ears are on, the PQ's great, and the Chiefs are up 6-0 right now, but I'm so pissed off about my $110 purchase that I am splitting my valuable football time with reading forums about this piece of crap.

I dropped everything back to Overlay mode, which disables any sort of hardware deinterlacing, set it back to the Cyberlink codec, and it's worse than my 7 year old Radeon VE. 40% GPU, 35% CPU utilization, and it looks like I'm getting about 20fps. I used to think I had a pretty good grasp on how all of this stuff worked, inside and out...but now I'll be the first to admit that I can't figure out what the hell the problem is now. I've tried the registry tweaks to compensate for the drivers not jiving with the card's needs (What the hell, by the way?) and really haven't noticed any difference. Yes, I rebooted after applying them. I'm at my wit's end as far as this thing goes...it should have 100x the balls as a Radeon VE, but craps its pants.

Am I crazy in thinking that I should have zero problems with HD content with this system and card? Can someone tell me what I need to do in order to make it work like it's supposed to? What codecs work the best for MPEG2 with this card? Anything?

Thanks in advance...

arfster

10-21-07, 06:06 PM

Am I crazy in thinking that I should have zero problems with HD content with this system and card?

*points at 90 page thread.......* :D

AGP cards are the worst of the bunch too, they have a whole extra range of bugs. It seems ATI are making card makers do their own drivers for these, so the default 710s don't deliberately don't support them. Might be worth trying these:

http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/drivers.html

They're 7.10s made specifically for AGP, so might work.

originalsnuffy

10-21-07, 07:04 PM

I still have quite a few AGP machines in the house. Based on what I see going on here in this thread...there is no way I would "upgrade" to these cards.

PainBreak

10-21-07, 07:17 PM

*points at 90 page thread.......* :D

AGP cards are the worst of the bunch too, they have a whole extra range of bugs. It seems ATI are making card makers do their own drivers for these, so the default 710s don't deliberately don't support them. Might be worth trying these:

http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/drivers.html

They're 7.10s made specifically for AGP, so might work.

Ran the Catalyst Uninstall util from add/remove programs to uninstall all ATI BS.

Rebooted.

Installed the visiontek 7.10 driver.

Rebooted.

Tried 1080i Video, VMR9 style with Cyberlink Codec. Choppy, and my processor is spiked. Same thing for 720p. That sucks.

Installed AVIVO from visiontek's site, even though it says it's not for my card.

Set SageTV to ATI MPEG Decoder instead of Cyberlink. 720p is smooth as a baby's butt until the transparent program guide comes up...then it starts to choke. After letting it sit on the program guide for a bit, with the video running in the background, I started getting what initially looked like stream breakup...so I checked the signal quality, and it was just fine. Then I wondered...maybe the video card is overheating because it's spiking the GPU as well. Not sure of that, but I do know that when I exited the program guide, the 720p video is smooth as silk again.

Man, it looks nice... SD stuff looks nice, too.

Now, for 1080i... Switch it to "Football Night In America" on NBC...Oh, hell it looks like it's working fine, too...

Well, that certainly wasn't expected.

Thanks for the tip...it appears that everything is now working how it should, except for Sage's slow-assed transparent menus, but I don't think that's ATI's fault.

arfster

10-21-07, 08:57 PM

PainBreak

10-21-07, 09:46 PM

Well, I take back what I said about SD content... HD looks great (not perfect...scrolling tickers always scroll for about a second and a half, then chop, then scroll for a half second, then chop), but now SD has some pretty bad interlacing artifacts. It doesn't seem to make any difference which of the last three deinterlacing methods I choose in CCC (Adaptive, Motion Adaptive, Vector Adaptive), the artifacts are identical. This is very disappointing, because it should be doing *something*. I admit, I didn't test SD to much extent, and then ran the VBS that changes all of the registry settings for the 2400, so maybe the trdenoise needs turned back on...or something? I'm so frustrated with this.

Speaking about SageTV's slow-assed transparent menus...my processor sits at about 50-60% when I'm watching HD mpeg2s, and then spikes when I hit up the menus. I wouldn't think that 1080i MPEG2 decoding should take 60% of a P4 2.8ghz processor, particularly when it should be offloaded onto the video card. I'll continue with this until either I figure something out, or I give up, take the card back, and see how my integrated Intel video looks in Overlay mode.

If anyone from ATI is reading this...you're all a bunch of *******s. Just so you know.

arfster

10-22-07, 08:23 AM

AGP betas of 8.43 (aka next month's cat 7.11), Vista and XP:

http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/DOWNLOAD/8.43/

PainBreak

10-22-07, 09:13 AM

AGP betas of 8.43 (aka next month's cat 7.11), Vista and XP:

http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/DOWNLOAD/8.43/

Oh god damnit, just when I had convinced myself to box this piece of **** back up when I get home from work and take it directly back to the Best Buy returns desk, not passing go, and not collecting $200. $110 would have been nice, though.

I'll give these a shot when I get home, but I'm afraid the result will cause me to drink myself into a stupor, disallowing me to drive to Best Buy in order to return it.

Time will tell...

arfster

10-22-07, 09:17 AM

PainBreak

10-22-07, 02:32 PM

Hehe, I wouldn't expect them to do much for you tbh. Mpeg2 and 1080i problems with the 2400pro are kinda inevitable, it's a little short on shader power to do both (it does for 1080i h264/vc1 though, because those don't use the shaders for decoding).

A way past this is to use software decoding, with hardware deinterlacing - the only ones capable of this I know are Bitcontrol and ffdshow-tryouts (set output to interlaced/bob, then it passes it to the card for deinterlacing).

If you want to have a play with it and learn a bit more of the ins and outs, you may get it to work acceptably. FFDshow is free after all, and many of these experiements are documented in this thread. See the post in my sig for various witterings about this :-)

I tried the demo of Bitcontrol, but wasn't able to select it as a codec in SageTV, unfortunately. I set it as the highest priority for the directshow graph, and set it to default, but there's no feedback as to whether or not it's really using that codec. I assume it was, and it was working like crap...

I might check out FFDShow... I've had some luck with it in the past, but most of the time it was just horrible and pointless because libmpeg2, while free is pretty much worthless when compared to other codecs... If it can pass deinterlacing off onto the card, maybe it'll be the cool and smart.

Am I confused in thinking that the hardware deinterlacing on this card should be much, much better than any software deinterlacing available?

arfster

10-22-07, 02:35 PM

Am I confused in thinking that the hardware deinterlacing on this card should be much, much better than any software deinterlacing available?

Yeah, that's right. The deinterlacing on these cards is excellent, if you can get it working....

PainBreak

10-22-07, 02:41 PM

Yeah, that's right. The deinterlacing on these cards is excellent, if you can get it working....

I'll plug away at it tonight and let you know what I come up with. The H.264 decoding would be nice and all...except that I bought CoreAVC and it seems to do just fine, no matter what video card you throw into the mix. I guess if the H.264 content is interlaced, I'd be looking for a hardware solution....maybe.

Funny that if you search ffdshow-tryouts and interlaced/bob this thread shows up as a googlewhack of sorts.

ChuckKahn

10-22-07, 02:50 PM

I don't have an HDMI connection on my LCD monitor, only DVI, so that wouldn't work for me.

While I wait for Visiontek support to answer my email about my AGP HD2600 Pro, I've been looking through my motherboard's (asus a7n8x v2.0 deluxe) manual, wondering which BIOS settings would be relevant to my not seeing any display from DVI during BIOS boot up. Some possible candidates:

- "AGP Spread Spectrum" -- options are [Disabled][0.50%][1.00%]
- "Graphics Aperture Size" -- [32M] [64M] [128M] [256M] [512M]
- "AGP Frequency" [Auto] [50, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84 ,85 ,86, 87, 90, 93, 95, 97, 100MHz]
- "Video RAM Cacheable" - [Enabled] [Disabled]
- "AGP VDDQ Voltage" - [1.5V] [1.6V] [1.7V]
- "AGP 8x Support" [Enable] [Disable]
- "AGP Fast Write Capability" - [Enable] [Disable]
- "Primary VGA BIOS" - [PCI VGA Card] [AGP VGA Card]

With my old Radeon 9600SE AGP card, BIOS via DVI is displayed.

DPlettner

10-22-07, 03:01 PM

While I wait for Visiontek support to answer my email about my AGP HD2600 Pro, I've been looking through my motherboard's (asus a7n8x v2.0 deluxe) manual, wondering which BIOS settings would be relevant to my not seeing any display from DVI during BIOS boot up.My guess is that your display is supplying EDID info that causes the 2600 to use an unsupported resolution, but for some reason it worked with your 9600.

Try running Monitor Asset Manager (http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm), and post the results.

I have no problem seeing the BIOS/boot screens with an AGP HD2600 Pro connected to an HP MD5880n DLP.

-Dave

arfster

10-22-07, 03:30 PM

I'll plug away at it tonight and let you know what I come up with. The H.264 decoding would be nice and all...except that I bought CoreAVC and it seems to do just fine, no matter what video card you throw into the mix. I guess if the H.264 content is interlaced, I'd be looking for a hardware solution....maybe.

Oddly enough h264 will be easier for you (or should be, if AGP doesn't interfere). The decoding is done elsewhere, so the shaders aren't clogged up the way they are with mpeg2, leaving them free to do only deinterlacing.

Note that for European 1080i50 h264 you will definitely need the relevant registry tweaks in my sig, cos the 2400 has it disabled by default.

PainBreak

10-22-07, 04:19 PM

Maybe I'm some kind of retard, but I have no idea how to get ffdshow (grabbed the latest ffdshow-tryouts) to pass along the deinterlacing to my video card. I set it up to use libmpeg2 for decoding, set raw to all available, and it doesn't seem to matter which deinterlacing method I choose in ffdshow, it all causes the cpu to max out. With deinterlacing disabled, it'll do 1080i at 45-50% CPU. If you could tell me which settings I'm missing, that would be great... I assume your earlier comment about interlaced/bob was for Bitcontrol, because I don't find those options anywhere in ffdshow.

arfster

10-22-07, 04:28 PM

PainBreak

10-22-07, 05:12 PM

Sorry, was off the top of my head, forgot the exact details. You have to go to the ffdshow output tab, tick "set interlace flag" and set to bob, then above that tick NV12, untick all other colour types. In codecs, you don't need to set raw ( that's for using ffdshow as a postprocessor while other codecs do the decoding), just set mpeg2 on.

This way you get software mpeg2 decoding, but it passes the output to the card with the interlaced flag set in the stream. The card notices this, and does the necessary deinterlacing.

By the way, a useful tool is rivatuner, its monitor allows you to see how maxxed out your graphics card shaders are.

Rivatuner didn't work properly for me, as it didn't detect the driver version for the card, so most options weren't available. Probably something to do with it being a 2400 Pro and AGP...nothing seems to like it.

Can't we just petition everyone to knock it the hell off with trying to implement interlaced standards in a progressive world? I want to take whomever decided 1080i was a good idea, grab them by the neck, and shake them profusely until they admit that adopting interlaced standards is idiotic when the very technologies that your standards are dependent upon are the same ones that are moving away from raster scanning. Anyone with a boss understands, however, that the ones with the power to make the decision are also the ones who have no foresight...

If I had a brain, I would have recorded some heavy 1080i content last night (football, perhaps) so I could see how things are doing, because right now, on daytime TV, all of my 1080i stuff is pillarboxed upscaled 480p.

I turned it onto an SD channel and it had The Nightmare Before Christmas on it, and it looks pretty good...but I won't be doing any 1080i testing until this is over, as it caught the wife's attention...

At least football's in 720p tonight...

ricabullah

10-22-07, 05:19 PM

Sorry guys, but second time after 2400 , now 2600 XT is in the basket.
Neither PowerStrip, nor CCC could have fixed my overscan problem with 60Hz LG.
Plus pixelization and frame drops like 2400.
After half an hour i returned back to my 8600GTS (even can not fix 59 Hz problem, at least i can resize)
Roughly 220.000 reads, cause why?
Suppose?

PainBreak

10-22-07, 06:14 PM

The results weren't good with ffdshow-tryouts and 1080i. It introduced the kind of blocks that appear when the signal appears to be breaking up...you know, the green / blue blocks over half of the screen? It never produced a clean picture.

I'm back in Overlay mode using the Cyberlink driver. No reason to have this card anymore.

Is there any other affordable card that might be able to do hardware deinterlacing?

MikeSM

10-22-07, 06:26 PM

arfster

10-22-07, 07:13 PM

The results weren't good with ffdshow-tryouts and 1080i. It introduced the kind of blocks that appear when the signal appears to be breaking up...you know, the green / blue blocks over half of the screen? It never produced a clean picture.

Ahh well, that's the sign to give up. A lot of the 2400pros seem to do that - mine was overheating, others thought it was BIOS faults. The 2600pro doesn't seem to suffer from this, but it is a bit more expensive. Good side is that there are far less issues with it, as it's a lot more powerful, and the drivers don't disable so much by default.

The 8400GS or 8500GT are also possibles, but can you get them in AGP? Their deinterlacing also isn't as good as the 8600 or 2600 cards.

PainBreak

10-22-07, 08:31 PM

Ahh well, that's the sign to give up. A lot of the 2400pros seem to do that - mine was overheating, others thought it was BIOS faults. The 2600pro doesn't seem to suffer from this, but it is a bit more expensive. Good side is that there are far less issues with it, as it's a lot more powerful, and the drivers don't disable so much by default.

The 8400GS or 8500GT are also possibles, but can you get them in AGP? Their deinterlacing also isn't as good as the 8600 or 2600 cards.

I'm just about too afraid to try any other cards anymore... I'm using the onboard Intel Craptastic 500 or whatever the hell's onboard on my HTPC, didn't even bother popping in the Radeon VE, and sure enough, the Cyberlink drivers work just fine with 1080i HD video in overlay mode. It's still not "perfect", but it's better than anything that 2400 produced in VMR9. 720P looks freaking beautiful, just like it should.

Where can you score a 8400GS for $29?

SpHeRe31459

10-22-07, 09:11 PM

My HTPC is still using a Radeon 9800 Pro AGP with an ATI DVI-to-component dongle since my HDTV has only component inputs.

I'm looking at this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129096

Will this card output 1080i component video somehow? With or without my existing component dongle, as long as I can get it to work.

Input here appreciated.

Thanks!
The old dongle you have was only for specific models from the 9700/9800 era so it won't work with a newer card. But the good news is that most new cards come with a breakout cable. That card for some reason didn't, and you can never be sure that a vendor properly enabled the component breakout abilities of the video out port if they didn't include the cable.
This card for example does have it and is a better performing part (the 2400 series is quite the underpowered card for HD material): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102709
Note that I don't think anyone here would call the stock cooling on the cards quiet.

Also take heed of all the AGP issues the HD 2x00 series seems to be having, you may want to sit on things for a while more while issues are resolved.

ausvette

10-22-07, 09:45 PM

Thought I'd follow my own advise and try these, which are slightly ahead of the official 7.10s. Anyway, looks like they fixed the 2600 Bluray mpeg2 problems that they created in the officials.

Also accidentally noticed that trdenoise, when on (as it is by default), only seems to do anything with interlaced content, and only when vector or motion adaptive deinterlacing are on. Good on both counts. I don't know if this is a recent development, will check later on my main 7.7 setup. Maybe time for a rehabilitation of trdenoise, I have a hunch it's improved recently. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it....

Probably a really dumb question but do these visiontek drivers work on PCI-E cards ?

Thanks,
Dave.

markmonn

10-22-07, 10:24 PM

Another question about sound over HDMI. I've scanned this thread but haven't seen anything similar to my problem...

I have an HD2600XT card made by Diamond in my HP box running XP Pro SP2 and CCC 7.10. It works well for outputting 1080i HD to my Viewsonic over HDMI but I can't get the sound over HDMI to work. I get stereo from the onboard Realtek system but none from the HDMI link. I'm using the ATI DVI->HDMI adapter. I don't see anything about an ATI sound device in the device manager. Shouldn't there be something there? Nothing shows in the Sounds and Audio Devices in the control panel, either, only the Realtek. Any ideas why it doesn't show up? Also, do I need the Microsoft UAA hidef audio drivers? I explicitly loaded the ATI hidef audio driver and it appears to load (at least there are no errors displayed) but nothing shows up anywhere that indicates there's an ATI audio device. I really don't care about 5.1, 2 channel audio to the TV would be fine.

arfster

10-22-07, 10:35 PM

Probably a really dumb question but do these visiontek drivers work on PCI-E cards ?

They have PCI-E versions of 7.10 which are slightly ahead of the official 7.10. They've also got a beta of the 7.11, but only for AGP. Just hunt around their site, it's all there.

ChuckKahn

10-22-07, 11:03 PM

My guess is that your display is supplying EDID info that causes the 2600 to use an unsupported resolution, but for some reason it worked with your 9600.

Try running Monitor Asset Manager (http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm), and post the results.

Monitor
Windows description......... Dell 2405FPW (Digital)
Manufacturer description.... DELL 2405FPW
Manufacturer................ Dell
————————————————————————————
Plug and Play ID............ DELA010
Serial number............... T613359J189S
EDID data source............ I2C bus (real-time)
————————————————————————————
Manufacture date............ 2005, ISO week 39
EDID revision............... 1.3
Display type and signal..... Digital
Sync input support.......... n/a
Screen size................. 520 x 330 mm (~26")
Power management............ Standby, Suspend, Active off/sleep

Color characteristics
Display gamma............... 2.20
Red chromaticity............ Rx 0.640 - Ry 0.330
Green chromaticity.......... Gx 0.300 - Gy 0.607
Blue chromaticity........... Bx 0.149 - By 0.060
White point (default)....... Wx 0.313 - Wy 0.328

Timing characteristics
VESA GTF support............ Not supported
Horizontal scan range....... 30-81kHz
Vertical scan range......... 56-76Hz
Video bandwidth............. 170MHz
Extension blocks............ n/a
Timing recommendation #1.... 1920x1200 at 60Hz
Modeline................ "1920x1200" 154.000 1920 1968 2000 2080 1200 1203 1209 1235 +hsync -vsync

Standard timings supported
640 x 480 at 60Hz - IBM VGA
640 x 480 at 75Hz - VESA
720 x 400 at 70Hz - IBM VGA
800 x 600 at 60Hz - VESA
800 x 600 at 75Hz - VESA
1024 x 768 at 60Hz - VESA
1024 x 768 at 75Hz - VESA
1152 x 864 at 75Hz - VESA
1280 x 1024 at 60Hz - VESA
1280 x 1024 at 75Hz - VESA
1600 x 1200 at 60Hz - VESA
1680 x 1680 at 60Hz - VESA
1920 x 1200 at 60Hz - Dell

Raw EDID base
00: 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 10 AC 10 A0 53 39 38 31
10: 27 0F 01 03 80 34 21 78 EE EE 50 A3 54 4C 9B 26
20: 0F 50 54 A5 4B 00 81 80 A9 40 71 4F B3 00 01 01
30: 01 01 01 01 01 01 28 3C 80 A0 70 B0 23 40 30 20
40: 36 00 07 44 21 00 00 1A 00 00 00 FF 00 54 36 31
50: 33 33 35 39 4A 31 38 39 53 20 00 00 00 FC 00 44
60: 45 4C 4C 20 32 34 30 35 46 50 57 0A 00 00 00 FD
70: 00 38 4C 1E 51 11 00 0A 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 1C

Display adapter
Adapter description......... SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600SE Edition
Adapter device ID........... 0x41511002
Display settings............ 1920x1200, 32bpp

User/computer information
Registered user name........ Chuck Kahn
Registered organization..... None
Network user name........... Chuck Kahn
Network computer name....... SONATA
Windows version ............ Windows XP
Windows build .............. 5.01.2600 Service Pack 2
Installation date .......... 18/01/2005 12:00:00 PM

DPlettner

10-23-07, 03:26 AM

Your EDID info looks normal to me. The only thing that seems a little odd is that there is only a single timing recommendation. I wonder whether the 2600pro bios has a problem with the 1920x1200 recommendation.

FWIW, here is my EDID info. As I mentioned above, I see the BIOS/boot screens.

Monitor
Manufacturer description.... HP MD5880N
Manufacturer................ HP
————————————————————————————
Plug and Play ID............ HWP270E
Serial number...............
EDID data source............ Registry (stored)
————————————————————————————
Manufacture date............ 2005, ISO week 35
EDID revision............... 1.3
Display type and signal..... Digital
Sync input support.......... n/a
Screen size................. 1300 x 740 mm (~62")
Power management............ n/a

Color characteristics
Display gamma............... 2.20
Red chromaticity............ Rx 0.640 - Ry 0.330
Green chromaticity.......... Gx 0.300 - Gy 0.600
Blue chromaticity........... Bx 0.150 - By 0.060
White point (default)....... Wx 0.313 - Wy 0.329

Timing characteristics
VESA GTF support............ Not supported
Horizontal scan range....... 15-80kHz
Vertical scan range......... 23-61Hz
Video bandwidth............. 150MHz
Extension blocks............ 1
Timing recommendation #1.... 1280x720 at 60Hz
Modeline................ "1280x720" 74.250 1280 1390 1430 1650 720 725 730 750 +hsync +vsync
Timing recommendation #2.... 1920x540 at 60Hz
Modeline................ "1920x540" 74.250 1920 2008 2052 2200 540 542 547 562 +hsync +vsync
Timing recommendation #3.... 1920x1080 at 30Hz
Modeline................ "1920x1080" 74.250 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1094 1124 interlace +hsync +vsync

Standard timings supported
640 x 480 at 60Hz - IBM VGA
800 x 600 at 60Hz - VESA
1024 x 768 at 60Hz - VESA
1280 x 720 at 60Hz - HP
1280 x 720 at 60Hz - VESA
1280 x 1024 at 60Hz - VESA
1920 x 540 at 60Hz - HP
1920 x 1080 at 30Hz - HP
1920 x 1080 at 60Hz - VESA

Raw EDID base
00: 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 22 F0 0E 27 BD 13 00 00
10: 23 0F 01 03 80 82 4A 78 0A EE 95 A3 54 4C 99 26
20: 0F 50 54 21 08 00 81 C0 81 80 D1 C0 01 01 01 01
30: 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 1D 00 72 51 D0 1E 20 6E 28
40: 55 00 C4 8E 21 00 00 1E 01 1D 80 18 71 1C 16 20
50: 58 2C 25 00 C4 8E 21 00 00 9E 00 00 00 FC 00 48
60: 50 20 4D 44 35 38 38 30 4E 0A 20 20 00 00 00 FD
70: 00 17 3D 0F 50 0F 00 0A 20 20 20 20 20 20 01 D3

Raw EDID extension (reserved)
00: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
10: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
20: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
30: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
40: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
50: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
60: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
70: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Display adapter
Adapter description......... ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP
Adapter device ID........... 0x95871002
Display settings............ 1776x1000, 32bpp

-Dave

DPlettner

10-23-07, 03:32 AM

aravs

10-23-07, 08:37 AM

hi guys, been lurking and reading this thread for weeks and am really confused and still cant decide.

Ideally i wanted to get an Hd2400/2600 agp version for my socket 754 MSI K8N Neo Platinum 7030 board. These cards seem ideal for my purposes of shifting this board and setup to a HD-dvd and BR htpc. I finally found some local stores in Canada that are carrying the AGP versions of this card, but in the case of the hd2600 is around the $150mark or more. After reading a good number of recent posts in this thread it seems like the AGP platform has its own problems ON TOP of all the other numerous problems these cards exhibit trying to play hd media.

based on the cost of getting an 2600 agp version, i think i could get a brand new budget dual core system (board, processor, and passively cooled pcie-xpress card) for around $200. Alternately it would be easier for me to simply buy an non passively cooled hd2400 for $84 before taxes, stick it into the system and POTENTIALLY get HD playback. Is the pcie route much easier than AGP or should i move onto a newer platform? I really hate throwing away old hardware that i haven't fully utilized yet, but spending endless hours tweaking something that inevitably wont work well is the more expensive option; to me. Suggestions and advice would be greatly appreciated.

arfster

10-23-07, 09:14 AM

Is the pcie route much easier than AGP or should i move onto a newer platform?

There are clearly a lot less potential problems with the pcie models, but it seems impossible to say whether AGP will work for you or not - my hunch is that it's highly dependant on motherboard chipsets.

You could buy the AGP version, then return if it doesn't work properly. After all, if it doesn't do as advertised that's your right.

guste

10-23-07, 12:00 PM

I recently bought the 2600Pro AGP 256MB and after three seperate calls to Visiontek, where they insisted that the card could do audio over HDMI, they finally said that none of their cards are capable of this. It was especially frustrating, as I have had an open ticket with ATi for this and been going back and forth trying to come up with solutions, for the last two weeks.

How the company that makes the chips and the company that makes the cards don't know these things, is beyond me...

I keep hearing mythological stories of AGP cards working with HDMI audio, yet I don't see anyone in this thread talking about it, so I assume it doesn't work, no matter the manufacturer.

alfonxs

10-23-07, 12:35 PM

In case anyone is interested, I have not been able to run PowerDVD with any ATI driver above 7.8. I have a VisionTek 2600 Pro 512MB AGP.

I was looking at posts in the Rage3D forum, and I read this thread:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33904903

The solution posted in this thread works for me, and I am now able to run PowerDVD with the latest beta drivers from VisionTek.

-Dave

Do you get HW-Acceleration with this solution in PowerDVD and other programs like MPC? I have not been able to get HW accelerated Playback since version 7.8 with my Radeon 2400 AGP.

Thx, alfonxs

DPlettner

10-23-07, 12:55 PM

Do you get HW-Acceleration with this solution in PowerDVD and other programs like MPC? I have not been able to get HW accelerated Playback since version 7.8 with my Radeon 2400 AGP.

Thx, alfonxsI have never tried MPC. I have always had VC1 and AVC acceleration in PowerDVD with all the ATI drivers I have tested. As I mentioned above, I have a VisionTek 2600 Pro 512MB AGP card.

I don't have BR yet, so I have never tested BR MPEG2. However, I do have recorded HDTV files in MPEG2 TP format. The TP files play back much better in PowerDVD with the latest VisionTek beta drivers than they did with 7.8. I think Arfster is correct when he stated that MPEG2 acceleration has been improved in the latest drivers.

I have a MyHD card with a hardware MPEG2 decoder. In my opinion, the output from the MyHD card looks at least as good as the output from any software player, so I use MyHD to watch the TP files. I probably won't care much about MPEG2 acceleration until I get a Blu-ray drive.

-Dave

alfonxs

10-23-07, 01:29 PM

BigTony

10-23-07, 02:00 PM

I'm asking because ATI confirms the broken HW-acceleration for AGP cards (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=29894). So I wonder why this does not apply to all AGP cards...

alfonxs

I don't think so, my visiontek HD2400pro Agp works great, using powerdvd ultra 3319, ccc 7.10, p4 2.4, analog 5.1 connection to the receiver, component cable to HDTV, hddvd and blu-ray from harddrive play perfectly (mpeg2, avc, h264 or vc-1, you name it).

Only problem I am having is I can not play x264 file with hardware acceleration on, so my upper limit is 720p x264 using CoreAVC software decoding, 1080p x264 is not watchable for me. But I think the problem is no filter has good support for x264. I am waiting for powerdvd to have better support for x264 files.

BigTony

DPlettner

10-23-07, 02:23 PM

I'm asking because ATI confirms the broken HW-acceleration for AGP cards (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=29894). So I wonder why this does not apply to all AGP cards...

alfonxsThanks for posting the link. I had not seen that article before.

While I tried every version since 7.8, PowerDVD always crashed or aborted until I tried the fix that I linked to above. With the fix, I went straight to the VisionTek beta drivers, which I guess are 7.11 betas.

I noticed that the article states that this is a problem with 7.9. Perhaps if I loaded 7.9 with the fix I would not have acceleration either.

In any event, I have acceleration now with the latest VT beta drivers, so either ATI has fixed the problem, or it does not affect all AGP cards, as BigTony suggests.

-Dave

pratter

10-23-07, 02:26 PM

Hello guys,

sorry for bother you with the same stupid problem: 2600XT -> no DXVA with *.mkv

I still have no solution to play *.mkv media files with my 2600XT (hardware-acceleration = ON).

I've installed the latest Catalyst driver (7.10), reg-hacks, PowerDVD Ultra-Version, MPC, EVR... on my Windows XP Machine.

PowerDVD can't play any *.mkv files, but i thought it's possible to play those files in MediaPlayerClassic using the PowerDVD Codecs and EVR. I've enabled the DXVA in the codec, but it's still using software-decoding.

Any idea or is my wish a one-way street?

Thank's in advice.

greetings from germany,
Sascha

arfster

10-23-07, 04:56 PM

Hello guys,

sorry for bother you with the same stupid problem: 2600XT -> no DXVA with *.mkv

I still have no solution to play *.mkv media files with my 2600XT (hardware-acceleration = ON).

There's no way round it - it happens with all cards with VLD h264 acceleration, including Nvidia ones. Latest thinking is it's the fault of the Cyberlink decoder, as apparently if you go back to earlier versions it accelerates mkv a bit better.

Fric

10-23-07, 07:04 PM

I have the same problem, hd2600 and no mkv container acceleration :(

originalsnuffy

10-23-07, 08:44 PM

I have some .mov files (bbc hd). I think the internal codec is h.264. Can these be played back in anything other than quicktime? The reason for the question is that with quicktime, I get "stutters" in playback. My guess is that quicktime is not utilizing the hardware acceleration of the card.

I can't get these files to play in Cyberlink PowerDVD.

Also....anybody know how to "reinstall" windows media center in Vista? This program, for me, is pretty much fried. I can't play anything back without it crashing...and can't even go into the settings to try to monkey with various settings.

arfster

10-23-07, 11:03 PM

I have some .mov files (bbc hd). I think the internal codec is h.264. Can these be played back in anything other than quicktime? The reason for the question is that with quicktime, I get "stutters" in playback. My guess is that quicktime is not utilizing the hardware acceleration of the card.

Yeah - you need haali splitter, then cyberlink as your default h264 codec, then use a player with EVR. I just tried one with WMP and it worked perfectly.

Cipher

10-24-07, 01:17 AM

Hey guys,

Sorry, I've just been skimming this thread as I'm about to build a new HTPC system and I'm leaning towards the fanless MSI 2600XT 512MB card. The reviews on NewEgg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814127298) are very positive and I just wanted to know what the general impression here is. Are there any issues I should be aware of with this card or is it truly the best fanless PCI-E solution for HD today?

Thank you

jbgoulding

10-24-07, 05:29 AM

AMD-3200+, GeCube 2400 Pro AGP, Windows Vista Ultimate.

I just installed the 8.43 drivers from the Gecube site. On starting Media Centre it just sat that there with 100% utilisation and a black screen. CyberLink would quit out before the main screen.

So I rolled the *driver only* back (not CCC or AVIVO etc.) to 8.40 and that fixed those problems.

Cyberlink will now play HD in 720p smoothly where it didn't before. 1080i is still really bad and even at 720p the CPU is running quite high but not 100% and unusable as it was before.

So some progress at least.

Gaizka

10-24-07, 07:14 AM

Hi,

I hace install Visiontek AGP beta drivers for my Club3d 2400 pro agp

I fillany succesfuly playback mpeg2 with HW enabled in WMP9

Playback of 720P and 1080i y smooth and perfect panning

30% cpu for 720p and 50% cpu for 1080i on my AMD XP 1700Mhz real clock

I noticed that there is an error with DXVA_WMV_NA registry entry type. It sholud be REG_SZ but if search this appears as REG_MULTI_SZ. I delete the entry and create new DXVA_WMV_NA as REG_SZ, restart the computer and WMP9 HA runs fine.

To obtain smooth playback i must "force" HDTV output to (1920x1080@30Hz or 60Hz) on CCC display control. This appears on "Force" botton.

aravs

10-24-07, 07:37 AM

thanks very much for your advice.

I think i will do that. couple questions:

how bad is the fan noise on the VisionTek Radeon HD 2400 PRO 256MB (the card i will be purchasing)? i'm worried its going to be loud my xbox360. as it's near impossible for me to find one of these cards in fanless mode for purchase in canada, that was another pressing reason why i was thinking of abadoning my old board and going with a newer pciexpress. if i get the 2400 up and running and it sounds like an airplane taking off i'm going to be pretty disappointed.

did everyone install their new card into a cleanly wiped system? ideally for testing purposes i'd like to remove my old agp card and drivers and drop in this new one. is this doable? if so, do i only have to remove the old catalyst drivers or other drivers elsewhere? i'm currently running an ati aiw 9600xt using ccc ver1.2.2217.

has anyone detailed in a previous post here steps on how to swap out video cards?

Thanks!

There are clearly a lot less potential problems with the pcie models, but it seems impossible to say whether AGP will work for you or not - my hunch is that it's highly dependant on motherboard chipsets.

You could buy the AGP version, then return if it doesn't work properly. After all, if it doesn't do as advertised that's your right.

jpilcher

10-24-07, 07:39 AM

I am updating my htpc , I alread purchased a 939 opteron(170) processor for the nividia 3 board I have. It is an agp board. when I made the decision to go this route , my research was indicating that the 2600 would be a good fit ..
especially as I am still looking to add a blu/hd combo drive when they become available .

my question is are the issues with the agp varients fixable? especially the h/w accel? ad if not will the opteron 170 be capable of handling the blu ray / hd-dvd playback in software only?

just so you know this is going to be a slow process for me , I am probably not going to do the upgrading until I have all parts , say middle of next yr

aravs

10-24-07, 07:42 AM

bigTony, its great to hear some success stories on this card. what kind of platform (cpu, mobo, ram) are you running? what was the previous vid card you had in it?

I don't think so, my visiontek HD2400pro Agp works great, using powerdvd ultra 3319, ccc 7.10, p4 2.4, analog 5.1 connection to the receiver, component cable to HDTV, hddvd and blu-ray from harddrive play perfectly (mpeg2, avc, h264 or vc-1, you name it).

Only problem I am having is I can not play x264 file with hardware acceleration on, so my upper limit is 720p x264 using CoreAVC software decoding, 1080p x264 is not watchable for me. But I think the problem is no filter has good support for x264. I am waiting for powerdvd to have better support for x264 files.

BigTony

Brad-Man

10-24-07, 10:18 AM

Hi people:

The question is pretty much in the title...

What is the performance difference/advantages of 512MB of GDD3 vs 256MB of GDD4?

I understand that the 512MB units have passive cooling, so are potentially quieter and possibly use less power over the fan on the 256 units.

Are there any performance differences to speak of?

TIA,

Brad

Patter

10-24-07, 12:41 PM

Can someone give me a hand? I had an X1650 Pro that was not HDCP compliant, so I got ATI to replace it with the HD 2600 AGP, and now the cyberlink Advisor is telling me that it is also not compliant. I also have the issue of choppy full screen video...(with any video, avi, wmvHD...DVD's and so on. I applied the reg tweaks, but where it becomes confusing is it says, that your DVI outs should be 0000 and 0001 but mine shows up in CCC as 0003 under 2D where it says to look. If anyone can give me a hand with my choppy full screen or the HDCP issue...let me know. I did read a lot of this forum but I may have missed something. Thanks

shurik_1

10-24-07, 01:05 PM

Like most of people here with AGP cards I confirm that the last version of working drivers is 7.8(8.40). My card is GeCube 2600pro. As visiontek they also now have on their site 8.43 drivers. Neither is functional. Not functional I mean that PDVD crashes on opening od HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. I also cannot see the ATI flag in CCC deinterlace options. Just black box.
ati3duag.dll replacement as described in rage3d forum does not work either. For people trying the trick you can do the replacement much easier than described. First the dll cannot be replaced directly but you do not have to boot in Safe Mode. Rename the dll and then copy the old dll to the folder. Reboot. Second to extract dll from old driver package no need to install driver do in DOS prompt "expand ati3duag.dl_ ati3duag.dll"
Eagerly avaiting new drivers that do not break down hardware acceleration in AGP as I still have couple of films to see one that maxes out CPU and another that crashes PDVD.

Edit (11-06-07): As DPlettner pointed out here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12134361#post12134361) substitution has really to be performed in safe mode

Patter

10-24-07, 01:14 PM

Do you get the message that your card drivers are not HDCP compliant? I am sick and tired of this crap and need to find the new keys for transformers. I don't really get what your saying about replacing the .dll. The flag shows in my CCC. Got any other ideas as far a fullscreen choppyness. I was playing trailer park boys in xvid. This is what was going on with my x1650.

P4 3.2
4 gig ram (3.4 showing (32bit))
HD 2600 512mb
Asus P4c800 D
www.prosgroup.net (patrick)

Patter

10-24-07, 02:00 PM

So I just got off the phone with ATI asking them about the AGP cards and hardware acceleration. I asked why the driver is NOT HDCP cert. His answer was, return the card, as the hardware acceleration does not work with the AGP cards. GREAT! KB artical is 737-29894. This is a load os crap again. I'm returning it and going to find something different.

Valnar

10-24-07, 02:12 PM

ChuckKahn

10-24-07, 10:16 PM

I don't think so, my visiontek HD2400pro Agp works great, using powerdvd ultra 3319, ccc 7.10, p4 2.4, analog 5.1 connection to the receiver, component cable to HDTV, hddvd and blu-ray from harddrive play perfectly (mpeg2, avc, h264 or vc-1, you name it).

When I try to install ccc 7-10 for my Visiontek HD2600 Pro I get "Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit." I get the same when I try to install ccc 7-7. Maybe because I'm Athlon XP 2600+ instead of P4 2.4?

BigTony

10-25-07, 12:35 AM

When I try to install ccc 7-10 for my Visiontek HD2600 Pro I get "Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit." I get the same when I try to install ccc 7-7. Maybe because I'm Athlon XP 2600+ instead of P4 2.4?

I used methods in post #1954 & #1956 to make changes to some files from ATI Official 7.10 driver (in fact, other drivers before 7.10)

For Visiontek cards, I always check following link, the newest one is always on top, there is 7.10 there, I believe should support visiontek, but I didn't try visiontek 7.10 since ATI official 7.10 is working for me now, I will not try any newer driver until x264 hardware acceleration is supported. Visiontek has some wierd thinking there, they will first put newest driver there, then put an older driver there. So now if you go to download driver route, you will get 8.43 which according them is between 7.8 and 7.9.

http://visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/?M=D

BigTony

arfster

10-25-07, 12:52 AM

I will not try any newer driver until x264 hardware acceleration is supported.

That's not a driver issue, it's a decoder one.

diarant

10-25-07, 07:48 AM

I have the Asus 2600xt, and have enabled the sound through the HDMI output, is there any way to have both the HDMI and the standard PC sound card enabled AT THE SAME TIME? so you can have the HDMI sound connected to the LCD TV and the PC sound card to the PC speakers, now I have to switch between the two!
Awsome! Somebody made! I have been trying to find info how to get sounds out from hd2600xt but no luck so far. I asked from asus and you dont belive what they said " we dont know about that feature. we have to look into it..."
So can you help me and tell me how you got sounds out from this card trough HDMI?
Thanks.
I have Asus MB with integrated soundcard and Vista business as os.

mike infinity

10-25-07, 09:13 AM

Is anyone connecting to an HDTV at 1080i and getting smooth playback?

Although HW acceleration works perfectly for my AVCHD (h.264) files (less than ~5% cpu for 1080i HD recorded material), if the card is set to output at any interlaced resolution I get choppy playback (on SW decoding as well)...even though I am still less than 5% cpu.

Everything works like a charm as long as my 2600xt output is progressive (1080p, 720p). I am thinking its an interlacing/deinterlacing bug of some kind since the card may be de-interlacing then re-interlacing the output....but no one else seems to be mentioning it (I suppose most...or maybe all...posters here use progressive output and have not experienced this)

Any ideas?

Gaizka

10-25-07, 11:37 AM

mike infinity how do you playback h264 material?
You can play with hardware acceleration h264 files? movie trailers in .mov for example?
Actually i can accelerate mpeg2 1080i .ts files with winodws media player and latest beta drivers for AGP cards.

regards

originalsnuffy

10-25-07, 12:14 PM

OK; think I have some ideas of how to fix the windows media problems. Looks like blowing out some files for the library for windows media player and the media center setup files should work.

Does quicktime use the h.264 acceleration capabilities of these cards? I assume not, but I'd like to hear your thoughts (I have pci-e and vista). If not, I will start playing with haali splitter, ffdshow, and coreavc. The source is BBC HD in mov format.

E39

10-25-07, 01:25 PM

This thread is giving me mixed messages...

Can someone answer this question:

Does the HD2600 AGP version provide hardware acceleration for H264 encoded movies?

and

Does the HD2600 AGP version provide hardware acceleration for H264 encoded movies in MKV format?

Thanks,
D.

(Pardon my ignorance if the question is phrased incorrectly, hopefully the gist will come through)

arfster

10-25-07, 01:33 PM

Does quicktime use the h.264 acceleration capabilities of these cards? I assume not, but I'd like to hear your thoughts (I have pci-e and vista).

Nope. However, if you have the cyberlink h264 codec you can play back quicktime files via any directshow app - the only caveat is it has to be in EVR (same for all Vista h264 acceleration), so use WMP, ZP, MPC Home Cinema, Theatertek etc. With haali as a splitter this definitely works, I've done it.

arfster

10-25-07, 01:38 PM

Does the HD2600 AGP version provide hardware acceleration for H264 encoded movies?

It should, but quite possibly won't because of the many bugs that seem to infest AGP solutions.

Does the HD2600 AGP version provide hardware acceleration for H264 encoded movies in MKV format?

Nope (assuming it's x264 content inside, as almost all mkvs are). AGP doesn't matter here though, it's the same for the pcie version, and indeed for Nvidia's equivalent 8400/8500/8600 cards.

The fault almost certainly lies with PDVD's decoder though, so this'll likely be fixed in the future, when someone else releases a compatible h264 accelerating decoder.

E39

10-25-07, 01:57 PM

Thanks for the quick reply arfster.

It seems I was incorrectly assuming H264 = X264.

Are there any cards that provide hardware acceleration of both H264 and X264 content?

arfster

10-25-07, 02:02 PM

Are there any cards that provide hardware acceleration of both H264 and X264 content?

Well, x264 (application) creates h264 (video format) encodes, but it's doing something with the encoding options that the powerdvd h264 codec doesn't process properly. The cards themselves support standard h264, so when the codec actually passes it through properly, they should accelerate it fine.

Patter

10-25-07, 02:22 PM

I didn't mean to get everyone rev'ed up about Hardware acceleration not functioning, but I don't know how they can sell a card that has no supporting drivers. Right now these cards are on sale a Future Shop and I think it's a big load of crap. I was going to return it, but then I will have no video card. We need to find some way to get these cards functioning correctly.

>I cannot get any video to play full screen without being choppy. It does not matter what type of video, it will not play properly FULLSCREEN. I have the latest drivers from visiontek and still nothing. Everything else looks fine...but I also don't play games. I have a Plasma 42' but I don't bother hooking it up because there is no hardware acc. Call ATI and ask them....I'm serious, they will tell you, either return it, or subscribe to the KB article.

IF ANYONE HAS SOMETHING TO FIX THIS.. LET US KNOW...I CANNOT BE THE ONLY ONE WITH THIS ISSUE.

originalsnuffy

10-25-07, 02:30 PM

Patter

10-25-07, 02:31 PM

Symptoms:
On AGP versions of the above mentioned graphics cards the Hardware Acceleration does not get enabled. High CPU usage, stuttering HD playback or even system crash are expected behaviours, although DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) is enabled by the application.

Solution:
Currently there is no solution

arfster

10-25-07, 03:01 PM

Arfster;

I suspect other less technical types will benefit from this discussion too. Yes, I have PowerDVD, so therefore I assume I have the Cyberlink h.264 codec. I have not used haali. Is this a run time; or do I need to create a new file for the direct show apps? And do I need to somehow register the cyberlink codec for windows media player (or other apps?).

Haali itself is a source/splitter filter for videos in mkv containers (and less so for .ts and .avi) - normally end users don't need to fool with this sort of thing, but mkv is a nonstandard file type and thus normal windows/powerdvd filters have no idea what to do with it. You can get it here:
http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/

The cyberlink h264 codec (and all other pdvd codecs) are already registered in windows for use by any directshow app, and unless you have another h264 codec with a higher priority they will be used by default (if ffdshow is set to decode h264 it's higher).

A useful media app here is MPC Home cinema:
http://tibrium.neuf.fr/

This is a small, minimal player that has lots of options. It allows you to set what renderer you want to use, and also which filters to prefer. The good thing about this is you don't need to fool with registry settings etc, as these preferences only apply for MPC itself.

originalsnuffy

10-25-07, 04:34 PM

Arfster,

I bet this is helpful for other forum members too. Thanks.

So I gather that quicktime does not use direct show. If this is the case, then how does one configure haali to parse the mov files for use in MPC Home Cinema or other direct show apps? (You did not mention mov as one of the supported containers...I am at work right now so I have not tried out any of your suggestions yet).

arfster

10-25-07, 04:54 PM

So I gather that quicktime does not use direct show. If this is the case, then how does one configure haali to parse the mov files for use in MPC Home Cinema or other direct show apps? (You did not mention mov as one of the supported containers...I am at work right now so I have not tried out any of your suggestions yet).

I think it's done when you first run haali setup. Certainly Haali supports mov, because when I run one in WMP Haali is the default splitter - it produces an icon in the system tray so you can see, with the rather nice option of showing bitrate graphs for video and audio.

There some to be a few odd problems with MPC though, as the version I have uses internal filters only for mov files (even when I've told it in options not to). These work fine with WMP though: haali will be used as the source/splitter, the cyberlink avc decoder will decode the video. You'll need an aac decoder for the sound though - again the cyberlink one should do fine for this, and should be the default

An easy way to show what are default filters for any file is to drop it into graphedit. If you have an obnoxious filter with very high priority then, you can either uninstall it, or use a filter manager app (eg radlight) to change its directshow priority.