ATI Radeon HD 2X00 (2400,2600,2900) series owners thread

[arfster]

so is there a way to turn off any "20fps bug", or "mkv acceleration" even though i dont use pdvd? i only use mpc,haali and ac3filter and i still het the problem when playing x264 files!

You're still using the pdvd codec though? If not, it isn't the same problem.

[karrih]

Hi Karrih

Thanks for the info I take it these would be under UVD\DXVA for Vista 32 and as strings and under the 000\ folder in XP as DWORDS

Thanks

Dave

I have them as strings in XP under 0000

[ExDeus]

i bought it thinking it would be ok to i play my x264 720p hd films but all i get is what looks like a framerate jerky issue going on, it doesnt matter if i select overlay or vmr9 as it still jerks at a terrible pace, my old 3500+ with a 6200gt played things fine on overlay but my new 4200x2 with 2400pro just doesnt work right,
You must have been using a software decoder w/o acceleration for H264 to work on an Athlon 3500+ w/ 6200GT, so a software decoder will work on your new machine. Any should work with your new proc, but CoreAVC is the most efficient (uses the fewest CPU cycles).

[ExDeus]

Is there anyway to convert a x264 file that is in an .mkv container back into a regular Blu-Ray 264 format so that it may be decoded with AVIVO in PowerDVD? Thanks.

I have been looking for the same thing. I have found a program called TSRemux which takes MKV inputs and outputs in a Blu Ray folder structure. I have downloaded and will be trying very soon. Google TSRemux and you will get lots of responses.
It is my understanding that the problem is with the x264 implementation of the H.264 standard, so changing containers may not fix all problems.

If what you have is specifically an "x264" file, meaning it is H.264 video compressed with the x264 encoder, then you don't have a Bluray file, you have an x264 file that someone compressed from a Bluray file. So, it wouldn't be the same as playing an original Blu-ray file.

[originalsnuffy]

I just hooked up a the 2400 Pro with the hdmi dongle to a new Onkyo 905 receiver. I have been pleasantly surprised that all audio signals that I otherwise would have sent via analog cable or coax spdif seem to be carried over the hdmi cable with no problem usign arfster's modified 7.7 driver set. I think the unit is sending 5.1 decoded information as pcm, but I'm not sure. How would I figure out exactly what format is being used? I am guessing PCM because I am not seeing any indication for the most part on the receiver of dolby digital or dts. Everything sounds fine so far (but the material is basic action movie soundtracks not some kind of high def music video).

I am now mucking about with PowerDVD. The next step is still to hook up the external xbox 360 drive. The overall project is doing a bit better than I would have thought at this point.

Arfster, in particular, thank you again.

[vmajor]

Hi,

I am new here.

Can someone PLEASE make a clear, all in one place post explaining what registry values need to be added or changed to enable hardware decoding on Radeon 2400 AGP using Catalyst 7.9 drivers.

I have added the registry tweak values I found in this forum, but they did precisely nothing. There is plenty of Vista related information, but nothing completely coherent regarding Windows XP. The values are thrown about, but I cannot see verified information anywhere whether the registry entries are meant to be dword, string, binary etc....

With PowerDVD 7.3, I can select "Enable hardware acceleration (ATI AVIVO)" but that gets automatically deselected and grayed out after I start playing a video file.

With WM Player there is also no hardware acceleration as my CPU utilization hovers around 80%+

I am at the end of my wits.

Cheers,

V.

[sumster]

Just a quick question regarding PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra -- in the video configuration --> Advanced settings, what do you guys have set? If I use "no hardware acceleration", my HD-DVD's play well, but poor deinterlacing using my HD-HQV test disc or SD-HQV test disc.

The options under Hardware Deinterlacing are 3 hexadecimal values, Bob, and Weave. Unable to play HD-DVD if any of these are enabled (2600 Pro 512 mb) --> I just get a black screen for the main movie. On the SD version of HQV, only the top hexadecimal choice deinterlaces well. The others produce jaggies.

Changing the CCC settings from Auto to vector adaptive doesn't seem to make a difference at all. Any suggestions for SD and HD content?

[red5goahead]

Yestarday I installed the new htpc with an Intel e4400, a Asus P5k motherboard and an Ati EAH2600Pro. I use Kmplayer.

My goal is obtain hw acceleration for any stream mpg-4 included. I would use fully Avivo also for 24fps material to test pull-down 3:2 avivo features on my Panasonic 37PV60 at 1280x720@60. I've Catalyst 7.9. I use XP Sp2 home edition.

Actually:

1) Ati Mpeg decoder for mpg4 do not work well. dvxa start but image is very bad. huge macroblock appear on screen. I come back to divx 6.6 sw codec

2) Ati Mpeg decoder , nvidia pure video and cyberlink work fine for mpg2 (i test only sd dvd)

3) Cyberlink 2.00+ work for avc1/h.264 material but not in mkv container (x264). I confirm that big problem. if I convert mkv in avi with mkv2vfw utility in haali splitter package work (but no audio).
Instead it work with mov file (trailers) also at 1080p with ridicolous use of cpu and gpu.

4) wmv dxva work after windows media player 11 update (wmv3). i'm planning yo test material with other fourcc (wvc1)

so actually with 2600 only trdenoise and dxva_detailenhance are the tweak on registry?

I send this feedback to ati by the ATI Catalyst Crew Feedback:

"any issues are about use dvxa and video card acc. hw features.

1) could be usefully display on the screen (overlapped) a feedback (optional) about the activated acc.hw. If I use the ati mpg decoder to decode an mpg2 video stream the video card should display (dxva,dxva2 activated, or denoise level=25, enhanced detail level=23 ect.ect., pulldown 3:2 activated) so display any kind of informations about the decoding in progress.

2) improve the ati mpg decoder to xvid and avc1 stream and make usable the mpg4 features because now is possible but the images are orrible, unusable. add avc1/h264 full support because is unacceptable is not avaiable. the use of powerdvd should be optional.

3) make be possiible in ccc a configuration to switch from a refresh to an other according as video frame rate rilevated.
if I play a 25 fps must use 50 hz. refresh rate , if I play a 24 fps should be use 60 hz. with puuldown 3:2 or 48,72 hz. if the monitor support it. any player can't do that."

[kevon27]

Please, if you get HW acceleration to work on a hd2400 pro under XP, list step by step instructions on how to do it and make our lives a lot eazier.
Thank you.

[red5goahead]

Please, if you get HW acceleration to work on a hd2400 pro under XP, list step by step instructions on how to do it and make our lives a lot eazier.Thank you.

hw accel. for what? dvd, divx, avc1 ? what player do you use?

[ExDeus]

All registry settings were gathered from this thread, as posted by arfster. You should thank him for all his work.

Download the ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks (http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/). Follow the instructions there to download and run the program.

Alternatively, you can read below to get more information or add the registry settings yourself.

Open the CCC and go to the Information Center > Graphics Software section. Listed for the 2D driver, there will be a registry path with the GUID for your current graphics setup. Just look at the path in the CCC and look at the registry; you will get which part is the GUID (between the curly brackets "{}").


Win XP: The settings below will be entered in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID from CCC}\0000\ and 0001\ registry keys. The settings under 0000 are for the first DVI/VGA port, while the 0001 settings are for the second port. Putting the following registry values under both keys will apply the settings to both outputs (likely a good idea).


Win Vista: The settings below will be entered in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID from CCC}\0000\UMD\DXVA\ and 0001\UMD\DXVA\ registry keys. The settings under 0000 are for the first DVI/VGA port, while the 0001 settings are for the second port. Putting the following registry values under both keys will apply the settings to both outputs (likely a good idea).


Do not use MKV files or H.264 files created with the x264 encoder when you are testing to get DXVA working. Use some other container format (e.g., TS or MP4) encoded using some other codec (e.g. Nero Digital/Ateme). Playing an HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc from a drive seems to be the easiest format to get acceleration to work. The most reliable places to test for DXVA will be using PowerDVD Ultra 7.3.3104 or Nero Showtime 3, as both use their own internal decoder selections so you don't have to worry about DirectShow filter settings.


Use one of the following code sections. You might put the settings in the wrong place if you chose the ones for the wrong OS. You can replace "{GUID}" with the {string} from the CCC information section, and then save the text to a standard .txt file. Change the file extension from .txt to .reg, double-click to run it, and you will add it to the registry.


Make sure you replace the proper GUID from the CCC before adding the settings to your registry.

Registry Tweaks for HD2400 under Win XP:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000]
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideFPSCaps"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForce24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080H264"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0001]
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideFPSCaps"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForce24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080H264"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"



Registry Tweaks for HD2400 under Win Vista:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000\UMD\DXVA]
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideFPSCaps"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForce24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080H264"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0001\UMD\DXVA]
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideFPSCaps"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForce24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080H264"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"


Registry Tweaks for HD2600 under Win XP:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000]
"ColorVibrance_DEF"="0"
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"="0"
"ColorVibrance_NA"="0"
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"Fleshtone_DEF"="0"
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"="0"
"Fleshtone_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0001]
"ColorVibrance_DEF"="0"
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"="0"
"ColorVibrance_NA"="0"
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"Fleshtone_DEF"="0"
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"="0"
"Fleshtone_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"


Registry Tweaks for HD2600 under Win Vista:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000\UMD\DXVA]
"ColorVibrance_DEF"="0"
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"="0"
"ColorVibrance_NA"="0"
"DI_METHOD"="5"
"DI_METHOD_DEF"="5"
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"Fleshtone_DEF"="0"
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"="0"
"Fleshtone_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0001\UMD\DXVA]
"ColorVibrance_DEF"="0"
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"="0"
"ColorVibrance_NA"="0"
"DI_METHOD"="5"
"DI_METHOD_DEF"="5"
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"Fleshtone_DEF"="0"
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"="0"
"Fleshtone_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"


If you want the scoop on what each setting does, see the following posts:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11659897&postcount=2121 - arfster's definitive post
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11485622&postcount=1785
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10988769#post10988769
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11598261#post11598261
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11610164#post11610164
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11611651#post11611651

[karrih]

Registry Tweaks for HD2400Pro (as collected from this thread):


Thanks, I was just about to post my exported reg settings, but you were faster...

I recall adding the following registry entries to my HD2400Pro in XP with Catalyst 7.9 and PowerDVD Ultra 3104_R1 setup according to information gathered from this thread. GUID below must be replaced, and settings work only after reboot. I dont know if they are correct or not, but at least CPU load dropped from 100% to 20% or so for 1080/50i H264 channels.


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000]
"ColorVibrance_DEF"="0"
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"="0"
"Fleshtone_DEF"="0"
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"="0"
"DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"DXVA_DETAILENHANCE"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080H264"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"

[ExDeus]

Thanks, I was just about to post my exported reg settings, but you were faster...
No, that's good, because I forgot about the color/fleshtone settings. I haven't used them yet, as I was more concerned with getting DXVA working than trimming GPU cycles once it did.

[arfster]

Colour/flesh aren't needed for the 2400 I think, since they default to 0 - it's only the 2600 where they're at 25 in the drivers. Oh, and to avoid confusion, the DXVA_Only24FPS entries were replaced by Vforce24fps in driver 7.8 onwards. Similarly, SORTsomethingorother became VForceMaxResSize at the same time.

Can anyone confirm which are strings and which are dwords for xp? Once that's figured we can do a single FAQ for everyone to refer to.

Anyway, nice idea making saveable reg files, it's much less trouble than great big driver packages. I'll do the same for Vista.

[DPlettner]

I am having a similar problem and I am running XP I installed the only audio drivers I could find on ATIs site which are listed as being for the 2900.

I havent recieved my ATI dongle yet but I figured installing the drivers would at least get the HDMI audio to show in Device manager but it still only shows my Creative sound card and that works but the volume is terribly low and only plays out of one speaker.

I have a 2600pro AGP and running XP , does anyone know if I am using the correct audio drivers or are there better ones.

Also should I be seeing HDMI show in Device manager even without the Dongle or is it a XP problem?Nils_lars,

According the Site Admin of the VisionTek forum:

The AGP version of the HD2000 series do not have any audio transfer capability through HDMI. This feature is only available of the PCI Express version.

http://forum.visiontek.com/viewtopic.php?t=3056

-Dave

[ExDeus]

Nils_lars,

According the Site Admin of the VisionTek forum:



http://forum.visiontek.com/viewtopic.php?t=3056

-Dave
I guess I can't speak specifically to 'transfer capability', as I don't have any HDMI devices to consume the audio output, but I do know with my VisionTek HD2400Pro OC, there is a PCI device that is present when the card is installed. The display drivers don't install anything for it and it just sits there without a driver unless you install the VisionTek HDMI audio drivers, at which point you get an HD Audio device. Like I said, I can't test it for output, but it's there, generating a bunch of hardware interrupts when I use my DVI cable. When I uninstall the audio driver I stop getting the hardware interrupts, so I just disabled the 'PCI Device' in Device Mgr.

[IanD]

Can anyone suggest how I can force a 2400Pro to support 1920x1440p72 via VGA with a Mitsubishi 2060u monitor under XP? There's a 75Hz option but no 72Hz, which seems strange since 24fps is a common video source.

ATI drivers/CCC do not have a 72Hz option above 1280x720. Powerstrip374 has custom timing greyed out.

Nvidia supports 72Hz straight out of the box.

I had this issue with every previous ATI product I have used in the past: 7500, 9250, X300 and now 2400Pro and it seems to be a common failing. I tried Reforce, but it didn't seem to help.

I would like to use the 2400Pro, but this lack of immediate 72Hz support is pushing me back to Nvidia.

[Neeto]

Hi,

A long way back in this tread there was a discussion about the power of the 2400pro and was it enough to hardware accelerate decoding of the higher bit rate blueray sources.
I think the comments concluded it did not have enough power.

There was also some discussion that the 2400 did not really have the power for hardware acceleration of high rate mpeg2 sources. Not sure what the result of that discussion was.

With updated drivers etc, can anyone comment? Is this still true?
What's the recommendation on 2400pro/xt vs. 2600pro/xt?

Thanks,

Neeto

[DPlettner]

I guess I can't speak specifically to 'transfer capability', as I don't have any HDMI devices to consume the audio output, but I do know with my VisionTek HD2400Pro OC, there is a PCI device that is present when the card is installed. The display drivers don't install anything for it and it just sits there without a driver unless you install the VisionTek HDMI audio drivers, at which point you get an HD Audio device. Like I said, I can't test it for output, but it's there, generating a bunch of hardware interrupts when I use my DVI cable. When I uninstall the audio driver I stop getting the hardware interrupts, so I just disabled the 'PCI Device' in Device Mgr.Strange that you mention that. I had the PCI device too, and then it just went away. I don't recall doing anyting to make the PCI device go away. I have a VisionTek 2600pro 512MB AGP.

I actually got the ATI HDMI dongle. With the discount code, it was only $7 or $8 shipped. However, I have not been able to make it work with audio.

I don't think this is a big deal anyway. I was hoping to pass 5.1 or 7.1 LPCM over HDMI. However, according to ATI (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=28948), I can't.

I guess I will have to wait for the Auzentech HDMI solution.

-Dave

[originalsnuffy]

DPlettner;

I am passing 5.1 LPCM over HDMI with a 2400Pro and the ATI dongle. I simply selected the hdmi audio driver.

Is HDMI an option for you as an audio driver? Also, do you have AC3Filter installed (easier to experiment with various options with this driver in place.

[ExDeus]

Strange that you mention that. I had the PCI device too, and then it just went away. I don't recall doing anyting to make the PCI device go away. I have a VisionTek 2600pro 512MB AGP.
In Device Mgr, the device was first listed under "Other devices", but after another driver install, it oddly moved itself down under "System devices".

[BertM]

Am I the only one or doesn't this issue bother other people?

From the first moment I installed my HD2600XT it suffered from something that looked like the notorious Chroma Upsampling Error when hardware acceleration enabled and using either motion adaptive or vector adaptive deinterlacing. A google search reveals some other users bothered by the error.

Some two months ago Arfster posted a few screenshots in another forum, with different deinterlacing methods with either an ATI 2400 or nVidia 8500 (if I'm correctly). In these shots, the colour displacement was clearly visible with the ATI adapter while not present with the nVidia.

I have submitted a ticket with ATI some time ago, where the support representative acknowledged the problem anbd sent data to the catalyst crew. On my query about proceedings yesterday I got this answer:

"What will be fixed in a driver update is never published before the driver release.

Typically the next 3-6 drivers are at different stages of development at any one time.

I have forwarded the feedback to the Catalyst Crew team. The more they see the issue the better.

If you can get other users to submit tickets as feedback on the same issue they will go directly to the Catalyst Crew Team."

This was a response to this ticket:

"As an addition to the screenshots I previously sent, it is quite simple to view the effect in catalyst control center. Here, while choosing a deintelace method, the red ATI-banner is correctly put on screen with BOB and adaptive modes, but shows an awfull shift of the red color upwards when using motion or vector adaptive mode.
Obviously, for HTPC use, the vector adaptive mode yields absolutely the best picture quality, by using extensive post-processing.

Could we (myself and the HTPC community using the HD2400/2600 display cards) get an estimate on the CCC version that corrects the color-shift problem in the high performance deinterlace modes?

Many thanks,
"

In other words, the more people complain, the faster the response might be. Which is propably the answer to why ATI fixes problems in games faster than video problems, my guess would be that there are a lot more gamers than there are HTPC users.

The attached files show the colour offset in a real-live situation, the software.jpg is a photograph of a part of the screen with bitcontrol decoder in software mode and hardware deinterlacing (which then defaults to adaptive mode), the hardware is with the avivo decoder with forced vector adaptive mode in CCC.


I was about to replace the 2600XT with my good old X1950, when I decided to play around a bit with ffdshow. To my surprise, ffdshow can use NV12 mode (enabling full hardware acceleration, as shown by deinterlacing mode in vmr9 [the 3C-thingy] and enabled detail-enhancement) while shifting the colour down by one line. Thus getting rid of the colour displacement, but still having the advantage of VA deinterlacing.

Regards,
Bert

[emilot]

So far so good then, with the registry tweaks...

Can anyone tell us what are the inf tweaks to install the driver for the AGP card, under XP and Vista, to complete the tweaks??

[sharangad]

Has anyone got a PCI-E HD2600 XT working in MCE 2005? I've tried all the catalysts (7.7-7.9) and its fubared. I get a black screen in MCE itself for the user interface and a blue screen for the Live TV window.

Is this just me or is anyone else suffering from this problem?

[emilot]

So far so good then, with the registry tweaks...

Can anyone tell us what are the inf tweaks to install the driver for the AGP card, under XP and Vista, to complete the tweaks??

Ok i found it!!!
From post 1954..

c:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-9_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_52443
\Driver\Driver\XP_INF\CX_52443.inf

[ATI.Mfg.NTx86]
"ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO AGP" = ati2mtag_RV610, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_94C4
"ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP" = ati2mtag_RV630, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9587
"ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT AGP" = ati2mtag_RV630, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9586

any other files need to change?
For XP, there are two more files that need to be modified. BTW, I figured this out from this old post.

The first is Driver\CX_?????.INI and the second is Driver\INSTALL.INI

Both these files need this line:

R6=DriverPath_R6,0x9587,0x94C6,0x94C4,0x9586

I just replaced the R6 line in the 7.9 drivers, but you can also probably just add to the existing line.

[DPlettner]

DPlettner;

I am passing 5.1 LPCM over HDMI with a 2400Pro and the ATI dongle. I simply selected the hdmi audio driver.

Is HDMI an option for you as an audio driver? Also, do you have AC3Filter installed (easier to experiment with various options with this driver in place.That is very intersting. If I can pass 5.1 LPCM over HDMI, I might spend more time on this. Maybe I should do a quick fresh install of XP on a spare hard drive and see if I can make it work.

One thing I wonder about is that you say you are using AC3Filter. Are you sure that AC3Fileter is not encoding 5.1 LPCM into AC3 in the PC, and sending AC3 over HDMI? That's what a lot of people use AC3Filter to accomplish with S/PDIF. Does your receiver confirm that it is receiving 5.1 LPCM, of does it indicate Dolby Digital?

Thanks,
Dave

[arfster]

Am I the only one or doesn't this issue bother other people?

From the first moment I installed my HD2600XT it suffered from something that looked like the notorious Chroma Upsampling Error when hardware acceleration enabled and using either motion adaptive or vector adaptive deinterlacing.

Bert: not at my PC atm, but I think that might be something to do with the ATI mpeg2 decoder. Can you try cyberlink, nvidia, sonic or any other with dxva support?


ps what OS/driver version are you using?

[DPlettner]

In Device Mgr, the device was first listed under "Other devices", but after another driver install, it oddly moved itself down under "System devices".Under System Devices, I do have a "Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio". This device uses a driver called hdaudbus.sys.

I do not have a PCI Device under System Devices. As I mentioned before, I used to have a PCI device under Other Devices, but it vanished and has not returned.

From the HD Audio driver package, it looks like I need to have a driver called AtiHdAud.sys installed. I searched the registry, and did not find anything, so the install package is not installing the driver.

My ultimate goal is to pass 7.1 LPCM from my HTPC to my Onkyo TX-NR905 over HDMI, and watch HD DVD and Blu-ray movies using the best audio stream from the HD disc without any loss in audio quality. There are two obstacles in my way.

First, I need an HDMI sound solution. I have been following the HDMI sound card thread. However, if I can use my existing 2600pro and ATI DVI/HDMI dongle, that would be great. On the other hand, if ATI can only pass 2-channel LPCM and 5.1 channel AC3 and DTS (as ATI states in the link I posted above), then there is little advantage to using ATI HDMI audio over S/PDIF.

The only advantage I can see is that two channel audio over HDMI would be HD, while S/PDIF two channel audio from my sound card is 16-bit/48KHz. That is not enough of an advantage for me to bother with HDMI. I really hope that Originalsnuffy is right.

Of course, another option would be to purchase a really good sound card, like the new Auzentech Prelude, and just send analog to the receiver.

Second, PowerDVD is resampling all HD audio down to 16 bit/48KHz. There is a whole thread about that issue. It sounds like the only way around this problem is to remux a ripped HD DVD or BR movie and use a different player. However, I won't bother focusing on this problem until I have HDMI sound working.

-Dave

[digitlman]

http://www.arcsoft.com/products/digitaltheatre/

anyone try this new hd-dvd/bluray player to see if it uses avivo accelleration?

[BertM]

Arfster:

Bert: not at my PC atm, but I think that might be something to do with the ATI mpeg2 decoder. Can you try cyberlink, nvidia, sonic or any other with dxva support?



Of course I tried several decoders with DXVA support. Cyberlink, nVidia, BitControl: all latest versions, and an older Sonic Cineplayer version (I didn't want to upgrade/pay again just to see whether the new version works OK).

It might of course be due to the fact that I am using overlay (the attached pictures are taken from DVBViewer in "Unchanged" mode), but as explained, the colour displacement is also visible in the CCC deinterlacing section with the waving banner, and acknowledged as an existing problem by ATI.

I am running XP Pro/SP2. As for drivers, any driver from 7.7 that came with the card exposes this. Swapping the card for the old X1950 card resolves the issue, at the cost of some picture quality (and of course loosing hardware acceleration for our few HD H.264 satellite feeds)

The good thing is, I am now using ffdshow with the chroma shift option enabled, which also resolves the issue while maintaining overall picture quality, so at the moment I am quite happy, but I think I should be able to use any decoder of my liking, not only ffdshow.
Besides, ffdshow doesn't work in DVBViewer to watch DVDs, where only nVidia and powerDVD seem to work so I really would like the colour shift solved.

Maybe the issue isn't there in Vista? Unfortunately, I can not get my remote to work with DVBViewer in Vista (AND get no picture in my preferred overlay mode) so I have to use XP for now.

regards,
Bert

[originalsnuffy]

Dave Plettner--

Actually I had to turn off AC3Filter in order for Cyberlink PowerDVD to send audio over HDMI. In fact, AC3Filter got in the way of audio from PowerDVD no matter what audio was selected; analog speakers, coax spdif, or hdmi audio. So the sound I hear with Power DVD is going straight through in LPCM as far as I can tell into the 905.

I have now hooked up the USB Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. It sort of worked once, and has been crashing since. Blue screens of death with Vista, the whole crash deal.

I think the problem is that I have the 2400 hooked up both by VGA and by HDMI. It is also possible that my CPU is a tad weak. A third alternative is that the 2400 is not providing proper acceleration to PowerDVD. I am not as sophisticated as most of the participants on this forum...so any suggestions of what to try will be appreciated. I am using the arfster 7.7 pack right now.

[DPlettner]

Originalsnuffy,

I have had zero problems with my XBox 360 HD DVD add-on in XP. I just installed the drivers from Windows Update, and that other driver posted in the XBox 360 HD DVD add-on thread. However, it is my understanding that none of that is needed in Vista. It should just work.

I don't have a powerful CPU either. I am using an old Athlon XP 3200+ and an nForce2 motherboard. The motherboard has the Soundstorm hardware AC3 encoder, so perhaps that is part of my problem.

When I have a chance, I will do a test install on a spare hard drive to see if I can get HDMI audio working.

How are you liking the 905? I am very happy with mine, but there are a couple of minor annoyances, such as the delay in hearing audio whenever the is a change in the S/PDIF signal.

-Dave

[topcaser]

Hi,

what are currently the best registry tweaks for CCC7.9 on XP for a 2600xt?

I have set currently flesh and colorvibrance to 0,

What about TRDenoise and DXVA_Detailenhancement?

Thanx in advance.

[emilot]

No H/A with 7.9, even with the registry tweaks!!Nothing, i try with string and with dwords values but nothing...

Back to 7.8betaRC3 drivers!!

[arfster]

Hi,

what are currently the best registry tweaks for CCC7.9 on XP for a 2600xt?

I have set currently flesh and colorvibrance to 0,

What about TRDenoise and DXVA_Detailenhancement?


DXVA_DetailEnhance is pretty marginal. Try it on and off, it makes little difference, and uses almost no GPU at all. Might be the detail setting in the registry affects the degree of sharpening - it's set to 50 for the 2600, 0 for the 2400, and there must be a reason for that.

TrDenoise is tricky - for interlaced video I'm tending towards the opinion they've made a good job of it (has it changed a bit?), especially for dark scenes where noise is quite prominent. For progressive stuff, I generally prefer to have no filters at all, and see it as the director intended. If you don't like grain though.....

One definite thing is that trdenoise eats a lot of gpu cycles. I'm guessing 2400 users playing 1080i h264 will struggle with it, and with 1080i mpeg2 no chance. Even 2600pro people might not manage it with 1080i mpeg2.

[grimholtz]

I'm thinking of buying an HD 2x00 card for an HTPC with no monitor (just want HDMI+audio to an HD television with no stand-alone receiver). My question is: how "plug-and-play" is the HDMI+audio on these boards? Skimming through this thread, it looks like it may not be easy to get it working on a standard WinXP installation. Is that still the case, or is it easier these days? I simply want to install the card, install the drivers/software, and connect the cable. No registry fiddling, etc.

Thanks in advance for any advice,
grimholtz

[gbcrush]

Arfster, or anyone else.

Is there a way to enable the SD forced expansion (to be the same as HD, etc) on older drivers? I'm thinking Cat 7.7 or so.

I finally got around to installing Arfster's modified "Bio-Shock updated drivers" and noticed something after / as I was recalibrating my TV's brightness and contrast settings.

1. The OS, menus, photos, etc look more like they should.
2. My 720p WMV videos look better, with less black crush and proper colors (make sense now that im calibrating to HD levels, yes?)

3. Sadly, on the THX optimizer menu for my Star Wars and Indy DVDs, I can only see 7 of the 10 boxes now (and no dropshadow whatsoever) on the black-level / brightness test. :(


Overall, a win, but I still can't seem to use these drivers. Got some other bugs (Screen flickering, red dots racing across black spots, and the tie fighters look like they're surrounded by boxes now when they fly through space). :S

[Mr.M]

BertM,

This is a very important issue for me. I'm holding off replacing my X1650XT because of issues like that, that really is quite poor.

I have enjoyed tremendous results on this board: http://www.rage3d.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=59 I recommend you go there and post the problem as clearly as you possibly can, including the screenshot. I did that for the edge enhancement issues and an ATI beta tester was able to rapidly communicate with the Catalyst engineers reveal the specific registry key in the thread I posted.

Good luck!

[ExDeus]

I'm thinking of buying an HD 2x00 card for an HTPC with no monitor (just want HDMI+audio to an HD television with no stand-alone receiver). My question is: how "plug-and-play" is the HDMI+audio on these boards? Skimming through this thread, it looks like it may not be easy to get it working on a standard WinXP installation. Is that still the case, or is it easier these days? I simply want to install the card, install the drivers/software, and connect the cable. No registry fiddling, etc.

Thanks in advance for any advice,
grimholtz
Not really plug-n-play at this point. You first need to install everything with another monitor connected in addition to the TV, so that you can properly configure the display resolution and refresh rate for your TV from there, before forcing incompatible settings on your TV and risking damage.

Once you have the TV properly set up as a secondary monitor, you can disable the primary monitor and remove it, so your TV is primary. You still would need a separate monitor each time you reinstall the ATI drivers as well, as it doesn't keep your settings.

I guess if you know your TV is already capable of displaying the standard 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions you'll get while un/installing drivers, then you could get by without it. That would make it fairly plug-n-play, aside from installing/updating drivers.

Then you'd have to install the HDMI Audio drivers and see if it works to select the HD Audio Device in your playback software.

Getting DXVA working would be another project altogether. I'm still not there with an HD2400pro. We'll see when I replace it with a HD2600pro.

[bgbop15]

OK, heres a good one, I think.. Havent found an answer anywhere yet.

I have the sapphire 2400 pro. I also have a soundblaster audigy LS. I did a fresh MCE 2005 install, got all my drivers in there. the Microsoft UAA HD Audio device was on the system list, but i had sound from my SB to my headphones and video with DVI to DVI to my dell lcd. Awesome. Everything works.

I bring the PC to its home upstairs under my VIZIO 42" 1080p LCD. NO SOUND from the sound blaster. After some basic trouble shotting, I decide that the Vizio is looking for the sound over HDMIm, but its not coming so I get no sound. On Vizio HDTV there is HDMI 1 and 2. HDMI 1 is a solo slot, but HDMI 2 has RCA Audio in as well. I've used it many times on this set and my 47" Vizio.

I tried disabling the Microsoft UAA HD audio device in system devices and rebooting. NO Sound.

I check to make sure all the creative setting were good. No sound.

Please help!

[Fuz]

I am using the tweaked 7.9 driver with a HD 2600XT on Vista and I am getting terrible stuttering with 1080i50 OTA HD. It was doing this with the standard 7.9's as well. This is within Vista MCE.

It isn't like my machine is struggling, in fact the cpu usage is quite low, but its like its running a few fps too slow, so its skipping frames continuously. If I have any text scrolling across the screen horizontally, its almost impossible to read because of the stuttering.

Is there a fix for this? Please help, as this is doing my head in.

Thanks.

[joker454]

When I have a chance, I will do a test install on a spare hard drive to see if I can get HDMI audio working.

I'd be interested in hearing your results as well. I just got an Ati 2400HD connected via hdmi to my Sony 5300, and so far all I can get is 2 channel audio via hdmi.

[grimholtz]

Not really plug-n-play at this point. You first need to install everything with another monitor connected in addition to the TV, so that you can properly configure the display resolution and refresh rate for your TV from there, before forcing incompatible settings on your TV and risking damage.

Once you have the TV properly set up as a secondary monitor, you can disable the primary monitor and remove it, so your TV is primary. You still would need a separate monitor each time you reinstall the ATI drivers as well, as it doesn't keep your settings.

I guess if you know your TV is already capable of displaying the standard 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions you'll get while un/installing drivers, then you could get by without it. That would make it fairly plug-n-play, aside from installing/updating drivers.

Then you'd have to install the HDMI Audio drivers and see if it works to select the HD Audio Device in your playback software.

Getting DXVA working would be another project altogether. I'm still not there with an HD2400pro. We'll see when I replace it with a HD2600pro.

Excellent information. Thank you! One question. What do you mean by "you'd have to install the HDMI Audio drivers and see if it works to select the HD Audio Device in your playback software". Once you have the HDMI audio drivesr installed, they don't automatically work with any software that outputs sound? I don't understand.

[BertM]

BertM,

This is a very important issue for me. I'm holding off replacing my X1650XT because of issues like that, that really is quite poor.

I have enjoyed tremendous results on this board: http://www.rage3d.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=59 I recommend you go there and post the problem as clearly as you possibly can, including the screenshot. I did that for the edge enhancement issues and an ATI beta tester was able to rapidly communicate with the Catalyst engineers reveal the specific registry key in the thread I posted.

Good luck!

Many thanks Mr.M, I'll have a look at that board and see if I can post some more screenshots over there.

At the moment I am contemplating the fact that it could have something to do with the revision number of the GPU chip, as I only found some people mentioning the problem a few months ago. Especially Arfster's remark about not having the colour displacement on his current setup worries me, because earlier screenshots he took from a 2400 clearly revealed the colour shift.

Maybe I should get me a new 2600XT from another brand and see how that works out (telling my employer I definitely need such a card for my work... ;-)

Bert

[tman247]

I'd also be interested in a full set of reg tweaks for a 2600XT on Vista (similar to the ones recently posted by ExDeus). I suppose we should concentrate on the latest drivers (7.9).

Otherwise, what settings would be best to change for the 2600XT if I was looking at ExDeus's settings for the 2400Pro?

[arfster]

Arfster, or anyone else.

Is there a way to enable the SD forced expansion (to be the same as HD, etc) on older drivers? I'm thinking Cat 7.7 or so.


Sure, the same way: add UseBTCSC601=1 to umd/dxva.


I finally got around to installing Arfster's modified "Bio-Shock updated drivers" and noticed something after / as I was recalibrating my TV's brightness and contrast settings.

1. The OS, menus, photos, etc look more like they should.
2. My 720p WMV videos look better, with less black crush and proper colors (make sense now that im calibrating to HD levels, yes?)

3. Sadly, on the THX optimizer menu for my Star Wars and Indy DVDs, I can only see 7 of the 10 boxes now (and no dropshadow whatsoever) on the black-level / brightness test. :(


Hard to know what the problem is there. That driver+tweaks package expands both HD and SD to 0-255, assuming you're using EVR, or VMR9 with hardware acceleration. However, it does absolutely nothing to non-video stuff like photos/menus. In CCC/colour, is it set to MCE levels?

Best way is to find out literally what values are being displayed on screen, rather than screwing around with approximatations like screen calibrators. Download irfanview, printscreen some video, paste into irfanview, click on a pixel and look at the titlebar. It'll tell you the RGB values - the darkest areas should be 0/0/0, the brightest 255/255/255. Try some of the patterns at http://www.w6rz.net/ to get a better idea of what's happening, in particular "Level 1 to 254 Ramp and -5 to 105 IRE Bars (5 IRE steps) 1920x1080". With that the dots are originally 16 and 235, but when expanded by the card they should be 0 and 255.

[arfster]

I'd also be interested in a full set of reg tweaks for a 2600XT on Vista (similar to the ones recently posted by ExDeus). I suppose we should concentrate on the latest drivers (7.9).


Will do. The 2600 models don't need so much though, see the reg changes section in the post in my sig. As far as I know that's still up to date.

[aravs]

i'm up in canada and i'm having a real difficult time finding any of these cards in agp to the point where people at the online computer stores tell me there are non made, but yet i come here and there's a lot of posts about the agp flavor of these cards. do they all come in agp? could someone please private message me where i can find something like the hd2400pro in canada for online sale or a big box store that carries them? are they that much more expensive than the pcie versions? this is quite frustrating and i'm being turned around by misinformation.

[Owen]

I have a 2600 running on XP with 7.9 (beta I think) drivers and Gamma adjustment for overlay does not working.
Is this normal? If so does Gamma adjustment for overlay work in Vista or other XP drivers.

[bgbop15]

I'd be interested in hearing your results as well. I just got an Ati 2400HD connected via hdmi to my Sony 5300, and so far all I can get is 2 channel audio via hdmi.

did it come with the dongle, or did you have to buy one? what drivers did you use?

[Luar Azul]

I've tried every driver I could get my hands on to get my Sapphire 2400pro up and running with Vista. I've tried tweaked and official drivers from versions 7.6 to 7.9.

In the lattest versions Power DVD would constantly crash on some VC-1 ts files. Even movies handled by CoreAVC or other decoders would appear with too much color saturation, even though I've made sure all values in the registry and ccc relating to color "enhancement" were 0.

Yesterday I reversed to the first driver I've tried: version 7.6 tweaked by arfster and uploaded on Richard Berg's site (see post #253). Uahuu, powerdvd works better, does not crash and colors are more natural with hardware acceleration working better overall. Soome problems still remain such as lack of powerdvd support regarding many kinds of files, but it is undoubtedly the best driver for my system.

It's incredible how awful the drivers from amd/ati really are, and getting worst! I'm contemplating to sell my 2400pro and get an intel cpu upgrade instead. This is certainly what I should have done in the first place! I've lost dozens of hours trying to get this to work properly - something a powerful cpu would have done out of the box!

AMD sucks! (by someone who has been an AMD supporter in more than 10 years)

Thanks for all your hard work!

[originalsnuffy]

Luar--I am tempted to revert back a few revs of drivers myself. I keep getting PowerDVD crashes under vista with the HD DVD player.

Is there an arfster pack for 7.6 also?

[indecision]

I am ready to purchase a 2600pro but my motherboard has realtek HD audio built in. It looks like lots of people had trouble with realtek after they installed the ATI card. Is there a work around or do I need to expect to have audio trouble once I install the card?

[joker454]

did it come with the dongle, or did you have to buy one? what drivers did you use?

It came with the dvi->hdmi dongle in the box. I installed the cd that came with it, then updated with the latest drivers right from Ati's site (I just got the card 3 days ago). Everything worked right out of the box, I got video just fine and audio as well, all from hdmi. The only issue has been getting 5.1 audio over hdmi. I bought the card because it says right on the box that it can do 5.1 multichannel audio. I've been trying with ac3filter, but still no luck. 2 channel stereo works though.

[bgbop15]

I'd be interested in hearing your results as well. I just got an Ati 2400HD connected via hdmi to my Sony 5300, and so far all I can get is 2 channel audio via hdmi.

It came with the dvi->hdmi dongle in the box. I installed the cd that came with it, then updated with the latest drivers right from Ati's site (I just got the card 3 days ago). Everything worked right out of the box, I got video just fine and audio as well, all from hdmi. The only issue has been getting 5.1 audio over hdmi. I bought the card because it says right on the box that it can do 5.1 multichannel audio. I've been trying with ac3filter, but still no luck. 2 channel stereo works though.

yeah my sapphire 2400pro came w/out dongle, im using a dvi-HDMI cable and it seems like the 2400pro is causing my sound card to not be able to transmit the audio, I think becasue my TV is waiting for HDMI audio. I'm lost :(

[DPlettner]

I'd be interested in hearing your results as well. I just got an Ati 2400HD connected via hdmi to my Sony 5300, and so far all I can get is 2 channel audio via hdmi.This morning I did a fresh install of XP SP2 using a spare drive. Before I installed XP, I turned off AC97 audio in the BIOS.

After installing XP, I installed the nForce2 chipset drivers, and drivers for my integrated Intel gigabit NIC, and ran Windows Update. I installed all the updates. Then I installed the video drivers for my VisionTek 2600 Pro 512mb AGP card, and then I installed the driver for HDMI audio from VisionTek's site. I rebooted whenever I was prompted to reboot.

The results are the same as my original XP install. I do have a "Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio" installed, but I do not have any other HDMI drivers installed. Also, there are no sound output devices to select in the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel applet.

At this point, I tend to believe VisionTek's assertion that HDMI audio is not implemented on VisionTek AGP cards. I know that others such as Originalsnuffy have HDMI sound working with AGP cards. However, are they VisionTek AGP cards?

The fresh install is still on the spare drive, so if anyone else has any ideas I would be happy to give them a try.

-Dave

[ExDeus]

At this point, I tend to believe VisionTek's assertion that HDMI audio is not implemented on VisionTek AGP cards. I know that others such as Originalsnuffy have HDMI sound working with AGP cards. However, are they VisionTek AGP cards?
As I've mentioned, I do have a VisionTek HD2400pro OC AGP, and the VT HDMI drivers did give me an HD Audio device I could select in Windows Sound properties and various playback software, but I don't have anything with HDMI input to test that the sound is actually being passed.

I would assume you would have to get the HD Audio device to select for your output.

[ExDeus]

I tried disabling the Microsoft UAA HD audio device in system devices and rebooting. NO Sound.

I check to make sure all the creative setting were good. No sound.

Please help!
In Windows, or wherever you set the audio output in MCE (or whatever playback software you're using), did you select the HD Audio device when you want HDMI audio? Did you select your SB Audigy when you want RCA audio?

Enabling/disabling audio devices can change audio settings in unintended ways, in Windows and inside each of your apps.

[DPlettner]

As I've mentioned, I do have a VisionTek HD2400pro OC AGP, and the VT HDMI drivers did give me an HD Audio device I could select in Windows Sound properties and various playback software, but I don't have anything with HDMI input to test that the sound is actually being passed.

I would assume you would have to get the HD Audio device to select for your output.Thanks, I had forgotten that you mentiond that. Now if someone has the HD Audio Device with a VisionTek 2600pro 512mb AGP I will be really frustrated :).

-Dave

[ExDeus]

Excellent information. Thank you! One question. What do you mean by "you'd have to install the HDMI Audio drivers and see if it works to select the HD Audio Device in your playback software". Once you have the HDMI audio drivesr installed, they don't automatically work with any software that outputs sound? I don't understand.
I just meant that you need to select the HD Audio device for output, whether that's in Windows and all your software takes the setting from there, or if that's inside each of your applications.

The "see if it works" part is more about if you get 2.0 PCM, 5.1 PCM, 5.1 DD, etc.

[ExDeus]

Thanks, I had forgotten that you mentiond that. Now if someone has the HD Audio Device with a VisionTek 2600pro 512mb AGP I will be really frustrated :).

-Dave
I'll let you know after I replace my 2400 with a 2600 in the next couple days. Should be the same HD2600 as you have.

[ExDeus]

I'd be interested in hearing your results as well. I just got an Ati 2400HD connected via hdmi to my Sony 5300, and so far all I can get is 2 channel audio via hdmi.

Will do. The 2600 models don't need so much though, see the reg changes section in the post in my sig. As far as I know that's still up to date.
By popular demand, I updated my reg tweaks post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11622510#post11622510) with separate settings for XP/Vista and HD2400/HD2600.

Obviously all thanks goes to you, arfster, as the settings all come from you. If you decide to start maintaining your own XP/Vista reg file tweaks, I'll just defer to you. I'm just trying to aggregate information/settings into a ready-to-use, up-to-date form that users can follow in a step-by-step process.

[bgbop15]

In Windows, or wherever you set the audio output in MCE (or whatever playback software you're using), did you select the HD Audio device when you want HDMI audio? Did you select your SB Audigy when you want RCA audio?

Enabling/disabling audio devices can change audio settings in unintended ways, in Windows and inside each of your apps.


The only device in windows sounds and devices is the Soundblaster. That's where I'm confused.

[Nils_lars]

Thanks, I had forgotten that you mentiond that. Now if someone has the HD Audio Device with a VisionTek 2600pro 512mb AGP I will be really frustrated :).

-Dave


I also have the VisionTek 2600pro AGP and have not been able to get audio working over HDMI , I installed all the drivers but get nothing to select in sound devices.

I assumed it was a issue with the MCE 2005 I am running but maybe its the card thats the problem.

[DPlettner]

I also have the VisionTek 2600pro AGP and have not been able to get audio working over HDMI , I installed all the drivers but get nothing to select in sound devices.

I assumed it was a issue with the MCE 2005 I am running but maybe its the card thats the problem.I really don't know what else to try. It will be interesting to see what ExDeus has to report when he get his 2600. Maybe the VT 2400pro has HDMI audio, and the VT 2600pro does not, but that seems odd.

-Dave

[ExDeus]

The only device in windows sounds and devices is the Soundblaster. That's where I'm confused.
What software are you using for playback? Are there separate audio settings inside MCE?

[DaytonaDave]

Use one of the following code sections. Using more than one will just overwrite strings with dwords, or vice versa.

Thanks for pulling this together. I am new to the thread and after a couple of hours of reading I can say I was not eager to try piecing in all together myself.

That said, can we get a definitive decision on Strings vs. DWORDs? Or should I just check the existing entries and use whatever matches?

Thanks again!
Dave

[bgbop15]

I really don't know what else to try. It will be interesting to see what ExDeus has to report when he get his 2600. Maybe the VT 2400pro has HDMI audio, and the VT 2600pro does not, but that seems odd.

-Dave

I also have the VisionTek 2600pro AGP and have not been able to get audio working over HDMI , I installed all the drivers but get nothing to select in sound devices.

I assumed it was a issue with the MCE 2005 I am running but maybe its the card thats the problem.

What software are you using for playback? Are there separate audio settings inside MCE?

It's MCE2005, i use MCE2005 and cyberlink powerdvd, but the issue is with windows as a whole. I tested this by plugging dvi-hdmi calbe from the card to the tv, then plugging audio from my ipod to hdmi audio in on the tv. The ipod audio could be heard from bios post right up to the windows boot, but cut out as soon as windows loaded.

For kicks, i downloaded the Visiontek HDMI audio drivers, but they seem identical to the ones on the sapphire CD that came with mine.

Please let me know if you know how to get the HDMI audio to show up in sounds and devices without having a dongle...

Or, where I can get the dongle for my sapphire hd 2400 pro?

[DPlettner]

can we get a definitive decision on Strings vs. DWORDs?I am not sure it matters. I need to use VForceMaxResSize to get PDVD to fill the screen. However, it works fine if I enter 2800000 as a decimal DWORD or enter 2800000 as a string.

If you export the registry after a fresh install, you can see the data types for the existing keys. There is a mix of Strings and DWORDs, but it does not make sense to me. Sometimes a String is used to hold a purely numerical value.

-Dave

[arfster]

Looks like you can tell from the CX_52443.inf within the driver install package. Here's a sample:

HKR,, DisableFullAdapterInit, %REG_DWORD%, 0
HKR,, GCOOPTION_DigitalCrtInfo, %REG_BINARY%, A3,38,61,C1,A3,38,61,B1
HKR,, PrimaryTiling, %REG_SZ%, 1

However, all the ones we're interested in seem to be strings. From the XP 7.9:

HKR,, Detail, %REG_SZ%, "0"
HKR,, Detail_DEF, %REG_SZ%, "0"
HKR,, Detail_DE_MIN, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR,, Detail_DE_MAX, %REG_SZ%, "100"
HKR,, ColorVibrance, %REG_SZ%, "0"
HKR,, ColorVibrance_DEF, %REG_SZ%, "0"
HKR,, ColorVibrance_DE_MIN, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR,, ColorVibrance_DE_MAX, %REG_SZ%, "100"
HKR,, Fleshtone, %REG_SZ%, "0"
HKR,, Fleshtone_DEF, %REG_SZ%, "0"
HKR,, Fleshtone_DE_MIN, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR,, Fleshtone_DE_MAX, %REG_SZ%, "100"
HKR,, ColorVibrance_NA, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR,, Fleshtone_NA, %REG_SZ%, "1"

Mght be an idea to change those last couple to zero so XP users get the control sliders in CCC btw.

Some of those that are a regstring in the install appear to be made binary when installed (eg colorvibrance), but that should all work automatically. If not, the user can just hit default anyway, and ColorVibrance_DEF certainly remains a string.


ps looks like they're preparing to have a detail slider in there. I wonder how that relates to dxva_detailenhance....

[arfster]

By popular demand, I updated my reg tweaks post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11622510#post11622510) with separate settings for XP/Vista and HD2400/HD2600.

Obviously all thanks goes to you, arfster, as the settings all come from you. If you decide to start maintaining your own XP/Vista reg file tweaks, I'll just defer to you. I'm just trying to aggregate information/settings into a ready-to-use, up-to-date form that users can follow in a step-by-step process.

No problem, thanks for doing - it was becoming a abit of a hassle trying to keep everything collated. Your method is much neater than mine too, and doesn't run the risk of tripping up any future driver checksum thingy.

Might mail you with some possible changes if that's OK, there are some things I've just noticed :D

[DaytonaDave]

Thanks for the update :)

[originalsnuffy]

DPlettner,

I apologize. I did not realize you were using the AGP version of the card. I am using the PCI Express version. Also, I think you use XP; and I am on Vista.

Sorry again. I have no idea what will happen with audio under AGP and XP.

[dastrong]

No problem, thanks for doing - it was becoming a abit of a hassle trying to keep everything collated. Your method is much neater than mine too, and doesn't run the risk of tripping up any future driver checksum thingy.

Might mail you with some possible changes if that's OK, there are some things I've just noticed :D

To Arfster, ExDeus and Karri

Thanks to you all for your expoertise. Using XP and 7.9 with the associated fixes you a have all found out it works. 100% even BBC HD TS (MBAFF) clips utilise only 8% on the P4 3.0GHZ processor + Sapphire 2400 pro pci 16

YIPPEEE

[crozk]

I'm sorry if this has been answered, but I couldn't find any information about it.

I have a GeCube HD2600 AGP Pro 512 MB and I can't get the 7.9-drivers to be installed because of the "couldn't find hardware"-problem.
I have tried to edit the .ini-files but it didn't work.
Is there a way to install those drivers with my card?

Another question: Are there anyone who has achieved H/W-acceleration running Windows XP with a similiar card (HD2400/HD2600 AGP)?

[IanD]

IWith PowerDVD 7.3, I can select "Enable hardware acceleration (ATI AVIVO)" but that gets automatically deselected and grayed out after I start playing a video file.
I'm having the same issues with a 2400Pro official Catalyst 7.9 XP and the 7.9 string tweaks: can't get acceleration to work in PowerDVD 7.3.2911 for HD-DVD (haven't tried anything else as I mainly use HD-DVD).

However, before this I had tried Catalyst 7.7 and the 7.7 tweaks and I was able to get acceleration, although there were desktop window open/close tearing issues and problems with acceleration with menus and certain extras.

Catalyst 7.9 has stopped the desktop window open/close tearing issue, but prevents acceleration.

Tried installing the 7.9 tweaks as dword instead of string, but that doesn't make any difference.

Have now uninstalled 7.9 and installed 7.8 plus tweaks, but it's the same as 7.9: HA won't remain ticked when actually playing HD-DVD. No acceleration when playing an evo file either.

Have tried playing an 1080i mpeg2 TS and CPU load is about 60% on C2D 2.8GHz, so I guess that's not getting accelerated either. It's no good trying H.264 as I only have that in mkv format and we all know the additional problems with that particular container and PowerDVD.

I had installed PowerDVD 3104a and then gone back to 2911, but 2911 is accelerating HD-DVD with an 8500GT for a short while before crashing PowerDVD, so it looks like it's sort of working at least with NVidia, so I'm guessing it should work with ATI. Since it's the drivers still causing issues with Nvidia, I'm guessing it's similar for ATI and I just have to find the right combination of hardware and drivers that works.

I'm going to try the official Catalyst 7.7 drivers next and see if I can get that accelerating again, as I had it working previously (but with problems). If that doesn't work, then I'm not sure what is going on. My only concern is that the 7.7 tweaks are different and so I'll have to hunt back through the forum thread to see what they needed to be set to, instead of using my preconfigured set.

[UPDATE: acceleration works with Catalyst 7.7 without any tweaks. Have to try tweaks next and see if that makes any difference. However Catalyst 7.7 returns tearing of desktop windows when opened or closed.]

[UPDATE: not sure what effect the tweaks are having if any. Before I installed the tweaks, I tried playing King Kong with acceleration enabled and full screen on a 1920x1440p75 desktop and it seemed to play perfectly fine with around 8% CPU: I was expecting not to be able to get full screen video with the default SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps, based on previous thread comments, but didn't see an issue. Now that the value has been tweaked to 2800000, I still don't see any effect.]

However, with Catalyst 7.7 (and not sure if it applies to later Catalyst), adjusting Brightness and Contrast in the CCC Avivo Video settings seems to have no effect whatsoever on an HD-DVD playing in PowerDVD (acceleration enabled or disabled): only the PowerDVD colour controls seem to have an effect.

I have another issue with accelerated playback of HD-DVD: when playing the main feature of King Kong or 300, everything is fine, but if I play the 300 extra "300 - Fact Or Fiction" it's like a slideshow in full screen: reduce to the default window and playback is smooth; increase the window size much more and it begins stuttering. Strangely, the 300 menu background is also jerky in accelerated mode. Turn off acceleration and both extra and menu are smooth (but CPU spikes 100%).

And of course I can't run at 72Hz as there are no options for that at HD resolutions, so I have to choose 75Hz: what's up with that?

At least I'm getting acceleration now for HD-DVD, but I wish I knew what was going on.

My conclusion FWIW is that Catalyst 7.7 is best for XP and PowerDVD 7.3.2911 and VC-1 at this time, but still has a long way to go before being a stable solution.

[arfster]

If you're having hardware acceleration problems, try figure out what element is not working. For example, does PDVD in media (file) mode work, but not in disc mode? (they're essentially separate programs with similar-but-slightly-different codecs). Do you get acceleration if you use graphedit to play files with a hardware accelerating codec? Do different file types work? (eg mpeg2 HD doesn't accelerate by default with the 2400). Essentially try get more detail, cos there are so many reasons for acceleration not working it's pretty much impossible to get forum help without a bit more specifics.

If you've upgraded to PDVD3104 and then back, this may also cause problems. PDVD has awful uninstallation utils, and routinely leaves chunks of previous installs in files or the registry. They basically expect you not to "downgrade" - perhaps it would help if they didn't keep introducing new bugs :-) Anyway, it's good idea to try directshow acceleration with something like the purevideo, sonic, avivo codecs, because then you've got something to compare PDVD against.

Also it's possible with all the driver swapping around that you have remnants from previous installs - ATI are just as bad as Nvidia in this regard. Before installing new drivers, uninstall the old, reboot to safe mode, run driver sweeeper/driver cleaner/xdc (any driver cleaner utils you can find). It's probably also worth doing a search through the registry manually for old ATI bits.

[originalsnuffy]

Power DVD still crashes. This seems to be related to some form of infinite loop error.

Anybody see this before and have any guesses what is going on? That might help my trouble shooting. System is Vista, right now went back to the ATI 7.6 drivers to create a "base case".

Is it possible that the problem is that the card has both a HDMI connection and a VGA connection hooked up? The VGA goes straight to the monitor; the HDMI goes to an Onkyo 905 and then to the same HDCP compliant monitor via HDMI (Sony Bravia 1080p capable LCD).

I am using the latest PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra update from the Cyberlink website. It is not obvious to me, a new user, how to download older versions from the Cyberlink website, so at least right now I do not think I am able to backtrack to older versions.

[shandy b]

Wow and I thought building a HTPC would be easy!
ATI 2600XT/VISTA/PDVD/DVB PRO/BBC HD etc
Have managed to get HA playback of BBC HD H264 TS in media player and PDVD but have a question about required Enhanced Video rendererer (EVR). Can EVR run windowed on primary screen and full screen (ATI Theatre mode) on secondary. In my case secondary is Panasonic Viera via HDMI.
I get the additional full screen OK without HA but as soon as EVR is in use there is no secondary in full screen. Second screen remains showing extended desktop. Anyone got EVR and Theatre Mode?

[cri123]

Just an FYI, I can never see how a sound card could work through the AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) as I understand it is purely a graphics interface. So I would think the sound feature will not be available for AGP users.

I have the 2600PRO PCI-e and it seems the 7.7 drivers are by far the best as far as image quality is concerned. The problem is they are unable to come out of sleep without causing a hard lock of the PC. The 7.9 drivers are stable out of sleep mode but then they look awful. I like to use the Today Show in the morning as an example and the 7.7 drivers show NO jaggies and the scrolling news line at the bottom is as smooth as glass. With the 7.9 drivers, the scrolling news is a little blurred and infact all movement seems a little blurred. Probably a problem with deinterlacing as there is no problem on 720p sources. Also, jaggies are really jagged. The 7.9 drivers are not as bad as when there is NO hardware acceleration but it is pretty bad. I wonder if the 7.7 drivers are doing FULL hardware acceleration while the 7.9 drivers are doing only partial acceleration. I also wonder if the 7.9 drivers are just not optimized and we can expect ATI to clean them up in the future, or could it be that full hardware acceleration and sleep mode does not mix. In my experience with both ATI and Nvidia, it seems the 7.7 driver set are totally as good - quality wise - as the latest Nvidia drivers. The 7.9 driver set is stable but looks like complete crud. The Nvidia drivers offer excellent image and NO stability problems. It's too bad that Nvidia didn't have the foresight to include a soundcard for sound through HDMI like ATI has done. All my problems would be solved. For now, I am waiting on ATI to get their drivers in order, or Nvidia to add sound. It's incredibly frustrating.

I am running full 1080p.

EDIT: I use Vista 32-bit MCE

[arfster]

The 7.9 drivers are stable out of sleep mode but then they look awful. I like to use the Today Show in the morning as an example and the 7.7 drivers show NO jaggies and the scrolling news line at the bottom is as smooth as glass. With the 7.9 drivers, the scrolling news is a little blurred and infact all movement seems a little blurred. Probably a problem with deinterlacing as there is no problem on 720p sources.

There are some oddities with the deinterlacing in Vista 7.9 if you use the Cyberlink mpeg2 decoder - which have you?

Might also be worth trying forcing vector-adaptive deinterlacing in CCC/avivo video/basic quality.

[cri123]

There are some oddities with the deinterlacing in Vista 7.9 if you use the Cyberlink mpeg2 decoder - which have you?

Might also be worth trying forcing vector-adaptive deinterlacing in CCC/avivo video/basic quality.

I am using the MS decoder. I have tried the Cyberlink one and could see absolutely no difference. I am beginning to think that the MS one is really made by Cyberlink. I say that tongue-in-cheek but am a little serious also.

I do not use the automatic deinterlacing and force vector which certainly looks the best. However, it seems the automatic setting uses this all the time from what I can tell.

Quality-wise, the 7.7 driver is pretty much PERFECT. The results are stunning. With the 7.9 drivers, I can atleast let the PC sleep and still have my shows recorded.

BTW, to be more specific about the problem with the 7.7 drivers, it appears that they do not like my display to be off. This, for some odd reason, causes the PC to lock and my processor fan eventually goes to maximum speed indicating that the processors are running at full load. Probably the driver gets stuck in somekind of continuous loop waiting for the display and locks, but I'm just guessing. If ATI could figure out how to make the 7.7 drivers play nice then I'd be as happy as a clam at high tide. The 7.9 drivers are just ugly.

EDIT: I should add that the 7.9 drivers could be worse. The problem is that they are not as good as the 7.7 ones. What bothers me the most are the jaggies. They make everything look so distorted, like an Atari 2600 video game. For the most part, this should only be a problem on 1080i broadcast content.

[arfster]

I am using the MS decoder. I have tried the Cyberlink one and could see absolutely no difference.

Hrrm - not tried the MS decoder myself, my Vista version (Enterprise) doesn't have it.

However, I noticed the deinterlacing problems you mentioned straight away after installing 7.9, but only with Cyberlink. Here's what I found when I tested it:

2600 deinterlacing: If you force VA in CCC for any 1080i, as my default install does, the cyberlink mpeg2 decoder goes into judderfest mode when used with EVR (which includes WMP11, Vista MCE and PDVD itself). The AVIVO decoder works fine though, so use that with any third party app. VMR9+Cyberlink is fine also. Cyberlink h264+EVR is fine

[karrih]

Hello, I was wondering if others still have problems with saturated red colors banding heavily when using mpeg2 hw acceleration? This is most apparent with SD video, although some of it can be seen also with hd. This is the only remaining major issue for me, so it would be great to get it solved.

This is what I mean:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=88738&d=1188931990

Also, I'd like to point out that anyone having problems with movement in video with latest drivers and VA deinterlacing should check if the 'LCD Overdrive' is enabled. If it is, there might be pretty annoying effects.

[cri123]

Hrrm - not tried the MS decoder myself, my Vista version (Enterprise) doesn't have it.

However, I noticed the deinterlacing problems you mentioned straight away after installing 7.9, but only with Cyberlink. Here's what I found when I tested it:

2600 deinterlacing: If you force VA in CCC for any 1080i, as my default install does, the cyberlink mpeg2 decoder goes into judderfest mode when used with EVR (which includes WMP11, Vista MCE and PDVD itself). The AVIVO decoder works fine though, so use that with any third party app. VMR9+Cyberlink is fine also. Cyberlink h264+EVR is fine

The MS decoder that comes with Vista MCE works great. It even works pretty well without hardware acceleration, but I wouldn't say great. For example, it is much better than the Nvidia decoder without hardware assist. I highly recommend Vista MCE. I used XP MCE for a while so I am familiar with both. MCE comes in Vista Home Premium so Ultimate is not needed. For any other use, I still prefer XP. I bet you already know this, huh?

---

Alright, everybody having the same problems as I have been describing might be interested in what I have just found.

In a last desperate attempt to solve this problem, I went into CCC and changed from the best looking deinterlacer, vector-adaptive, to the absolute worst one, weave. Now, bear with me... You will see the ATI flag and think there is no way in h*ll that this is going to look good, because it is completely distorted and looks like spaghetti. Well, it should not, but actually looks much better than V-A. The action is much smoother and clearer, crisper. Jaggies almost gone. Also, my CPU usage went from 25%, which is not bad, to 5% which is awesome. It looks pretty decent, or livable, I will say, but I think ATI need to get the V-A deinterlacer working properly. It seemed the V-A worked better in 7.7 but I am not going to go back to investigate. I want to point out that I have yet to see the quality that I had from my NVidia 8500GT, but I am hoping that after ATI have had the same amount of time to resolve driver issues then they will be more or less equal. (crosses fingers)

I do curse NBC, CBS and ABC for deciding to transmit interlaced content.

[red5goahead]

hi guys.

I'm using an Asus Ati 2600 Pro under XP (I switch to Vista in few days). Actually my intetion is use 1280x720@50 CCC profile fps Pal material and 1280x720@60 for 24 fps material (also mkv my hope someone fix that problem). Dxva/Wmr9 work fine with Cyberlink codec. some mov file hw accel. have a gray line at bottom.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/2062/kmplayersilentcity720ptnw0.th.png (http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kmplayersilentcity720ptnw0.png)

I would to use Avivo 3:2 pulldown features to use 60 Hz. with 24 fps material and changing to 60 fps. Have you notice if that features work and can I know if it's on during playback?

how work 3to2Pulldown, 3to2Pulldown_DEF and 3to2Pulldown_NA registry entries?

[autoboy70]

Hello, I was wondering if others still have problems with saturated red colors banding heavily when using mpeg2 hw acceleration? This is most apparent with SD video, although some of it can be seen also with hd. This is the only remaining major issue for me, so it would be great to get it solved.

This is what I mean:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=88738&d=1188931990

Also, I'd like to point out that anyone having problems with movement in video with latest drivers and VA deinterlacing should check if the 'LCD Overdrive' is enabled. If it is, there might be pretty annoying effects.

Awhile back I was having this issue with 7.7 and 7.8 drivers on a 2400pro and 2600pro. I pulled them out because shows were unwatchable and I just checked in to find out if it is solved. Apparently not. I saw it most on human faces where the red cheeks of people have bad visible banding. I have never seen it in HD so I thought it might have something to do with video levels. Apparently SD and HD video use different video levels but I don't understand this enough to find out if this is what I am seeing. I was kinda under the impression that I was the only one that still had this problem.

[arfster]

In a last desperate attempt to solve this problem, I went into CCC and changed from the best looking deinterlacer, vector-adaptive, to the absolute worst one, weave. Now, bear with me... You will see the ATI flag and think there is no way in h*ll that this is going to look good, because it is completely distorted and looks like spaghetti. Well, it should not, but actually looks much better than V-A. The action is much smoother and clearer, crisper. Jaggies almost gone.

Hrrm, I"m confused. Are you weaving genuine interlaced 1080i60 (ie news/sport), or films? If the former it should be juddering unwatchably. Will have to have a play with this myself *ponders*

[tman247]

Hello, I was wondering if others still have problems with saturated red colors banding heavily when using mpeg2 hw acceleration? This is most apparent with SD video, although some of it can be seen also with hd. This is the only remaining major issue for me, so it would be great to get it solved.

This is what I mean:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=88738&d=1188931990

Also, I'd like to point out that anyone having problems with movement in video with latest drivers and VA deinterlacing should check if the 'LCD Overdrive' is enabled. If it is, there might be pretty annoying effects.

I'm not exactly seeing banding as such, but when viewing SD material (mainly OTA Digital), where there's large blocks of colour (mainly reds, sometimes blues), I see a sort of shift of the colour, or pulse if you like. It's difficult to explain, but it looks like the that area moves slightly, then reverts back. It's almost like shifting color bleed. HD material is perfect, with no signs of similar issues. I haven't tried it without h/w accel though.

I'm currently running Vista Ultimate (32bit) with a 2600XT using arfster's 7.7 tweaked drivers. I'm going to try the latest bioshock 7.9's, but a friend (almost same HTPC rig, but with 2400pro) get's his best pic with stock 7.8RC3, but see's the same 'bleed' as I do with 7.7's

[karrih]

I'm not exactly seeing banding as such, but when viewing SD material (mainly OTA Digital), where there's large blocks of colour (mainly reds, sometimes blues), I see a sort of shift of the colour, or pulse if you like.

Yes, I get this too, also especially with video based material. I wonder if red colours from video sources somehow go out of colour space. After all, these cards first priority apparently is BD/HD DVD.

[autoboy70]

Yes, I get this too, also especially with video based material. I wonder if red colours from video sources somehow go out of colour space. After all, these cards first priority apparently is BD/HD DVD.

That would be dumb to optimize a card for BD/HD DVD when 98% of the content people still watch is not BD/HD DVD.

I'm wondering if this color problem is only the graphics card, or if it is a TV/graphics card problem. When I get home I will try hooking up my 22" monitor to the 2400pro and see if i have the same problem. I use a 3 year old 720p Samsung DLP normally.

[arfster]

I'm not exactly seeing banding as such, but when viewing SD material (mainly OTA Digital), where there's large blocks of colour (mainly reds, sometimes blues), I see a sort of shift of the colour, or pulse if you like. It's difficult to explain, but it looks like the that area moves slightly, then reverts back. It's almost like shifting color bleed. HD material is perfect, with no signs of similar issues. I haven't tried it without h/w accel though.


Hrrrm, weird. Deblocking failure? Chroma upsampling? Can't see why that would switch on/off though.

What brand are you using? I've got the exact same setup in my HTPC (vista32+2600xt+tweaked 7.7s) and haven't seen such a thing. I'll try tune it to the worst SD channel I can find later.

[cri123]

Hrrm, I"m confused. Are you weaving genuine interlaced 1080i60 (ie news/sport), or films? If the former it should be juddering unwatchably. Will have to have a play with this myself *ponders*

By films, do you mean films that were transferred to DVD?

I am using some recorded HD football games from yesterday on CBS and NBC, this morning's HD Today Show broadcast on NBC. This of course is in the States, the only place where there is football that is worth watching and never end in 0-0 scores! :eek: (LOL) Are you in the US? I hope you know what the Today Show is. I use this to test because it has some really cheesy graphics they slap along the bottom plus the news feed is nice to test the smoothness, etc.

I also briefly watched the beginning few minutes of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It looked pretty good. The panning across the mountain ranges was pretty smooth so it seemed none or very few frames were being dropped. Suggest a good film to test with and I will give it a try. I do have some of the Tour de France DVD's (1999-2006) which I am almost certain the earlier ones were from a 480i source (or whatever it is in Europe (PAL)), but if you have a better idea then let me know. I have Contact, Forest Gump, all the Lethal Weapons, and other older movies. I'll give something a go tonight.

BTW, all the SD digital broadcasts still look as good as they have ever looked which is not saying much. Our PBS station has one broadcast in 720p HD and another in true, honest-to-god 480p, but I suspect it will look OK since it is progressive. This is the only broadcast in our area that is not HD so I don't think I have an interlaced source to try other than the 1080i of NBC/CBS/ABC.

[autoboy70]

I'm not exactly seeing banding as such, but when viewing SD material (mainly OTA Digital), where there's large blocks of colour (mainly reds, sometimes blues), I see a sort of shift of the colour, or pulse if you like. It's difficult to explain, but it looks like the that area moves slightly, then reverts back. It's almost like shifting color bleed. HD material is perfect, with no signs of similar issues. I haven't tried it without h/w accel though.

I think i have seen the phenomenon that you talk about, but never on my HTPC. I saw it on a cheap HDTV at Best Buy. It was on a red football jersey and when the player moved, his jersey flickered like the jersey was a frame behind then caught up, then got a frame behind again. It only showed up on the really bright areas. I have no idea what caused it, but I sure didn't buy that TV!

[arfster]

By films, do you mean films that were transferred to DVD?


Sorry no, should have specified what I was getting at. If you're watching films broadcast in 1080i60 with appropriate flags, the drivers/decoder should be digging out the original 1080p24 via inverse telecine. That's assuming the pulldown detection checkbox is ticked - but I just realised it greys out if you select weave, so have no idea what will happen then :-) If it's weaving film to 1080p30 it's not going to look very good.

The problem here is that it's hard to know exactly what the problem is from descriptions in words - for example terms like judder, jitter, framedrop tend to get used interchangeably :-( It'd probably be best if you could try recording some stuff and playing it outside media centre, say via an app like MPC that allows you to control filter/renderer choice. Then select EVR, turn on the stats viewer in the menus, and see if it really is dropping frames.

The fact you say SD interlaced still looks good lends me to believe there's nothing wrong with the actual deinterlacing itself, since it uses exactly the same routines in SD and HD. However, badly flagged film material is more common with mpeg2 1080i, where the decoder can't quite decide whether it's seeing film or video origin content. If you have the NVidia decoder it's quite useful, because the decoder properties window tells you whether it's currently detecting film (and thus applying IVTC to produce 1080p24) or video (and thus deinterlacing to make 1080p60). However note the NVidia decoder is ye-olde-worlde-pre-Vista, and you'll need to use VMR9 with it or it can't accelerate.

[emilot]

I'm sorry if this has been answered, but I couldn't find any information about it.

I have a GeCube HD2600 AGP Pro 512 MB and I can't get the 7.9-drivers to be installed because of the "couldn't find hardware"-problem.
I have tried to edit the .ini-files but it didn't work.
Is there a way to install those drivers with my card?

Another question: Are there anyone who has achieved H/W-acceleration running Windows XP with a similiar card (HD2400/HD2600 AGP)?

From post 1954..

c:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-9_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_52443
\Driver\Driver\XP_INF\CX_52443.inf

[ATI.Mfg.NTx86]
"ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO AGP" = ati2mtag_RV610, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_94C4
"ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP" = ati2mtag_RV630, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9587
"ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT AGP" = ati2mtag_RV630, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9586

any other files need to change?
For XP, there are two more files that need to be modified. BTW, I figured this out from this old post.

The first is Driver\CX_?????.INI and the second is Driver\INSTALL.INI

Both these files need this line:

R6=DriverPath_R6,0x9587,0x94C6,0x94C4,0x9586

I just replaced the R6 line in the 7.9 drivers, but you can also probably just add to the existing line.

[emilot]

Please guys who can tell us, at XP which are the correct registry tweaks for 2400Pro AGP, the dwords or strings type??

Someone who solve it plz??

[ExDeus]

Please guys who can tell us, at XP which are the correct registry tweaks for 2400Pro AGP, the dwords or strings type??

Someone who solve it plz??
When I first started looking at the registry entries, before having installed any tweaked drivers or settings, I saw the DXVA settings as strings. Others have reported it works for them to use strings. I would go with strings.

I'm just about done with an update script to enter the registry tweaks automatically. Just need to test on Vista. I'm using strings in the script because the tweaks have been reported to positively work with strings.

[cri123]

Sorry no, should have specified what I was getting at. If you're watching films broadcast in 1080i60 with appropriate flags, the drivers/decoder should be digging out the original 1080p24 via inverse telecine. That's assuming the pulldown detection checkbox is ticked - but I just realised it greys out if you select weave, so have no idea what will happen then :-) If it's weaving film to 1080p30 it's not going to look very good.

The problem here is that it's hard to know exactly what the problem is from descriptions in words - for example terms like judder, jitter, framedrop tend to get used interchangeably :-( It'd probably be best if you could try recording some stuff and playing it outside media centre, say via an app like MPC that allows you to control filter/renderer choice. Then select EVR, turn on the stats viewer in the menus, and see if it really is dropping frames.

The fact you say SD interlaced still looks good lends me to believe there's nothing wrong with the actual deinterlacing itself, since it uses exactly the same routines in SD and HD. However, badly flagged film material is more common with mpeg2 1080i, where the decoder can't quite decide whether it's seeing film or video origin content. If you have the NVidia decoder it's quite useful, because the decoder properties window tells you whether it's currently detecting film (and thus applying IVTC to produce 1080p24) or video (and thus deinterlacing to make 1080p60). However note the NVidia decoder is ye-olde-worlde-pre-Vista, and you'll need to use VMR9 with it or it can't accelerate.

OK, I just tried a 1992 Tour de France where Andy Hampsten won the stage to the Alpe de Huez, which if you don't follow cycling then you probably haven't the slightest idea of what I am talking about. Only point is it is OLD and certainly interlaced and it looks quite aweful in Weave - lots of banding/interlacing. It looks OK in Bob, though. It appears to me that BOB softens the 1080i content a tad, but I guess it is a compromise. It's NOT as bad as vector adaptive and it does not appear to slow/blur the motion all that much, only a little. The news feed along the bottom of the Today Show is slightly softer in Bob than in Weave. Natalie Morales still looks georgous, though, so I guess none of this matters. :) All of the "adaptive" deinterlacers look aweful. What would be nice, if I could program the "automatic" deinterlacer to choose Weave for 1080i and Bob for all other interlaced content. It is very hard to try to understand how one interlaced source looks great in weave when another looks aweful. Perhaps 3:2 pulldown is automatically enabled for 1080i sources??? I'm very tired of messing with this. It seems to me that ATI needs to either clean up the vector-adaptive deinterlacer or fix the automatic deinterlacer to just choose between Weave and Bob depending on source. Forget all of the adaptive deinterlacers because if they can not be improved upon then they need to be scratched. Do you know if it is possible to tell the auto deinterlacer to only enable Bob and Weave and then to use Weave for 1080i only? Do you know of any options in the registry that disable some of the deinterlacers?

My problem with the Nvidia decoder was that it would work fine in XP MCE for a while but after time - with NO changes to the system - it would decide to start studdering/dropping frames. The only way I could fix it was totally wiping the system clean and reinstalling everything. It was a royal pain in the butt. When it wasn't studdering, the picture was good. I am so glad that I do not have to mess with those 3rd party decoders any more. Besides, the acceleration in these ATI HD cards is second to none so, for the moment, I'm happy with dumping Nvidia and going with ATI.

[augiedoggy]

That would be dumb to optimize a card for BD/HD DVD when 98% of the content people still watch is not BD/HD DVD.

I'm wondering if this color problem is only the graphics card, or if it is a TV/graphics card problem. When I get home I will try hooking up my 22" monitor to the 2400pro and see if i have the same problem. I use a 3 year old 720p Samsung DLP normally.

I think your wrong about that.....more people than you think who are ahead of the curve with HTPC's are also keeping up with the changing times and going HD....especially since probably 85% of htpc's are hooked up to hd compadible tv's.....

[originalsnuffy]

Okay, proof of concept achieved. I was able to get King Kong on HD DVD to play from the external drive with Cyberlink PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra and unmodified ATI 7.6 drivers, under Windows Vista with 2400Pro. Had some problems with blotches on the bottom of the screen from time to time (now I'll have to figure out what these are called!). Just used the analog drivers and the VGA output to the monitor. In catalyst control center pretty set everything to performance (vs. quality) when there was a choice.

Now the fun is to get some tweaks going to make things a bit better.

[crozk]

From post 1954..

c:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-9_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_52443
\Driver\Driver\XP_INF\CX_52443.inf

[ATI.Mfg.NTx86]
"ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO AGP" = ati2mtag_RV610, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_94C4
"ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP" = ati2mtag_RV630, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9587
"ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT AGP" = ati2mtag_RV630, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9586

any other files need to change?
For XP, there are two more files that need to be modified. BTW, I figured this out from this old post.

The first is Driver\CX_?????.INI and the second is Driver\INSTALL.INI

Both these files need this line:

R6=DriverPath_R6,0x9587,0x94C6,0x94C4,0x9586

I just replaced the R6 line in the 7.9 drivers, but you can also probably just add to the existing line.

I have done this and it didn't work for the GeCube card.
Can someone who has edited the .ini-files and got it to work please send them over? (some http-file service or something)

[tman247]

Hrrrm, weird. Deblocking failure? Chroma upsampling? Can't see why that would switch on/off though.

What brand are you using? I've got the exact same setup in my HTPC (vista32+2600xt+tweaked 7.7s) and haven't seen such a thing. I'll try tune it to the worst SD channel I can find later.

Thanks arfster. As I said, I'm mainly seeing this with with UK DVB broadcasts from a Terratec Cinergy 2400i dual tuner card with standard MS MPEG2 decoder in Vista. My previous rig was a NVidia 6150 with XP MCE. No problems at all with this setup, but it was very poor for HD, so I had to change. My friend is using same rig, but Nova-T 500 dual DVB, and sees the same problem, so it's not the tuner.

Happens on pretty much all channels, even the strong ones like BBC1,2 etc. Also seems to happen more on static shots. It either doesn't happen on panning and fast action material, or I just don't notice it.

It's livable with, but slightly annoying. I was hoping later drivers would fix it.

[arfster]

Thanks arfster. As I said, I'm mainly seeing this with with UK DVB broadcasts from a Terratec Cinergy 2400i dual tuner card with standard MS MPEG2 decoder in Vista.....

That's the difference with my setup then, I use other decoders. Seems to be a common theme in these threads that people using the Vista decoder have weird issues though. At a guess, it could be the point where the decoder switches from bob to weave. If the decoder was interacting properly with hardware acceleration this shouldn't happen though, but I have seen similar problems before with various decoders (eg previous versions of PDVD the decoder couldn't initiate with vmr9, nvidia's decoder still misdetects between film/video, and the 3104 pdvd mpeg2 decoder with drivers 7.8/7.9 has problems with judder when not on auto deinterlacing mode).

[emilot]

I have done this and it didn't work for the GeCube card.
Can someone who has edited the .ini-files and got it to work please send them over? (some http-file service or something)

You must doing something wrong because i have also a Gecube 2400Pro card!!under XP!

Watch about the install.ini which is also located under the root folder of the drivers, but the right one is at the DRIVERS/Install.ini

[tman247]

That's the difference with my setup then, I use other decoders. Seems to be a common theme in these threads that people using the Vista decoder have weird issues though. At a guess, it could be the point where the decoder switches from bob to weave. If the decoder was interacting properly with hardware acceleration this shouldn't happen though, but I have seen similar problems before with various decoders (eg previous versions of PDVD the decoder couldn't initiate with vmr9, nvidia's decoder still misdetects between film/video, and the 3104 pdvd mpeg2 decoder with drivers 7.8/7.9 has problems with judder when not on auto deinterlacing mode).

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I guess I'm using VMC pretty much as everyone else does (with the MS decoder). You mention you use 'other' decoders, and don't see these issues. There's a limited selection that are actually VMC compatible, so can I ask which one you use?

[cybrsage]

You must doing something wrong because i have also a Gecube 2400Pro card!!under XP!

Watch about the install.ini which is also located under the root folder of the drivers, but the right one is at the DRIVERS/Install.ini

If you are running MCE2005 and an AGP 2400, I doubt you will ever get it to work.

I gave up trying.

[ToughRowToHoe]

yeah my sapphire 2400pro came w/out dongle, im using a dvi-HDMI cable and it seems like the 2400pro is causing my sound card to not be able to transmit the audio, I think becasue my TV is waiting for HDMI audio. I'm lost :(

You cannot get sound over HDMI without the ATI specific dongle. AGP cards may well not support sound over HDMI. PCI-E cards probably all support sound over HDMI.

The Sapphire 2400 Pro PCI-E worked fine sending sound over HDMI to my Sharp LCD.

In order to enable HDMI support on the Radeon™ HD 2000 series board through the DVI connector, AMD has designed a unique DVI-HDMI adapter that is only available through certified vendor(s) selected by AMD to authorized partners.

Source: http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...asp?deptID=894

[Nyria]

Hrrrm, weird. Deblocking failure? Chroma upsampling? Can't see why that would switch on/off though.

What brand are you using? I've got the exact same setup in my HTPC (vista32+2600xt+tweaked 7.7s) and haven't seen such a thing. I'll try tune it to the worst SD channel I can find later.

Hello,

I'm also having this "red coulour shift" problem, mostly in tv logo's and tv/talkshows with large red backgrounds.

Fooling arround a bit with the avivo settings i found the problem does not appear when i uncheck the pulldown detection in the deinterlace options.

This gives a great picture on Sd video in Media Portal + Cyberlink 7.3 + Evr, except for the fact MediaPortal crashes when i enable evr, and using vrm9 gives no picture at all in MP if i change annything in the deinteralace options.

Guess i have to watch something else then talkshows untill ati or MP gets this fixed. :D

Long storry short: the problem seems to be related to the "pulldown detection" option.

I'm using a 2600pro from Club3d btw.

[emilot]

If you are running MCE2005 and an AGP 2400, I doubt you will ever get it to work.

I gave up trying.

I am sorry for you but i was talking to "crozk" about the problem with the drivers!!

And i was talking about Win XP!!

[gvagolf]

I applied the registry tweaks for Windows Vista and my HD2600 card and rebooted. The video now has gone from the occassional stutter / slowdown to looking like a slide show. I am sending a 720p signal to my plasma tv. Any suggestions?

Thank you very much

[arfster]

Hello,

I'm also having this "red coulour shift" problem, mostly in tv logo's and tv/talkshows with large red backgrounds.

Fooling arround a bit with the avivo settings i found the problem does not appear when i uncheck the pulldown detection in the deinterlace options.


Hrrrm, interesting. Are you in PAL or NTSC land? PAL users shouldn't have problems from pulldown.

If using NTSC, this does tend to suggest a film/video detection problem (aka bad edits) with your decoder. If it's hopping between one and two, you'll be strobing between 24p and 60i, and at the point it changes you'll get some odd artifacting. With pulldown detection switched off you'll be at 60i all the time, which means no flickering between film/video, but other problems with film (because it's being screwed to a 30p format).

For Vista/EVR, if it's driver 7.8/7.9 then the Cyberlink 7.3 mpeg2 decoder doesn't like anything other than auto in the deinterlace selection. You might want to try ATI's AVIVO decoder. With 7.7 the cyberlink decoder is fine.

Not surprised you're having mediaportal EVR problems, I found that very unstable. It is quite a new feature though.

[arfster]

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I guess I'm using VMC pretty much as everyone else does (with the MS decoder). You mention you use 'other' decoders, and don't see these issues. There's a limited selection that are actually VMC compatible, so can I ask which one you use?


I still use 7.7 with the Cyberlink decoder (no improvement with later drivers, so I never updated the HTPC). With 7.9 the cyberlink mpeg2 doesn't get along with EVR except with basic deinterlacing, so the ati avivo decoder is the answer.

[Nyria]

Hrrrm, interesting. Are you in PAL or NTSC land? PAL users shouldn't have problems from pulldown.

You might want to try ATI's AVIVO decoder. With 7.7 the cyberlink decoder is fine.


Thanks for your sugestions arfster.

Gonna go and give the avivo decoder a spin, and try to go back to 7.7 to see what gives the best combination.

I'm living in europe PAL country btw, using a floppy dvb-s card to receive astra1. Also got a DV