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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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?

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."

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.

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?

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

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"

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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".

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

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??

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?

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;

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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!!

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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,

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

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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?

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?

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.

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 :(

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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?

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

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....

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

Thanks for the update :)

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.

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

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)?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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*

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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??

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.

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.

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.....

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.

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)

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.

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).

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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!!

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

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.

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.

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 DVB-C card gonna give that a try also to see if the input tv card/signal is causing the problem.

Autumn 2007 Video Processing Face Off
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/autumn_2007_video_shootout/

I wonder using the tweaked driver would help... but upsampling really sucks for the Radeon's.

Damn... should I just forget about HTPC and go for a PS3 when it comes to media playback? That sucks.

Autumn 2007 Video Processing Face Off
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/autumn_2007_video_shootout/


Few quick thoughts from whizzing through it:

Monster cables? Sigh, doesn't look promising.

A Monster Line conditioner? Rofl, duh, and ffs.

What should be a PS3 picture is labelled Nvidia with the first set of comparisons. Which is correct? It's also displaced by a few pixels compared to the others.

Cyberlink mpeg2 + Vista + ATI 7.9 ..... oops, bad combination. With 7.9, you have to use another decoder, or backtrack to 7.7 if you want to use cyberlink for mpeg2. Wouldn't be surprised if that's deinterlacing rather than IVTCing incidentally, given the problems reported here with 7.9 and IVTC.

The Bluray screenshots of Knightley and Depp are both expanded. Bad that they didn't notice that (come on, it's obvious), worse that they tried to compare it to other images.

PS3 pic in the 3rd set is expanded. Some extra layer of procesing is being applied here obviously - I wonder why, and that else it did. The PS3 gets special compliments here from them though, when in fact they're just seeing the expansion providing dramatically different black and white levels.

They were also unable to get vforcemaxressize to work, which rather invalidates most of the ATI HD tests. Not exactly difficult to do either.

No mention of HD expansion issues on the ATI.

This being a default 2600 install, colour and flesh will be at 25, trdenoise and dxva_detailenhance on, etc etc.

Testing denoising via the HDHQV image isn't very useful, because there's no camera pan involved. A really good denoiser here might result in ghosting elsewhere, or any number of other problems. Of course, since this is the test everyone's now using, guess what the drivers get optimised for? *fumes*

What's the point of screenshots of _temporal_ denoising? Waste of time. I really hope they didn't make their decisions using the screenshots, although if they didn't then testing the difference with all that equipment to shift in/out would be pretty tricky. By the time you'd switched from one to the other, you won't have a detailed enough picture in your mind anymore to make adequate comparison.

Come to think of it, no mention of blindtesting at all. That's the only way to really do this sort of test.

More generally, where are the decoder fidelity tests? It's not exactly hard to do a few pixel by pixel comparisons.


There's also the presumption that maximum sharpness before artifacting is best. What if the director intended a degree of softness? What if you're giving undue prominence to features that aren't intended to be so obvious? This often happens with hair, and I think the PS3 looks to be doing this a touch, rendering it a bit unnatural. This also happens with the facepaint eyes on Depp's face - the PS3 version makes them appear glossy as if they were smooth polished stones, rather than matt face paint. By delineating the edges too exactly, you mess with the overall image.

Nvidia also wins overall imo on those screenshots, mainly because it maintains texture the best. This is slightly visible with Keira Knightley's skin, and more on the third with the texture of the trees and seas imo. That's the key thing about displaying a huge vista scene like that imo.

Anyway, I did pretty extensive tests myself between a 8500, 8600 and 2400 a while back (and later between 2400 and 2600) - and found the scaling pretty much identical. See http://rapidshare.com/files/43460708/MR___news.zip.html

The above article only tells us what we already know: that ATI's drivers are a joke. There's a reason why all these tweaks exist :-)

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

Please, please and again please! Can you upload your drivers? or at least the most important files, the .ini-files.

Yes - I do not see the boot screen. All I see is windows - but when I reboot the machine - I do not see the boot screen.. So I cannot see the BIOS - if I need to change anything. Any ideas??? Again - I have an HIS 2600 Pro and I have a DVI connection on my TV and a DVI connection on the card. I have a 25 ' cable. The cable is DVI-HDMI. I connect the DVI end to TV and the HDMI end to the HIS card with a generic HDMI->DVI adapter.

What do you mean? Your video looks fine but you can't see the boot screen?

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

And i was talking about Win XP!!

MCE2005 is XP, hence the mentioning of the issue.

Do not worry, I will ignore you from here out.

Hello,

I have an HIS 2600 Pro, Vista 32 bit, I have CCC 7.7 (with most of the registry tweaks). I am about to install CyberLink Ultra and I want to know which patch/version I should use. I see a fair amount of talk - but no-one comes out and says which is the most stable.

UPDATE: this is quite a bit out of date, and some things have been fixed. With 8.3-8-5, I find the only absolutely necessary is to standardise levels with UseBT601CSC=1, and the acceleration fixes if you use dual screens. Use others only to correct specific problems - it does vary with different cards and OS's.

UPDATE2: if you have an AGP card, even this lot of tweaks might not fix things. Unfortunately, there are a bundle of problems with agp cards, and it's just pure luck if they work or not.

UPDATE3: with 8.8 2600+dual monitors can be made to accelerate all again. Set vforceuvdcd1 & vforceuvdh264 to 1, and dxva_nohddecode to zero.



Useful app to apply tweaks:
http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/

Quick way to apply individual ones in the right place:
http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/DXVAChecker_1810.zip

(run the app, right-click any of the listings in the top box, driver settings, change stuff, OK, reboot if in XP)


LIST OF REG TWEAKS:

The "UseBT601CSC"="1" driver expands SD levels, the same way as HD is expanded automatically by the drivers, giving you 0-255, aka PC levels. If you want the original 16-235 (video levels) then go into CCC/avivo video/basic colour and turn "use application settings" off, brightness to 16, contrast 86 - pretty much exactly reversing the expansion. Note that in Vista EVR will always expand, and so will VMR9 with hardware acceleration. However, VMR9 without acceleration will not expand at start, and neither will the CCC colour controls work, until you manually move a colour control via the likes of procamp. (this isn't a fix though, because when it doesn't expand it gets moody and instead resorts to screwing the colours).

Note that this can create a problem with HD 720p material that has a wider aspect ratio than 16/9, and has a vertical resolution less than 720 lines (eg mkv 720p at 2.4:1 gives resolution of 1280*533 if encoded without black bars). These are encoded with standard HD bt709, but the card thinks that all <720 is SD, so assumes bt601. So, bt601 on bt709 material = colours unsurprisingly wonky. I think possibly the drivers respect material with colourspace flags though, so this might not be an issue - need to test. If needed you could use Haali renderer set to auto, and it'll select the correct one (breaks acceleration though).


More advanced solution to levels: use ffdshow-tryouts to output RGB32 high quality (with fullrange set under RGB conversion, the default "standard" setting confusingly actually expands). This breaks acceleration, but means no expansion. Note you'll need to select between bt601/709 for sd/HD, or you can make autoswitching profiles based on resolution (i use horizontal res above/below 1024 to do this). Note this also disables all driver based postprocessing, from sharpening/denoising to deinterlacing, as all of these require YUY2/YV12 to be fed to the renderer (and deinterlacing requires nv12 for anything better than basic bob). If this is all gibberish, probably not a good idea to use it, as you need to be fairly familiar with ffdshow for this.
Quick guide here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=15279715&postcount=6237


I don't know how XP behaves in software mode with expansion, so you'll have to experiment a little. A good way is to printscreen some video and paste into irfanview, then you can click any pixel and it'll tell you in the window header what the RGB values are. If it's 0/0/0 in the blackest bits, or 255/255/255 in the whitest bits, that means it's expanded. Non-expanded, ie the original, will be around 16 and 235 respectively.


If you're changing drivers, it's a good idea to run the complete ATI self-destruct sequence to rid your machine of driver remnants: in control panel/programs, uninstall ATI Catalyst Install Manager, and tell it to delete all ATI software. Reboot after, then delete any ATI directories in c:\program files, and if you have them run drivercleaner or xdc.

Edit: quick update, I find uninstall/reboot/drivercleaner completely wipes all traces, both files and in the registry.


These tweaks will work with any driver version - some of the key names changed so this covers them all.


THE REG STRINGS (yes, they're all apparently reg strings, even in XP)

"Fleshtone_DEF"="0"
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"="0"
"ColorVibrance_DEF"="0"
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"="0"
"ColorVibrance_NA"="0"
"Fleshtone_NA"="0"
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"="0"
"DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080H264"="0"
"VForce24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264"="0"
"DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1"="0"
"DXVA_WMV_NA"="0"
"SORTOverrideFPSCaps"="0"
"TrDenoise"="0"
"UseBT601CSC"="1"
"VForceMaxResSize"="2800000"
"SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000"
"VforceUVDVC1"="1"
"VforceUVDh264"="1"

2600 only:
"DI_METHOD"="5"
"DI_METHOD_DEF"="5"



EXPLANATIONS:
trdenoise 0 = turns off forced temporal denoise, which can just blur things. Even when set on (as it is by default), this appears to only work for interlaced content, and when motion-adaptive or vector-adaptive deinterlacing is in use. It also seems to be broken in the Vista 7.7 drivers, but works in 7.10. When on, it has a hefty hit on the shaders, 15% on a 2600XT. Probably it defaults to off for the 2400, as it would probably equate to 30-40% there (if anyone can test please let me know, just turn it on and off with va deinterlacing in use, and watch rivatuner gpu).

UPDATE: in 8.3 ATI added a CCC slider for denoise, which defaults to 64 (too much imo, try 30ish). Note this only works when MA or VA deinterlacing are engaged - this is correct imo, as film origin stuff doesn't need denoised. If you only want SD denoise, you can set vforcehddenoise=0. To enable sliders for XP, set Denoise_NA=0


dxva_detailenhance 0 = turns off forced sharpener.

UPDATE: in 8.3 ATI added sliders for detail and denoise. The above tweak is no longer necessary, just untick in CCC. Note the detail enhance appears to be totally disabled for HD. It does work for all SD though, progressive & interlaced. I reccomend putting the slider to 50. To enable sliders for XP, set Detail_NA=0.


VForceMaxResSize 2800000 (aka SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps in Cat7.7 and earlier) = this sets the PDVD HDDVD/Bluray max render size in pixels, but the default setting is so small that it can't fill a 1080p screen. The formula appears to be screen width squared * 0.75. On a 2600 the default value when the key doesn't exist appears to be around 2.3 million, which is enough for a 1600*1200 screen, but not for 1920 pixels wide. For that the 2.8 million value above is enough, but if you have a 2500*1600 screen it needs to be 4687500 or greater. Since there's maybe a performance reason for a limit, it's probably not worth setting it higher than you need.

DXVA_WMV_NA set to 0. Makes the CCC checkbox visible in CCC that allows controls WMV acceleration. Still no WMV acceleration in Vista regardless though :-(

Fleshtone and ColorVibrance minimum/defaults set to 0. The standard 2600 install has these on and at 25, but if you disable them in CCC they actually still continue to work at their default, ie 25. Setting mins and defaults to 0 means that when you deselect them in CCC, they actually turn off - your choice of course, but several people have reported that vibrance in particular results in posterisation.
UPDATE: note, with newer drivers this seems not to be an issue. Not sure quite when they fixed it though, so if you're using older drivers it's worth checking.

ColorVibrance_NA and Fleshtone_NA to 0. This makes the sliders visible in XP. Does nothing in Vista, they're visible already.

UseBT601CSC set to 1. This causes SD to expand to 0-255, in the same manner as HD (which expands regardless what you do) for a consistent single calibration between the two.

(2600 only) default deinterlacing mode to vector adaptive. In Vista there's a bug with 7.9 where auto mode in CCC just selects bob for 1080i. This reg change forces the issue. For the integrated/2400/3400 cards, see vforcedeint....

VForceDeint = 2/3/6. These force the availability of various deinterlacing modes, which are restricted on the lower models due to limited shader power. 6 allows all to be available, and you can then manually select which you want in CCC. Watch your gpu %.....

VForce24FPS1080MPEG2, VForce24FPS1080H264, VForce24FPS1080VC1 all to 0 (and dxva_only24fps etc for cat7.7 and earlier). Allows the 2400 to run European 1080i50 accelerated. For the 2600 these already work, so makes no difference.

dxva_nohddecode set to 0. Enables mpeg2 HD acceleration for the 2400, does nothing for the 2600 (except in official cat7.10). This can potentially create problems - if your GPU (see rivatuner) is being maxxed out by 1080i mpeg2 after this, set this back to 1 and use PowerDVD with hardware deinterlacing in options/video/advanced forced to 3C (vector-adaptive, the best) or 55 (motion-adaptive, next best). This avoids the enormous hit of mpeg2 HD decoding, which is around 50% GPU on a 2400pro or 35% on a 2600pro, but still gets you hardware deinterlacing. As above, in Vista the 2400 drivers will happily ignore whatever deinterlacing mode you select in CCC. XP is better behaved and will obey the CCC mode, but outside PDVD to get deinterlacing without acceleration the only choice (afaik) is the Bitcontrol mpeg2 decoder, or ffdshow set to decode mpeg2 (in codecs, you also have to go to the ffdshow output tab, tick "set interlace flag" and set to bob, then above that tick only NV12 of the colour types). Unfortunately with these methods you get no choice of what deinterlacing mode is used, unlike PDVD, so Vista 2400 users are a bit screwed.

VforceUVDVC1/VforceUVDh264 =1. With 8.1 onwards, ATI broke acceleration with dual display on lower end models (which includes the fairly powerful 2600xt for some reason, but not the 3800 cards), if the second display is HD (ie >719 lines vertical, thus pretty much every PC monitor). The above tweaks get acceleration working again. Quite why they chose to do this I have no idea, since every card from the 2400 up is capable of dualscreen acceleration.


Other known bugs:
* mpeg2 not in UVD but in shaders
* wmv acceleration broken in Vista
* 2400 Bluray mpeg2 not accelerated (and in 7.10 2600 also)
* 50hz displays have no overscan correction
* (cat7.8-7.10) Vista EVR+cyberlink mpeg2 results in juddervision deinterlacing errors (this includes Vista PDVD itself, ati avivo codec+EVR is fine though, vmr9 is unaffected)
* (cat7.8-7.10) deinterlacing set to auto in CCC bobs for 1080i h264. Forcing vector-adaptive works, at least in Vista.

The above article only tells us what we already know: that ATI's drivers are a joke. There's a reason why all these tweaks exist :-)

I couldn't agree more, and to add something, I wouldn't take resolution tips from someone who says something like this:
To repeat myself a third time, the Blu-ray edition is four times sharper than the DVD release.
960p has only the potential for twice the resolution than 480p. 1080p is only a bit more than 2X the resolution. Many confuse number of pixels with resolution because of the "megapixel race" in digital cameras, but resolution only goes in one dimension. So OK, maybe it could be forgiven if the word he used was "resolution", but "four times sharper"? That's just plain wrong.

And I say "potential" because with all 1080p movies I've seen that came from a 35mm film source, the reality is that at that point the resolution limiting factor is either the lens (you can actually see the aberrations) or the source film itself. You can tell how much more resolution potential 1080p has by viewing movies that either were done totally in a computer (like CG animated "toy-story-clone" movies) or one like Corpse Bride, which was done with Canon 1D Mark II cameras (8 megapixel digital SLRs), whose source resolution is a great deal higher than the final output, hence all the equipment required (lenses, processing equipment, etc) outresolves a 1080p image.

So because of this, while most movies' resolution will indeed be limited by 480p, also most won't be limited by 1080p (they'll already be limited at that point), so the actual "sharpness" difference would be less than 2X, in my opinion for those movies. Maybe the Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (or King Kong) movies, as they're new and high-budget (much better source material) will approach being limited by 1080p, but even in that case it's only 2X, or a little over 2X "sharpness" over DVD.

So yes, the "up to 6X resolution than DVD" line coming from HD-DVD (or is it bluray?) is super-ultra bullshit.

with ati mpeg decoder (kmp, dxva mode (superspeed), xp, vmr9)

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6868/74675693lq7.th.png (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=74675693lq7.png)

what do you think?

Just got an AGP Visionteck 2600PRO installed in ECS 848P-A motherboard. I tried the 8.4 drivers from Visionteck's web site and also the one on the included CD. In both cases the install process seems to go OK and eventually asks to reboot the computer but when Windows restarts no drivers are installed. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks John

Here's a little updated list of regtweaks and known bugs/solutions for the 2400/2600, in XP and Vista. Ex_deus is doing a little vbs script to automate this, and this is the accompanying little spiel so it's clear what each change does.
Thanks for the definitive list: it's much appreciated.

However, with a 2400Pro Catalyst 7.7 (with all your tweaks) XP PowerDVD 7.3.2911 and hardware acceleration enabled, changing Brightness, Contrast, Digital Vibrance or Fleshtone in CCC Avivo Video has absolutely no effect that I can see. The tweaks exist because the Digital Vibrance and Fleshtone sliders now appear in CCC and I have confirmed them in registry (and I have rebooted).

If I alter Brightness in CCC Avivo Video with hardware acceleration disabled, I immediately see the brightening effect (and I expect the other controls will work as well).

I now don't trust that any of the CCC controls are actually getting used by PowerDVD in the way they were intended when in hardware acceleration mode on my particular setup.

Anyone have any ideas on why this might be so?

However, with a 2400Pro Catalyst 7.7 (with all your tweaks) XP PowerDVD 7.3.2911 and hardware acceleration enabled, changing Brightness, Contrast, Digital Vibrance or Fleshtone in CCC Avivo Video has absolutely no effect that I can see.


Hrrrrrm. Might be that XP PDVD's renderer (overlay was always presumed) isn't affected by system colour controls when acceleration is on, in the same way vmr9 isn't in Vista if you disable mixer mode. Whatever routine on the card that is used for colour manipulation simply isn't working as a result. Just checked and Vista PDVD is instantly affected by any CCC colour change, but that's probably cos it uses EVR.

Do PDVD's internal colour controls do anything?

Hello

My Vista 32 Install with the HD2600 is showing the DI_METHOD entry to be binary instead of a String. Should I delete the binary value and create a string?

Thanks

OK, now I am running the official ati catalyst drivers 7.7 and Cyberlink Power DVD 7.3. I again have HD DVD running, but only with the VGA output and coax spdif to the receiver.

It appears that the card does not like me having both the HDMI and the VGA connected simultaneously. Everything went more smoothly when I "turn off" the HDMI connection in the receiver control panel.

Is this a common issue...that one can not have the HDMI and VGA active simultaneously? Is there a way in software to alternate between the two; or do I physically have to disconnect the VGA in order to experiment with the HDMI?

Is there a way in software to alternate between the two; or do I physically have to disconnect the VGA in order to experiment with the HDMI?

Personally I am using profiles in CCC to enable 'Primary' display only. Switching between displays can be done by setting hot keys. Don't know if this will help your problem, though.

The "UseBT601CSC"="1" driver expands SD levels, the same way as HD is expanded automatically by the drivers.



Do you, or somebody else know if this affects something else also? 601 colorspace apparently is SD colourspace and living in PAL land with some HD available it makes me a little worried.

Also I don't seem to get too much level difference without it, should check it with irfanview, I guess.

Do you, or somebody else know if this affects something else also? 601 colorspace apparently is SD colourspace and living in PAL land with some HD available it makes me a little worried.


I checked and it uses BT709 (aka HD color space) over 720 lines vertical, regardless of what this setting is at. You can check with the patterns at http://www.w6rz.net/.

Hrrrrrm. Might be that XP PDVD's renderer (overlay was always presumed) isn't affected by system colour controls when acceleration is on, in the same way vmr9 isn't in Vista if you disable mixer mode. Whatever routine on the card that is used for colour manipulation simply isn't working as a result. Just checked and Vista PDVD is instantly affected by any CCC colour change, but that's probably cos it uses EVR.

Do PDVD's internal colour controls do anything?
PDVD's internal colour controls work regardless of hardware acceleration status, so I can at least adjust basic settings (but not more advanced tweaking like fleshtone or vibrance if required), but I was following the tweak guide which suggests adjusting Avivo Colour for Brightness=16 and Contrast=86 to transparently offset the ATI level expansion and I can't do that in hardware acceleration mode via Avivo globally.

It's almost as though I have ticked the "use application controls" in Avivo Colour settings, when in hardware acceleration mode in PDVD, to disable the Avivo controls; but it's definitely unticked.

I also have a suspicion that modifying the Brightness setting in Avivo Colour and applying, when in PDVD acceleration mode, was reset back to 0 when CCC was opened the next time.

It would be most unfortunate if PDVD somehow disables all Avivo Colour settings in favour of its own internal settings (which we may not know about or have control over), when in acceleration mode. I wonder if this might explain de-interlacing results which aren't as one would expect from the Avivo settings.

I understand that I can implement EVR in XP by installing .NET3, but I'm wondering if PDVD would use this.

I think I would prefer to run in software decode mode, to get access to all the Avivo controls, but I need the hardware acceleration for smooth playback: caught between a rock and a hard place again.

Please, just give me directshow HD audio decoders so I can use the WMV9 decoder (which gives perfect levels BTW, without expansion and at low CPU) and bypass all this PDVD crap. ;)

Incidentally, the http://www.war6z.net/ link returns a server not found error.

[UPDATE 1: I was sure that Avivo Colour settings in CCC were working with hardware acceleration disabled, but I've tested it again and the Brightness control does not do anything in Avivo, regardless of whether acceleration is disabled or not. However, the PDVD colour controls work for accelerated or unaccelerated. This is nuts!]

[Update 2: The 100% CPU load for C2D 2.8GHz with PDVD in software decode mode is almost completely due to the PowerDVD.exe process; no other process is using more than a few % at any one time. Memory load is around 560MB with PDVD running and 230MB with PDVD not running (1GB single channel RAM).]

[UPDATE 1: I was sure that Avivo Colour settings in CCC were working with hardware acceleration disabled, but I've tested it again and the Brightness control does not do anything in Avivo, regardless of whether acceleration is disabled or not. However, the PDVD colour controls work for accelerated or unaccelerated. This is nuts!]


Unfortunate side effect of the way PDVD works perhaps - all those security restrictions mean it can't just use plain vmr9. If I've got time later I'll plug in my disk with the XP install.



[Update 2: The 100% CPU load for C2D 2.8GHz with PDVD in software decode mode is almost completely due to the PowerDVD.exe process;

Now that's definitely a PDVD fault, but I've absolutely no idea what. On a 2.8ghz it shouldn't ever go over 50% with h264, and perhaps half that with VC1.


Edit: fixed the link, it's www.w6rz.net, I always typo that :-)

Borked installation perhaps? (Cyberlink have a long history of install/uninstall problems). Could explain some of your other issues too.

I checked and it uses BT709 (aka HD color space) over 720 lines vertical, regardless of what this setting is at. You can check with the patterns at www.war6z.net.

What about SD? What color space is then used? I checked this using the same clip with ffdshow's resize and result is identical for both SD and HD (more than 720 lines vertically). Have you checked that for SD 601 is used?

BTW switching from SD and HD using vertical size of the image is clearly wrong. Since HD can be only 16/9 then more correct would be horizontal size more or equal 1280. Some clips are in 2.35:1 ratio and then they have horizontal size of 1280 but vertical 544 and drivers use SD conversion. For example for apple trailers it results in different colors for 1080p than for 720p version.

What about SD? What color space is then used? I checked this using the same clip with ffdshow's resize and result is identical for both SD and HD (more than 720 lines vertically). Have you checked that for SD 601 is used?


Pretty sure I did, yes. If you're using ffdshow you're killing dxva though, so may be changing its behaviour (although EVR will still expand).



BTW switching from SD and HD using vertical size of the image is clearly wrong. Since HD can be only 16/9 then more correct would be horizontal size more or equal 1280. Some clips are in 2.35:1 ratio and then they have horizontal size of 1280 but vertical 544 and drivers use SD conversion. For example for apple trailers it results in different colors for 1080p than for 720p version.


Yeah, didn't check that - I don't have any content in 720p (we only use 1080i and 576i over here).

Quick clarification though: the 720 line thing I was thinking of was the expansion boundary. I don't know how it decides between 601 and 709.

Checked and the 720 vertical boundary is the line between 601 and 709 after all (was just an assumption before). However, brightness/contrast in CCC also uses the same 720 line boundary so recontraction is done back to the original perfectly.

Bit irritating if you watch 1280*550ish bt709 stuff at PC levels I guess, you get some truly weird colours. Unfortunately, expansion is never going to be without some problems, which is why I detest it so much.

Thanks for bringing this up - I'll add a note to the tweak guide. Possibly this might not be a massive problem for Vista users as most 1280*550ish content is going to be mkv files, which don't get accelerated anyway. If you play these via a separate VMR9 player as I do (since hardware acceleration with EVR stalls at startup with mkv x264), then neither the expansion nor recontraction ever happen in the first place (vmr9 software mode seems to break colour controls).

Not sure about XP though.

Unfortunate side effect of the way PDVD works perhaps - all those security restrictions mean it can't just use plain vmr9. If I've got time later I'll plug in my disk with the XP install.

Now that's definitely a PDVD fault, but I've absolutely no idea what. On a 2.8ghz it shouldn't ever go over 50% with h264, and perhaps half that with VC1.

Borked installation perhaps? (Cyberlink have a long history of install/uninstall problems). Could explain some of your other issues too.
The fact that Avivo Colour controls don't work for PDVD doesn't concern me greatly (since PDVD has working colour controls, albeit basic and with no Vibrancy or Fleshtone adjustment) except for the possibility that the de-interlacing settings might also be negated: what does PDVD use then?

As for borked installation, I have had this issue since the first PDVD 7.3 release and with each patch since. On one of the updates I went through the registry by hand, removing every PDVD or Cyberlink occurrance I could find, but it still didn't help. I think the 2911 update was standalone rather than a patch. It's still a possibility I suppose, but I don't like the idea of having to completely re-install XP to find out.

Just played the King Kong feature evo with Haali splitter and WMV9 decoder: CPU load of 55% compared with over 90% for PDVD software decode. This is curious, because I recall the same file played the same way with a 8500GT was around 25%. Great: another influence of the 2400Pro.

It's all becoming too difficult and maybe that's what the studios want.

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?

I know you found it already, but for other people who may want to try it out, this is Richard Berg's post (finally I can post links!!)

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11032339&postcount=253

Which has links to his page where the 7.6 drivers (tweaked by Arfster) still are. I went back to these and they still are the best for me.

I don't have time for all this. But I would never have the board running if it weren't for you guys and your wisdom :), blargh to the joke driver that ATI provides. :mad:

Thanks!

The fact that Avivo Colour controls don't work for PDVD doesn't concern me greatly (since PDVD has working colour controls, albeit basic and with no Vibrancy or Fleshtone adjustment) except for the possibility that the de-interlacing settings might also be negated: what does PDVD use then?


The deinterlacing is a separate element - as I remember XP PDVD behaved OK for that (unlike Vista). That was with 3104 and 7.7 though.



Just played the King Kong feature evo with Haali splitter and WMV9 decoder: CPU load of 55% compared with over 90% for PDVD software decode. This is curious, because I recall the same file played the same way with a 8500GT was around 25%. Great: another influence of the 2400Pro.


Is all VC1 like this? I just ran a disc on a e6400 box (2.13ghz) and it's using 35% or so in software mode. Same with the WMV decoder.

The difference between the two might be some heavy interactive element is being processed in PDVD disc mode, that wouldn't get touched by a directshow chain outside it (it'll just get ignored). The graphics card can't really do anything about this - it can't accelerate nongraphics stuff after all :-)

By the way, if the reason you're not using 3104 is because you want to maintain software mode, you can break acceleration via the registry key HWUVD_DisableVC1.

Is all VC1 like this? I just ran a disc on a e6400 box (2.13ghz) and it's using 35% or so in software mode. Same with the WMV decoder.

VC-1 is supposed to be very easy to decode compared to H.264, which is why Nvidia didn't provide full UVD decode for VC-1 in their latest GPUs. I think most VC-1 titles should be about the same, since they can only fit so much on a dual layer HD-DVD and that means a bitrate limit. I've noticed that Elizabeth seems to take more CPU than King Kong, so probably the average bitrate is a little higher.

For some reason, my system is using more CPU than it should for software decode in PDVD and I need to find a way around this.

The difference between the two might be some heavy interactive element is being processed in PDVD disc mode, that wouldn't get touched by a directshow chain outside it (it'll just get ignored). The graphics card can't really do anything about this - it can't accelerate nongraphics stuff after all :-)
I was wondering whether PDVD was processing IME or other material, even though it wasn't displaying it in software mode, but then that wouldn't explain why I'm about the only one with these high CPU loadings.

Oh for a simple directshow graph I can just open in MPC.

By the way, if the reason you're not using 3104 is because you want to maintain software mode, you can break acceleration via the registry key HWUVD_DisableVC1.
I didn't know this: thanks for the heads-up.

Actually, HA works acceptably at least for the main features, but has an edge enhanced look about it that is offputting. But if it means I can at least watch my HD-DVDs, I will put up with it for now.

Are there any other registry keys I should know about?

Registry Tweaks for HD2600 under Win XP:

Strings:
REGEDIT4

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

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


DWORDs:
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000]
"ColorVibrance_DEF"=dword:0
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"=dword:0
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"=dword:0
"DXVA_WMV_NA"=dword:0
"Fleshtone_DEF"=dword:0
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"=dword:0
"TrDenoise"=dword:0
"UseBT601CSC"=dword:1
"VForceMaxResSize"=dword:2AB980

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0001]
"ColorVibrance_DEF"=dword:0
"ColorVibrance_DE_MIN"=dword:0
"DXVA_DetailEnhance"=dword:0
"DXVA_WMV_NA"=dword:0
"Fleshtone_DEF"=dword:0
"Fleshtone_DE_MIN"=dword:0
"TrDenoise"=dword:0
"UseBT601CSC"=dword:1
"VForceMaxResSize"=dword:2AB980



If you want the scoop on what each setting does, see the following posts:
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

Dont understand this post, since all registry values are given twice: as strings and as dwords. But: Iam only able to state one of both. Otherwise an error is given.

Ok, I give up on my Sapphire pro 2400!

Ok for 60 hz, but 50 hz and 48 hz is impossible, with all drivers and tweaks I tried!

Now if I would try an 2600, which version should I buy? Sapphire? Radeon, other? And xt or Pro?

And...which drivers, are best now?

I was wondering if any of you guys know whether the 2600 series cards will work with windows 2000? I get conflicting info on the system requirements for this card.....some sites say 2000 is okay and others just say its for XP,MCE, and/or vista.

I never upgraded my OS cuz 2000 is the only windows which has worked well for me over the long run so I decided not to upgrade for the hell of it.

thanks

I have a Sapphire 2600xt with Cat 7.9.
When I change some of the reg settings and then reboot they do not stick, they revert back to default settings. Anyone got any idea's ?

Thanks

Dont understand this post, since all registry values are given twice: as strings and as dwords. But: Iam only able to state one of both. Otherwise an error is given.

Just use the Strings version that matches your OS and you should be OK.

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 sure-fire way to tell if your card supports HDMI audio is to check the Device Manager. The HDMI Audio is reported as a PCI Device.

If you have an unknown PCI Device whose PCI slot (look in device details) is the same as your video card's PCI Slot, then you are in luck. There is a Microsoft KB patch that enables the HD Audio over HDMI. A little googling for "2600XT HDMI Audio" dug it up for me.

You can also check under "Sound, video, game controllers" in Hardware Manager to see if you video card's driver install identified the HDMI audio and installed it. In my experience I have never seen the driver install find the HDMI audio before installing the Microsoft patch.

<Edit>
Here are the two files you need to install (install in order):
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=xp/hdmiaudio-xp

ATI says they are for the 2900XT only, but they work fine on my 2600XT.
</Edit>

Dont understand this post, since all registry values are given twice: as strings and as dwords. But: Iam only able to state one of both. Otherwise an error is given.
You have to read how to use them:

In one of the default driver installs from ATI, the DXVA keys were registry strings (REG_SZ), so I would go with those, and they have been reported to work. Others have said to use DWORDs, so I've included that option for convenience, but I haven't seen those reported to work.

...


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

I wrote a small program in VBScript, inventively called ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks, that will add the registry tweaks for you on Windows Vista, XP & MCE.

Download ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks here (http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/).

There are directions on the page there, but it doesn't take much:

Open CCC and go to Information Center > Graphics Software. Look at the 2D Driver Path to get the GUID for your active video device.
Run ATI HD2x00 Registry Tweaks.
You will be prompted for each video device on your system.
When you see a video device with the GUID for your device, approve the program to run for that device.
Answer whether you have the HD2400 or HD2600.
If you want to add all settings automatically, answer positively when prompted.
If you want to approve each setting individually, answer accordingly.

arfster gave a nice summary of each setting in his new post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11659897#post11659897).

I also updated my post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11622510#post11622510) to refer to the program, but also to keep the registry settings there up to date.

I upgraded my VisionTek HD2400Pro OC 256MB AGP to a VisionTek HD2600Pro 512MB AGP last night.

A few notes:

Windows XP, using AMD Catalyst 7.9 in overlay.

Registry tweaks for 2600 applied with my new program (http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/).

DXVA works in PDVD 7.3.3104 and DirectShow players using the Cyberlink decoder. DXVA would not work in Nero or with MainConcept decoder, or with some MKV files.

With the 2400, MPEG-2 1080i vector adaptive deinterlacing struggled, and H.264 DXVA didn't work at all for any type of file.

Even though the 2400 was overclocked to 700MHz GPU, 395/790MHz DDR2 RAM, and the 2600 is only 600MHz GPU, 400/800MHz DDR2 RAM, the 2600 is already operating much smoother.

DXVA for MPEG-2 1080i60 in TS worked perfectly with VA deinterlacing and 3:2 pulldown detection on, using PowerDVD and Cyberlink decoder in BeyondTV.

DXVA for H.264 720p60 in MP4 (MainConcept encoder) stuttered in PowerDVD, but DXVA was on and it used 3% CPU or less. Playback of the same file in ZoomPlayer using the Cyberlink decoder played smoothly with DXVA, again 3% CPU or less.

DXVA for H.264 720p60 in MP4 (Nero/Ateme encoder) played smoothly in PowerDVD and ZoomPlayer with Cyberlink decoder with 3% CPU or less. DXVA would not work in Nero ShowTime, even though the file was created with Nero Recode.

DXVA for H.264 1080p25 in TS (unknown encoder) played smoothly in PowerDVD and ZoomPlayer with Cyberlink decoder, using 3% CPU or less. This was my goal in buying an HD2x00 in the first place, as I couldn't watch H.264 1080p content using the CoreAVC decoder. It just couldn't keep up on my Athlon64 3400+.

DXVA for H.264 720p24 in MKV (x264 encoder), worked for some files but not others. I have not done research or a comparison of the files to figure out the difference.

The PCI Device for the HD Audio device was present with the HD2600 card, just as it was with the 2400. I'm assuming if I installed the VisionTek driver package, or the Microsoft KB patch and the AMD driver package, that I would get the HD Audio device again.

The PCI Device for the HD Audio device was present with the HD2600 card, just as it was with the 2400. I'm assuming if I installed the VisionTek driver package, or the Microsoft KB patch and the AMD driver package, that I would get the HD Audio device again.Would you mind testing this? I have a new theory that the hardware IDs for the 2600pro are not in the HDMI audio drivers from ATI and VT, but I need to do a little more checking.

By the way, I know there has been speculation that the AGP bus can only be used for video data. It occurred to my last night that my old 9800AIW had an analog tuner that sent audio and video over the AGP bus, so clearly the AGP bus can be used to send more than video display data.

Thanks,
Dave

Can anyone help me set the sound to 5.1 over hdmi? I have outputting 2 ch stereo and tried setting up the device for 5.1 but there is no surround option just stereo.

Can anyone help me set the sound to 5.1 over hdmi? I have outputting 2 ch stereo and tried setting up the device for 5.1 but there is no surround option just stereo.I am interested in hearing from others that have 5.1 or 7.1 working too. According to AMD (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=28948), only two channel LPCM is supported. However, at least one person posted here that they have 5.1 working.

The only advantage to me of ATI HDMI audio over S/PDIF is the ability to send lossless 5.1 or 7.1 to my receiver.

-Dave

Would you mind testing this? I have a new theory that the hardware IDs for the 2600pro are not in the HDMI audio drivers from ATI and VT, but I need to do a little more checking.

By the way, I know there has been speculation that the AGP bus can only be used for video data. It occurred to my last night that my old 9800AIW had an analog tuner that sent audio and video over the AGP bus, so clearly the AGP bus can be used to send more than video display data.

Thanks,
Dave
I will attempt an install, and I'll try adding the PnP Hardware IDs if it doesn't work initially.

I didn't address it when it originally came up, but there is an AGP to PCI Bridge that can send information from an AGP card to the PCI bus. Hence the PCI Device from an AGP card.

Is it time to create separate threads for video and audio issues with the ATI 2x00 cards? At 72 pages so far, it's becoming difficult to locate the relevant video aspects amongst the audio.

Do we need a sticky for ATI 2x00 tweaks, as it's difficult finding them amongst the 72 pages as well?

I'd like to add my thanks to all the guys who've been working on the registry settings. Certainly has made a huge difference to the cards useability. Hard to imagine how the driver developers can get it all so wrong.

I have an issue I'm hoping someone will know the answer to. I'm using the HDMI on a 2600XT outputing 1080p at 50 Hz from Windows XP running though a Onkyo 875 receiver to a Sony VW60 projector. If I have the receiver and projector turned on and reboot the PC all is fine. However to keep the media PC working I have an automatic reboot scheduled for the early hours of the morning and of course the receiver and projector are turned off. Problem is when I turn them back on the projector isn't receiving any video, although the PC is otherwise working fine. Rebooting the PC now the receiver and projector are on results in normal video output.

I take it the card is auto-sensing whether there is a hdmi display turned on and if there isn't, it doesn't output hdmi video. Is there a way around this ?

Thanks,
Dave.

Has anyone put in a support call with ATI has to why their knowledgebase says the HDMI 5.1 audio doesn't work and all their advertising blurb says HD audio ?

If they have no plans to implement this then it really is false advertising on a massive scale and at the very least should stop advertising this feature.

I'm using the HDMI on a 2600XT outputing 1080p at 50 Hz from Windows XP running though a Onkyo 875 receiver to a Sony VW60 projector.I have the Onkyo 905, which is similar. These AVRs copy the EDID info from the display, tweak it a bit, and send it to the PC. The problem is that they do not provide EDID info when they are on standby.

Right now, I am running my HTPC DVI output directly to my TV, which does provide EDID info when it is off. However, if you want to keep your PC connected to the Onkyo, one of these (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011003&p_id=3048&seq=1&format=2) should fix the problem.

-Dave

I don't really know if AGP cards can provide HDMI...I think my ATI All in Wonder AGP card needed a cable to the sound card in my older AGP machine.

With regards to 5.1....maybe the answer depends on whether you use XP or Vista. In Vista, I don't really need to do much other than select HDMI as the desired audio device. Then with multichannel sources, the PCM signal is sent over the HDMI cable. I think I have seen dolby digital (AC3) go over the HDMI also, but I would not want to swear that on a stack of bibles.

Checked and the 720 vertical boundary is the line between 601 and 709 after all (was just an assumption before). However, brightness/contrast in CCC also uses the same 720 line boundary so recontraction is done back to the original perfectly.

I think we must be more precise here: color conversion routines has nothing common with expansion to pc levels. Color conversion uses specific equations for changing YUV color found in video stream into RGB colors used to drive modern displays. After this conversion levels can be expanded or not via changing contrast and brightness.

For color conversion we have two standards: bt601 for SD and bt709 for HD. Now ATI drivers clearly use only one color conversion routine for every source when use601 key is set. You are saying that this is 709 routine and it does not change for SD/HD then SD sources are converted using wrong routines.

Some time ago it was differrent, I tested it here, clearly for HD equation was other than for SD:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=988268#post988268

It should be checked for newest drivers, I can do it only for XP with X1650pro.

Thanks for bringing this up - I'll add a note to the tweak guide. Possibly this might not be a massive problem for Vista users as most 1280*550ish content is going to be mkv files, which don't get accelerated anyway. If you play these via a separate VMR9 player as I do (since hardware acceleration with EVR stalls at startup with mkv x264), then neither the expansion nor recontraction ever happen in the first place (vmr9 software mode seems to break colour controls).

We must be more precise here also :-)

VMR9 has two modes of operation: non mixing and mixing mode. You are reffering them as software and hardware mode. In first (non mixing) conversion to RGB is done in software inside VMR9 so it is not dependent on drivers. In latter conversion is always done in drivers. Decoder used doesn't matter as long as VMR9 will be in mixing mode.

EVR is always in mixing mode. I believe that when hardware decoding is used, VMR9 must be also in mixing mode that is why it can be misinterpreted as hardware decoding responsible for levels expansion.

Thank you for simplifying the registry tweaks for 2400 PRO AGP under XP. Unfortunately none of them make any discernible difference to the CPU or GPU utlisation.

With HD video, CPU remains at 100%, while the GPU sits at 24%, with SD, CPU is at 20% and GPU still at 24%. Thus, there does not seem to be any HD or otherwise acceleration happening at all.

I have submitted a support ticket to ATI and perhaps they will do something to resolve this. I'll make a post here if they come back with anything useful.

Cheers,

V.

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.
I have the same problem.
I mainly see the problem if there is high contrast red like we have on the TV4 logo(when it is red, thankfully it is mostly grey) in Sweden, but I turned off "pulldown detection" in ccc and I have not seen the problem since (I have not looked at more than a couple of hours but I have my hope up that it is gone).
So if it is gone I have to enable it when needed.

I don't really know if AGP cards can provide HDMI...I think my ATI All in Wonder AGP card needed a cable to the sound card in my older AGP machine.

With regards to 5.1....maybe the answer depends on whether you use XP or Vista. In Vista, I don't really need to do much other than select HDMI as the desired audio device. Then with multichannel sources, the PCM signal is sent over the HDMI cable. I think I have seen dolby digital (AC3) go over the HDMI also, but I would not want to swear that on a stack of bibles.

I can't get anything more than stereo out over the HDMI on XP. What output config do you have Powerdvd set to - I'd assume 6 or 8 speaker ?

I have the Onkyo 905, which is similar. These AVRs copy the EDID info from the display, tweak it a bit, and send it to the PC. The problem is that they do not provide EDID info when they are on standby.

Right now, I am running my HTPC DVI output directly to my TV, which does provide EDID info when it is off. However, if you want to keep your PC connected to the Onkyo, one of these (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011003&p_id=3048&seq=1&format=2) should fix the problem.

-Dave

Interesting - another bug found, at least I know whats going wrong now.
Thankyou!

Now ATI drivers clearly use only one color conversion routine for every source when use601 key is set.

No, this what I was trying to say: they' use 709 for HD (aka >720), regardless of what that key is set to. UseBT601CSC only changes <720 behaviour.

You can see this quite clearly if you get some HD in 601, let the card expand it, then resize it to 700 lines vertical and compare the difference. Or vice versa, some 709 SD resized >720.


VMR9 has two modes of operation: non mixing and mixing mode. You are reffering them as software and hardware mode.


That's different - when I refer to software and hardware I mean wrt acceleration. It is possible to have software mode with mixing or non-mixing though (several players allow you the choice, eg MPC).

Ok, I give up on my Sapphire pro 2400!

Ok for 60 hz, but 50 hz and 48 hz is impossible, with all drivers and tweaks I tried!

What kind of results did you get?

I was trying this all last weekend, trying to get (non-supported) 48hz on my Westy TX-47 LCD.

I had some success with 1080i mpegs using DscalerIVTC + Reclock + MPC. I was able to use Powerstrip to get my LCD down to 48hz, and DscalerIVTC removed all telecine junk. BacktoTheFuture3(1080i) played back liquid-smooth, definitely better than 30/60hz. (DscalerIVTC works great for hard-telecined stuff, like D-Theatre films, etc)

PowerDVD @ 48hz would freak out when trying to play HD DVD rips and disks, and lock my PC with garbage all over the screen. I tried without HW acceleration, but still didn't work. Pretty much the same at 50hz as well.

p.

Interesting - another bug found, at least I know whats going wrong now.
Thankyou!Keep in mind that devices like the Gefen DVI Detector and the Monoprice DVI Doctor will screw up HDCP. This might be OK if you are not playing HD DVD or Blu-ray content, or if you use AnyDVD.

-Dave

I am interested in getting one of the ATI hd card because it is able to send sound over HDMI. However, I saw that people is having trouble getting the sound other than stereo over the HDMI. I saw on ATI website that if you bought the card and it does not come with the adapter, the adapter that you bought separately will not work. Is that maybe the reason why people having trouble getting the surround sound over HDMI.

IF the adapter really work, does it mean that the card itself decode the sound format or is it just sending the digital signal to the receiver and the receiver will do the decoding of DTS and dolby digital? Can it send trueHD and dtsHD also?

What's up with this DVI-HDMI adapter that ATI supplies? Whats the difference with the one they ship and the ones you can buy everywhere.

I got a Gigabyte HD2600Pro yesterday packed without DVI-HDMI adapter, no big deal I thougt since I had a Supra DVI-D single link to HDMI type a adapter at home but I can't get any sound out from the HDMI port. The only thing that has to do with audio that I have seen, not heard from my computer since I installed the card is a notification that goes "HDMI-to-DVI notification, A HDMI-to-DVI display connection has been detected. In order to hear audio on your HDMI-based TV or display, you will need to have a separate audio connection from your comupter sound outputs to your TV or audio equipment." when I switch my receiver off! I go nuts over this crap! Only place I have seen something that has to do with Radeon HD2000 adapters in Europe are in Germany and Im in Sweden so where are we folks who lives with polarbears supposed to get this all mighty ATI DVI-HDMI adapter quick and easy? :)

Can anyone confirm that audio out via HDMI does not work with any other brand of adapter except for "ATI" brand adapter?

I am using the adapter that came with the card so it should work fine. I get stereo but no 5.1. The thing with the DVI to HDMI adapter is that most DVI to HDMI adapters are missing some pins on them which is what ATI uses to carry the sound. There should be some adapters out there that will work but take a look at the DVI pins I think there missing like 4 pins. I can take pics of it later.

ATI's website specifically states that the DVI - HDMI adapter that they sell will only allow audio if the video card you purchased originally came with the adapter. The adapter is meant to be a replacement only.

ATI's website specifically states that the DVI - HDMI adapter that they sell will only allow audio if the video card you purchased originally came with the adapter. The adapter is meant to be a replacement only.
...which is a proven lie.

Tried to install both the new Catalyst 7.9 and the drivers on the CD, but after choosing express install the machine just hangs.
I have a clean installation of Win XP Pro with all avaiable updates from Microsoft Update.
System specs:
- Powercolor Radeon HD 2400 Pro AGP
- Abit IC7 mobo (socket 478, BIOS compile date 12.28.04)
- P4 3.2 HT
- 2gb DDR
- Creative Audigy 2
- D-Link DWA-547 wireless NIC

Help me, please :)

Is anybody getting the HDMI output from PowerDVD to work nicely thorugh the Onkyo 875 or 905 with HD-DVD? I put more memory in the PC, and still can't get the HDMI to work through the receiver. I think the problem is HDCP related, though I am not sure. Output to VGA works fine (direct to monitor). HDMI works fine with everything BUT HD-DVD.

With regard to the DVI-HDMI dongle--just use the code posted a while back and order it from ATI. Nothing else works for audio. Known fact. And the dongle works with all 2400 and 2600 cards. As stated above; the verbiage on the ATI website that says the dongle only works when supplied with a card is downright wrong.

Any technical information about dvi-hdmi dongle?
with Asus EAH2600Pro is not in the bundle.
Ati cards should have dvi-I dual link connection so a standard "24+5 dvi-I Dual link to hdmi F-F adaptor" could work? (Actually I've a 18+1 dvi-D to HDMI M cable or the video)

It's quite strange that ATI claims that audio would only work if the video card originally came with an adapter since most manufacturer use the line "HDMI and 5.1 surround audio(by optional adapter)" in theire marketing of ATI Radeon HD2X00 videocards still when they are not shipped with an DVI-HDMI adapter. We who lives outside the US and Canada can not make an order from ATI's website so its a dead end.

I made an order for a second HD2600 card today, took the Club-3D Radeon HD2600Pro Dual-DVI 512MB which is claimed to be shipped with an DVI-HDMI adapter in the box, I'll just open the box and switch the DVI-HDMI I use today with the one from the new card and see if that does the trick.

Good thing with these cards are that they aren't very expensive, more expensive then to get an ATI "approved" adapter but its way quicker for me to get a new card then to hunt for an adapter.

Posted a question to Gigabyte with my problem so I'm waiting for respond from them, I want to know where I can get the DVI-HDMI that they claim to work with their cards sold here in Sweden. :)

I have 2600XT connected via DVI to Samsung SyncMaster 940 and to Panasonic Viera via HDMI. The CCC settings (latest drivers) for Panasonic TV on HDMI at 1080i/25 dont present an option for no deinterlace. How can I be sure that my BBC HD playback stays with the interlace intact to be de-interlaced by the TV? Else could it could be de-interlaced twice?
In 1080i/25 AVC transport stream file playback I notice lots of artifacts with vertical scrolls (credits) on Planet Earth (for example). When using PDVD ultra and DXVA I can see several left to right tears. Restarting from stop or pause will change the number of tears and with patience I can get perfect scrolling (no tearing).
Once this is achieved the PQ is excellent except for one artifact. When a shot has global darkening or brightening (fast fades from black for example) I see fringing or shuttering patterns as if the scene is being lit by sunshine behind blinds. Does that sound familiar? 1080i is a menace it seems : http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_301-editorial.html

My last comment on the dongle matter. Some retailers do carry the ATI dongle. I think Newegg had it listed under the name of a manufacturer (PowerColor perhaps?). But the price was higher than direct from ATI.

Why would ATI make confusing statements about the dongle? Probably because they don't want to answer tech support questions (such as problems with audio over AGP...if the dongle came with a PCI-E card no problem...AGP...probably a problem no matter what). Correct me if I am wrong; but I don't think anybody has audio working with HDMI over AGP even with the ATI dongle.

My 2400 card had a box that clearly stated support via HDMI for audio over the card; but no dongle was included. I don't think ATI wanted to get into the game of qualifying where the dongle would work...so they put out a blanket disclaimer for all dongles not originally supplied with cards.

Is anybody getting the HDMI output from PowerDVD to work nicely thorugh the Onkyo 875 or 905 with HD-DVD? I put more memory in the PC, and still can't get the HDMI to work through the receiver. I think the problem is HDCP related, though I am not sure.It works fine for me.

I have a 2600pro 512MB AGP going to the 905, and then the 905 is connected to an HP MD5880n DLP. The 905 is set to output 1080p. I am using the Xbox 360 Add-On.

I think you are right, your problems are HDCP related. If you think about, HDCP encrypts the DVI/HDMI data stream. The 905 needs to unscramble the data stream, since the 905 may upscale the resolution and apply the 905 OSD to the video. The 905 needs to respect HDCP, so it must re-encrypt the data stream before transmitting it to your display.

As I said, everything works for me. Our Onkyos and ATI cards are nearly identical, so I suspect that the problem is the HDCP handshake between the 905/875 and your display. What display are your using? You might want to check the thread for your display and see if others are having any HDCP problems.

To test this theory, download and install AnyDVD. You get a free 21-day trial. If AnyDVD fixes the problem, it is almost certainly HDCP-related.

-Dave

Would you mind testing this? I have a new theory that the hardware IDs for the 2600pro are not in the HDMI audio drivers from ATI and VT, but I need to do a little more checking.
I installed the VT 8.41 HDMI drivers last night for my VT HD2600pro. It installed both the MS UAA bus driver and the HD Audio driver. I had the sound option in Windows and could select the device, but once again, I'm not using HDMI, so I don't know if it works.

I've read through different parts of this thread, but have been unable to find a specific answer to my question. Most of this thread seems to be about offloading decoding duties to the GPU. That's certainly an important feature, but I'm more concerned about the signal that gets send out. I'm looking for the best card to give me a proper 1080P output to my TV. In other words, one that will do things like 2:3 pulldown and IVTS properly. Is this a good/the best card from that standpoint?

Any technical information about dvi-hdmi dongle?
with Asus EAH2600Pro is not in the bundle.
Ati cards should have dvi-I dual link connection so a standard "24+5 dvi-I Dual link to hdmi F-F adaptor" could work? (Actually I've a 18+1 dvi-D to HDMI M cable or the video)
ATI states (http://ati.amd.com/products/pdf/ATI-Radeon-HD-2000-Compare.pdf) it's a DVI-I to HDMI adapter, so a standard dual-link DVI-I to HDMI adapter or cable may work. The problem is such an adapter isn't common. HDMI Type A is only compatible with single-link DVI-D, so in any other situation, it wouldn't make sense to include the dual-link or analog pins, as they wouldn't wire to anything. The audio in HDMI is transmitted on the same pins as the video, so theoretically all you need is single-link DVI-D, but obviously ATI is testing for the presence of some other pin(s). They could be doing anything they want inside their adapter to return some predetermined response on the dual-link or analog pins, as they aren't being passed thru the adapter. So, on the other hand, theirs may be the only adapter that will work.

I installed the VT 8.41 HDMI drivers last night for my VT HD2600pro. It installed both the MS UAA bus driver and the HD Audio driver. I had the sound option in Windows and could select the device, but once again, I'm not using HDMI, so I don't know if it works.Thanks for checking. You got further than me, since I never get the HD Audio driver to appear in Device Manager. I only get the MS UAA bus driver. The only sound option I have is the integrated nVidia sound.

I have a couple Vista Home Premium DVDs that I got as free upgrades when I purchased two MCE2005 licenses. Since they are OEM, I don't want to activate them. However, I think I will install Vista on the spare drive and see if I can get HDMI audio.

Once again, HDMI audio has little value to me if I can't pass 5.1 LPCM over HDMI. But I would like to prove that it does not work to myself.

Thanks again.

-Dave

ExDeus: There are many threads indicating that HDMI audio with a non-ATI dongle is a no go.

DPlettner: I will try your idea.

With regard to the AGP audio-did you verify whether your card natively fed audio via the AGP bus in that old configuration?
I hope for your sake that getting HDMI audio over AGP is not tilting at windmills.

ExDeus: There are many threads indicating that HDMI audio with a non-ATI dongle is a no go.
My point was DVI-I and probably dual-link are requirements, yet difficult ones to satisfy. Do you know that the users of non-ATI adapters were using DVI-I and dual-link? If not, I'm simply saying it's something to look for.

There was at least one person here that said they had audio working over a non-ATI adapter. For those OUS, there may still be hope.

I have a 2600 Pro that I purchased from eBay. It did not come with the dongle. I currently have it connected to a Samsung TV via DVI to HDMI cable. I am getting some sound through the HDMI cable. Computer sounds (clicks, dings, etc) come through crystal clear, as well as the "test" sounds in the speaker configuration setup. Sounds from video and music come through VERY distorted and about 2 seconds delayed from the video.

I am running Vista and the Catalyst 7.9 driver. I have ordered the dongle and will post the results after it comes in. My question is, if I am getting sounds from the computer, but distorted sound from video, could this be a codec issue?

If your getting sounds from the computer that means that there is a lot of noise on the card and that something might be wrong with it. If the new dongle doesnt fix it I would say that the card is broken.

I have a 2600 Pro that I purchased from eBay. It did not come with the dongle. I currently have it connected to a Samsung TV via DVI to HDMI cable. I am getting some sound through the HDMI cable. Computer sounds (clicks, dings, etc) come through crystal clear, as well as the "test" sounds in the speaker configuration setup. Sounds from video and music come through VERY distorted and about 2 seconds delayed from the video.

I am running Vista and the Catalyst 7.9 driver. I have ordered the dongle and will post the results after it comes in. My question is, if I am getting sounds from the computer, but distorted sound from video, could this be a codec issue?
I have the same issue, I am getting sound over HDMI with a HDMI-DVI cable but the sound quality is horrible. Did the ATI dongle resolve you distortion issues?

Thanks for checking. You got further than me, since I never get the HD Audio driver to appear in Device Manager. I only get the MS UAA bus driver. The only sound option I have is the integrated nVidia sound.

I have a couple Vista Home Premium DVDs that I got as free upgrades when I purchased two MCE2005 licenses. Since they are OEM, I don't want to activate them. However, I think I will install Vista on the spare drive and see if I can get HDMI audio.

Once again, HDMI audio has little value to me if I can't pass 5.1 LPCM over HDMI. But I would like to prove that it does not work to myself.

Thanks again.

-Dave



If your running MCE 2005 then that might be the problem I havent been able to get my 2600pro AGP to be recognized as a sound device at all and I have tried every driver out there.

TB311, I was not clear in my description of the issue. Sorry. The sounds that are coming through clear are the windows-system-sounds (wav files). I can mute them in the mixer and they are not heard, so I don't think it is an issue with the card.

Strange thing is, if I play the same wav files through Itunes, they are distorted. When they are played through windows or through the "test" in speaker configuration, they are crystal clear. That is why I was wondering if it was a codec (or software) issue. The sound through any video (mpeg, divx, avi), including stuff on the web, like YouTube is also distorted. Basically, all sounds coming from any source, except windows-system-sounds, are really distorted. The distortion sounds like the source volume is too high for the input.

Brucemck, I have not received the dongle yet. Will post results after it comes in and I have had time to play with it.

If your running MCE 2005 then that might be the problem I havent been able to get my 2600pro AGP to be recognized as a sound device at all and I have tried every driver out there.My normal install is MCE2005. However, my new test install was XP Pro.

-Dave

With regard to the AGP audio-did you verify whether your card natively fed audio via the AGP bus in that old configuration?
I hope for your sake that getting HDMI audio over AGP is not tilting at windmills.Originally the 9800Pro needed the audio cable. However, later ATI came out with drivers that sent the audio from the tuner over the AGP bus.

-Dave

Concerning the DVI->HDMI dongle/adapter: It is a Dual Link DVI-D adapter. If you find someone making that to HDMI then it would also work. Unfortunately monoprice only sells the DVI-D single link adapters.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/stc/FAQs/Video/dvicon.gif

So you need a female Dual Link DVI-D to whatever (female/male) HDMI if you want sound... or just get the one from ATI.

Also, Has anyone experienced choppy audio through HDMI if you edit the refresh rate with Powestrip? I've noticed if you hit certain rates the audio goes all wonky. Example, I set my display to 1280x720 &75hz and the audio just started to stutter, but the video was fine. I am using HD2600XT.

I installed Vista tonight to see if I could get HDMI audio working. I do have a High Definition Audio Controller, but it has a yellow explanation mark. According to Device Manager:

This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. (Code 12) If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system.

I yanked out all the PCI cards, but it did not make a difference.

I am pretty sure that there is a conflict with my nForce2 motherboard. Maybe it is SoundStorm. I see that ATI has identified a similar issue with VIA sound drivers.

-Dave

Regarding the ATI DVI-to-HDMI adapter, I did stumble on this:

Combined with the ATI Radeon™ DVI-to-HDMI adapter, ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 solutions enable end users to get full video and audio support via standard DVI for an easy connectivity and thebest HD experience. Current DVI-to-HDMI connectors do not carry audio, thus do not enable HDMI. ATI Radeon™ adapter handshakes with the board to enable audio via the DVI port; when the adapter is connected to the output of an ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 solution, it becomes a seamless HDMI output.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/Avivo/pdf/ATIAvivoHD-AddressingtheChallengesofHDPlayback-LowRes.pdf

-Dave

I have an HD 2600XT, and using the supplied DVI->HDMI dongle, it worked perfectly with Vista. I had to change some audio setting in Control Panel to make the audio go down the right path, but with that, my machine booted and displayed 1080p w/ audio, with an HDMI cable connected to my JVC HD-70FN97.

(Then I had to try to figure out how to correct the underscan. Grrr.)

--Don

My 2400Pro did not come with a DVI-HDMI adapter, I purchased a DVI-HDMI cable and I get sound with this solution and I also tried with a Monster DVI-HDMI adapter on a standard DVI cable and I also get sound with this as well but in both cases the sound quality is aweful. The ATI adapter is the only one I have seen that connects to the DVI port then uses a Female HDMI port and a HDMI cable. My thought is the HDMI cable is better designed to handle audio than running it over the DVI cable hence the bad sound quality I am getting.

Hi,
I'm yet another user having problems with installing the HD 2600 Pro. I've browsed much of the 74 pages worth of posts so I think I'm fairly up with the details. I have Vista Ultimate, my card is the GECUBe Hd 2600 Pro 512mb ddr2. (Intel Pentium 4 2.8 / 1.5 gb ram on an s8-7rx motherboard). I'm attempting to install the CCC 7.9 drivers, although I started out with the ones on the cd.

For the CD (7.7/7.8 ones?) - my process went uninstall old Nvidia drivers, install 7.7 - it recognised the card, but this gave error 43 in device manager. So uninstalled - downloaded 7.9 - this wouldn't even recognise the hardware - so I looked up the hardware id as advised on this forum (9587) and changed the reference in the inf file to the hardware id and tried again. This time it recognised the card, but once again refused to run the driver for the same error as above.

I drilled into the error and found the message - which doesn't show that much of used - but reproduced here:

Problem Event Name: PnPDeviceProblemCode
Architecture: x86
Hardware Id: PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9587&SUBSYS_002818BC&REV_00
Setup class GUID: {4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
PnP problem code: 0000002B
Driver name: atikmdag.sys
Driver version: 7.1.1.670
Driver date: 07-05-2007
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057

Now I know it's pretty much the Vista version of the driver that must be causing this as this machine runs on a dual partition with XP home edition, and the XP version of the drivers ran first time and works perfectly. Also the previous - nvidia card - worked fine on Vista, but prior to that I had tried to run an old 9600 on the Vista partition and that also couldn't find the inf file via Catalyst Control Center (hence I swopped to an Nvidia card I had(. So I'm thinking ATI Vista drivers in general??? Are there further tweaks I can perform? the registry tweaks don't seem applicable yet as the drivers aren't actually working.

So any advice/opinions anyone could could give or links to something I might have missed on my skimmed reading of these forums would be most welcome.

Cheers,
Chris
PS Finally one last possibly connected clue - on Vista I've been unable to install the Sis Accelerated Graphics Port driver - via Windows Updates, if I do the machine won't boot, so have to drop into safe mode and swap it back to using teh Sis to AGP Controller - is this at all connected?

I also have the same card as StreetWaves and it won't let me install 7.9 on XP, only the CD drivers. This wouldn't be a problem as I don't need the hardware accelaration, but some games that my son plays won't run anymore.:mad: My old card was a 9600 that I'd unstalled the drivers fully before installing the new card.

The picture does seem smoother on some HD recordings I have, but I'm being pestered by my son to 'fix it' from the games point of view......

Some people using nvidia 8600 card reporting booting problem with sony XBR4 lcd. Can anyone confirm that ATI HD card does not have booting problem when connected to a sony XBR4?

Station-drivers have cat8.0 betas for XP, MCE and 2000.

http://www.station-drivers.com/page/ati%20catalyst.htm

No Vista, I'll ask and see if anyone has those yet.


Edit: it's ReleaseVersion,,"8.42-070907a-053101E-ATI

Hi,

I've been following this thread for a while now and with my Vista Mediacenter completed, I wanted to try out the HTPC tweaks from ExDeus.

Unfortunatly, the VB-script does not seem to work on my setup. The GUID's that the script shows me do not match the one found in the CCC.

Details from the CCC are:
Driver Packaging Version 8.411-070821a1-052447C-ATI
Catalyst Version 07.9
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 7.01.01.680
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0523
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.6847
Catalyst Control Center Version 2007.0821.2146.36991

I could apply the settings manually but I'm somewhat confused by the registry since there are two ControlSet's as you can see in this picture (http://appelkaas.nl/avs/regedit_.png).

My system is build of an AMD X2 3000+ with a Club3D ATI HD2600PRO videocard. The drivers that are listed above are the latest drivers according to the ati.amd website.

Could anybody point me in the right direction for this?

The Vista drivers mirror different sections in the registry. CCC in mine is at 2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0003

...and this mirrors to....

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{B 99DB138-A14B-4959-A295-50698307D32C}\0000
(which is where I've always made changes manually)

Change anything in one, the other changes instantly. Not sure if this applies to XP.

The script worked fine for me btw, as long as you pick the right GUID under currentcontrolset. Some of the others with umd/dxva in my registry are clearly remnants of a pregvious 2400 install btw.

has anyone been able to actually get a 2400pro to work...I've got an asus eah2400pro and I cant get the hdcp to work with pdvd ultra (any version) without anydvd. Also I cant get it the play in hardware mode while playing an hd dvd. And mytheatre is very buggy with the graphs...somtimes video will play othertimes its all green or blocky and the asus splendid icon comes up in the corner....this is very frustrating . S far ive tried the drivers that came with it and also 7.9...this is in an amd chipset board (version 690 i believe) and its a new build pc.
There has been so many mixed results here I'm just wondering if anyone has found a working solution....
oh yea I'm running xp service pack 2 32bit....I've also got codec8.1 installed (includeds coreavc 1.5) could that be screwing something up? Thanks

Thanks to Arfster for the Station drivers link.:) I'm going to give this a go tonight, but if I still can't get the install to complete, I'm going to reinstall my 9600 card, install the Beta version 8, then refit the 2600Pro. See if that works.

I did notice that there wasn't an option to select 1920 x 1080(p) at 50Hz and the 60Hz option didn't work anyway. That was running the supplied driver from CD. In the past I've had 1080p @50Hz from my old 9600, so it should be possible. Also I couldn't see any option for 24Hz as I have a couple of 1080/24 trailers I'd like to try out through my projector (AE1000). Is this option buried somewhere on an advanced menu?

i have a 2600pro card and i cant get VC-1 hw to to work, got 100% cpu on my A64 3200+, after some regtweaks and Powerdvd Ultimate 7.3 i got H.264 to drop from 100% to 10% cpu.

Any got VC-1 to work? talkinga about 18gb files 1080p
help plz..

i have a 2600pro card and i cant get VC-1 hw to to work, got 100% cpu on my A64 3200+, after some regtweaks and Powerdvd Ultimate 7.3 i got H.264 to drop from 100% to 10% cpu.

Any got VC-1 to work? talkinga about 18gb files 1080p
help plz..

Tell us more... what file container, what file video, what video app, what codec.

Kinda important details :-)

First thanks for responding..and i expressed myself poorly... :o
i have

Windows XP Pro sp2
AMD 64 3200+
1 gb ram
MSI ATI RX2600Pro

Dvi->hdmi->Sharp XD1E 46"

I have managed to install Catalyst 7.9 with reghack
Powerdvd Ultimate 7.3
Then i got h.264 (Blu-ray.Remux.1080p.H264.DTS-HDMA, 18gb whole movie)to work and cpu went down from 100% to 10%

But VC-1 (HD-DVD.Remux.1080p.VC-1.DD51.DDPlus, 18gb whole movie) no difference what so ever cpu at 100% and real slow.

I have installed and unstalled alot, like k-lite codec pack, core AVC, fddshow earlyer not now....

I get picture but no hardware accelaration from my HD2600 card when playing VC-1, (or WMV9 as its also called?) some forum mentionend DXVA and DVBviewer but i think thats more for live HDtv encoding?

In short get my HD2600 to hardware accelerate all formats including VC-1

Thanks in advance...

I noticed when playing VC-1 it is hw acc not enable in powerdvd ultra under configuration/video, but when playing h.264 its "checked" (both senarios when playing a file its shadowed and cant be clicked or unclicked, only before starting the file)

Help with High CPU with 2400Pro!

I am trying to watch a 1080i ATSC broadcast in Windows Vista Media Center, the Video is choppy stalls all the time and starts to look like a slide show.

I added the NOHDDECODE=0 to see if I could get hardware acceleration going , but perfmon still shows CPU at 50%+ sometimes going to 60%+ on both cores.

My system specs are

Windows Vista Ultimate
Intel E6600
2 gig DDR 800
PCI-E 2400 Pro

Any ideas, from what I have read the 2400 should be handling this and CPU usage should not be that high.

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks

Has anyone here used the 2400 pro for standard defintion(SD) DVD playback of anime, what was the quality like (e.g. comb effect due to bad deinterlace, ect..)?

Hi All,

I am using a 2600XT connecting to an Onkyo 705 via HDMI for video and audio.

If I switch to a different component on the 705, XP sees the HDMI connection disappear and disables the display. To get it back I need to reenable the display and then reset it's resolution.

When it disables the HDMI display it shifts primary to the 7" LCD on my Moncaso.

Is there any way to prevent XP or the ATI driver from disabling and switching primary on me? I looked in the registry and a couple of things looked possible, but I did not want to make things worse by changing stuff with no real knowledge of what it does.

Ideas?
Thanks!
David

FYI - I have tried using setting the 705 to be my secondary, which kind of works, but sometimes I need to reboot if video was playing when I switch HDMI components. And in this mode the programs I run on my 7" screen will not work (they expect to be on the secondary monitor).

grr....:mad:

I downloaded PowerDvd Ultra 7.3, but then i saw it was 7.2! Why write 7.3 and upload 7.2!!, then i updated with a patch, but no difference it said 7.2 anyway....thought it were updated to 7.3

Well NOW i have unstall all old Powerdvd and installed "CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra v7.3.3104a" and i get HW video acceleration to work with VC-1, but i have one .ts file (of course the one i usally test with, and that one still wont activate hw video acceleration, DxVa. The file is
Ice.Age.2.HDTV.1080P.Blu-ray.Remux.DTSHD.AC3..17.6G.3dhunter@Silu.1-4.ts
And i think it might be DTSHD? any suggestions? anyone? i have win xp, msi xt2600pro, catalyst 7.9

David,

I have switched my 2600pro AGP using an Onkyo 905 and a Monoprice switcher. When I switch back to the PC, I hear a beep and the DVI output is automatically re-enabled. I am using the 7.8 drivers. The 7.9 and 8.0 betas break PDVD for me.

One problem I had was that the 2600pro seems to switch resolutions when I switch away from the 2600pro output. To check this, I VNC'ed into the PC and took a look around while the TV was not connected to the 2600pro output. The resolution was 640x480, and the monitor was a default VGA monitor. The main display in CCC's Display Manager was disabled. Setting the resolution to 1920x1080 @ 60Hz via VNC while the DVI output was not connected seems to help.

Here are a few other thing to try. Install PowerStrip and create custom driver (inf) file for your TV. You can do this under Options > Monitor Information, and then look for the option to create the driver in the drop-down box in the lower left. I attached my monitor driver file as a text file, in case you are interested. You can uninstall PowerStrip after you create the driver.

Install the custom driver as your monitor. You will probably be replacing a default Plug and Play Monitor.

Next, switch away from your ATI card. VNC into your computer, and install the custom driver as your monitor, replacing the default VGA monitor. While in VNC, set the display resolution to the same resolution that you send to your display.

This has worked well for me for a couple days, but there are no guarantees. It seems like the Plug and Play driver needs to have EDID info, but the PowerStrip-created driver does not. It also seems to help if Windows thinks the same monitor is connected whether or not the DVI output is being used.

-Dave

well i decided to do a fresh install of vista and put my X850XT back in instead of 2600xt untill the drivers get more stable. With next week the begin of new tv season, I'll be hearing it everyday if i don't give her a nice picture to watch. but I now have a strange issue, I can get my secondary to display in Theater mode. or vise versa if i switch the primary and secondary.

Any Ideas??


This current set-up
AMD 5600+
2gb ram
X850xt
Fusion HdtvGold for ota
Primary Display Gateway 19"
Secondary 46" Mitsui LCD

Vista 32 bit
7.9 drivers no reg hacks.
Media player classic 1.10
Fusion Software player
Power DVD 7.3

Hrrrm, just had a quick look at the 8.0 betas. New keys with interesting names:

DALRULE_GETVGAEXPANSIONATBOOT
DALRULE_OTHEREXPANSIONMODEDEFAULT

I have Vista installed with ATI's 7.9 drivers and PowerDVD 7.3 installed. The graphics card is a 2400Pro installed on an AMD 5200+ system.

When I played DVD discs and files with PowerDVD, I could notice jagged edges and pixels (as if I was watching a low resolution video file). Anybody know what could be causing this degradation?

Thanks for any help

Can anyone tell me if there is a HD 2600XT card that is silent and comes with a DVI to HDMI adapter? I would prefer to have a passive solution, but if there is one that has a very silent fan that would be ok too. I like the Gigabyte GV-RX26T256H (http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/VGA/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2586), but it doesn't come with the DVI to HDMI adapter.
I would appreciate any suggestions on this.
Currently I am running XP, so i'm not sure if the 2600 would be ok? How about the nVidia 8600GT?

Thanks

One problem I had was that the 2600pro seems to switch resolutions when I switch away from the 2600pro output.

I did create a custom driver for my TV that looks like this:
; Custom monitor information file - generated by PowerStrip 3.0, 9/23/2007
; Copyright (c) 1995-2005, EnTech Taiwan.
; Web: http://www.entechtaiwan.com

[Version]
Signature="$CHICAGO$"
Class=Monitor
ClassGUID={4d36e96e-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Provider=%MFG%

[Manufacturer]
%MFG%=MonMfg

[MonMfg]
%MODEL%=Mon.Install

[Mon.Install]
DelReg=DEL_CURRENT_REG
AddReg=Mon.AddReg,RES,DPMS

[Mon.AddReg]
HKR,%MODE%,Mode1,,%RANGE%

[DEL_CURRENT_REG]
HKR,MODES
HKR,,MaxResolution
HKR,,DPMS

[RES]
HKR,,MaxResolution,,%MAXRES%

[DPMS]
HKR,,DPMS,,0

[Strings]
MFG="ONKYO"
MODEL="TX-SR705"
MAXRES="1920,1080"
MODE="MODES\1920,1080"
RANGE="30.0-68.0,50.0-76.0,+,+"

It installed ok, and I thought this trick had worked for me. A little later in the evening, I notice a lot of flashing on my 7" LCD when I switched away from the PC. When I switched back I found that the resolution for both the LCD and the TV had changed to 1024x768 - the LCD should have been 800 x 600.

I see a MAXRES string in the driver. Is MINRES a valid value too? I was thinking that I need the driver to think the only valid resolution is 1920x1080.

Of course the best overall solution would be if the drivers did not care about the monitor being switched to begin with :)

Thanks for trying,
Dave

PS - I will look into the monoprice bit tomorrow.

I close to getting PowerDVD to work nicely with the Xbox 360HD. By physically disconnecting the VGA connector, I was able to achieve playback using hdmi over the Onkyo 905. Audio, as far as I can tell, is converted to PCM and sent over HDMI by the 2400 in conjunction with Power DVD.

I am now experimenting with proper screen resolutions. The main problem right now is stuttering.

Can anyone tell me if there is a HD 2600XT card that is silent and comes with a DVI to HDMI adapter? I would prefer to have a passive solution, but if there is one that has a very silent fan that would be ok too...

Here's one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127298

Is it possible tell uvd to upscale for example a dvd in dvxa/vrm9/xp or dvx2/evr/vista?
in a lot of avivo techical sheet a "Avivo Video Post Processor/Horizontal and vertical scaling" is mentioned. what the mean of scaling in a dxva filtergraph? hwo can I activate it? is it possible?

Is it possible tell uvd to upscale for example a dvd in dvxa/vrm9/xp or dvx2/evr/vista?
in a lot of avivo techical sheet a "Avivo Video Post Processor/Horizontal and vertical scaling" is mentioned. what the mean of scaling in a dxva filtergraph? hwo can I activate it? is it possible?

It's entirely automatic, same as any graphics card. Whenever you change window resolution you're up/down scaling.

It's entirely automatic, same as any graphics card. Whenever you change window resolution you're up/down scaling.

Are you sure? If I start an automatic filtergraph into kmplayer . dvxa video chain return me an input (input for the player) resolution of 720x576 anamorfic not 900x720 anamorfic for hd-ready or 1350x1080 anamorfic for full hd, if these my video resolutions. If I go to full screen obviously video card convert the frame but also my 9000 pro or a tnt2 videocard make this . so why create upscaling libavcodec (lanczos,spline ecc) features typicall of sw codec based filtergraph?
so that scaling mention is a joke...

Are you sure?

Yes. That's all scaling is: changing the resolution of a video. The snakeoil electronics industry make it sound like magic, when it's really something every computer has been able to do for well over a decade.

The reason for software scaling is simply that until recently, graphics cards were pretty poor at it.

The reason for software scaling is simply that until recently, graphics cards were pretty poor at it.

mhh, do you think in new ati hd the upscaling is better o worst than classic sw based?

mhh, do you think in new ati hd the upscaling is better o worst than classic sw based?

To my mind it's about the same in the Nvidia 8xxx and ATI 2xxx cards as with software - that's why I gave up using ffdshow.

I never did a clear read on the following question...

Is it just my vista system, or does everybody else have the problem that Catalyst control center can not be invoked when using drivers beyond 7.7?

I wonder if the settings from 7.7 remain "on" when going to 7.9; as I can't get the catalyst control center to start up. I like the ability to set the overclock, etc. with CCC.

I have not yet tried the tweak script...perhaps it has the same settings as ccc. Trouble is, I simply am not as good with registry hacks and driver nuances as most of the users of this thread.

Happydays, got an ATI DVI-HDMI packed with the second card I ordered wich is great but I only get 2 channel audio? :)

I wonder if the settings from 7.7 remain "on" when going to 7.9

It's certainly a common problem with ATI drivers. I've not had the specific problem you mention with Vista, but if I dig around the registry on my HTPC there are clearly chunks remaining from old 2400 installs.

If you can, try booting to safe mode after uninstalling and running driver cleaners, manually wiping anything ATI from files/registry etc.

Arfster;

Actually, I would be happy if the settings from 7.7 stayed on for 7.9!

You see, with 7.9 I can't get the catalyst control panel to turn on. (Can you?).

So I was hoping to set up the overclocking, etc. with the 7.7 control panel and then move to 7.9.

But it would be much better if I could figure out a way to get the catalyst control center to work under Vista and 7.9.

re: My problem with HD Pro 2600 and installing on Vista...

Problem Event Name: PnPDeviceProblemCode
Architecture: x86
Hardware Id: PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9587&SUBSYS_002818BC&REV_00
Setup class GUID: {4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
PnP problem code: 0000002B
Driver name: atikmdag.sys
Driver version: 7.1.1.670
Driver date: 07-05-2007
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057

I have received a reply from AMD... I was on the right lines....

>>PS Finally one last possibly connected clue - on Vista I've been unable to install the >>Sis Accelerated Graphics Port driver - via Windows Updates, if I do the machine won't >>boot, so have to drop into safe mode and swap it back to using teh Sis to AGP >>Controller - is this at all connected?

Unfortunately the answer won't help any others in this boat. ATI are passing the buck... It seems that error code "43" is caused by a miscommunication between the motherboard chipset (SR7-8X) and the graphics card. They blame this on the Sis to AGP to Controller on the motherboard and suggest I download the latest motherboard drivers. Unfortunately the latest motherboard specifc drivers are from back in 2003, which I already have installed. There is the "dodgy" Sis accelerated graphics port driver that is recommended in Windows Vista updates that keeps on causing my Vista installation to crash if I try to install it, which would seem to be the key, if I could somehow install that and get Vista not to choke on it, but I've no idea how. Could it be a simple IRQ conflict somewhere, or something unsolveable? I suspect the latter.

So basically they're saying my motherboard isn't compatible with Vista which is technically true BUT I can run an Nvidia 7600GS without any problems on it, so I'd argue ATI are to blame. It's a perfectly good motherboard running a P4 2.8ghz for my "second" machine.

My solution is to switch the NVIDIA card back in, switch the HD 2600 Pro into my work machine and consign the 9600 to retirement (which it was going to be retired anyway). Anyone got any better ideas for sorting out the chipset problems (funnily enough there were no problems without the ATI cards and Vista before that, it was a very stable machine)?

Chris

Hi,

I've been following this thread for a while now and with my Vista Mediacenter completed, I wanted to try out the HTPC tweaks from ExDeus.

Unfortunatly, the VB-script does not seem to work on my setup. The GUID's that the script shows me do not match the one found in the CCC.

Details from the CCC are:
Driver Packaging Version 8.411-070821a1-052447C-ATI
Catalyst Version 07.9
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 7.01.01.680
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0523
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.6847
Catalyst Control Center Version 2007.0821.2146.36991

I could apply the settings manually but I'm somewhat confused by the registry since there are two ControlSet's as you can see in this picture (http://appelkaas.nl/avs/regedit_.png).

My system is build of an AMD X2 3000+ with a Club3D ATI HD2600PRO videocard. The drivers that are listed above are the latest drivers according to the ati.amd website.

Could anybody point me in the right direction for this?
I wanted to add a little to what arfster said.

The key piece of information is that the active display is listed under CurrentControlSet, so applying the tweaks is a good idea, regardless of what driver path is listed in the CCC, for all the devices that my program finds with a device description that matches your graphics card.

There's no harm to adding the tweaks to every device the program finds, because devices that aren't the ATI card aren't going to read the registry settings you add. The key names are so specific, that it isn't like you're going to be overwriting keys for some other device. There is no reason, however, to tempt fate by adding junk settings to devices that don't look like your card, i.e., "Netmeeting driver" or "RDPDD Chained DD".

I feel the program is safe to use this way, and I've done it myself, but as always, if you don't feel comfortable using it or editing the registry, don't.

ControlSet00x keys are settings profiles, one of which is active as the CurrentControlSet (so it will always mirror one of the ControlSet00x keys, unless a reboot is required for a particular setting). Windows' "Last Known Good Configuration" can create new ControlSetXXX keys, or System Restore, or creating a new Hardware Profile, etc.

Booting to the 'Last Known Good Configuration', restoring the system from a System Restore point, or changing hardware profiles can all change which ControlSetXXX profile the CurrentControlSet maps to.

So, generally, it isn't recommended to edit a ControlSetXXX key directly, but to edit the current configuration thru CurrentControlSet.

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4 D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\Settings" appears to mirror all settings for your active display device under Vista. The GUID is always the same, so Vista users could use reg files instead of an actual program, but now that I've written the program to support Vista, I don't see any reason to change as long as it's working.

I don't see the same settings in XP mirrored. Under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4 D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\Settings", I have what look to be settings from initial install, but the current settings under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{G UID}\0000" are not reflected there, and some keys under the Video key are not present under the Class key. Changing settings in CCC definitely changes settings under the Video key, not the Class key.

Does anyone here use an HD2600 Pro under Windows XP. I tried using it with HD DVD (PowerDVD 7.3 and latest Patches) but did only get green/pink stripes instead of the video. I switched to 1920*1080 at 60Hz and now it works perfect. Unfortunately my screen wants a 50Hz Signal. Does anyone here have the same Problem. I already wrote to Cyberlink but I think could also be a ATI bug.

Alex

You see, with 7.9 I can't get the catalyst control panel to turn on. (Can you?).


Yeah, no problem there. I think that issue is an old one for ATI though, you see it popping up quite often. At a guess, it's probably some old file remnant causing it to fail to bootup CCC, rather than a registry thing.

I continually get 'VPU Recover' crashes on my VisionTek HD2600pro AGP on WinXP, when images are on the screen. I can watch video all day long and everything is fine, but if I browse the web for 5 minutes, I get a VPU crash. The same thing happened with a VT HD2400pro, so I don't believe it's a hardware failure on the card.

The last recommendation I saw from users experiencing similar issues was to upgrade to Cat 7.8RC3 drivers.

I've now tried Cats 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, and some VisionTek drivers with ATI versions in-between major Catalyst releases. I'm still having the same issues.

I need to try the 8.0 betas, and I haven't found the 7.8RC3 drivers for XP, but I haven't found any solution yet. Anybody else?

Arfster;

Actually, I would be happy if the settings from 7.7 stayed on for 7.9!

You see, with 7.9 I can't get the catalyst control panel to turn on. (Can you?).

So I was hoping to set up the overclocking, etc. with the 7.7 control panel and then move to 7.9.

But it would be much better if I could figure out a way to get the catalyst control center to work under Vista and 7.9.
You can't get it to load at all, i.e., selecting 'Restart Runtime' from the Start Menu, or right-clicking the desktop and selecting CCC?

Because if it's just that the CCC doesn't load in the system tray at boot up, that's an easy solution. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Run and put double-quotes around the start-up item for CCC (it's StartCCC or StartCLI, or something similar). If it's already there, then I guess it's some other issue.

I continually get 'VPU Recover' crashes on my VisionTek HD2600pro AGP on WinXP, when images are on the screen. I can watch video all day long and everything is fine, but if I browse the web for 5 minutes, I get a VPU crash. The same thing happened with a VT HD2400pro, so I don't believe it's a hardware failure on the card.

The last recommendation I saw from users experiencing similar issues was to upgrade to Cat 7.8RC3 drivers.

I've now tried Cats 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, and some VisionTek drivers with ATI versions in-between major Catalyst releases. I'm still having the same issues.

I need to try the 8.0 betas, and I haven't found the 7.8RC3 drivers for XP, but I haven't found any solution yet. Anybody else?I have the VisionTek HD2600pro AGP running with WinXP, and I have seen a single VPU crash when I was adjusting my my Netflix queue. I do a lot of surfing, so it seems pretty rare me. I am using the 7.8 drivers.

Have you checked your AGP Aperture in the BIOS? Try setting it equal to the memory on your card.

-Dave

I have the VisionTek HD2600pro AGP running with WinXP, and I have seen a single VPU crash when I was adjusting my my Netflix queue. I do a lot of surfing, so it seems pretty rare me. I am using the 7.8 drivers.

Have you checked your AGP Aperture in the BIOS? Try setting it equal to the memory on your card.

-Dave
I'll check when I get home today, but I believe I'm maxed out with the aper set to 256, while the card has 512MB.

It's an older, nforce3-based motherboard, so I'm hoping not to find out it's an issue with the AGP bus, as Nvidia has long since quit updating the chipset drivers. The fact that this has happened with multiple cards using multiple drivers may point to a problem source other than the card and its software. Then again, maybe the drivers just need to mature.

ATI isn't even making an AGP version of these cards, AFAIK. Maybe that's a sign.

Well after about 12 hours of playing with my settings, I seem to have everything working the way they should. All video formats seem to work well from Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, .ts , .mkv , .wmv files and SD recorded from Ritz.

Here is my current set-up.

Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe
AMD 5600+
2 gb ram
ATI 2600XT
Gateway 19" lcd dvi
Mitsubishi 46" lcd dvi to hdmi
Dvico hdtv goldplus
Twinhann 1030a


Windows Xp sp2 Clean install
ATI Beta 8.0 from station drivers
ExDeus Reg tweak(0.6)
sarah99 mpc Blu-ray HD-Dvd settings
CoreAVC 1.5 (smoother playback for .mkv files with my setup)
Power Dvd 7.3
media player classic 1.0.10
FusionHDTV 3.63.01
Ac3Filter
DirecX10



Hope to switch back to vista maybe this weekend, Haven't yet tried sound with HDMI to my Onkyo 905.

I'll check when I get home today, but I believe I'm maxed out with the aper set to 256, while the card has 512MB.

It's an older, nforce3-based motherboard, so I'm hoping not to find out it's an issue with the AGP bus, as Nvidia has long since quit updating the chipset drivers. The fact that this has happened with multiple cards using multiple drivers may point to a problem source other than the card and its software. Then again, maybe the drivers just need to mature.

ATI isn't even making an AGP version of these cards, AFAIK. Maybe that's a sign.I have an even older nForce2 motherboard, but I can set my AGP aperture to 512MB.

On a related subject, I think my motherboard has an incompatibility with ATI HDMI audio. In the Event Viewer, I found the following:

IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 0, function 1. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

I have confirmed that PCI slot 0, function 1 is the HDMI audio function. If I disable the UAA Bus driver in Device Manager, the Event Viewer message goes away.

I did some searching on AMD's site, and the HDMI audio is touted as supporting up to 5.1 AC3. SPDIF supports that, so I don't see a big advantage to ATI's HDMI audio compared to SPDIF. If 6 or 8 channel LPCM was possible, it would be a different story.

-Dave

Holy cow. I discovered that the best way to hook up this puppy with PowerDVD in order to play Goodfellas is not through VGA, which I thought was less resource intensive. It turns out that the 2400 is much happier supplying the signal to to the HDMI port!

Thanks to everybody's help (especially the exalted arfster) I was finally able to do a clean install of 7.9 with CCC working...and now PowerDVD seems happy too. Or at least enough to play back a file from hard drive without a ton of glitches.

It still seems easier to use the HD drive off the Xbox, however. Maybe with enough patience (or practice) even that may not be true.

Well after about 12 hours of playing with my settings, I seem to have everything working the way they should. All video formats seem to work well from Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, .ts , .mkv , .wmv files and SD recorded from Ritz.

Here is my current set-up.

Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe
AMD 5600+
2 gb ram
ATI 2600XT
Gateway 19" lcd dvi
Mitsubishi 46" lcd dvi to hdmi
Dvico hdtv goldplus
Twinhann 1030a


Windows Xp sp2 Clean install
ATI Beta 8.0 from station drivers
ExDeus Reg tweak(0.6)
sarah99 mpc Blu-ray HD-Dvd settings
CoreAVC 1.5 (smoother playback for .mkv files with my setup)
Power Dvd 7.3
media player classic 1.0.10
FusionHDTV 3.63.01
Ac3Filter
DirecX10



Hope to switch back to vista maybe this weekend, Haven't yet tried sound with HDMI to my Onkyo 905.

What kind of luck have you had with your 2600 and your Twinhan sat card?
I have a 1020a and a genpix setup and want to get either the 2400 or 2600 AGP versions, to run with it in DVBDream or MyTheatre. I have yet to read of anyone having good luck getting either card to work smoothly with h.264/MPEG4 content via a Satellite card.
grusome

Well, it looks like if I want stable 48hz playback in PDVD, I'll need a 2600Pro (d'ohhh). The Asus EAH2600Pro should go well with my Asus MB (I hope). I'm hoping the fan noise is unnoticable.

FYI,
While checking what's available locally, I noticed that Asus has 2 variations of their 2600Pros, a 'HTDI' which includes the ATI DVI-HDMI, and a 'HTDP' which doesn't have the dongle, but claims 'Vista compatible' and is +$10. All other specs looked identical. I'll stick to the HTDI for my XP OS, and the dongle.

EDIT: HTDI version is listed as "Built for Microsoft® Windows Vista™", same as the HTDP version, so I dont know whats really going on, or why the price is cheaper on the dongle-included box, might be a price typo on the store website I saw it listed.

EDIT #2: HTDI includes dvi-hdmi dongle, and claims '5.1 audio', HTDP version has no dongle, and says nothing about 5.1 sound.

p.

Well, it looks like if I want stable 48hz playback in PDVD, I'll need a 2600Pro (d'ohhh). The Asus EAH2600Pro should go well with my Asus MB (I hope). I'm hoping the fan noise is unnoticable.

FYI,
While checking what's available locally, I noticed that Asus has 2 variations of their 2600Pros, a 'HTDI' which includes the ATI DVI-HDMI, and a 'HTDP' which doesn't have the dongle, but claims 'Vista compatible' and is +$10. All other specs looked identical. I'll stick to the HTDI for my XP OS, and the dongle.

p.

They are claiming 5.1 audio which can just be the same thing provided by Ati. Legacy codecs DD and DTS over HDMI. They do not claim uncompressed LPCM or bitstream over HDMI so I suspect there is nothing new here.

- Rich

ExDeus
Thanks for your .vbs-script! BUT, I didnt find my GUID for my Powercolor 2600 PRO, so I used the .reg instead, much better picture-quality _o/
Is there any chance to have a "change-log" on the download-site? Would be great.
Thanks again!

I have a similar problem with sapphire 2400 pro in XP pro. I get the crashes only with websurfing. The VPU crashes become more frequent as the temperature on the card increases. Someone suggested placing a fan to cool the card reduced the crashes. I can't do this due to the small case Antec NSK 2400 with a Hauppauge 150 TV card next to the video card.

I'm tempted to upgrade to the 2600XT if someone could tell me that the crashes would stop.

I continually get 'VPU Recover' crashes on my VisionTek HD2600pro AGP on WinXP, when images are on the screen. I can watch video all day long and everything is fine, but if I browse the web for 5 minutes, I get a VPU crash. The same thing happened with a VT HD2400pro, so I don't believe it's a hardware failure on the card.

The last recommendation I saw from users experiencing similar issues was to upgrade to Cat 7.8RC3 drivers.

I've now tried Cats 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, and some VisionTek drivers with ATI versions in-between major Catalyst releases. I'm still having the same issues.

I need to try the 8.0 betas, and I haven't found the 7.8RC3 drivers for XP, but I haven't found any solution yet. Anybody else?

I get occasional crashes with my fanless 2600xt, however I think I can count them on one hand over the thusfar two-month lifespan of my card.

Tried the 8.0 XP betas with a 2600XT:

1) Expands HD by default with VMR9, in software and hardware mode. SD not, still needs usebt601csc=1. Can't remember if it did software mode expansion before.

2) Deinterlacing with bitcontrol might have changed. You can set bitcontrol to do software mpeg2 decoding, but hardware deinterlacing. For a 2400 this is ideal, because mpeg2 acceleration normally gobbles so much shader power very little is left for the higher quality deinterlacing modes. If you manually set VA deinterlacing in CCC, it obeys the setting. Might be different with the 2400, you never know, but worth checking.

If software mpeg2 decoding along with hardware deinterlacing is selected via bitcontrol, will the final image quality be as good as using the GPU hardware for everything? With the former method, would the upscaling and denoising still be done with the GPU or would they be bypassed? I own a 2400pro so I am curious about this.

If software mpeg2 decoding along with hardware deinterlacing is selected via bitcontrol, will the final image quality be as good as using the GPU hardware for everything? With the former method, would the upscaling and denoising still be done with the GPU or would they be bypassed? I own a 2400pro so I am curious about this.

Scaling will be in hardware certainly. Not entirely certain about denoising, although I expect it would work too - it's just another form of postprocessing handled in the shaders, same as the deinterlacing.

As I said though, not sure if the 2400 will allow this trick. Bitcontrol has a trial you can use before buying though.