[Blight]

Ok, I got a radeon card.


I don't know why, but part of the overlay code seems broken. I can set the overlay color controls, but for some reason, I can't get their current settings. But I guess this is irrelavent.


I'm currently in the process of adding the code to allow setting the overlay color controls.


In my inital testing, I found this settings to be "weird", not really what I expected, but then again, I'm not the expert. I'm going to set this as edit fields which you can basically input any number and experiment with the result.



Ok, about the radeon card itself, here are my first impressions:


Completely ignoring the "3d" part as this isn't really the feature I use most...


Overlay:

I'm disappointed with the video features of this card (ATI Radeon 64 VIVO). All video appears pixelated compared to my oldish TNT2. Wasn't the radeon supposed to have a vastly suprior overlay stretching? what am I missing here?

Pressing the default button on the color control dialog in the screen property decides to set my overlay brightness to the max, maybe it's because i'm accessing this data writing zoom player, but it does it when zoom player isn't loaded! BUGS!


TV Out (analog):

The TV out can't be set to 640x480! I can't select PAL! Even when set to 800x600, it doesn't cover my entire TV set, even though I set both the width and the height to the maximum.


While the TV filtering can be lessoned, it can't be disabled completely, so whatever you do, the picture isn't as sharp as on a TNT2 using a BT869 chipset (possibly the chrontel chip as well).


It's nice that you can macro the TV mode to a keyboard function, but it doesn't change the resolution, so you're stuck in a big-ass virtual desktop.



Conclusion:

Am I missing something here? Where's the great video quality? Is there a special tweaking tool I'm missing somewhere? (and I went over the display dialogs 10 times and tried everything)


And yes, I was using the latest drivers off the ATI site, which I downloaded 2 minutes before installing the card.

 

[MikeM]

There is a relationship between the ATI player's color controls or any other player for that matter and the overlay controls issued by the new ATI drivers (7199). Also, I believe a DVD has to be in the drive in order for you to change anything in the overlay tab.


Those overlay settings should be at 0 default with all controls except for staturation and gamma which need to be tweaked up a bit.

 

[Blight]

No... I'm giving you access to the RAW data, ATI color controls interface is probably doing some sort of translation to make it more logical for the user, but I'll let you access the data directly, so there's like weird numbers, for example, I can set gamma as a number between 0 to 529, brightness can be 100000 to make the picture completely white, saturation can be 50000, etc... I guess you'll just have to see it.


It also works on media files btw, as long as you set the Overlay mixer to load in the filters file...

 

[Blight]

Ok, this is a release for Radeon cards mostly. It should let you access the overlay color controls.


Also, the eject button should now work on non-NT OSes.


The IRE 0 button is intentionally disabled. If someone submits the values to set the overlay to IRE 0, I'll enable it.


Get it here:
http://pisho.net/dvdgenie/zoomplayer212rc2.zip



P.S.

I remember someone commenting that freeware support sucks. Well, I've written this thing within 3 hours of the FedEx guy dropping the card.

 

[Yvonus]

Only one thing to say, great job Blight. I'm supportive of any initiative to make our htpc experience better, keep up the good work !

 

[Mad Chemist]

Blight,

I beleive the settings based on Digital Connections 0 ire reg file should be (someone please correct me if I'm wrong):


Brightness: 5000

Contrast: 10000

Gamma: 100

Hue: 0

Sat: 12800


I tired it and it looked correct to me. You don't need the 7199 drivers for this to work. I'm using the 7087 drivers and the controls in Zoomplayer work.

Edit: These setting may not work with the 7199 drivers. When I tried the 0 ire patch with the 7199 drivers, the ATI player was too bright.

 

[MikeM]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mad Chemist Blight, I beleive the settings based on Digital Connections 0 ire reg file should be (someone please correct me if I'm wrong): Brightness: 5000 Contrast: 10000 Gamma: 100 Hue: 0 Sat: 12800 I tired it and it looked correct to me. You don't need the 7199 drivers for this to work. I'm using the 7087 drivers and the controls in Zoomplayer work. Edit: These setting may not work with the 7199 drivers. When I tried the 0 ire patch with the 7199 drivers, the ATI player was too bright.

Those values listed above are correct for 0 IRE.


As for the 7199 drivers and the ATI player, there will be problems if you use the 4.1 player and those drivers since the drivers are DXVA and the player is not. You would have to disable Harware Optimization in the Genie under the Cinemaster tab to make it work so that the player uses SW mode only. The 7199 drivers will work of course with the 5.0 player, Zoom and PowerDVD all using DXVA. The ATI player will brighten because every time you touch the video tab in the player, the overlay controls go nuts -- same problem as we had several months ago except this time you have two sets of controls fighting for dominance. My suggestion is to place the ATI player controls at default and then set your PQ in the overlay if you;re using the 7199's. The closest to the 0 IRE would be default for everything other than gamma which should be at +6 and saturation which should be at 112%. Looks good!

 

[trbarry]

Quote:

P.S. I remember someone commenting that freeware support sucks. Well, I've written this thing within 3 hours of the FedEx guy dropping the card.

Well it certainly wasn't me, and I sure don't believe that.


But I hope that 3 hours allowed you to make a backup before starting to install new Radeon drivers.


- Tom

 

[Mad Chemist]

Does anyone else think this is a rather significant event? I've been hesitant to install the 7199's on my HTPC because its been rock solid since I built and its stayed that way due to a lack of fiddling. However, I need aspect ratio controll of the zoom player since I will have an Isco II shortly and I still wanted gamma control. So it seemed that before today, I needed the 7199's and Zoomplayer. Now all I have to do is install Zoomplayer on the HTPC and can leave the drivers alone. If this had come out 6 months ago, IMO, virtually every Radeon owner would be using Zoomplayer.


The only problems I've had with Zoomplayer is it would sometimes choke on startup. By forcing it to DVD mode, fullscreen and aspect ratio 3, it starts perfect every time. I did this by creating a shortcut with the following command line (I have the player in a folder called "Zoom" at the top of the C drive).


C:\\Zoom\\zplayer.exe /DVD /F /AR:3

 

[trbarry]

So what are the implications of this? I'm still typing this on my HTPC using a Matrox G400. But I have a new Radeon LE in a cardboard box on the table in front of me that I'll install this week.


Does this change which drivers I should head for? It seems it might.


I want to be able to compare the Zoom player, my PDVD 3.0, and the new TT player when it comes. Also I'd like the Zoom player with who know's what drivers and filters to play software HDTV.


Any ideas? (besides cross fingers and make a Ghost backup)


- Tom

 

[jrwood]

Blight there is an overscan registry value for ATI cards which works .

http://www.rage3d.com/radeon/r3dtweak/ (has option to enable overscan)


or manually


"creat a new DWORD of 'TVEnableOverscan' under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\ATI_Technologies\\Driver\\000x \\DAL and set the value to 1. Now The Overscan button is available under the TV display settings.'


You will need to reboot after making the registry changes, then the option should appear. Also worth a read..

http://www.dtvmax.com/radeon_guide.htm


Keep up the great work

 

[JKohn]

Tom,


If I recall you have an RPTV, correct? If so, you may want to consider using driver version 7093, as it lets you use interlaced resolutions for DVD playback. With the newer drivers, you're going to be limited to 480p/540p timings.

Quote:

Any ideas? (besides cross fingers and make a Ghost backup)

That's always a good idea

 

[Blight]

Since no one is arguing about this, I'll set:

Brightness: 5000

Contrast: 10000

Gamma: 100

Hue: 0

Sat: 12800


As the IRE 0 button.


Also, since I can't read the actual data from the card (no idea why this doesn't work), can anyone give me the settings for the default values so that I can add a "reset" button ?

 

[DaGamePimp]

Blight ,


Thank you for the recent additions , the added feature set is wonderful to say the least .


I have been using ZoomPlayer for a while now [ with the new Rav. filter ] and can honestly say that nothing that I have seen can match the PQ and features .


We all owe Blight a big thank you for the effort that he is putting into Zoom for us HTPC'ers .


Thank You !

Jason Berg


[ the overlay settings look fantastic - those numbers appear to be right on the money !!! ]

 

[Blight]

Ok people, how about helping me out a bit.


I've been trying to get a decent TV-Output (through analog) quality for several hours now.


I did manage to enable overscan as per instruction-given.


Oh and of course, the Aspect Ratio on the TV output is wrong, it's 1.41 instead of 1.333inf. Luckily, I already fixed that issue with the zoom player support to adjust aspect ratios. Setting a 5% adjustment fixes this problem.


However, setting the filtering to minimum still doesn't disable the filters! This makes the video quality sub-par. It adds all sort of color artifacts to black areas, and blurs the image.


Does ANYONE know how to completely disable filtering on the TV output?


Ontop of that the overlay seems pixelated! What the heck is going on here?

 

[Blight]

Hmm, this sucks.


I tried both the ATI Radeon 64 VIVO and the ATI Radeon 32 PCI and both exhibit this pixelization in overlays!


You can easily see it by loading some sort of good quality video (I used the Bugs Life DVD), the doing like 500% zoom on it, you can instantly see the pixelization.


However, I took the ATI card out, plunked in my old old TNT2 m64 card, zoomed in on the same frame 500%, and the image is blurred smoothly, no pixelization.


What gives, can't the ATI do proper overlay resize!?

 

[trbarry]

Quote:

However, I took the ATI card out, plunked in my old old TNT2 m64 card, zoomed in on the same frame 500%, and the image is blurred smoothly, no pixelization. What gives, can't the ATI do proper overlay resize!?

I'm the last one to say how to fix it because I haven't even installed mine yet. But from all the comments here in the last year or so I was fairly sure the Radeon was actually rather good at scaling.


So there almost has to be something else wrong here.


- Tom

 

[JohnAd]

I'm with blight on this one, I just went from GeForce 2 to radeon and I'm seeing the pure scaling degrade, Overall I prefer the Radeon but just for scaling I don't think the radeon is a winner.


John

 

[Blight]

I actually tested this on 2 radeon cards!


ATI Radeon 64 VIVO

ATI Radeon 32 PCI


Exactly the same. I seem to remember people mentioning that the ATI had anisotropic scaling and whathavenot, hmmf.

 

[Vern Dias]

FWIW, I have never seen scaling artifacts using my Radeon DDR64 and Win98 with WinDVD, ATI, or PowerDVD.


I agree, something else is wrong. Unfortunately, I have no clue what it might be, other than maybe OS or DirectX version.


Vern