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ATI DVD Decoder

K

Krycek1

Gawd
Joined
Aug 6, 2004
Messages
724
Which dvd decoder do you use for your ATi card. I'm using the ATi DVD decoder 9.08 from the website but is this the best one to use for an ATi card. The problem I'm having with it is that I'm getting one shade of black boardering the widescreen image and a different shade of black boardering where the 16;9 image ends. Its kinda hard to describe and it's not messing up the image quality but it's really annoying.
 
are you getting this when watching dvds or files? or both?
try using zoomplayer with ffdshow. ffdshow can double dvd resolution to 1440x960. both free. takes a few minutes to set up but well worth it. ffdshow and purevid best decoders out now.
 
it will work with ati. but its 15 or 20 dollars. zoomplayer and ffdshow are free. ffdshow is not the easiest decoder to set up, but by far the best. there are many guides on how to set it up with various players. try dvd digest or one of the htpc sites. if you dont mind going for a few bucks a very good player is theatertek. in the various htpc forums, most of the veterans are using this.

btw your black bars can be fixed in the option page for "aspect ratio adjustment" you should be able to adjust your picture to cover the bars, or if not, you should be able to match the two colors so you cannot see the difference.
 
Total noob question here.

I use powerdvd 5.0 for my player. How do I tell which decoder I have installed? Or does powerdvd include it's own decoder?
 
Riptide_NVN said:
Total noob question here.

I use powerdvd 5.0 for my player. How do I tell which decoder I have installed? Or does powerdvd include it's own decoder?
Click to expand...


PowerDVD 5.0 has it's own decoder.
 
Krycek1 said:
Which dvd decoder do you use for your ATi card. I'm using the ATi DVD decoder 9.08 from the website but is this the best one to use for an ATi card. The problem I'm having with it is that I'm getting one shade of black boardering the widescreen image and a different shade of black boardering where the 16;9 image ends. Its kinda hard to describe and it's not messing up the image quality but it's really annoying.
Click to expand...


I have a backup machine with a Radeon 9000 running purevideo decoder, and it does the same thing with the two shades of black/grey.
 
Riptide_NVN said:
Does it suck?
Click to expand...
That and WinDVD are about "descent" as far as quality goes, the NVDVD decoder is considered to have the best quality by far.

But ATI doesn't develope their own MPEG codec like NV did, the ATI DVD codec is a rebranded Cyberlink PowerDVD codec.

I use both the NV codec and Dscaler regardless of the video card brand.

http://members.aol.com/DriemMastR/FreeShow.html
 
Do you still need to load divx if you have ffdshow installed?

Also why would you need both dscaler and the nvdvd codec? Don't they both do the same thing?
 
Riptide_NVN said:
Also why would you need both dscaler and the nvdvd codec? Don't they both do the same thing?
Click to expand...
Multiple PCs, the HTPC has the NV codec installed because it needs a code to encode as well as decode MPEG 2 video. The other systems have Dscaler installed.
Do you still need to load divx if you have ffdshow installed?
Click to expand...
Nope, I would add that the Divx codec that FFDShow has is alot more optimized (faster) then the offical Divx codec. The only codec I have installed on every system is just FFDShow and an MPEG2 codec.
 
Thanks man. That helps explain a few things.

At this point I'm not sure if I should just leave powerdvd on there or remove it and put dscaler on instead. I'm tempted to load dscaler since people feel it's superior. Will I have to load the ac3filter as well if I remove powerdvd?
 
You shouldn't have too, the only reason I can give for removing PDVD is that possibly it can try and assert itself as the default codec when Dscaler is set to be, this causes alot of confusion for the video player and gives you really crappy playback (things like stuttering video) and lower picture quality.

Some of the time it seems that WinDVD and PDVD don't play well with others.
 
To late I just removed powerdvd. And divx codec. :)

I'm going to install dscaler, ac3filter, and ffdshow.

BTW I appreciate you helping me out with this. I have to say this is pretty complex, all this encoding/decoding/playing/etc. business. It's not a click on a box and everything works type of deal.

My only remaining concern is that how will these changes affect playback of some HDTV content I have. I have several 1080i .mpg files and will they still play right after I install dscaler and ffdshow.
 
The hard part is setting up FFDShow if you want to use it's filters. lol

In FFDShow you can set it up to "launch" different filter presets based on several things like what app is playing the video file, movie's deminsions, aspect ration match, etc. Click on "Image Settings" and then click on "Preset autoload conditions" to see what you can do with it.

I've had no problem playing back HD content of any kind.
 
Well after removing powerdvd and dvix codec my .MPG 1080i/720p files are still playing without any problems. Evidently they aren't divx files or they shouldn't be working right now.

Next step is to try dscaler/etc. and see how DVDs play. I'll post back in a bit after I get a chance to see what happens. I'm pretty excited by some of those examples on the htpc guide (like the picture of yoda). Those are very nice results.

*EDIT* I don't get it. Powerdvd is gone, I haven't installed dscaler, and yet MPC seems to be able to play DVDs right now. How is that possible??
 
Heres a tip for FFDShow, under "Codec" scroll down to the "Raw Video" listing and select "YV12," now scroll down to the "Output" listing on the left hand side and make sure that only YV12 and "closest colormatching" are checked.

These both improve image quality as well as moving some CPU load to the GPU.
 
Thankyou very much again. Merry christmas! :D

What seems odd to me is that I've removed powerdvd. Also removed divx codec. I have not installed dscaler, ac3filter, or ffdshow yet. So I shouldn't be able to play DVDs right now. However MPC plays them. MS Media Player complains, as it should, about not having a decoder.

Why does MPC still work? Is there some decoder still on my system somehow? :confused:
 
Riptide_NVN said:
*EDIT* I don't get it. Powerdvd is gone, I haven't installed dscaler, and yet MPC seems to be able to play DVDs right now. How is that possible??
Click to expand...
MPC has a built in MPEG-2 decoder which is why the guide says to use the override menu to install an MPEG2 codec of your choice.
 
Excellent! Thankyou so much for clearing up the questions I had here you have been extremely helpful. I'll head off now and get the installation done so I can start tweaking with the setup. The guides you posted are very good btw. Excellent step-by-steps.
 
Just remember that the FFDShow guide is more of a walkthrough or introduction to FFDShow, the settings oulined my not work with your system and software. The point is for you to tailor FFDShow to your setup.
 
Just tried that, curiously Dscaler5 .07 wasn't setup as perferred like when I had .06 installed. Yeah it's crashing to the desktop but it doesn't do that when it's just set to "merit".

Just make sure to diable the MPEG 1 and 2 codecs under "Filters" in the Options menu, if Dscaler is the only MPEG codec installed on your system and setup under MPC then it's going to use Dscaler.
 
OK looks like it's working again. I had a box checked that was crashing it, "Hardcode for PAL with ffdshow". This is not a PAL disc, therefore it blows up. Fine I expected that much now that I understand what that means. :)

Next problem I'm running into is that when I have the resize option checked in ffdshow it resizes fun but gets unbearably choppy. Odd thing is that the OSD shows low CPU usage yet it is still choppy as hell. If I uncheck resize then it stops doing that.
 
What are you resizing too? Try going with 1440x960 for DVDs using the Lanzcos 2 method for both Luma and Chroma. If my 2.3Ghz M-AXP can do that then I'm sure that your X2 4800 should be able to as well.
 
I'm using a 4200+ X2 which is two 2.2GHz cores. Even setting the resize ratio to "Multiply by 1.2" CPU spikes up to near 50% (one core pegged). If I try any higher than just 1.2 it stutters.

Not sure what the problem is but even modest use of the resize function causes atrocious cpu usage... :confused:
 
Krycek1 said:
I have NVDVD 2.0 somewhere in all my library, is that the version your talking about?
Click to expand...
2.0 is an old one, they went to 3.0 and then renumbered then. The newest version on NV's site is 1.02-185 and was released the first week of November. NVDVD was the DVD player app (rebranded WinDVD I believe) while the new "Purevideo decoder" is simple an MPEG codec.
And again, sre you sure It's going to help me since its probably optimized for nVidia and I'm running ATi?[
Click to expand...
It's not optimized for NV, this is a very common misconception. There is NV specific coding in there but thats for features that are supported on certain NV cards anyways.

It's main function is as a DVD codec.
 
Riptide_NVN said:
I'm using a 4200+ X2 which is two 2.2GHz cores. Even setting the resize ratio to "Multiply by 1.2" CPU spikes up to near 50% (one core pegged). If I try any higher than just 1.2 it stutters.

Not sure what the problem is but even modest use of the resize function causes atrocious cpu usage... :confused:
Click to expand...
Try setting a resolution to resize to rather then using the "Mutliply by" setting.
 
Nope. Same problem.

Right now the only filter I have selected in ffdshow is resize. Nothing else, even blur/nr is selected.

If I manually set the resolution to 1440x960 it's choppy. The audio stutters. CPU usage spikes and it pegs one of my cores. I've tried changing it to "no aspect ratio correction" and that doesn't help either.

Posting a screenshot of my settings. One moment...
EDIT*

Follow the thumbnail please.
 
Using build 1221...

Just discovered that if I set it like this CPU hovers around 36-40%.


Unfortunately if I turn the parameter up to 2.00 and luma sharpen to 1.5 it hits 50% again and stutters.

I take it this is abnormal then? I've loaded the AMD CPU driver and MS dual core hotfix so I doubt any of that has much to do with this.
 
I'm still getting two different shades of black boardering the initial 16:9 image and then a lighter shade boardering the 2:31 or whatever widescreen image. I'ts really annoying, can't seem to figure out how to get rid of it. I remember having this same problem a long time ago and i fixed it but for some reason i can't seem to figure out why it is.
 
If we had a rep point system I'd give some to CrimandEvil. :D

That version of ffdshow he linked to fixed all the problems I was having w/CPU utilization. I'm now all set to go and just need to tweak ffdshow's settings. I can even set it to 1920x1200 on resize now if I want with no problems. Awesome! :p
 
Riptide_NVN said:
If we had a rep point system I'd give some to CrimandEvil. :D

That version of ffdshow he linked to fixed all the problems I was having w/CPU utilization. I'm now all set to go and just need to tweak ffdshow's settings. I can even set it to 1920x1200 on resize now if I want with no problems. Awesome! :p
Click to expand...
Good to hear. :)
Krycek1 said:
I'm still getting two different shades of black boardering the initial 16:9 image and then a lighter shade boardering the 2:31 or whatever widescreen image. I'ts really annoying, can't seem to figure out how to get rid of it. I remember having this same problem a long time ago and i fixed it but for some reason i can't seem to figure out why it is.
Click to expand...
Are you using FFDShow to resize the image or is this in general? Depending on your video player you can tweak the color balance alittle and make sure the black is black. Are you using MPC?
 
Krycek1 said:
I'm still getting two different shades of black boardering the initial 16:9 image and then a lighter shade boardering the 2:31 or whatever widescreen image. I'ts really annoying, can't seem to figure out how to get rid of it. I remember having this same problem a long time ago and i fixed it but for some reason i can't seem to figure out why it is.
Click to expand...


Does no one know what I'm talking about? :(

I'm getting this with whatever decoder I use.
 
CrimandEvil said:
Are you using FFDShow to resize the image or is this in general? Depending on your video player you can tweak the color balance alittle and make sure the black is black. Are you using MPC?
Click to expand...
Bump for list of software used.
 
I've never gotten anything but a black window when trying to use the PureVideo decoder :(
 
What settings are you guys using w/ffdshow? I'm testing w/Star Wars III dvd9 and it seems like ffdshow hardly makes much of a difference. I know it's working because I have the OSD checked and it shows up but the IQ just doesn't seem much improved.

Maybe this is OK though. After reading the documentation I guess it's supposed to be a subtle difference.
 
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