DXVA|EVR broken in newer versions of ATI drivers

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › DXVA|EVR broken in newer versions of ATI drivers

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C0rsa

32 posts

Geek

#197712 24-Feb-2009 12:07

My 2 cents worth
ATI HD2600, PowerDVD V8.0 codecs and Vista Ultimate without the tv pack.
TV1, TV2 & TV3 and the demo channel were ok but the other channels all had varing amount of green screen pixelation.
Media Portal V1.0 behaved better than Vista MC but still had some issues.
Swapped to a Nvidia 8600GT and no green screen issues on any channels (only this card hasn't got spdif header so using optical for sound).
Windows 7 with ATi HD 2600 and latest drivers still has green screen issues on 576i Freeview channels
Windows 7 beta with no extra loaded codecs works fine with Nvidia card (note that latest drivers from Windows (update 18/2/2009) seem to have removed any pixelation issues from previous driver).
Phil

mm1352000

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#197875 24-Feb-2009 23:01

Hi Nil Einne

I responded to your questions on the other thread but I also wanted to respond to your comments on here. I fully understand your desire to get everything working on a Vista platform - I want to get DXVA going under Vista too! I also accept that you have to be careful which versions of drivers and powerdvd you have to install to get everything working on an XP platform. The practical hitch is that XP (despite its issues) has proven to be easier to get working than Vista has - I have XP working flawlessly now, but no matter what I try I still haven't got Vista going. Obviously other people on this forum have got nVidia cards working with Vista, however the question is about ATI cards... I haven't heard from anyone that has an ATI card working with software (let alone hardware) decoding in vista 32 or 64. Having said that, I would love nothing more than for someone to jump in and confirm that they have hardware acceration going on Vista using an ATI card

...

MrThc

13 posts

Geek

#197883 24-Feb-2009 23:51

My main HTPC (Vista SP1) is running MediaPortal 1.0 with an HD3870 using Catalyst 9.1 and PowerDVD 8.0.

My 2nd HTPC (XP SP3) is running MediaPortal 1.0 with an HD3450, using Catalyst 8.x and PowerDVD 8.0.

My main W\S (XP SP3) is running MediaPortal 1.0 with an HD4850 using Catalyst 9.1 and PowerDVD 8.0.

All systems work perfectly with Hardware Acceleration enabled, and I never get green screen issues.

H\A also works fine on all when playing recorded .ts files in WMP11

The main HTPC also has an onboard HD3200 that I had working in both XP and Vista with hardware acceleration and no green screen issues. I ended up having to opt for my spare 3870 though, because the HD3200 did not support 3:2 Pulldown Detection with 1080i content when the output resolution was above 720P. Which caused a horrible rolling screen refresh every few seconds (TV3 only). I had the same results with an Nvidia 8400GS.

I tried an early build of Windows 7, and had the green screen problems with that. I think I may have fixed it by installing PowerDVD8.

mm1352000

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#197891 25-Feb-2009 01:21

Hi MrThc

Thank you very much for posting

I have a few questions for you:
- what version of vista are you using, and is it 32 or 64 bit?
- do you have Aero enabled

For each system:
- what build of powerdvd are you using (this can be found by opening pdvd, right clicking on the window, and selecting "about". Example "PowerDVD 8 Version <b>8.0.2217.50</b>")
- are you using the release version of MediaPortal 1.0 or a nightly build?
- are you using VMR9 or EVR, and do you have all the checkboxes in MediaPortal configuration checked?
- do you have "prefer AC3 audio" enabled

Mmm thanks once again for posting. Food for though for me!

sbiddle

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#197898 25-Feb-2009 06:45

mm1352000:
- are you using VMR9 or EVR, and do you have all the checkboxes in MediaPortal configuration checked?

Just for the record again if you are not already aware you need to use EVR under Vista to enable hardware acceleration. If you use VMR as your renenderer under Vista you will not get hardware acceleration working.

Likewise under XP you can only get hardware acceleration under VMR, even if you use the EVR renderer using .Net3 you will not get hardware acceleration.

mm1352000

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#197907 25-Feb-2009 07:41

Hi sbiddle

I am aware of that - sorry. I was posting too late at night. At the moment I'd be willing to use either under Vista just to get jitter/pixelation/green frame free playback!

MrThc

13 posts

Geek

#197916 25-Feb-2009 08:45

Vista 32Bit, Aero enabled.

Prefer AC3 is enabled. Using EVR on Vista pc, VMR9 with all options ticked on XP systems.

PowerDVD 8.0.2217.50.

Mediaportal 1.0 release.

I hope that helps.

Equinox IT

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aether22

53 posts

Master Geek

#198021 25-Feb-2009 16:13

The results of (I forget the posters name) encouraged me to try older drivers and sure enough doing so and DXVA came back, i then found that I could get it to work with 9.2 but the greeness of the low res interlaced channels went through the roof so i went back to 8.41 I think. (where the non HD channels work most of the time and require a rebuild of the graph when it screws up on channel change)

However that's not the end of the story, I wanted to upgrade the bios from F3 to F7 however doing so caused anything DXVA to break ATIKMDAG.SYS in a BSOD as did F4 and F5 (F6 untried).
Even DXVA Checker would cause the blue screen. (along with MPC or dvbviewer)

I would be very curious to know if anyone with a GA-MA78GM-S2H reading this could tell me what bios revision they are using and if they can use DXVA.

Of course it is possible that if I tried the latest drivers and bios together they would work but the latest catylist not only kills most of the freeview channels with greenness, it also causes powerstrip to crash video drivers requiting a restart on most occasiuons.

Downing in bugs...

MrThc

13 posts

Geek

#198032 25-Feb-2009 17:05

The mainboard in my Vista HTPC is a GA-MA78GM-S2H Rev 1.0. I am using a beta BIOS (F8a), as HDMI or DVI would not work on my Bravia KDL32V4000 with anything lower than that.

As mentioned above, I had EVR working fine with the onboard HD3200, but lack of 3:2 Pulldown Detection at 1080P output made TV3 look horrible.

I can email a copy of the BIOS if you'd like to try it.

kiwijunglist

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#198080 25-Feb-2009 20:41

My 2c with onboard HD3200 + XP

Catalyst 8.12 + PDVD8 Ultra + MP => Works perfectly for Freeview H264 interlaced & progressive.

PS I have F7 bios (??Were there 2 versions of F7 becayse u gave a feeling there was, and the later one is better)

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

mm1352000

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#198096 25-Feb-2009 21:50

Thanks once again Mr Thc

I'll be doing a couple of clean vista installs this weekend to see if my problems are caused by:
- 32 vs 64 bit issues
- things that haven't been uninstalled properly - in my case old nVidia drivers (from my previous vid card), extra codecs etc.
- something I haven't yet thought of

Just out of interest, have you (or anyone else) heard of issues with Vista and the 4*** series of AMD/ATI video cards - SPECIFICALLY the 4*** series cards? I only ask because I think I recall having seen this suggested/mentioned on one of the many threads I've read over the past few days. Although I'm not asking (or recommending!) you do this, it would be interesting to know whether your 4850 would work in your main HTPC...

I'll let you all know what (if anything) I find...

MrThc

13 posts

Geek

#198181 26-Feb-2009 11:00

I would try if it would fit in the case. The 3870 only fits with about 3mm to spare.

My w\s with the 4850 is dual booting XP and Vista. I'll try it when I get some free time tonight or tomorrow.

KracsNZ

57 posts

Master Geek

#198208 26-Feb-2009 12:39

If you're looking at an nVidia solution you want a card that at least has VP2, though VP3 (G98 cores) would be preferable as it has full VC1 offload.

Can use this wiki reference to find out which card to choose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureVideo

MrThc

13 posts

Geek

#198234 26-Feb-2009 16:09

This page is also very useful. It includes ATI, Nvidia and Intel GPU's.

http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2564&Itemid=230&limit=1&limitstart=1

mm1352000

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#199912 8-Mar-2009 15:58

I FOUND MY LAST MAIN PROBLEM!!!

It was that I was using unsigned drivers for my TV card!

I had no idea that Vista was so strict about this stuff, I mean I had heard people saying that they needed a signed driver but I didn't understand why since I'd been able to install unsigned drivers without any trouble (or at least I thought so until now!). For some reason I just must not have noticed that I wasn't able to watch mpeg 2 satellite channels (as well as mpeg 4 terrestrial channels) properly in Vista. Once I saw that today I immediately suspected something bigger than codecs and software was causing my problems... on a hunch I switched out my tv card driver and... the rest is history. I now have TV running smooth with hardware acceleration in Vista 64 bit...

Thank you very much everyone for your help. Hopefully I can pay back my debt of gratitude by helping others in the future.

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