Marvel G400 WinXP ac3

[Kacho]

I've installed WinXP with latest drivers & video tools (adis.szm.com) for the Matrox. For subtitles & framerate conversion I use DivXG400 which works very good.
Everything worked fine until I've installed the drivers for the sound card & audiofilters for ac3 playback. When I play a movie on the PC monitor is OK but on the TV the picture was choppy.
At the end I realised thet this happen only when the framerate is 23.976 & the sound is ac3. It doesn't happen when played 25.00fps movie with ac3 sound or 23.976 with no ac3 sound. It also doesn't matter which codec was used to create it (DivX, XVid...)
I've tried to lower the screen size, depth etc but always the same. Only if I disable the ac3 decoding (it means without any sound) the playback is perfect. It seems just like there is no framerate conversion when ac3 is played.
Does somebody else experienced that & knows what could be done?
MSI BXMaster,Celeron901MHz,512MB,MatroxMarvelG400TV, CreativeLive5.1,1280x1024xx32bit/85Hz

[Dr Mordrid]

If the content is in MPEG have you tried playing it with DVD player software?

Dr. Mordrid

[Kacho]

It happened to me with .avi-s
I tried with WinDVD but as it activate the DivXG400 tray icon the problem remains the same!
I've even tried to check the PAL TruSpeed in WinDVD without converting the framerate in DivXG400 but ... No change!

[Flying dutchman]

I Would expect some choppiness since there's no accurate way to convert 24 fps to 25. Every second a frame has to be played twice, it might even muck up the field order.

[Kacho]

I've resolved the problem in a kind of strange way: I tried difrent way & at last I understood that if I change the refresh rate of my deskot screen to 75Hz all works perfect! That's strange to me because on Win98 it never happened - I was alway working at 85Hz, & one of the features of Marvel G400 is that both of the displays can have separate resolutions & refresh rates indipendently.
It's not a big problem but I really wonder why uner Win98 & Win XP the display drivers & the performance of the card are so diffrent!

[Flying dutchman]

That IS surprising indeed. You said it was the TV output that became choppy?

[Kacho]

Yes & by the way it works well in the way I've explained with a small tool called "ReClock" but with DivXG400 2.7 the problem remains. I can't really understand why!

[Flying dutchman]

Couldn't it be a memory bandwidth problem on the Marvel? At 85 Hz refresh rate, the video memory is under heavier load than at 75 Hz. The primary display, the secondary display (TV) and the media player all access the same video Ram chips simultaneously... is busmastering enabled in videotools?

[Nowhere]

Out of my memory: I think I've read somewhere long time ago that the newest version of DivxG400 has some weird problem sometimes and because of this it is in some cases better to use one of the older versions.
But don't count on it, probably I'm mistaken (perhaps that was about different software)

[Kacho]

Yes busmastering enabled but what do U meàn in video tools - isn't it in power desk options. It's strange that the same card didn't make such a thing when I was usin Win 98 where I was using DivXG400. All the settings are the same as were before, all the gonfig is the same just the OS. Is that meanig that Win XP can't get all of the power, if I could say like that, of the card?
The same problem occured with a friend of mine who has a G450. He has still both OS Win98 - works, & WinXP - my problem.

[gigirex]

I have same problem, and it does not depends from the use of DivXG400. On the monitor the movie is perfect, and on the TV is choppy. Some work can be do lowered the depth to 16 bit and the frequency to 75 Hz, but remain in the background. Perhaps it depends from the codec AC3. There are differents codecs to try?

[gigirex]

...another bit of information: the dvd playback with any player is perfect on the monitor and on tv. The problem is only with DivX movies. I have the same configuration as Kacho. CPU Load doesn't seems partecipate to the problem, that is the problem is independent from the workload of CPU.

[Kacho]

Yes U're right about lowering the frequency to 75. The depth could be higher than 16 bit. But on the TV is still the same. Now I use reClock to adjust the framerate on the TV & I could say it works fine. First it said "Cannot sync this CINEMA video to your hardware. Please set your monitor refresh rate near to a multiple of 24 Hz" but when I forced it to 25 frames it worked wery good. Only when U play a 30 fps file U should disable reClock as it slower the video & audio. But in that case on your TV U see the same perfect flow as on the monitor.
I still can't understand why on XP the DivXG400 doesn't work as on the 98 it was just fine, but now I can watch all my movies.

[gigirex]

Kacho, finally, what is your solution?

1) Are you using DivXG400 or not?
2) Are you sure that all depends from the audio AC3?
3) Are you sure that the version of powerdesk and/or video tools contribuite in the problem?
4) reClock is used in place of DivXG400?

Thanks

gigirex

[Kacho]

I'm sorry about the confusion! :-)
This problem occures only with any video file which has an ac3 sound with framerate different from 25 fps. I don't know if it depends of the sound but I had never problems with .avi different of 25 fps & non ac3 audio. I use DivXG400 for the subtitles but not for changing the framerate. For changing it I use reClock together with DivXG400.
I don't know why this happends - may be because of PowerDesk or something in Windows XP. On Win98 never happend but PowerDesk version is also different.