Announcement

**LukeLo** · 17 December 2003, 23:30

Here are the pics I took when using P650 with WinDVD5. The material I played is the prelude of Disney video program in Finding Nemo DVD. I gradually enlarged the playing window from 720*405 and saw the faint lines became more and more.

First I adjusted the window to 724*406 and 3 faint lines appear.I marked the 3 faint lines with numbers on this picture

Then I slightly enlarged the window and 5 lines appeared. I marked the 5 faint lines with numbers on this picture

Then I slightly enlarged the window and 7 lines appeared. I marked the 7 faint lines with numbers on this picture

Then I slightly enlarged the window and 9 lines appeared. I marked the 9 faint lines with numbers on this picture

Then I slightly enlarged the window and 11 lines appeared. I marked the 11 faint lines with numbers on this picture

Then I slightly enlarged the window and 15 lines appeared. But it is hard to recognize 15 lines on a 640*480 image so I only provide the photo of original size here.

http://mp3.dearhoney.idv.tw/matrox/15linesn.JPG

**Marshmallowman** · 18 December 2003, 00:37

The regularity of the line may suggest you have some kind of interfrence effect.

Not that I have seen it, but this may be matroxes infamous banding?, in which case no one whats to make a comment becasue it usually degenerates into a shouting match.

Things to try:

Do you have multiple displays enabled?, try disableing the rest to see if it helps, or maybe moving the moniters apart.

Does changing the refresh rate or resolution change anyhting?

Perhaps disabling/enabling vsync might improve things?

Also you say you have tried it with the DVI-d connector?, is that connected to a proper DVI- d monitor?

Does this interference appear if you use the TVout?

**Sasq** · 18 December 2003, 00:48

AFAIK the lx core has the banding resolved. (and from memory it was horizontal lines).

Your English is fine, as for posting in Big 5, there are a few users here who can read it, but it is better to leave it as a link to your own page.
The default headers force the page to English and it will apear as garbled text to most users.

**LukeLo** · 18 December 2003, 02:39

Thank you for replying my post.

Originally posted by Marshmallowman

Do you have multiple displays enabled?, try disableing the rest to see if it helps, or maybe moving the moniters apart.

No I didn't enable mutiple displays. When I took those pics I only used one monitor to my P650.

The monitor I used when I took pics is Dell P992, it is a SONY OEM display which is very similar to CPD-G420.

I once used Parhelia-512 connecting with Mitsubishi 2070SB and EIZO F980 (they are 21" CRTs) and enable multiple displays, then playing two videos on each monitor and these lines appeared.

Does changing the refresh rate or resolution change anyhting?

Nothing changed. I can see these lines in any resolution and any refresh rate.

Perhaps disabling/enabling vsync might improve things?

Did you mean the option "Flip pages during vertical blanking (VSync) interval in Game and 3D Settings in PowerDesk?

Yes I once set it to never(default is always) and nothing changed.

Also you say you have tried it with the DVI-d connector?, is that connected to a proper DVI- d monitor?

The monitor I tried with DVI-D connector is Neovo E-19A(19" LCD with DVI) and it works fine with NVIDIA Quadro 200NVS. I also tried to use dsub with it and nothing changed.

Does this interference appear if you use the TVout?

I don't know. I have no TV here to try.

**LukeLo** · 18 December 2003, 02:55

Originally posted by Sasq
Your English is fine, as for posting in Big 5, there are a few users here who can read it, but it is better to leave it as a link to your own page.
The default headers force the page to English and it will apear garbled text to most users.

Thank you for suggesting. It is my first page and I am sorry for wrong default headers. Here is the link.

404 Not Found

http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~r92222061/

Please note the page in this link was written in Big5 Chinese.

My dear friend JamesT translated the content of the page above to English and here follows the result.

Here are some characteristics of these vertical lines (flaws):

1. Actually these lines are ALWAYS there and have nothing to do with what material is being played. However, they are more noticeable in blue and white areas such as scenes of blue sky and white clouds or underwater. These brighter lines keep on the same positions while the playback is being paused, whether windowed or in full screen mode.

2. These lines are not of a particular color. The color is dependent on neighborhood colors and is more lightish (achromatous). They look like that you apply thin semi-transparent sellotape on the monitor screen. These vertical faint lines are throughout the video frame from the top scanline to the bottom scanline.

3. As the video playing windows remains a certain size, these lines remain on certain positions with a certain width and spacing. The actual width and spacing varies depending on the current monitor signal resolution and the current size of the playing window.

I tried to measure the width and spacing of the vertical lines with a ruler and give some examples as following:
<pre>
Width Spacing
12mm N/A; only one faint line (or band, since it is so wide) exists on the right.
4mm 61mm
3mm 47mm
2.2mm 32mm
2mm 28mm
1.8mm 23mm
1.5mm 20mm
</pre>

I used a 19" CRT monitor. The signal resolution was 1024*768. I opened the FFX-2 Opening video with Media Player Classic and pressed Alt-2 to scale it to 100% and then resized the window little by little. The result was the set of data above.

Note: the flaw is consistent in 16-bit and 32-bit color mode.

4. As mentioned above, the width and spacing varies while changing the size of the playing window. The larger the window is, the thinner and closer these lines are. Therefore, when the resolution is very high, say 1600*1200, these lines will be too thin and too close to observe. It's easier to observe them under 800*600 or 1024*768 full-screen mode.

5. These lines occur only when the playing window size is larger than the original video resolution. When you shrink the playing window, they don't appear. (However, I've found that when the monitor signal resolution is 1920*1440 or 2048*1536, these lines will not occur until the playing window is expanded to about 250-300% of the original video resolution).

When you play a DVD source, of which the resolution is 720*480, these lines occur as long as the playing window is larger than 720*480, and thus these lines do occur when you play a DVD under 1024*768 full-screen mode.

6. These lines don't occur unless the video is rendered with hardware overlay. Software rendering is free of this problem. You can tell if hardware overlay is activated by means of adjusting brightness/contrast under "PowerDesk-HR/Video playback settings" -- if you see the brightness/contrast of the video changes as you adjust it, the hardware overlay is being used.

7. So far, every Parhelia-512 and every P650 I've tested has the same problem. Analog (Dsub) and digital (DVI-D) output produce the same result.

By the way, the default video playback brightness of P650 is too low. It is recommended to adjust the Brightness setting to 43 so as to reproduce the gradation in darker areas. On the other hand, Parhelia-512 is OK regarding brightness; I adjusted the brightness setting of the Parhelia from 25 to 30 and then it met the THX Video Test standards.

B. The sequence to reproduce and to observe this problem:

1. Adjust the monitor signal resolution to 1024*768 (32-bit is preferable).

2. The following URL provides FFX-2 opening video (XVID 110MB). I apologize for the transfer rate may be very slow outside Taiwan.

http://mp3.dearhoney.idv.tw/matrox/FFX-2.avi

3. If you don't have XVID codec installed, you can get it via this URL:

http://nic.dnsalias.com/XviD-Dec.exe

4. Run Windows Media Player 6.4 "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe"

5. Open the video file mentioned in step 2. Pressing Alt-2 can make the playing window match 100% original video resolution.

6. Use mouse to drag and resize(expand, not shrink) the playing window.

7. Pay attention to the blue sky area in the video and see if there are some vertical, thin, brighter, faint lines. Keep changing the size of the playing window -- the closer to 100% it is, the farther from each other and wider these lines are.

You don't have to expand the window a lot. A little bit larger than 100% is good enough (often best) to see these vertical lines clearly. You can take the width and spacing measurement data I gave above as a reference. These vertical lines are the very flaws I've repeatedly proposed.

**Rob(QG)** · 18 December 2003, 03:28

Directx9 video renderer has a bug that causes artifacts much like this - generally worse with nVidia card, though, as that has an additional bug that increases the problem.

Basically, when the video is scaled it is broken in to tiles which are scaled with the 3D hardware on the graphics card. The scaling routine has a bug, causing overlaps, which show up as regularly spaced vertical "glitches" - most noticeable in camera pans.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the problem you are getting, but it could be related.

**LukeLo** · 18 December 2003, 04:27

Thank you for providing technical information.

I once installed a whole new windows xp and before I installed Directx 9 I saw those lines, so maybe Directx9 video renderer doesn't matter.

Another evidence is that when I use MPC(<a href="http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/guliverkli/mpc2kxp6472.zip?download">Media Player Classic</a>) with my machine and set video renderer to VMR7(Windowed) or overlay mixer, I saw these lines as when I used WinDVD5, PowerDVD5, and WMP.

When I set to VMR9 these lines didn't appear but I can not adjust brightness, contrast and others properties in pdesk. Only the window popped up responded. I almost didn't use VMR9 because of heavier CPU usage.

The situation when I used VMR9 is just like when I turn off Video overlay in pdesk, no lines but CPU usage became heavier.

Here is the set up window of MPC(<a href="http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/guliverkli/mpc2kxp6472.zip?download">Media Player Classic</a>) .

I used options below DirectShow video to change video renderer.

In fact I only know how to set video renderer in MPC. To my knowledge WMP, WinDVD5, PowerDVD5 don't have such options and I don't know whether VMR7 or VMR9 when I used with them.

I also tried PowerDVD5 instead of WinDVD5, and I also have captured image of the playback window(alt+print screen) and measure its dimension so I know these lines appeared when the window is larger than 720*405.

**LukeLo** · 18 December 2003, 09:35

I found a very easy way to see these lines.

Please save this picture to your harddisk.

Then please execute Media Player Classic to open the picture above.(<a href=http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/guliverkli/mpc2kxp6472.zip?download>You can download Media Player Classic Here</a>)

Please press alt+2 to make the playing window match 100% resolution of the picture above(544*408). Then please enlarge the window pixel by pixel and you will see some vertical, thin, brighter, faint lines.

This picture is captured from here.

404 Error - Page Not Found | Matrox

http://www.matrox.com/mga/news/demos_downloads/flash/parhelia/main_en_trans.cfm

Page not found.

**Haig** · 18 December 2003, 19:31

R & E

http://forum.matrox.com/mga/viewtopic.php?t=7115

Announcement

Video playback imperfection of Parhelia-512 128MB & P650

Video playback imperfection of Parhelia-512 128MB & P650

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