video codec question?

[Paddy]

Well, I took the plunge and bought a Zotac 9300 ITX motherbaord, with a E8400 CPU and 4GB of DDR2 RAM. I've diabled the on board video and am using a ATI/Saphire HD 4670 (passive) for HDMI output to the TV at 1080p. I'm currently running a Seagate (eco/green - whatever they call it) 1.5TB SATA drive which is by far the loudest component. All housed in a Silverstone Sugo SG05 case. I picked up a Logitech DiNovo keyboard and i'm set!

The display is gorgeous but I have noticed that the video playback is quite grainy.
Let me clarify, the TV will play MPEG2, AVCHD and H.264 in MKV directly from USB. The picture is simply stunning. When I play the exact same file via the PC, the output is quite noisey and almost 'pixalated' for lack of a better phrase. There is a very noticable difference between the two.

I'm assuming this is a codec issue - I jumped in and installed the CCCP codec pack onto Win7 x64, so I probably could do better. I havn't looked at the files to see what codecs they are using, but could anyone pointme in the right direction for 'optimising' the output?

Cheers

[VJ]

I only install one codec, and its FFDshow (beta version):

http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

Some formats are not enabled by default, but are supported by it. It offers a huge amount of options and image/audio processing.

FWIW, our sysadmin claims that the least noisiest harddrives are the Samsungs...

The dinovo is a nice keyboard, but in the beginning I was struggling with the click-behaviour of the touch-disk (which can't be disabled). I was also disappointed by the fact that the supplied dongle cannot be used to connect other bluetooth devices, esp. for a keyboard in this pricerange.

Just out of curiosity: how are you liking the mainboard? I've been oogling it as well...
(why not use the onboard nVidia 9300?)


Jörg

[Paddy]

Cheers for the prompt reply. I'll give FFDshow a whirl - i take it that it supports hardware acceleration??


The keyboard is nice, but i agree the touch pad takes a while to get used to - i cant find a sensitivity that I like! I hadn't tried to connect any other devices to the dongle, but as it is BT spec, I would have assumed that it would work...

Re: sammy - The rest of the PC is silent - the only fan is on the PSU which is quiet enough - perhaps I am being picky!

The mobo is great, although getting it into the case was a right PITA! Would recommend it! Has windows7 drivers out of the box. The only niggle is that I believe the 9300 audio over HDMI is lacking support at present, and the onboard realtek audio is so-so. More than adequate for my needs however. I'm still getting use to only 2 SATA ports though.. I'll have ti find a use for the eSATA...

[Evildead666]

I just use media player classic home cinema.
Set it up to do hardware h264/vc1 acceleration and its fine, you can then use ffdshow for xvid and divx etc....

Have HD 1080p on my Radeon HD3200 lapop, chipset video with UVD.
No probs with video on my 1680x1050 monitor....

The radeon 4670 has in in-built realtek audio chip for audio over hdmi.
The 9300 should have a header on the mobo for plugging in audio out from the onboard realtek audio, which would give you audio over hdmi on the 9300...

I have my mini-itx fileserver which uses a ATi HD3200 chipset also, with hdmi etc...Full HD no problem.
The drivers are a pain in the ass tho. Have to stop at the catalyst 8.5 or before or you're without hardware acceleration....

Haven't managed to get hardware acceleration working in Win7 RC yet with media player classic home cinema, only in XP so far....
Have also only had the RC up and running since early july so some time yet. But want to get HW acceleration on my 4870 right....

[VJ]

The keyboard is nice, but i agree the touch pad takes a while to get used to - i cant find a sensitivity that I like! I hadn't tried to connect any other devices to the dongle, but as it is BT spec, I would have assumed that it would work...

That is what I thought as well, but it doesn't show in the device list as a bluetooth dongle. I contacted Logitech support, and first they directed me to a different set of drivers, and when that didn't work, they said is is not possible.
Could be Windows 7, but I'm not too sure of it. Still, it is odd that the dongle then shows Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (you don't really need that for a keyboard...). You can use the keyboard with any bluetooth receiver, so in that aspect it is bluetooth spec...

Re: sammy - The rest of the PC is silent - the only fan is on the PSU which is quiet enough - perhaps I am being picky!

The mobo is great, although getting it into the case was a right PITA! Would recommend it! Has windows7 drivers out of the box. The only niggle is that I believe the 9300 audio over HDMI is lacking support at present, and the onboard realtek audio is so-so. More than adequate for my needs however. I'm still getting use to only 2 SATA ports though.. I'll have ti find a use for the eSATA...

I upgraded my htpc case with Noctua fans: they are extremely silent.
The eSATA may have its use when you want to add an external drive...

The mainboard looks nice, I was thinking of using it for small clients, but with an additional audio card rather than an additional videocard...

Jörg

[Marshmallowman]

You could use VLC player , it works well in win7 x64. Also means you don't have install codec packs which usualy end up stuffing something that you won't find out about for a few months.

I have been using win 7 x64 as a HTPC with VLC and Media portal 1.02 (and power dvd for blu ray) for a month or so.

I used to use a codec pack plus media player classic on my old machine, but have not had the need on this new setup and I am going to try and avoid it if I can.

[knirfie]

You could use VLC player , it works well in win7 x64. Also means you don't have install codec packs which usualy end up stuffing something that you won't find out about for a few months.

VLC is great for the codec support, which lets you play almost anything without a fuss and fairly low CPU load, but in my opinion gives lousy picture quality.

For HTPC use I would recommend FFDshow + Haali media splitter + media player classic (home cinema version). FFDshow has a lot of options to improve picture quality and remove encoding artifacts, though some of them can be quite CPU intensive (6 taps Lanczos scaling to 1080p, and accurate deblocking).

[VJ]

I agree with Marhmallowman on the codec problems, but FFDshow is really good (and no fuss as you need no others.

VLC is great if you want to playback a file without problems, but for daily use and integration, I don't like to be restricted to one player.

[Marshmallowman]

I must admit I only use VLC for web videos..etc

I play all my dvd's /blu ray with power dvd..

I'll have a go sttting up ffdshow

[Paddy]

Cheers guys.

I suspect that I'm not getting hardware acceleration to work in Win7 x64 RC. I could try another MS os, or even ubuntu... Its a testiment to the TV that it looks so good out of the box! I'll have another play.

Is there a specific driver revision that you would recommend for the HD 4670? I understand it depends on the os you are running...

[VJ]

FWIW: FFDShow currently doesn't support hardware accelleration (in the sense that it cannot use the GPU for decoding the file or applying filters). Of course, it does support hardware overlays.

But I'm using it on different computers, and haven't had any issues. I can imagine though that if you start applying some image filters, it may play a part...

Jörg

[Paddy]

hmm... I'll have to get a BD player for the beastie so I can see what it should look like!