Is it worth upgrading the G400 DVD engine?

[Grimace]

Thanks Larry, I'll check it out tonight when I get back to my rig.

[Larry]

No problem...Tell me how it works. I'm interested in if it's just me this is happening to.

Larry

[Michael7]

Grimace,

Sorry for the delay in responding. I'm using 2.036. It looks fine, almost too good in places. At least as good as the original software did. As for Blair Witch, I was getting a lockup after the intitial Artisan logo, that would force me to restart the player to get round. Then the playback would freeze when the movie itself would start, then crash the player. That was with 2.035. With 2.036 It plays beautifully. I'm very pleased with the quality of the Cinemaster engine in general. Much better than the DXR2 I once had.

------------------
-Michael
---------------
"Fight all the things that betray you."
--Excerpt from "Farscape: Rhapsody in Blue."
G400 32MB DH. Asus p5a. AMD K63-450. 128 MB. Huappage WinTV-PCI. SoundBlaster Live Value.

[orangejulius]

Anyone running Cinemaster on NT4 or NT2K yet?
The latest engine supposedly works on it.

Anyone running Cinemaster on a 266-333mhz processor? How is the performance for just watching movies?

[Grimace]

I'm now using 2.036 and everything is fine. As Larry predicted, changing from Katmai Enhanced to Full CPU fixed the problems. The special features menu of The Matrix works and the picture is great. Now if we could just get DVD output on the second monitor in MultiMon mode...

Maybe in PD 5.35???

P.S. Is the text in the opening credits of the Blair Witch supposed to be kind of moving around? I guess I could just run downstais and try it on my DVD player... and in fact it is...
Thanks all...

[This message has been edited by Grimace (edited 28 October 1999).]

[LrngToFly]

I can't get the latest Cinemaster to install on WinNT4 or Win2K- I double click on setup.exe and the decompressor indicator goes from 0-100%, but then nothing else happens. My CPU indicator stays at 100% and I have to kill the setup process through task manager. I let the setup run for 15 minutes the other day, so something is wrong.

I've been unable to get any versions of WinDVD working too- that installs in WinNT/Win2K, but my machine flat locks up when start it up. (locks up good too- no ctrl-alt-delete or anything!)

[orangejulius]

I can't get the latest Cinemaster to install on WinNT4 or Win2K- I double click on setup.exe and the decompressor indicator goes from 0-100%, but then nothing else happens. My CPU indicator stays at 100% and I have to kill the setup process

LtF, let me know if you figure it out -- I've heard reports of some DVDUTILS.COM users getting it to work under NT4.. Good luck!

[Gareth Evans]

Where do you get the upgraded versions? I have looked on the Matrox site and there is no sign

Thanks

[Larry]

Cinemaster99 is actually just the ELSA Player. I like it slightly better than the QI one because like the Matrox DVD Player, it will Maximize to full screen on a double click of the image. Also,the Matrox DVD Player does not like 1280x1024 on startup, but will play at that resolution after the movie has loaded (change the resolution during play). Both the QI (Cinemaster 1.6) and the ELSA Player will start up in 1280.

Larry
3D Audio Immersion

[orangejulius]

Not sure if Cine99 is 'just the Elsa player' as a Gateway version was just put out on http://www.dvdutils.com

[shken]

Larry or Grimace,

Maybe you guys could help me out, after hearing about CM engine update & region sel 2.55 I followed along and upgraded, couldn’t help myself. Now when I have the dvd playing out to the TV ,scaling the desktop dvd window to anything smaller than 8”x 8
causes the bottom third of the TV screen to be corrupted. When I minimize the dvd window to the taskbar the TV display is totally wiped and sometimes locks up not allowing me to restore it..any ideas ?

-Ecs-P6A+ - Q500Fulltower 300w
- P3 500 @ 560 5x112-Vek12 cooler
-256mg Corsair
-G400Max – Sli Orchid 12mg Voodoo’s
-18g & 9g Wd experts
-6/32xPioneerDvd-103 & HP8100 CDRW
-SBLive – Cambridge Microworks
-3com905b & 3com CableModem
-F400 19’ .22 Sony - Usb Hp882c
-UsrCourier 56k - Apc 650 backup
-W98 - NT4Srv - RH 6.0

[Larry]

Shken,

First of all, which front end are you using? (Matrox, Cine99, ATi, QI...etc). I recommend either the the Dell/Elsa player, which is referred to as Cinemaster 99, or the Quadrant DVD Player 1.6. Not much difference though.

What you are describing sounds to me like it's a surface flip position problem. I've read somewhere else on the forum regarding certain anomalies when using DVD Max. Most of the problems were solved by playing around with your Cinemaster settings, a.k.a. DVD Region Selector. For starters, I recommend setting you decode setting to the standard "Full Quality (CPU)" setting, since this is likely to be the most common. Secondly, adjust your surface flip mode and surface flip position settings. One odd point to note: It seems that the "overlay (Riva128/Matrox)" setting the WORST for DVD Output to TV, and I've heard simlar descriptions of your problems because of this. Your best bet is to try the "flip(Trident/Neomagic) settings. Since I haven't been able to recreate your problem myself (actually, I really haven't tried to do so), this is as much help as I can offer. If you have anymore questions, e-mail me!

Hope this helps!

Larry Yuan
3D Audio Immersion - www.3dai.net

[jd]

Okay, I'm wondering if people could clear things up for me, since over the last 2 weeks, I keep messing around with the cinemaster engine options and dvd region selector (trying various options, different engine versions etc). What should I expect as far as visual quality from one to the next? For the life of me, I can't tell a difference in any of the engines (other than when I tried the 1.036 engine with Katmai enhanced - then things looked more blurry). I can't seem to tell a difference between any of the de-interlacing options (which from what people say soft-deint is supposedly dramatically better than the others). Enabling triple buffering, 3:2 reconstruction, hardware optimizations, force bob vs force weave vs smart detect, all looks pretty much the same for all the different engines. Of course I notice a difference when going from Full-Qual to Basic-Qual to PC-Qual, but no difference between Full-Qual to Katmai Enhanced (except on the 1.036/RS2.55 combo - which is in the negative direction).

What should I be experiencing? Does the amount of graininess change as I go to a better engine/setting? Is it the CPU usage (which is really a don't care since I'm not using the PC for anything else while watching a movie)? Is it a jittery picture that gets better, is it improved contrast/sharpness/brightness?

Or is it that they are all so very similar that it's hard to tell the differences? Or maybe I need to invest in some contacts or something...

I watch DVD movies via DVDMax on my 31inch JVC TV using SVideo cable. One thing I did notice is that changing the sound options/filters and enabling LFE does improve the sound quality.

It seems to me that even with the latest 1.036 engine and the 'best' region selector settings, it looks no better than the default 1.029 engine that came with the G400 and its default settings... And that is the only one that seems to work while minimized.

if anyone could set me straight, I'd appreciate it.

-JD

------------------
-JD
P3-600
G400
128MB
Intel SE440BX2
Win98

[Gurm]

Anybody trying Cinemaster 99 yet, or just the Matrox player upgraded with the new engine?

- Ash

------------------
G. U. R. M. It's not hard to spell, is it? Then don't screw it up!
The word "Gurm" is in no way Copyright 1999 Jorden van der Elst.

[orangejulius]

The difference between the engines is mostly bug fixes and adding NT4/5 compatibility. No visual improvements.