My tv-out is OK but not great on my new R5D1 install (never used any other version). Any quick motion appears non-smooth. I "taped" OSU vs Michigan and sprinting players appeared choppy for instance. It almost appears that not enough frames are being played per second.

On the PC monitor the motion appears closer to perfect.

Also any drawn cartoons, such as "Danger Rangers", appear really grainy. What's going on?

My install is a P4-2ghz with a PVR-350. I have a nVidia card but it's not used--no tv-out. (Should I remove it from the system???)

Also note that I have 512 meg of ram and it's almost all used. Could this be the issue? I thought the PVR-350 did all the work so I'm not sure why so much ram is used. Help there too is appreciated.

Thanks,

Abby

I would first add the optimizations listed here http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=Optimize+Hard+Drive+Performance to your bootmisc.sh file.
You should find this clears up most of your issues.

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Grainy? Check your connections. It might have a loose or bad connection between the tv out and the tv. I know it wouldn't answer the choppy motion but there might be multiple issues.

Do you have any other kind of inputs on the tv? If you happen to have access to a tv with s-video or component video, you could try it instead of the 350's tv out. This would at least narrow down whether there's a problem with the 350. If the video is still choppy and/or grainy, then it's not the 350.

Just curious if you have motherboard mpeg2 decoding. I don't know if there would be a conflict between the 350 and a motherboard decoder but I don't know if there wouldn't be either. If you don't know, then you probably don't have it.

You might try checking the Bitrate and which profile your unit is using.

First the PVR 350 I believe only runs 720 x 480 basically above SDTV resolution. Not sure about the output capability as I don't have one but I assume it is similar.

In the Menu is Utilities/Setup then Setup, then TV Settings, then Recording Profiles.
You should see Mpeg-2 Encoders or something like that and Transcoders.
Select the Mpeg-2 Encoders. I am not sure what the Default settings were but I thought they were all exactly the same except for the Framesize.

I have 4 listed and I use them this way: Default (General stuff set just above Tivo like Quality), Live TV exaclty what it says, High Quality(I use this for Things like football and Nascar races, etc), Low Quality(stuff I don't care if it is a little grainy)

Anyway these are where you setup how the encoder captures TV both in Frame size (say 720x480), Video Bitrate(2200 kbps is default, gives you about 1.1 gig/hr) and Audio type/Bitrate.

What you described may be too low of a Video Bitrate, You can set those Higher but they can really fill a disk. for Nascar I like 720X480 and 3800-4600 kbps for the video bitrate.

I notice any below that the backgorund in a field shot will exhibit the artifacts you described.
At that Bit rate I generate about 1.6gig per hour, it is beyond the resolution of my TV, but occasionally I watch them on my remote PC as the family has something else they would rather watch.

Anyway, I hope that helps.

I know there are some other posts out there that will discuss capture resolutions and also I have seen one about maximum rate an SDTV can see. If you search that may give you some help too.

Anyway, I mostly set mine to what was acceptible for viewing of a given item, only trouble is when I have selected too low of a rate and wish I had selected higher. Trouble is I travel some and the family loves to use this thing. More disk space or put up with a little less than a tivo picture.

Anyway, enjoy and the team has done a great job making this thing easy to use.

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5
MBE: AMD64 3400+, K8N Neo4 Plat., 1Gig, Asus Extreme N6200, 320G pata, 2x320Gsata, 750Gsata, PVR-150 Retail w/Blaster
SBE: AMD XP2000, GA 7ZMMH, 1 Gig, XFX 256M 6200, 20 Gig, PVR-150 Retail w/Blaster
SBE: AMD Dur1800, 512M, PVR500

Grainy? Check your connections. >> I have cable coming on a splitter. If it change TV inputs to real LIVE tv (no myth) I have no grain.

Do you have any other kind of inputs on the tv? If you happen to have access to a tv with s-video or component video, you could try it instead of the 350's tv out. >> I'm using component video, would s-video be better? If not those two what is my third option? Am I missing something here?

Just curious if you have motherboard mpeg2 decoding >> No idea. I bought the pvr-350 cause I heard it does "all the work" and I could use a lower end pc. How do I determine if the mb has mpeg2 decoding? (What's the diff between mpeg2 and anything else??)

Thanks,

Abs

Big Bro >> Thanks that's what I think I need. I need to up the bitrate for quick moving motion.

By the way is that PATA 320 gig a Maxtor? I got two, for $80 each. Cheapest drive I could find for the value.

Thanks,

Abby

On exactly the same recordings? That would seem to indicate something very wrong with the PVR350 settings?


Unlikely. Linux eventually uses all the free RAM to buffer IO. Have a look at the output from the 'top' command. The buffers (and cached) field will probably have a healthy amount of your 512MB.

Abby, it might take a while to work out exactly what is causing this - you might have to try a lot of different tweaks.

My advice would be to take a scientific approach. Get two recordings (one SD, one HD) with lots of motion, and make a big list of all the things you have tried/are going to try, and after each change, put it back the way it was

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
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Yes I believe it is. Same here.

BTW, I too watched the OSU vs Mich game and my motion was clean. Go Buckeyes!

So sad about Bo though! I remember the rivalry well Woody and Bo.

Anyway, hope that helps you out. Just find something fast moving to test it on and tweak away. Keeping track of what works. Trial and error with a good record of what I did always seems to help.

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5
MBE: AMD64 3400+, K8N Neo4 Plat., 1Gig, Asus Extreme N6200, 320G pata, 2x320Gsata, 750Gsata, PVR-150 Retail w/Blaster
SBE: AMD XP2000, GA 7ZMMH, 1 Gig, XFX 256M 6200, 20 Gig, PVR-150 Retail w/Blaster
SBE: AMD Dur1800, 512M, PVR500

HI,

There is a check box to switch the hardware decoder of the 350 into action. .. may want to see if that is in fact on for tv out, tv playback I think is where it hides.

There are also a few different choices for filters for deinterlacing, try each of the different flavors for best results.

Memory being mostly used is ok, at 512, you should never need swap space. I run 256 and rarely need any swap unless I have "other" things also running. This information is available when you run top. Now if you have 512 full and swap full, then there is an issue or it is extremely busy.

Mike

Ok all my bit rates are set to 4500 with a max bitrate of 6000, default, low, high, and live tv. For a new install, are all four categories usually set identically?

So should I bump up the rate even more?

Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks, Abby

Oh gawd I'm such a noob. Thanks for your comments. MJL hit the nail on the head (and from what I hear he does that a lot).

I didn't have the pvr-350 doing the work. The card's hardware decoding wasn't being used. Doh!

Slightly off topic... I keep reading about KnoppMyth & just pain Myth documentation on "wiki" ... can someone post the url to those?

Thanks again,

Abby

Edit: this post has less relevence now that you've figured out the problem, but some of my response still has some relevence, so I won't delete it.



Ok, but what about the cable from the mythtv box to the tv? If you check the alternate input, all you are doing is checking *that* cable's connectors. Make sure the cable to 350 card is full connected, and the cable going into the tv is fully connected.



component video is supposed to be better than s-video. I thought you said you were using the tv-out on the 350 card? Or are you running the tv-out on the 350 into the tv's component video in?

What I was suggesting is hooking your tv up to the video card instead of the 360 card. Your nvidia card won't have a coax-out but it may have either s-video or component video out.



your 350 has hardware encoding and decoding to mpeg-2 compression. Mpeg-4 compression is dvd style, I believe. Mythtv's recordings are all mpeg-2. If you want to find out more info on the different compression formats, www.videohelp.com is a useful site someone here mentioned.

Some motherboards offer an onboard mpeg-2 decoder for watching video, but I don't know how useful that is. The encoding is what really takes processing power. (this is why hauppauge is one of the best brands to buy. All their cards have mpeg-2 encoding, which cuts down considerably on cpu utilization.)

Ah ok. I see what you mean. No my pc's video card does not have s-video or component out. When I said I'm using the TV-OUT on my PVR-350, I meant the dongle which provides s-video or component.

Thanks for the help!

Abs

The pvr-350 has s-video and composite output. It does not have component output, unless you have some super special pvr-350.

My bad. Ok so then what's the difference between component and composite??

Thanks,

Abby