Ghosting on DVD-Video X1600 mobility

  • Thread starter Thread starter Barrabas
  • Start date Start date
B

Barrabas

Recently I got new drivers for a Toshiba laptop
with an ATI X1600 with 128 mb memory.
This greatly improved an existing problem with DVD-Video
playback. Generally a lack of quality from the optical drive,
but better from the hard drive. It was in service for a while
so the problem was investigated as far as it could be.

But now the quality has improved but something I noticed
before now is prevalent. There is ghosting on playing a DVD-Video.
The look can be described as like a 'burn in'. Dark objects that move
around
a lot are followed by ripples. If a scene goes straight to black, you
can see an 'echo' of it in the black screen. As usual there is no problem
whatsoever if the
movie is played from the hard drive.

Also on 'auto' or 'advanced' settings in WinDVD some movies at times
get a 'jerkiness' or lack of smooth motion. This seems comprehensible now
and using 'bob weave' eliminates it. Also, temporarily turning up the color
and putting it back sets it right again, as before. My best idea of what
this
'jerkiness' is, is that it is a form of de-interlacing where only half the
frames are used.
Hence why it occurs on auto settings. All the issues with video
playback now makes sense with the new drivers.

The burn in look though occurs with the highest quality de-interlace
settings,
and 'force weave' eliminates it.

What would cause this look? It only occurs on DVD-Video playback from
the optical drive. As I said, the optical drive and so forth have already
been investigated.
 
First of One said:
Have you tried DVDIdle?
Click to expand...

Yes indeed I have. No difference.
I have discovered numerous work arounds.
The last I found was if I played from the optical
drive using the preview in DVD Shrink, then I don't
get any problems. Not sure why. Various theories,
possibly no hardware acceleration but I don't think so,
another is that the information about the DVD is changed,
not being taken directly from the disk, which might make
a difference. I wish I could find a player that did something similar.
As I said, before the new driver it was worse. I was convinced all
problems were gone but I investigated the ghosting I mentioned.
This happened before, but there was a 'line' about 2/3s down the screen
which is now gone to my great relief. The ghosting occurred down to this
line before, now it is the whole screen. Quality seems better too.
This 'ghosting' doesn't occur with 'Force Weave' but
I may get the 'lack of smooth motion' and not the perfectly smooth picture.
On 'Force Bob'
or 'Auto' or 'Advanced' I get the ghosting but not the 'lack of smooth
motion'.

Moving the 'color' control and putting it removes the 'lack of smooth
motion' until I do other changes.

DVDIdle just caches the data. This appears to be of no
consequence, some change in 'comprehending' the data might
be required.

It may still be true that some DVDs have the 'lack of smooth
motion' and others don't.
 
First of One said:
The problem is caused by your DVD drive's hardware CSS decryption process,
or its interaction with the primary MPEG2 decoder registered in your
system.

1. See if a firmware upgrade is available for your DVD drive.
2. Try Media Player Classic -
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358&release_id=403110
Click to expand...

I'm not having any problems on Media Player Classic.
But how can I be sure hardware acceleration is being used?
It's on 'default renderer' for everything, which is the same setting on
DVDShrink preview.
 
Which portion of the decoding/display process do you mean by "be sure
hardware acceleration is being used"?

The MPEG2 decoding process is done using Media Player Classic's own MPEG2
decoder, completely separate from WinDVD's. How much of the video card's
abilities like iDCT is used, I don't know, and frankly I don't think you'll
see a difference in % CPU utilization on modern 2+ GHz CPUs anyway.

The display process is definitely using DirectX. The fact you are see
bilinear filtering zooming into full-screen mode is proof. Beside the
"default renderer", feel free to try the other renderers like VMR7 and VMR9
in Media Player Classic. Under VMR9, you can even enable SmartShader effects
like porthole or black&white, though it's not stable.
 
First of One said:
Which portion of the decoding/display process do you mean by "be sure
hardware acceleration is being used"?

The MPEG2 decoding process is done using Media Player Classic's own MPEG2
decoder, completely separate from WinDVD's. How much of the video card's
abilities like iDCT is used, I don't know, and frankly I don't think
you'll see a difference in % CPU utilization on modern 2+ GHz CPUs anyway.
Click to expand...

I'm still learning things.
Under WinDVD the setup includes 'use hardware decode acceleration'.
I thought it was important because the picture quality seemed to go down
when switching
it off, even though any problems disappeared.
I spent more time looking at it again, and couldn't really see much change
in
picture quality like before when I had further problems which have since
gone.
WinDVD help says this about it: 'Enable Use Hardware Decode Acceleration to
ensure that WinDVD uses the hardware motion compensation provided by your
VGA card.'
I compared the picture before and after switching it off and noticed a lot
of block noise in the picture between people afterward. With it off there
is no
problem with the 'ghosting' but the 'advanced'option causes the picture to
stutter
as if there isn't enough processing power, but I don't know.

I compared this with Media Player Classic and realized this noise was
effectively not there. So to me MPC is preferred now. Though it seems
a bit darker than WinDVD.

My question was about how to be sure if the motion conpensation was being
done by the
card or otherwise. Windows Media Player also gets the 'ghosting' problem
without
the option to switch the hardware decode acceleration off. The fact that
the picture is inferior
on WinDVD compared to MPC with it off implies that hardware acceleration is
being used
on MPC. The next question would be, what is going on if MPC uses the
hardware acceleration
better than either WinDVD or Windows Media Player. Or if MPC to be
different uses a software
technique that is superior, but may put more stretch on the processing power
to run the movie. I wonder
if I see a slight hesitation in the picture.

I have 1.83 GHz X 2 by the way on a laptop.
 
Back
Top