PVR250 Image Issue

[stylin16]

I almost have a complete btv system going. I am having one problem however that I can not seem to fix. When viewing recording or watching live tv, there is some unusual image problems in the picture. Parts of the image seem to "float." In other words, the background my move slightly, but faces or certain objects do not. I see this most pronouned with people's faces, but sometimes, a background that should be motionless will be shifting around while the camera angle is not. I must mention that I do not see this problem in cartoons. They look perfect. What on earth could be my problem? I am using a pvr250 and nvdvd.

[stylin16]

Does no one else have this problem? It could also be described as smearing at times. This is the last obstacle to getting rid of my old, failing tivo. Someone please help! Anything would be appreciated.

[RobertH]

can you get screen shots of this (alt+printscr) if it shows up in an image it can often help to get an idea of what may be causing it, sometimes words just dont work. Although since this sounds like its related to motion compensation in the mpeg stream im not sure if a picture will see it. Although one thing you should definately make sure of is that you are using settings that are appropriate for the pvr (resolution/bitrates) so that it isnt overriding your settings.

What this is described sounds like bad motion compensation, the image is being compressed and while the background is drifting the compression engine is trying to keep portions of the image where they are because its easier to compress that way, its something only really perceptive people pick up, i can see it in low bitrate mpegs if I look really hard but its something ive gotten over, try upping the bitrate to say 9Mbps and make sure the resolution is at 720x480 (or the equivilent pal res) and try playing around with the motion compensation / noise settings

this is the quality I use
http://rhartfor.webhop.org/images/new_quality.jpg

[theparanoid]

I never seen that. What are your system specs other then a pvr250 and nvDVD. Also have you tried the decoder that comes with the PVR250? Do you have the same probelm with it?

[ske1eter]

Does no one else have this problem? It could also be described as smearing at times. This is the last obstacle to getting rid of my old, failing tivo. Someone please help! Anything would be appreciated.

I can't say that I've seen "floating" but I have noticed that video that was saved as deinterlaced and then output to a TV does have images that "jump" a scan line or two. This is most obvious on still objects similar to as you've described.

[stylin16]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Let me break things down a little bit more and maybe we can get to the bottom of this.

I am running an Athlon XP 2200+ with 512 MB of RAM. I have an 80 gig 7200 UDMA 133 drive. I am running all of this on an Asus A7V8X motherboard. Like I said, I am using a pvr250 and nvdvd. I have tried the Intervideo codec that came with the board, and it made no difference and used more processing time. I am usings Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 1 and all updates. I have a sounblaster live value soundcard. My video card is a GeForce FX5700 that I am outputting via S-Video and using overscan.

If this helps at all, it seems that the problem is worst in darker scenes such as watching an episode of Law and Order. Like I said, no problems with cartoons, and very few problems with bright sporting events or the news. I have motion compensation at 100%, but I have tried many other settings with this as well. Can anyone tell me what the predictive frames do? Could they be causing this?

Thank you again for your help.

[stylin16]

Okay, I think that I have found where my problem is with this setup. If I watch the videos on a computer monitor, they look fine and there is no smearing or floating. However, when I use the S-Video out on my FX5700, the problem reappears. I thought maybe the video card was bad, so I tried another and I still had the same problem. Is there a separate color depth setting for tv-out or anything else that could cause these strange image issues? Thanks for any help in advance.

[theparanoid]

Are you hooking up to S-video on your TV? If so, I am wondering if maybe you got bad S-video cable. might be a worth a trip to your local shack, get a new s-video cable, and maybe their s-video to rca converter. Keep your recipt and packaging, and you can return them within 30 days for a full refund, pay cash or us a credit card.

Try the new cable see if the probelm goes away. If not try the new cable and the convter and see if you still have the probelm.

If it goes away after the first then you bad cable. Which is possible as if I recall correclt S-video sperates the different parts of the single on different wires.

If it goes away after the second, you may have a bad s-video conector on your tv.

I notice the prepackaged s-video cable that came with my 5700 dikd not look like that good of a cable so it might be worth it try a better quality cable. More so if your going any distance. Also make sure the cable not intercepting or running real close to other cable, more so power then anything else.

[stylin16]

I have tried 3 different s-video cables (one of extreme quality and expense) to no avail. I know that the connector is good because I run my Tivo into the same s-video in connector. This is really frustrating. I can not for the life of me figure out what is different between my setup and everyone elses. I have tried different video cards, tuner cards, motherboards, CPUs, drivers, heck even hard drives.

Since I can not figure out what the problem is, I was wondering if anyone else had the same setup as me.

Asus A7V8X
Athlon XP 2500+
512 Meg Ram
160 GB 8 meg cache Maxtor drive
Hauppague PVR250 (Retail or OEM, I have both)
Nvidia FX5700 or MX440

If anyone else has these exact specs, hard drive, memory, and processor aside, I would be interested in chatting with you about software configuration.

Thank you!

[marc.aronson]

What bit-rate are you recording at? I assume you are recording MPEG-2, 720x480. When I first got my H250, I tried recording at a bit rate of ~3500KB/Sec, and I saw an effect where parts of people's faces (nose, etc.) looked like they would ripple/move/float at a different pace when people moved their heads. I increased the bit rate to 7,000MB/sec and the problem went away.

This problem does not occur with using SVCD at 2400KBS (480x480).

[stylin16]

I have tried everything all the way up to 12000. I thought that that was the issue as well, but like I said this only seems to happen when output by s-video. Maybe I'm just nuts :). I'm going to get a vga to component video adapter and try that out. I need one anyway so it's worth a shot.

[theparanoid]

i got the covereter today i be trying tomrrrow i let you know what happens

[mickwall]

Be very interested in the result, I get this and have just 'Got used to it' still drives me nuts at times though!

[theparanoid]

The picture look normal, I saw nothing that you mention, only thing i notice that small light color items were blurry and that the lines i seen on the monitor were also present. What i did notice was the picture on my monitor is better, but i figure it most likely would be