only fair quality on AMD2000XP & PVR 250

[Bruce Lowekamp]

I am trying out snapstream lite on a system with an AMD 2000XP processor, Hauppauge PVR250, 256MB, XP Home, in a Shuttle SK41G box.

Basically, if I record anything at a higher setting than Fair, I get a lot of stuttering, the audio pops in and out, and the system is basically unwatchable.

It wasn't watchable on Fair quality until I found the performance setting that told XP to prefer system buffers to application RAM.

The Windows Task Manager makes it look like the CPU is maxing out. I don't know if I believe this or not.

I have it set to 640x480 when in full screen mode.

I have done everything I can think of. I've downloaded and installed current drivers from hauppauge.com, shuttle.com, and s3.com, which covers the PVR250, builtin graphics, sound, and IDE. Every performance setting I can find in windows is enabled, the HD is a 7200RPM drive that is running at UDMA6.

Is there anything else I can do, or is this the best it will run? I was hoping for more with the encoding being done on the card.

Thanks,
Bruce

[RobertH]

Hey Bruce,

The problem is not the encoding it is the decoding, there is a known issue with the mpeg decoder in version 3.0 and 3.1 that causes these issues. My suggestion is to wait until 3.2 is release sometime in the very near future, it fixes these problems by allowing use of 3rd party decoders.

With 3.2 I have my second system (see sig) running captures at 720x480 at 6.4 Mbs and the video coming out of the sytem is of better quality than the video i get on the normal tv set (in fact to tell the truth since I started testing 3.2 two thursdays ago I have only used my tv's builtin tuner like all of 4 times and that was just cause I wanted to watch something else while I was recording something)

just wait youll love it

[WillP]

From personal experience I agree that version 3.2 with a different mpeg2 decoder should fix your problems, but......

I still don't understand why you're having a performance problem like this. My hardware specs (see below) are very similar to yours, and with SS 3.1 I was able to do any quality LiveTV at 640x480 output without maxing out my cpu or experiencing any stuttering. I haven't used any drivers from the hauppauge site though. I use the most recent from the "mce" page on shs. Works great for me.

I also notice that you're using the builtin video. I'm not familiar with the onboard video on the shuttle boards but I suppose that might have something to do with it. Maybe someone using a shuttle system will have some input on that. I'm sure the s3 chip is pretty weak but I don't know if that should make a difference with SS or not. I know most people here use nvidia or ati cards.

Will

[RobertH]

the drivers might be the problem, I have noticed from past experience that the drivers on hauppauge's site are not the best, the 77 drivers that are on shspvr.com work very well and seem to provide better support for the card, with the ones on the cd and the ones currently non beta on hauppauge's site I couldnt even get a pvr to work properly in one of my systems here. But the latest drivers on shs fixed most of those problems.

the builtin video card might also be a problem, some have noted that with other shuttle systems the video card that is built in cant even run the fullscreen interface. and those integrated chips are very slow because they have to share system memory

[Bruce Lowekamp]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I had been using an Nvidia GeForce2 card (ASUS V7700) earlier, but had removed it because it seemed to interact poorly with the Hauppauge application and I couldn't get the current ASUS driver to enable both the RGB and S-video output simultaneously. However, I put it back in, and now I am watching SS on best quality. Much, much better.

Thanks,
Bruce