FFdshow & Theatertek 1.5

Rob

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Hi All,

After the positive things said about ffdshow, I thought i'd give it a try. Unfortunately I'm having a few problems getting it work.

Firstly I'm still using the older version of TT (1.5?), does it work with this or just the 2.xx version?

Also, it won't play any PAL stuff, only NTSC, which is really stuttery.most of my DVDs are stored on hard disc and I use Xlobby as a front end.

I've followed the guide posted from HTPC news which seems straitforward enough, although I don't have the sonic icon in the control panel to enable/ disable hardware acceleration, so I'm not sure how else to do this. I guess this could be part of the problem :confused:

Also my nebula card started playing up (sound, no picture). I've since removed ffdshow and everything is now OK. If anybody can give me a few pointers, would be much apprecieated. :lease:

Cheers Rob.
 
What hardware are you running ffdshow on i.e processor etc as the stuttering is usually caused by this not being powerful enough. I had to overclock my XP2500 to get PAL material to work with ffdshow and the nvidia codecs.

I cannot help with TT1.5 as i dont have this but for PAL material using certain codecs you do have to change the registry setting for PAL material, i have to with ZP and the nvidia codecs, i am sure this was the case with TT1.5.
 
Thanks for the reply. I'm using a P4 2.4 & Radeon 9600 card, not sure if this is sufficient. I read somewhere that you had to change a setting within ffdshow to enable PAL stuff, I just can't find it now!

Cheers Rob.
 
Check the task manager to see how much of the processor is being used by ffdshow, if 95%+ then this is high and why it is stuttering, if it is not coping with ntsc material then imx it will really struggle with PAL.

As for the registry settings i have done a search and cannot find the sonic ones, someone else should hopefully know where the dword is that needs changing.
 
Rob: yes, you're right, for the Sonic decoder you need this registry key to play PAL movies via FFDSHOW:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sonic\CineMaster DS DVD\2.5\VideoDecoder]
"AllowAllRenderers"=dword:00000001
"HardCodeForPAL"=dword:00000001
You probably have the first one, it's the second one that's important, set to 0 for NTSC.
 
KraGorn, thanks. Sorry to be dumb, but how do I go about doing that. I have found "sonic" via searching for the file and only found Sonic Cinemaster video & audio.DLL which I can't seem to change. I'm obvoiusly doing something wrong :suicide:

Also just re installed ffdshow & configured. All I'm getting now is a green screen (with OSD at least) oh dear!

Thanks again.
 
Ah, okay, you're not familiar with REGEDIT I take it.

Simply cut and paste that quoted text exactly as it appears above into Notepad and then save it as a file called something like PAL.REG. Next, change the '1' to a '0' on the HardCodeForPAL line and save the file as NTSC.REG. Save both files to the desktop to make it easy to run them.

Now you should be able to simply double-click the PAL one, if all's well you should get a dialog box asking you if you want to add it to the registry. Click YES and you should get a confirmation dialog.

You should now be able to play PAL DVDs using FFDSHOW. To play NTSC simply repeat using the NTSC file you created.

Not sure what you disturbed by re-installing, check the settings you've used against those in this 'how to', since you had it working before it's obviously a simple setting you've not re-done.
 
Cheers, I'll do that and give it another go.

I did install as per the guide, so I'm not sure whats happened. I guess these things are never simple.

Regards Rob.
 
Rob,

As you're using a P4, then make sure your FFDSHOW version is an SSE2 version. This is optimised for P4's.

Also, if you post the settings you are using in FFDSHOW. This will give us an idea of how much strain you're exerting on your CPU.

One thing to try, especially if you're using resize, is to have another filter (such as Blur and Noise) with a minimal setting before the resize filter. there are some issues with re-size needing the colourspace to be converted to YV12 before it works efficiently. If you don't put a filter before then it can cause CPU overheads withign the rezise processing as it tried to do this itself.

Anyonr feel free to correct me in I've got this a bit wrong.

Thanks

Nick
 
Hi Nick,

Yes, I'm using the SSE2 version. Just checked,

KraGorn, I've tried changing the registry exacly as you described (I think).

When I get a "are you sure you want to add the info to the registry " prompt, I click Yes and get the error " Cannot import, the specified file is not a registry script, you can only import binary registry files from within the registry editor"

Did I follow your instructions OK? What I copied was,

"AllowAllRenderers"=dword:00000001
"HardCodeForPAL"=dword:00000001

and changed the values as described.

Sorry, and thanks for your patience! :blush:
 
You need to copy all the lines I posted, that error is because REGEDIT (the program that's reading the .REG file) didn't see the Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 line. You need all 5 lines (including the blank line I think, it may be optional but it's not wrong to include it).

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sonic\CineMaster DS DVD\2.5\VideoDecoder]
"AllowAllRenderers"=dword:00000001
"HardCodeForPAL"=dword:00000001


Don't worry, we'll get there. :)
 
Thanks again,

When you said cut the quoted text I thought you meant the text within the speech marks. :blush: :blush:

I'll give it another go.
 
Rob said:
When you said cut the quoted text I thought you meant the text within the speech marks.
Ah, didn't spot that ambiguity, my apologies.
 
OK tried that and things are improving :smashin:

NTSC stuff is now green & streakey, but PAL plays OK. I need to adjust the settings to improve the image, but getting it to work was the priority!

Thanks for your help so far :thumbsup: Just have to figure out the NTSC problem.

Rob.
 
KraGorn said:
Ah, didn't spot that ambiguity, my apologies.

My fault. Not very good at this PC thing (not that you'd Know :) )
 
When you say NTSC is green and streaky, do I take it that you're at least seeing a picture? Assuming you're using the Overlay renderer (with an ATI you should be) then check the Hue setting in the ATI Control Panel (if you have one) as well has perhaps in the player and/or FFDSHOW .. PAL doesn't use Hue so that's one possible cause of NTSC being messed up but PAL okay.

Glad you're making progress.
 
Yes I get a picture with NTSC but its unwatchable. The image is just visible through a mass of green & grey lines. It works fine when using TT without ffdshow, and pal is fine,so I'm not sure. I think a bit more tinkering is needed.

At least I'm on the way!
 
Tell me, are you using Overlay or VMR rendering?
 
I don't have the cineplayer dvd decoder pack icon in the control panel, as it says I should have in the guide, so I don't know if VMR playback is enabled or not. I'll check the ATI control panel with regard to the overlay.

Thanks again.
 
Strange there's no icon, are you seeing the FFDSHOW one?
 
Not in the control panel.

Just all the usual stuff ie add/remove programs, system etc. Should there be one?
 
What I'm wondering is if it only appears when you're playing a DVD, FFDSHOW's only appear there (if you've selected it in the configuration of FFDSHOW which is always useful).

IIRC TT 1.5 doesn't have a windowed mode, it only runs full-screen, but if you ALT-TAB or use CTRL-ALT-DEL to get the task manager check to see if there's the icon in the system tray.

If all else fails you could ask in TT's forum.
 
OK,

I'll keep trying. I'll get there in the end, i'm sure!

Thanks very much again for all your help :thumbsup:

Rob.
 

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