I don't understand ATI.

There are probably 1000's of postings on this particular issue all over the web and the horrific ghosting/smeared video is so distracting and obvious that even my 5 year old complains about it - yet ATI insists (through support requests) that this is not an issue with their driver nor hardware and the problem is something "I've configured incorrectly" or with Microsoft's decoder.

The last time I spoke to a 3rd level tech on the phone with them about this I was told I was the only one complaining about this issue and since there is no issue there is nothing to fix/nothing will be fixed.

Is no-one else logging support requests with ATI about this problem?

This issue is so big that in my opinion it makes Media Center in Vista just about useless.  I can't imagine a single person buying a Media Center system happily watching TV on it with this image quality.

More discussion over here, seems to work here in Australia with PAL content.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33893058

rgds Damon

Damon - I just tried this, and i think you have hit the jackpot!
I'm a little cautios, as some broadcasts aren't as bad as others, but it certainly seems to have solved the problem on first glance. In fact, i think it's even improved the dodgy blacklevels somewhat.

Many many many thanks!

jgriffin:

Damon - I just tried this, and i think you have hit the jackpot!
I'm a little cautios, as some broadcasts aren't as bad as others, but it certainly seems to have solved the problem on first glance. In fact, i think it's even improved the dodgy blacklevels somewhat.

Many many many thanks!

Yes seems much better, so far I have only set the TRDenoise value. The ABC SD was the worst offender and watching the 7PM news it looks fine.

rgds Damon

HT Slider:

Is no-one else logging support requests with ATI about this problem?

I can assure you that they know about this issue. We have reproed it here at MS, and there is an issue in their bug database regarding this. If their support people claim ignorance of the issue then perhaps things have not percolated down to their level.

It is being addressed, but in the grand scheme of attaining driver stability and perfromence on Vista it probably doesn't rank very high on the priority scale.

 

 

iank:

HT Slider:

Is no-one else logging support requests with ATI about this problem?

I can assure you that they know about this issue. We have reproed it here at MS, and there is an issue in their bug database regarding this. If their support people claim ignorance of the issue then perhaps things have not percolated down to their level.

It is being addressed, but in the grand scheme of attaining driver stability and perfromence on Vista it probably doesn't rank very high on the priority scale.

Thanks for your direct feedback.

Just a note on stability.  When my system was running Catalyst 7.4 it would blue screen at least once every 2 days (often more).  I didn't know what the problem was, but since I've upgraded to 7.5 it has been up straight for 4 days now without any issues.  At least stability is moving in the right direction (for my system at least).

The other issue ATI kept suggesting is a "configuration issue" at my end is the lack of DXVA hardware acceleration.  I've asked them point blank several times if they can confirm it actually works in Vista and instead of answering they send me all sorts of technical junk on the changes between DXVA (XP) and DXVA2 (Vista), links to hacks being used to enable DXVA for high end nvidia cards in Vista and Microsoft technical links on what is required to write a driver for DXVA2.  Reading between the lines, my interpretation is they don't have DXVA working at all in Vista and don't have an ETA on when it will be working.  I've also tried all of the "hacks" and none of them work at all and yesterday received response from a DXVA support call with Microsoft stating the problem is with the ATI drivers.

They still haven't admitted to me that there is a ghosting issue with the drivers in Vista, but their latest response (today), indicates that they are passing this support request to the driver team (no mention that there is a problem or if the driver team is working on a fix).

I would much, much prefer them to respond with - Yes, this is an issue.  We are working on it and expect to these issues resolved in the next few driver releases.  With the way they are responding I wonder if they'll ever get their Vista drivers fully functional and if I would be better off to sell this brand new ATI card and try nvidia again (although I doubt nvidia will ever actually get DXVA working with AGP cards, even though they advertise DXVA is already working with most AGP cards).

What ever happened to the days when companies were honest about their hardware/software functionality?

HT Slider:

They still haven't admitted to me that there is a ghosting issue with the drivers in Vista, but their latest response (today), indicates that they are passing this support request to the driver team (no mention that there is a problem or if the driver team is working on a fix).

Have you tried the reg hack listed above? It certainly works for me. All ghosting is now gone.

On the DXVA thing, i certainly seem to get some acceleration with the x1650. Certainly the CPU usage is pretty low on HD content, much lower than with my nVidia card when they were really in the driver gutter a few months ago.

jgriffin:

Have you tried the reg hack listed above? It certainly works for me. All ghosting is now gone.

On the DXVA thing, i certainly seem to get some acceleration with the x1650. Certainly the CPU usage is pretty low on HD content, much lower than with my nVidia card when they were really in the driver gutter a few months ago.

I tried the reg hacks and they fixed the ghosting and excessive edge enhancement!!!  The image quality is now very good on my system.

For others finding this I'll try to clarify exactly what I did as well as provide some other ATI registry tweaks I have found:

1.  Start "regedit"

2.  Look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\VIDEO and find the GUID (number between the {} brackets) located in the key \DEVICE\VIDEO3 (with XP it was always \DEVICE\VIDEO0, but it seems Vista does things a little differently).

3.  Using the GUID from above go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{GUID}\0000\UMD\DXVA.

4.  Add the string value "TRDenoise" with the value "0" to fix the ghosting issue and greatly improve the video quality (if you're having the ghost/smearing issue).  Note with XP you had to create a DWord with TRDenoise (plus its in in a different registry location) and with Vista you must use a string value to make this work.

5.  Add the string value "DXVA_DetailEnhance" with the value "0" to turn off the excessive edge enhancement (if this bothers you).

6.  If you want to attempt to turn on DXVA for WMV (GPU hardware acceleration for video decoding), delete "DXVA_WMV" and recreate "DXVA_WMV" as a binary value and give it the value "31 00".  In my case it didn't make any difference though (still no hardware acceleration).

7.  If you want to use the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) to enable and disable DXVA for WMV (which allows you to set DXVA_WMV line above), go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{GUID}\0000 and change the value for the key "DXVA_WMV_NA" to "0".  After this you need to restart the Catalyst Control Center using the start button on the lower left of the screen; executing "All Programs\Catalyst Control Center\Restart Runtime".  Now you'll find a Windows Media Acceleration button in "Video, All Settings" within CCC.

Although DXVA isn't working yet, playback of Recorded TV and other SD content now works perfectly on my system with Vista.

redfed, thanks for pointing out the registry hack link at http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33893058.

Thank for this guys.

I tried the registry hacks this weekend and my picture is now a lot better.

BRILLIANT ! Thanks for posting this info. 

This solved ghosting/smearing with my newly installed ASUS EAX1650

Thanks for the 'TRDenoise' registry tweak! I have an ASUS 3450 card with passive cooling. This tweak effectively removed the ghoul-like face-melting effect. It was especially noticeable and annoying on analog talking-head shows. I didn't notice any smearing on digital programs.

I have a couple of questions for ATI or anyone here who knows:

1. Why is this enabled by default?
2. Why doesn't the Catalyst Control Center/Avivo Video/All Settings/De-noise slider control this effect? I had that set to zero, but it made no difference until I added the TRDenoise value.

Before I found this, Bob deinterlacing was the only way to stop it, but that cut the resolution on the HD programs.

earthplanet:

Thanks for the 'TRDenoise' registry tweak! I have an ASUS 3450 card with passive cooling. This tweak effectively removed the ghoul-like face-melting effect. It was especially noticeable and annoying on analog talking-head shows. I didn't notice any smearing on digital programs.

I have a couple of questions for ATI or anyone here who knows:

1. Why is this enabled by default?
2. Why doesn't the Catalyst Control Center/Avivo Video/All Settings/De-noise slider control this effect? I had that set to zero, but it made no difference until I added the TRDenoise value.

Before I found this, Bob deinterlacing was the only way to stop it, but that cut the resolution on the HD programs.

I'm not from ATI (nor Microsoft), but talking with ATI (about #1) I have been told:

1.  ATI is convinced that with "most" systems that their temporal denoise algoritms greatly improve the image quality.  In reality (on my system at least) I have discovered that TRDenoise turned off is only required when playing content that has been both captured through s-video (denoised initially by the STB) and denoised yet again by the TV tuner card.  If content is captured digitally or is from a digital source (DVD for example), enabling TRDenoise does indeed produce the best image quality.  I have also discovered that by disabling my Hauppauge PVR-250's own temporal denoise through registry tweaks that I typically get the best image quality by removing the TRDenoise=0 entry from the registry.  The issue is basically that there is too much temporal denoise going on between the STB, the TV Tuner (s-video) and then again when the video card outputs the image.  Temporal denoise on top of temporal denoise on top of temporal denoise produces ghosted images in the video.

2.  I don't know for certain, but it seems to me that the denoise slider is changing some form of spacial denoise level and not controlling the temporal (motion compensated) denoise.

One thing for certain: If I am using a digital source for my video, not adding the TRDenoise=0 registry entry does produce the best image quality.  Considering that the ATI vs Nvidia wars are very often "tested" using DVD content, it makes sense that ATI wants their temporal denoise turned on (temporal denoise does a good job at removing compression artifacts that show up when playing back mpeg-2 content such as DVD).

I used the Hauppauge Tweak Tool to disable the PVR-500 temporal noise reduction. After that, I could remove the ATI TRDenoise registry tweak and still get no ghosting on analog programs, even ones that were recorded before making the change! I thought the Hauppauge noise settings would only affect the anaolog to digital recordings, but they appear to control the playback as well. That doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm glad it works. Thanks for the suggestion, HT Slider.

earthplanet:

I used the Hauppauge Tweak Tool to disable the PVR-500 temporal noise reduction. After that, I could remove the ATI TRDenoise registry tweak and still get no ghosting on analog programs, even ones that were recorded before making the change! I thought the Hauppauge noise settings would only affect the anaolog to digital recordings, but they appear to control the playback as well. That doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm glad it works. Thanks for the suggestion, HT Slider.

Hauppauge settings won't change playback of old recorded content.

What you are probably seeing is only a few shows actually had the problem in the first place and so far you haven't played one that does.

With my system there is still the occaisonal show with minor ghosting, even after tweaking the Hauppauge settings.  Overall I prefer this configuration though (no TRDenoise setting applied and Hauppauge filtering turned off).

Any ideas on a similar fix for Windows 7? Video3 had no GUID