Overlay and YUV -> RGB conversions problems
 

Hello,

Unfortunately the Overlay Mode does not work on my P1-233 with DirectX9 and an old Matrox Mysticque (4MB) with newest Drivers on Win98. If i disable the "use overlay option", i dont receive the "overlay failed" message, but the video (divx) flickers. I see alternating a black screen and a picture from the video. (but that, very fast).

The "force RGB" Mode is to slow for me.

What can I do ? How can I check, correct the YUV->RGB conversions, so that i can watch the video without flickers.
Besides, I use ffdshow as divx decoder. On other computers that works very fine.

regards,

Dimetron

Re: Overlay and YUV -> RGB conversions problems
 

Same problem here. My configuration is same (except for cpu, which is an AMD K6 200MHz). I've also the latest driver and bios installed. The Mystique doesn't support overlay, but it has yuv->rgb conversion, even if it works only on 16 and 32 bits screens. It's a pity that the screen flashes, as the replay speed is so great in this mode. When I play a movie in windowed mode, the window if at first filled with garbage (black lines on white background, or trashed copy of a part of the desktop) and the video switches constantly with this garbage. Only when I switch to full screen mode (and back) the garbage disappears. I hope it's not a hardware fault! Could be something done to rectify this problem?

Your sincerely,
Varthall.

I'm sorry to say so, but your hardware/CPU is to slow. Both of you!
At least, assuming a usual MPEG4 video resolution -I'm sure it's DivX or XVid in your case- of let's say 640x480 played at full screen size, it takes a PIII with 400MHz to play back smoothly.
All MPEG4 decoding is done by the CPU and thus consumes much power.
Doing YUY2 -> RBG conversion on top of that is a killer as well as turning off overlay which puts a lot load off the CPU, when switched on.
Even on my PIII@667MHz without overlay I'd have an unwatchable movie!!

Contact your Aunty Kathie to collect some money for new hardware. :D

I'm not sure if this is merely a speed issue: with a 512x384 DivX, the player's
Video info reports around 11-12 frames per second (but it feels like more), which are enough for my modest needs. The problem is the refresh, it looks like it doesn't wait the vertical blank before refreshing the screen, and the "wait VBL" switch doesn't help. I'm just curious to know if this is a problem related to a slow/broken Yuv conversion of the Mystique, or a bug of the player.

Well, if nothing else could be done it would be wiser (and cheaper) to convert the movie to a lighter format (like MPEG1-VCD). After all, I'm not going to watch many movies on my PC.

Varthall

slow machines?
 

I would suggest getting a card, what can handle IDCT and motion compensation with their HW (GPU to match nVidia boosting about it)...
...like old Riva...
...and wait, perhaps we can get a way, how to implement into the FFD filters the support for HW acceleration on cards like this one...

There must be something like that, becuase DVDplayers, like Win or Power DVDs using HW acceleration on Riva cards and such other ones, so, with this, even 200MHz machine can handle large DivX movies.

Futhermore, FFD filters are far from being as fast, as possible - there are still slight decoding blurring, for example, what i want to get rid off for nicer looking movies and Milan (FFD show autor) for CPU speed reasons.

Tought, when its disabled, the resulting image are sharp and clear, but also not well suited for scaling, even HW scaling into overlay window...
Im going to say, thats scalable, tought, but it show jagged edges, after that. Thats why every doceder blurry the image slightly.

Best is Xvid, worsest DivX5. Very good results giving DivX 3.11, and excelent results (and the smallest CPU load ever) DivX 3.11 with deleted certain file - that one, that performs the blur!!!
Into one of my earlier postings i mentioned it, now i dont remember, i focuding on FFD show and finding the way, how to do IDCT with HW support from graphic side...

@ Varthall
Hm, I'm not that kind of hardware expert, this is still rough stuff to me, also...
but I doubt that it's your "Mystique" to perform YUV->RGB colorspace conversion (apart from the signal transmitted to monitor being of course RGB!), because this ought to be the job of the software department.
The graphic card is only being told by Direct Show to build display matrix in certain color format that it's capable of .
Normally Direct Show checks if YUY2 or YV12 overlay can be initialized, if the graphic reports back an error (for mystical reasons ?!) it forces RGB overlay. And, AFAIK, this also fails, it uses a different buffering technique to provide image data (=no overlay acceleration), i.e. slow and slower.
Of course the non-consistent window garbage is strange. Maybe the screen refresh is not synchronized with this buffering method (if it's valid info), who knows? Not me.