Newbie with FFdshow need serious help

[nflp]

I am working with Theater Tek DVD software and the FFdshow to try and get the best DVD playback I can on my system. I've tried several settings that people recommend but they don't really look that good. I have a noisy picture on all my discs.
I have a AMD 3000+ processor
1 GB RAM
6600GT Nvidia PCI-X card
and a Gateway FDP1975W montior run with DVI

Can anyone give me some settings that will wow me? My monitor can do 1440x900 as it's resolution if that matters. ALso, I know people mention the Lazos or whatever it's called filter but they talk about various number Lazos 2, 3, 4. IN my FFdshow all I see is the Lazos with no number settings after it. I am using FFdshow 2006 0821 rev 2546. I think that's the latest one but I don't know if that makes it the best one for me to use. Thanks in advance for the help.:)

[mike_lee]

could you have turned up image sharpening in the nvidia card somewhere along the line? Are you sure you are not using overlay (that DVD software runs at default in overlay, I'd change that to something more robust.) DVD's are often noisy maybe this is the first time you have noticed that. I've never been impressed with mass produced DVD's. If anything could do a slam bang miracle for you it might be nvidia' purevideo codec

[foxyshadis]

That's a PCIe card, not PCI-X, unless macs and servers got a new infusion of gpus.

You'd be much better off using VMR9 or Haali's renderers than the enormous cpu hit software resize will cause - even that chip might not be able to keep up. The bicubic Haali's always uses and VMR9 optionally can is much sharper than bilinear.

There's also a denoise3d option in a filter called "Blur & NR", which can help clean up the video. It might get a little empty looking, because sometimes all the noise hides the lack of detail. All the other options of that filter just make your video more blurry though.

Purevideo is a good choice, if you can get it working, as well.

[mike_lee]

Don't they have a program for that? It is packaged in the k-lite builds, I don't have it in this setup now and I don't remember the name. It was on the same Principal as ffdshow except it was designed for external dvd's coming in and such.

It was named "De . . . . something. That's not much but there should be someone around here who knows.

[foxyshadis]

Descaler? That does deinterlacing/ivtc. It has a denoise filter, but it's not nearly as good as denoise3d. (Which is pretty similar to avisynth's Deen, afaik.)

[nflp]

Thanks for all the help. I looked up some tutorials for FFdshow and such and have come to the conclusion that I feel like a total idiot. It's not like I've never been around A/V EQ or the concepts before but this stuff has got me snowed. I followed some of the suggestions but I just can't get the quality that others are showing off. I wonder if my CPU isn't up to snuff for this stuff. I have a AMD 3000+ and when I looked at the OSD info it has my CPU load at 100% when I try to run the video at 1440x900 (my monitor's resolution). Is this a case of my computer just can't do the work?
Also, I see a lot of people that are running their outputs at 1900x1080 or such. Is this possible if my monitor can only go up to 1440x900? I didn't think I could exceed that safely. I would hate to damage my brand new monitor. I also notice most people are outputting to a HDTV monitor (like a 61" Sony or some other LCD projector). Can you get really terrrific quality with a computer monitor? Mine is rated for 720p HD-ready but I wasn't sure if the grain I am seeing with most of my discs is just showing the limitations of my monitor or not. Also, one last thing. I am working with Theater Tek and the FFdshow for the post filtering. Would you recommend this or would another DVD program be better? I know TT gets high marks but I also see a lot of people using PowerDVD and other programs. I was just wondering which one would be the best to mess with as far as trying to get the most "bang for my buck." What would you also recommend as far as system setup? I have the Nvidia 6600GT card PCI-e and a gig of RAM. Are there other cards that would perform much better (I know there are but will they really do this job a lot better)? Thanks for all the replies too. I'll figure this out someday ;)