ReClock DirectShow filter : try it !

[Sumster]

OGO... I wouldn't mind a copy of the interim Reclock until 1.0 is ready :).

[Jorgosch]

Originally posted by ogo

I have another version ready with corrections for AC3 that correct all the remaining problems. I you want it now just let me know :)[/B]

Bring it on! ;-)

[ogo]

Ok, i've put version 0.99e on my website. It only fix problems with AC3 SPDIF :)

[supAdrag]

wow first post!

well after several hour of trying to get ReClock running (which i really want cuz i can see the advantages with it) smoothly on my system i give up, i don´t know whats wrong and i don´t know what to do cuz when i run with reclock it just makes the clip even more jerky and stuttery than before, i think i have tried everything i could possible think of but still the same problems so maybe anyone can tell me if it has something to do with my hardware....here´s my setup (this is for my standalone mediaplayer)

PIII 500Mhz
128 MB RAM
Windows 2000 PRO SP2
Geforce256 DDR (Detonator 41.09)
Creative SoundBlaster AudioPCI 128 (Latest Drivers)
Zoom Player 3.0B4
FFDShow 20030103
DirectX 9
ReClock 0.99d

TV Out with TVTool to my PAL TV...

thanks!

[sillKotscha]

Originally posted by supAdrag
PIII 500Mhz

/me thinks here is your problem ;)

[supAdrag]

Originally posted by sillKotscha
/me thinks here is your problem ;)

yeah...you think that´s the problem....cuz i can play all movies fine without reclock (except for the problems reclock are supposed to help with), how much CPU power does ReClock actully take up?

[sillKotscha]

Originally posted by supAdrag
cuz i can play all movies fine without reclock

than try hardware resampling, even if it's not recommended...

Originally posted by ogo
But if your sound card can handle it properly, it will give you optimum quality sound.

Originally posted by supAdrag
except for the problems reclock are supposed to help with

maybe it's a lockup that occurred on slower PCs during clock estimation (<=800mhz) - even though it should be fixed from version 0.99 and higher...

[bkam]

Originally posted by supAdrag
it just makes the clip even more jerky and stuttery than beforeI am having the same problem, but only when I watch it on my computer. Here is my hardware:

1.2 Ghz Celeron
256 MB RAM
Windows XP
BSPlayer / WMP
DirectX 9
ReClock 0.99d
Monitor 60hz refresh rate
Playing back exclusively 23.976 fps

I'm not sure the rest because I'm not there right now but it's a Toshiba laptop (i.e. everything comes built in). DivX plays reasonably smoothly without ReClock for me, except a couple days ago I tried using the built in S-VIDEO (I think that's what it is) video out thing on my friend's TV and it was ever so slightly messed up. I installed ReClock, now playing back just to my LCD gets a little jerky (like, I look at the filter and it hovers between 50 and 150 ppm, what I understand is that you want this near 0, but it never gets there... like at least in 10 minutes it gets better sometimes and worse sometimes). I tried my system with reclock on my TV out though and it's beautiful. Like really good.

Is this because my monitor is not a multiple of 24? I was under the impression that ReClock would work best with a multiple of 24 or 25 but that it still helps otherwise. Is this true? Also, is it possible to change the refresh rate of all monitors? Because I was playing around in display properties and for my monitor (in the location I found) 60hz was the only choice. Is there another way to change this or am I stuck?

[supAdrag]

Originally posted by sillKotscha
than try hardware resampling, even if it's not recommended...


tried it, doesn´t change anything...

[sillKotscha]

best proof that it has nothing to do with ReClock ;)

[ogo]

@ms : i would be very happy to test you tool on some 23,976 avi file to see the result of my TV. Could you send me a binary i could play with ? :)

@supAdrag : please send me your logfile (c:\reclock_log.txt). Maybe i'll find something ... Latest version really work well on all PC i've tried, so there must be an explanation. ReClock consumes some CPU when you open a file (maybe during 1-2 seconds). After that, cpu consumption is very low, so it should not be the problem. I tested it on P2 350mhz without problem. Can you try "Slave reference clock to audio" and tell me if stuterring is still there ?

@bkam : please send me your logs too. Your ppm indicator not going to 0 indicates a problem. Do you use Intel speedstep ? What video chipset are you using in your laptop ? Could you clear your log, then play a movie on LCD for at least 30 minutes, then send me your log ? For you refresh rate question, you can't choose anything else than 60hz on your LCD (all LCD are 60hz). If you are playing a movie at 23,976 on LCD, you can choose "refresh rate/2.5" or "24 fps" in the media adaptation tab, this is what will give the best results

@Sumster and @Jorgosch : did version 0.99e give good results with AC3 ?

[Sumster]

OGO --> Excellent results with 0.99e. Those few repeats/additions have disappeared completely (I have increased MaxLatencySPDIF to 150 and MaxPCM to 100). I find that the sync is usually always +/- 20 msec... I have never seen it go any higher even on difficult scenes where frames were being dropped. In any case, increasing the thresholds solved the problem.

I have now tried it on my notebook, locked at 60Hz, Celeron 433 with 128mb RAM --> no problems. Old Ati RAGE LT video card and ESS soundcard.

I also have cut out a very difficult panning scene in Godfather Part III that has played terribly on every computer/TV I have tried it on. This clip really highlights the advantages of Reclock. It is 5 megs and I can send it to you for testing purposes if you wish.

Sumster

[Jorgosch]

Originally posted by ogo


@Sumster and @Jorgosch : did version 0.99e give good results with AC3 ?

No complaints here, everything works nicely!

[kallekill]

Hmm. I still got problems with ac3 spdif out. I don't get the kind of skips i got before were ac3 was going on and off on my reciever but I get strange variations in pitch that is very noticable.

[Jorgosch]

@Ogo,
I have a request which has to do with the dual head capability of my RadeOn.

Problem:
My TV and my main monitor work at different resolutions and refresh rates while Monitor has Outpout 1 and TV has Output 2. Sometimes I like to watch (well, it's more listen to) a movie while I am doing something else on the other monitor. Obviously, Video clock is not synchronized properly on the TV now.

Your suggestion:
Set TV as monitor 1 so clocks synchronize properly. For some reason my system wreaks havoc on me if I leave it like this to reboot. Also, it is not very comfortable, all this switching around.

My thoughts:
If I could set video clock and refresh rate myself, I wouldn't have to switch monitor outputs, right?

My request:
Make an "advanced setting" for Video clock and refresh rate where user can enter values (probably with warning). This way, user (me :-) can look up the correct values once with TV Out set to monitor 1 and then later enter those values in ReClock without the need to switch monitors.
You could even gather clock values in a database to manually chose, I mean, there are not THAT many refresh rates on a TV and chips on the market :-)

What do you think?

[BigT]

I saw that some users reported problems with DVDMax (Matrox G400 graphics cards) and Reclock. Initially DVDMax would not produce smooth playback on my HTPC so i tried Reclock myself. At that time i did not know about eventual Matrox/Reclock problems. Nevertheless i can probably share the following:

As already reported using the second head set as primary output is totally unacceptable due to the much lower IQ in comparison to DVDMAX (in particular in PAL which is what i use). Without Reclock Divx videos did not run smoothly at all. When i tried Reclock things got better but not perfect probably due to the synching problems which were already mentioned in this thread. On the other hand when i installed Matrox's older 5.85 drivers for XP instead of the latest 5.86 everything was perfect. Switching back to 5.86 reproduced the choppy playback. It's pretty probable that the drivers influences the behaviour of DVDMax: in case several clocks are generated within the G400 my observation could suggest that the one or other driver synchs DVDMax differently.

It would probably remain interesting to see if other Matrox owners can reproduce this. In case i am wrong, no harm done i suppose...

[Ewi]

Cause people only post something when they have problems I post to say I have NO problems. I use it since 0.95 and it always worked for me without a flaw...

Thank you

[Airw0lf]

sumster - that's a very good idea. It would be ideal if some "difficult" clips were made available for people to test with. Unfortunately, webspace is rarely free...

[Sumster]

Airwolf...

I'll try to set up some of the free webspace available with my Cable connection. Only problem is that there is a limit of 300mb / month. Therefore, it will only allow about 50 downloads of the file.

That should be enough for the people who are actively tracking this particular thread. I'll post the link once I've uploaded the 5mb clip from the Godfather III. P.S. Use 16/9 aspect ratio in the player... clip is sized for a 16/9 TV.

Sumster

[Airw0lf]

Sumster -
Thanks, that's very generous of you.

[Sumster]

Hello All!

Here is a scene that has played "choppy" on almost every computer I have tried. It is from the opening of Godfather Part III and has AC3 sound.

1) It is sized for a 16/9 TV, so manually set your aspect ratio to 1.85/1 in Zoomplayer.

2) The opening is the water near NYC, and then it pans across a bunch of pictures in the room. Look for how smoothly it pans.

3) Please let the forum know if Reclock helps at all, and if the link no longer works (ie. I've maxed out my bandwidth). I will try to find alternate places.


LINK --> http://members.rogers.com/sagrawal1084/Panning%20Scene.avi


Sumster

[The Link]

@ Sumster

Using Reclock there are no problems here! The avi plays smoothly for me.

BTW: The picture is pretty grainy. Did you use some special filters when encoding?

[Sumster]

Hi Link...

Yes... I have the Godfather Trilogy DVD set. All three original DVD's are very grainy. I used smoothing filters on Part I and II, but the encoding time was horrible. Therefore, I did not use it on Part III, but the DIVX became quite grainy.

Also, the movies are very long (>3 hours), so the low bitrate does not help very much ;) .

I find that if you use the DIVX 5 filter at maximum quality (so that deblocking and deringing are active), it is much less noticable.

Good luck all.... still looking forward to Reclock 1.0 with dynamic reconnect enabled! Hope the work is going well Ogo.

Sumster

[Airw0lf]

Sumster -

I tried out your clip, and the improvement due to ReClock was quite clear. Thanks again

[temporance]

Hello Ogo,

Reclock is truly a great piece of work and today I was interested in seeing how it works. I can only find four source files (in gpled_src.zip) and it's not enough to build the filter. Where can I find the other source files?

Cheers :)

[eLupus]

Hi,

Thanx for an awesome piece of software, it really does what it intends to do and really well, i only have two problems which keeps me from being able to use it.

I currently play movies on a laptop, with an external usb soundcard(extigy). I have this set up so that my internal soundcard is the primary soundcard. Then i set up zoomplayer to overide this so that when i play a movie the sound goes to the external soundcard. What i would really love is to see an option where you select which soundcard to use.

The second item on the list is something you allready know of, i also run movies on my secondary output(tv out) in dualdisplay mode, so that my lcd still is the primary monitor, i currently don't have problems with this as i use VMR and not overlay to play the movies, this does however also have the issue that refreshrates are not detected correctly. I just wondered if it wouldn't be possible to base this on in what window the video is played, or perhaps a setting which would allow you to specify on what display to detect refreshrate.

I presume you detect and sync to the refreshrate so that you may draw at correct time according to vertical sync, otherwise being able to manually set refreshrate would be an option.

Best Regards
Joakim Plate

[Chibi Jasmin]

Originally posted by Sumster
Hello All!

Here is a scene that has played "choppy" on almost every computer I have tried. It is from the opening of Godfather Part III and has AC3 sound.

1) It is sized for a 16/9 TV, so manually set your aspect ratio to 1.85/1 in Zoomplayer.

2) The opening is the water near NYC, and then it pans across a bunch of pictures in the room. Look for how smoothly it pans.

3) Please let the forum know if Reclock helps at all, and if the link no longer works (ie. I've maxed out my bandwidth). I will try to find alternate places.


LINK --> http://members.rogers.com/sagrawal1084/Panning%20Scene.avi


Sumster

This file is muxed badly...try remuxing with AviMuxGUI at default settings or with Nandub/VDub(Mod) at preload 96ms interleave 96ms and playback will probably improve a lot without ReClock as well.

For more information try the search function, there's lots of information, why the above is necessary for smooth playback with ac3-avis in the forum, let's not discuss this here in the reclock-thread, please!

[Sumster]

Thanks Chibi...

I totally use AviMux now.... I made these DIVX movies a LONG time ago using Doom9's original guides with Nandub. Unfortunately, I developed quite a collection of movies already burned that have been made this way.

Reclock, however, plays even badly muxed movies smoothly which is quite commendable!

-Sumster

:rolleyes:

[Sumster]

I actually tried to remux the clip (did not bother with the entire movie as it has already been burned to CD).

There WAS about a 40-50% improvement in the stuttering, however it was still very noticable. Reclock, when set to Audio-slave mode, seems to resolve the remainder.

Thanks for the tip Chibi.

[kallekill]

Reclock works really well for me and I get smooth playback on both the monitor and the tv. I have one problem though, and that is that almost always at some point in the movie the framerate gets out of sync and starts stuttering. I then have to restart mediaplayer and everything is fine again. Does anyone else have this problem?

[Sumster]

Kallekil... no I haven't had a similar problem. Are you using audio-slave mode? If so, reclock is constantly changing the video clock (framerate)in order to stay in sync. Have you tried using Zoomplayer?

[kallekill]

The only thing I have changed from the default settings is the resample audio using hardware option. It might be the cause of the problem but I suspect it can have something to to with that I am downloading stuff at the same time I watch a movie. I have noticed that it sometimes can cause a stutter while watching a movie and maybe resync loses the sync after such a stutter.

[Chibi Jasmin]

@ogo: You have any hint on why ReClock plays Nandub ac3-avis muxed with 500ms preload 1fr interleave (which normally play choppy on DefaultDirectSoundDevice) without problems? Or am I mistaken maybe (and Reclock plays them choppy as well...), I only did a few tests, but I got the impression these files play bad/fine just by disabling/enabling reclock...anyone did further tests on this?

[ookzDVD]

@ogo,

I just want to report that the PowerDVD AC3 filter is somehow
not working with Reclock on my system. But anyway it's ok
since I prefer to use the WinDVD AC3 filter which works very well
on my machine.

PS. I finally can notice the difference between use/no use
the Reclock, somehow the Reclock really make the motion is more
smooth. Thank you for your great filter. :)

[ogo]

Hi !

ReClock 0.99f is available on my website. It fix some problems discussed lately :)

I haven't had much time to discuss on the forum this week. I'll answer questions tonight or tomorrow !

By the way, i've just reproduced the problem when sound slowly goes high pitched, dropping regularly samples in the log. It will be corrected in next version (0.99g or 1.0) :)

Cheers
OGO

[Ewi]

Some questions regarding DivX Decoding Propterties:

There are these 5(6) properties in the DivX DShow Filter:
==========================================
Smooth Playback
Turning this off will allow B-frame encoded content to playback with lower CPU usage. However, enabling this option will introduce a 1 frame delay in the decoder (because of buffering), which may cause the last frame of the video to not be displayed. Enabling this setting is recommended.

YUV Extended Mode
When selected, the codec will attempt to use YV12 mode to decode the video. This is the fastest way to decode DivX content, but the drawback is that brightness/contrast/saturation controls cannot be used in this mode and are disabled. Enabling this setting is recommended.

Overlay Extended Mode
Selecting this will cause the filter to try to display video using the hardware overlay instead of the software overlay. The hardware overlay is much faster, but may not be supported on some video cards. When this mode is enabled, DirectShow-based player applications will be unable to open more than one window at a time.

Double Buffering
Enabling this will force the video card to allocate a second buffer for the video playback. This will increase the smoothness of the video playback, but may not be supported on low-end video cards with less than 8 MB of RAM.

Film Effect
This is a warming filter that when enabled will add film noise to the decoded picture. This may increase the perceived visual quality of the picture, especially if you are used to watching film. It's a personal preference, however, so use it if you want.

Force Color Mode (hidden)
You can manually set the registry key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DivXNetworks\Force Color Mode" in the Windows Registry and assign it a number from 1 to 7. This will force the video card to use a particular color mode, depending upon the value. This is only necessary in rare circumstances to solve video card problems. Supported color modes:
* 1: YV12* 2: YUY2* 3: YUYV* 4: RGB32* 5: RGB24* 6: RGB555* 7: RGB565
==========================================

Do any of these features have an effect on Reclock; is something recommended? Especially: Smooth Playback, YUV Extended Mode, Overlay Extended Mode, Double Buffering. At the moment I'm folowing their recommendation and have activated Smooth Playback & YUV Extended Mode.

Thank you in advance...

[Chibi Jasmin]

New version looks great, I especially like the NTSC DVD default frame rate thing...just a minor one: The 'cancel' dialog box in the config dialog shows 'annuler', although I don't have French Windows installed :D

Please don't forget my question further up about ReClock and badly muxed ac3-avis...

[eLupus]

SWEEET... Thanx Ogo, the new version work like i charm, i'm now able to run ReClock on my secondary display device. It detects the refreshrate correct. I was afraid my graphics card would do something stupid on the tv like running it on 60 hz in xp and then just outputing in 50 hz to tv, but it detects it as 50 hz while primary display is running 60hz.
Everything seems to work like a dream, no stuttering at all any of my movies that i had problems with before.

Thanx again Ogo
Joakim Plate

[((( atom )))]

i have a couple of questions, wich i admit might be answered in this thread. i ask them anyway, because i would like to know if i have a chance to get it working or not in the first place..

after installing reclock for use with:
zoom player
ac3filter
avis that contain ac3 + mp3 at once

i found the ability to switch between different audio-tracks gone in zoom-player. i only heard the mp3 though ac3filter was loaded.

also i would like to know if i can tell reclock to work with theater-mode on my radeon card.

hope i didn't piss anyone off with my post. sorry again, i am a bit short with my time atm..

[nikthebak]

First of all, ogo, thank you very much for a wonderful utility like ReClock! Honestly, idea of proper synchronization with display adapter has been long overdue. I'm astonished that no player software (especially "high quality" commercial DVD players like WinDVD or PowerDVD) has implemented ReClock-like functionality years ago. With ReClock, the HTPC (Home Theater PC) concept suddenly has much more meaning than it used to have. Finally Windows PC's have a fighting chance against stand-alone DVD players regarding movie playback quality.

Secondly, the new configuration screen is great. I use two sound cards (integrated for games and Terratec EWX 24/96 for music and movies) and the ability to choose between them is really helpful. Probably a lot of people find the possibility to choose between display adapters useful too, but which leads me to third point;

Like many previous posters, I own a Radeon 8500 card with one ramdac and a built-in Rage Theater TV encoder. Unfortunately they won't list as two separate display adapters (they are activated via ATI control panel) so I still can't choose which one to use for ReClock. Ogo, do you think it's possible to address this kind issue at all?

I think this kind of behaviour would require some manufacturer-specific code, like direct interaction with ATI/Matrox/nVidia/etc drivers so it may not be possible to implement at all. But I can't tell for sure, you're the expert ogo :D

[jwexqm]

I've had no luck in getting ReClock to work at all when using interlaced display modes. The filter just hangs the host app as it's being loaded.

To re-produce this issue... (happens with all versions back to 0.99c)

'Display Properties' -> tab 'Settings' -> button 'Advanced' -> tab 'Monitor' -> listbox '47Hz, Interlaced' -> button 'OK'

load GraphEdit
ctrl+f -> expand 'Audio Renderers' -> double-click on 'ReClock Audio Renderer'
(at this point GraphEdit will hang)

The log produced by ReClock during this hang can be found here (http://www.jwexqm.vispa.com/reclock_log_interlaced.html)
A 'normal' log repeating the above but with 85Hz non-interlaced is here (http://www.jwexqm.vispa.com/reclock_log_non-interlaced.html)

My graphics card is an ATi 9700

Finally I'd just like to thank OGO for developing such an important piece of software.

James

[ogo]

Hi guys :)

I'm reworking the sound section for the next version. I'm aware there are some problems with sound with sound cards with high latency (cheap ones ...) or sound cards that have a lot of clock deviation. It will take some time to figure out a good solution ...

I've had no luck in getting ReClock to work at all when using interlaced display modes. The filter just hangs the host app as it's being loaded.
@jwexqm : very interesting ... The problem seems to come from the fact that you are using interlaced video. From your logs, i see that the video clock detection code get confused while trying to determine the hardware video clock. It just loops forever, hence the hang. I designed the stuff to work only in progressive mode, and with the way it does work i'm afraid i can't make it work in interlaced mode (well there could be a solution but it would affect the precision in progressive mode). Just for curiosity why are you using interlaced mode ? And why 47 hz ?

Like many previous posters, I own a Radeon 8500 card with one ramdac and a built-in Rage Theater TV encoder. Unfortunately they won't list as two separate display adapters (they are activated via ATI control panel) so I still can't choose which one to use for ReClock. Ogo, do you think it's possible to address this kind issue at all?
@nikthebak : i added a display driver selection in the hope a secondary adapter would appear with some multi-monitor videocards ... It seems no to be the case with the Radeon (i saw it too with my notebook with a Radeon Mobility). For a radeon the only possibility is to switch the main display to the TV. Then it does work. But theater mode, or simultaneous display is not possible. It's a DirectDraw driver limitation i can't go around, sorry ...

also i would like to know if i can tell reclock to work with theater-mode on my radeon card.
@((( atom ))): please look at my response to nikthebak ...

I was afraid my graphics card would do something stupid on the tv like running it on 60 hz in xp and then just outputing in 50 hz to tv, but it detects it as 50 hz while primary display is running 60hz.
@eLupus : yes 50hz (PAL) is totally unknown to all Windows versions, they just think they are at 60hz when they truly are at 50hz. NTSC is the same when outputing to a TV : windows thinks it is at 60hz but in fact it runs at 29,970*2 hz

Do any of these features have an effect on Reclock; is something recommended? Especially: Smooth Playback, YUV Extended Mode, Overlay Extended Mode, Double Buffering. At the moment I'm folowing their recommendation and have activated Smooth Playback & YUV Extended Mode.
@Ewi : i'm really not a Divx specialist ... On my system i just check YUV extended and Overlay Extended (the later is not useful i think). I also choose "film mode" with 50% just because it looks better for my taste. I don't use "double buffering", because some players get confused with it. Also using "smooth playback" is discouraged by many people (it's only intended for slower PC and remove B-frames if i remember well)
I think the more important is the choice of video renderer that will be used (starting with version 0.99f it's displayed in the properties or reclock). The "overlay" renderer has always given good results for me. The VMR7 gets good results with all players but MPC where there are some vsync problems with it (tearing). I don't get good results with the VMR9 with ANY player : playback is just choppy with it with all players i tried (maybe it's the builtin auto deinterlacing stuff that is not working properly). Now the player choice is also very important. I find BSplayer a little buggy sometimes, and it seems to use it's own video renderer. I like ZoomPlayer and MPC. WMP9 seems to have some bugs too (crash with some videos). Maybe Gabest could have a look on the VMR7 problem with MPC or maybe it's just my install which is not fully working ...

Speaking of the VMR7 tearing observed with MPC, it make me thinks it's a good way to check that reclock is doing a good job on your system. First of all, you need a long panning scene (i have one of 30 minutes if you need one !). An horizontal displacement (tearing) will occur in the scene each time a new frame is drawn by the video renderer, so you can really "see" if frames are locked to vsync or not by looking at what point verticually the tearing occurs (you will see something like an horizontal bar slighlty shifted). So to make a test, just try with reclock uninstalled (the bar should move on the screen meaning that the frames are not drawn at vsync speed), or with reclock installed and running (the bar should always stay in the same region). You can also try with "slave to audio" mode and see the bar moving ...

You have any hint on why ReClock plays Nandub ac3-avis muxed with 500ms preload 1fr interleave (which normally play choppy on DefaultDirectSoundDevice) without problems? Or am I mistaken maybe (and Reclock plays them choppy as well...), I only did a few tests, but I got the impression these files play bad/fine just by disabling/enabling reclock...anyone did further tests on this?
@Chibi Jasmin: i'll try to explain ... The default audio renderer have a internal clock based on some system clock. Each time it receives an AC3 frame which last some tens of milliseconds (depending on interleaving let's says X), it sends the frame to the audio card. Then each time the audio card has finished a frame or X duration, the renderer measure the deviation of it's clock to X, and then correct the clock to make stay in sync. So if a frame last 50ms, the clock is corrected every 50ms. This correction can be rough is the two clocks have some deviation from each other, hence the choppy playback.
To make a picture, imagine two cars running side by side at 100km/h (each car according to it's speedo). As speedos are inacurate, they don't run at the real same speed. So the lead car make 1 kilometer, then stop until the second one arrive. Then they both restart for 1 kilometer. They will roughly arrive at destination at the same time, but the ride will not be smooth.
Now reclock in "audio slave mode" does work a different way. It integrates clock correction over time. Speaking of the cars, at each kilometer, the faster car will not stop and stay at 100km/h, but at each kilometer interval, the slower one will look at how many late it is, and accelerate for the next kilometer to stay side by side. The more kilometers the cars will do, the more accurate will be the acceleration correction of the slower car giving a smooth ride :) To be precise the correction method i use in reclock is a proportional+integral (PI) compensator.

Reclock works really well for me and I get smooth playback on both the monitor and the tv. I have one problem though, and that is that almost always at some point in the movie the framerate gets out of sync and starts stuttering. I then have to restart mediaplayer and everything is fine again. Does anyone else have this problem?
The only thing I have changed from the default settings is the resample audio using hardware option. It might be the cause of the problem but I suspect it can have something to to with that I am downloading stuff at the same time I watch a movie. I have noticed that it sometimes can cause a stutter while watching a movie and maybe resync loses the sync after such a stutter.

@kallekill: yes reclock is very sensible to other tasks giving stuttering with sound. This is something i'm working on. The other problem of permanent stuterring until you pause/start is described in the known problems of the changelog. I have no solution yet for this

I presume you detect and sync to the refreshrate so that you may draw at correct time according to vertical sync, otherwise being able to manually set refreshrate would be an option.
@eLupus: no it's not possible. Correction is done in real time, so you can't enter refresh rate manually, because reclock needs to do some measures during playback

Reclock is truly a great piece of work and today I was interested in seeing how it works. I can only find four source files (in gpled_src.zip) and it's not enough to build the filter. Where can I find the other source files?

@temporance: yes for now i made the choice not to distribute all the source code. I give only the GPL portions of the code (to respect the GPL licence). ReClock is freeware, but not open source. Maybe it will change in the future :)

Here is a scene that has played "choppy" on almost every computer I have tried. It is from the opening of Godfather Part III and has AC3 sound.

@Sumster : very good idea to provide "difficult" pieces of films :) I think my ISP gave me 200mb of space, so i can take some pieces if you want

As already reported using the second head set as primary output is totally unacceptable due to the much lower IQ in comparison to DVDMAX (in particular in PAL which is what i use).
@BigT : why is it the case ? I don't understand why putting a display in primary mode would give bad quality. Matrox is doing bad work here :(

My thoughts:
If I could set video clock and refresh rate myself, I wouldn't have to switch monitor outputs, right?
My request:
Make an "advanced setting" for Video clock and refresh rate where user can enter values (probably with warning). This way, user (me :-) can look up the correct values once with TV Out set to monitor 1 and then later enter those values in ReClock without the need to switch monitors.
You could even gather clock values in a database to manually chose, I mean, there are not THAT many refresh rates on a TV and chips on the market :-)

No it's not possible, same response as for eLupus. I wish i could find a solution for this ...


Cheers
OGO

[gabest]

ogo: Under xp you are using vmr7 even if mpc is set to "system default", the same is true for wmp64. Do you have the vsync problem only when "vmr7" is selected?

[ogo]

I'm not at home to confirm this, but i quite sure i get this too with "default" settings (i'm on xp) which also use VMR7.
I don't get that behaviour with WMP or ZP (it's easy to check which renderer is used from the reclock properties).
If i remember well it was with MPC version 6.4.2.0. I get this on a Geforce 3. Saw this too with a TNT2

With VMR9 no vsync problem, but choppy playback. Do you also get choppy playback with VMR9 ? I get this with all players i tried (with or without reclock). I can also crash VMR9 if i play with the "deinterlace" settings ... Strange

With Overlay : no problems at all

[gabest]

Please try this with "vmr7" as the renderer, it should wait for vsync now.
http://download.vobsub.edensrising.com/mpc2kxp6424.rar

[Chibi Jasmin]

Originally posted by ogo
@Chibi Jasmin: i'll try to explain ... The default audio renderer have a internal clock based on some system clock. Each time it receives an AC3 frame which last some tens of milliseconds (depending on interleaving let's says X), it sends the frame to the audio card. Then each time the audio card has finished a frame or X duration, the renderer measure the deviation of it's clock to X, and then correct the clock to make stay in sync. So if a frame last 50ms, the clock is corrected every 50ms. This correction can be rough is the two clocks have some deviation from each other, hence the choppy playback.
To make a picture, imagine two cars running side by side at 100km/h (each car according to it's speedo). As speedos are inacurate, they don't run at the real same speed. So the lead car make 1 kilometer, then stop until the second one arrive. Then they both restart for 1 kilometer. They will roughly arrive at destination at the same time, but the ride will not be smooth.
Now reclock in "audio slave mode" does work a different way. It integrates clock correction over time. Speaking of the cars, at each kilometer, the faster car will not stop and stay at 100km/h, but at each kilometer interval, the slower one will look at how many late it is, and accelerate for the next kilometer to stay side by side. The more kilometers the cars will do, the more accurate will be the acceleration correction of the slower car giving a smooth ride :) To be precise the correction method i use in reclock is a proportional+integral (PI) compensator.

Maybe you're on the wrong track here, because an AC3-Frame always lasts 32 ms (it does not depend on interleaving)...and the only difference between the 'bad' muxes and the 'good' (muxed with 96 ms preload, 96 ms interleave) ones (using default directsound), is the interleaving used...Nandub treats ac3 simply as a bytestream...and if you cut files with it, it produces fracted ac3-frames...meaning it's not complete frames in each chunk, but fracted ones...but even these files play fine, if they are muxed with 96/96 on default direct sound device for some reason, so it's not the fracting...with the 'bad' default setting, it's just they are not fracted every 32 ms (if they are at all fracted with the 96/96 setting, this happens only on splitting with Nandub), but they are fracted with a varying pattern...well, maybe you don't have to dive into this, as it works as it is, but if you're interested see here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36094) and here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38855)!

Originally posted by ogo

@BigT : why is it the case ? I don't understand why putting a display in primary mode would give bad quality. Matrox is doing bad work here :(


Well, this is just the way it is with the Matrox card...when using the card as 'normal' multidisplay card, you have the functionality of using 2 independent displays for Windows Desktop etc. You can use two monitors (which independent resolution/refresh rate) or use one monitor and a TV (also with independen resolution/refresh rate)....but this does not produce very good quality for video playback for whatever reason...not mentioning the fact, that using a TV as primary display is not even possible, only as secondary in multi display mode...and you don't gain anything by that, except some performance hit and loss of quality...another possibility is clone mode, which just copies (depending on resolution some scaling might be involved) the primary display to the TV (on secondary head), so you could think, play fullscreen on Monitor and you have the same picture on TV..fine...problem 1. You can set them refresh rate independent, if you want to...so we have the same old clocks problem (are there two? and which one is correct?). And you can set the having the same refresh rate, but you are still not sure, if it actually uses the same clock...and 2. The quality in this mode is worse than with DVDMax mode...

DVDMax mode is much nicer to work with anyway...as said, you can minimize the player window or let it play in a window on the desktop having nice fullscreen playback in good(!) quality on the TV...I doubt any Matrox user will consider using anything else for playback...it has a fixed resolution for the TV (720x576 in PAL mode, 720x480 in NTSC mode, scales if necessary), and for whatever reason delivers very nice quality output on video playback...

The only problem that still remains is...do we have two independent clocks?? But using Reclock in PAL mode with a 100 Hz Refresh rate on monitor, I didn't have too many problems at the moment, a few stutters here and there, but these were probably caused by other activities in the background and probably also happened on the monitor...so instead of speculating, I suggest, that anyone who is able to do so tries to find some hardware specs of the card (G400 etc...), which tell us, if there is two clocks and how they work together...

[eLupus]

Ogo you misunderstood my post.. probably should have frased it better. ReClock accuaratly detects my secondary display(tv) as 50 hz, i was afraid it wouldn't but it accually does.

Ogo, do you think it would be possible to make ReClock register itself as a normal audiorenderer and not take priority over any other renderer?. I can't even override it in zoomplayer. It would be nice if it were not the default renderer, but only used if I have selected it as the output device in zoomplayer.

nikthebak
You say it won't register as a secondary controller. Have you made sure you have selected extend desktop to this monitor in display properties? Otherwise it won't show.
You might have to install wm9 to be able to play video on the secondary display since very few graphics card support overlay there. WM9 introduced a new video renderer that doesn't use overlay, but 3d rendering support, and seem to work properly on secondary display's.
My ATI Mobility 3 shows the TV properly as a secondary device, wich you can extend the desktop to(thou it has required me going through quite some display drivers to get it that way)

Divx movies play just fine, but as soon windvd's filters get loaded, eg mpeg, there is no display there, they seem to force the videorenderer to use overlay and revert to an old renderer.

Hope this helps someone
Joakim Plate

[ogo]

The only problem that still remains is...do we have two independent clocks?? But using Reclock in PAL mode with a 100 Hz Refresh rate on monitor, I didn't have too many problems at the moment, a few stutters here and there, but these were probably caused by other activities in the background and probably also happened on the monitor...so instead of speculating, I suggest, that anyone who is able to do so tries to find some hardware specs of the card (G400 etc...), which tell us, if there is two clocks and how they work together...
@Chibi Jasmin: maybe you could do the "MPC + VMR7" test (with an old version of MPC) and if you get the tearing, just check if the tearing stays in sync with vertical sync ?

Ogo you misunderstood my post.. probably should have frased it better. ReClock accuaratly detects my secondary display(tv) as 50 hz, i was afraid it wouldn't but it accually does.
No problem about 50hz, i just tried to explain im my bad english that windows does not know the 50hz mode and says "60hz" instead :) For your filter priority problem, you can still disable reclock from the start menu in one click. I'm surprised that you can't override it with another renderer in ZP (must check this). Anyway you can still edit the filte merit inside ZP (a little tricky and not very user friendly i know). Maybe i should provide some settings in the configuration app in a future version

[jwexqm]

Some background on the interlaced display modes issue...

I live in Europe where most TVs have RGB SCART sockets and I've always felt it to be a shame that S-video is accepted norm for getting a video signal from PC to TV. My current HTPC uses a Matrox G400 which is the only card I could find which does TV-out via RGB. It's not a bad solution but I'm always looking for something a little more direct.

The recent uptake of the Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) along with Catalyst 3.0 seems to have completely fixed the Radeon's half-frame interlaced overlay bug which in the past prevented it from being any use for overlay video presentation in interlaced modes. I've recently been doing some tests driving my Sony Wega's RGB SCART input directly from the VGA port of my Radeon with this connection arrangement...

D-15 SCART
1-------15--------Red
2-------11--------Green
3-------7---------Blue
6-------13--------Red return
7-------9---------Green return
8-------5---------Blue return
10------17--------Composite sync return
13------20--------Composite sync

Powerstrip is then required to configure the card into a suitable mode - I use :-
625 total scan lines, 540 visible, 720 horizontal pixels per visible scan line, 50Hz interlaced (25 frames/s), composite sync
(it can be fiddly to set this up initially but there are ways)

The result is the cleanest signal I've seen from a PC to TV with a nice full-screen desktop with no clipped edges.
What you don't get though is any of the normal flicker filtering which you'd find present on TV-coders, so the low-frequency interlaced signal is emphasised by the many pixel-wide horizontal lines present in Windows. Other, 'chunkier' GUIs are fine though (ShowShifter for example). Video playback however is stunning, with rich colours, deep blacks and all the other goodness you'd expect from RGB.

So my motivation here is to obtain robust, jitter-free playback of 25FPS progressive material (PAL DVDs) and then maybe even natively play 50 fields-per-second PAL interlaced material (say from PVR capture) using VGA driect drive.
The progressive 25FPS case 'seems' relatively simple, no deinterlacing required - decode a frame, wait for current field to complete, blit to framebuffer, wait 2 fields then repeat. I guess this all depends upon the mechanism used to inform the renderer of the current state of the graphics card's DAC. Presumbaly this is done either by interrupt/callback or polling a status register. I wonder how interlaced modes are treated differently in this way (if at all)?

I'm quite sure people living in America are going to hit analogous issues when playing HDTV back to interlaced sets over component video so I don't really see this as being a Europe-only problem.

Anyway, maybe that's put my case across a little, or possibly even just been mildly interesting.
Thankfully the G400 exists in the meantime :)

James

[ogo]

I understand well your problem, i'm french :)

Powerstrip is then required to configure the card into a suitable mode - I use : 625 total scan lines, 540 visible, 720 horizontal pixels per visible scan line, 50Hz interlaced (25 frames/s), composite sync
Could you try this in "progressive" mode and check that reclock detects a clock of 31250 hz (which is horizontal freq = 625*50), just to be sure.

Maybe you could provide me a procedure to create interlaced modes with powerstrip on my notebook (Radeon mobility which is nearly the same as a radeon 7500), so i could find a solution to make reclock work on interlaced displays ?
My notebook only have a composite output (shame...) but i've always been surprised by the quality of the TV out (i use overscan mode with a registry hack). Colors seem more rich that my setup with a Geforce3 + s-video (maybe more bits in the DAC ?).