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Video Playback and jerky on pans

Saturday, 07/28/2007 -- by Stephen Maher. Subject: Video Playback and jerky on pans

Hi guys..

We have had this issue for quite some time.. The first issue started with a blank screen when videos were presented by the infochannel 3 player. We could hear sound but see no video.. Contacted scala and they stated you needed to set use overlay in the designer to "never" for each video added. This resolved this issue. Does anyone know how to enable video overlay on a player machine using a radeon 8250 PCI card?? Im hoping it would solve problem number 2 listed below...

Second problem is all our videos presented in scala player are jerky on alot of pan movement. (this also applys to some transitions between scala pages). This does not occur using the WinDVD player to play the AVI file by itself nor does windows media player have a problem with it.. Only scala.. Does anyone have an idea why scala is making the Video jerky? Does anyone know a workaround or a fix?

Many thanks
Stephen Maher


Machine specs..

Dell PowerEdge Server 1800
Dual Xeon 3Ghz processor
2gb of ram
80gb SCSI hd.
OS is Windows Server 2003 (Graphics drivers are XP!)
Running scala player 3

Monday, 07/30/2007 -- by John Schilling. Subject: Totally expected behavior

For over ten years I have been posting "Hardware FAQ's" to help people avoid messes such as this. This is no salvaging _this_machine. The IC3 SW and Dongle need to be taken off this box and installed on a more appropriate machine.

Issues:

A "PCI Graphics Card". Enough said. Totally inadequate for 99.9% of all Scala Applications and deployments.

An "ATI RADEON 8###" series GPU. Again. Not really suitable for any of our products sold after 1999 or so.

Windows 2003 Server. Not an appropriate/approved/tested OS for a Scala Player. There are lots of reasons why this is a "bad idea"--let's just leave it at "Don't Do IT!".

So: PCI bus, 1990's-era Graphics chip, Server-OS for an application that is clearly a "Workstation-class" usage/load.

It does not matter how powerful the CPU is nor how much RAM there is--this is basically a case of using a Mack Truck's engine, mating it to an AMC Gremlin's chassis, and then bolting on the wheels from a Trabant!

Almost any basic $500-consumer machine with ATi RADEON-Xpress graphics and a Celeron CPU would totally outclass this machine in playback performance.

Best Suggestion: Get a $500 consumer box. Retask this machine as a small Database or Web-Server--or add a RAID-array and make it a Network Manager or something more appropriate to its design.


--JSS

Monday, 07/30/2007 -- by Peter Evans. Subject: "Horses for courses."

Having been told off for PCI graphics cards, I am in full agreement with JSS. "$SOFTWARE runs on $SPECS or better" is there for a good reason.

Fortunately, the new wincomm 792 has PCI-E.

Unfortunately, the box I have is a demo box, some bits of which I hope don't make it into the production version. Spagetti, disk mounting, reset switch ...

Tuesday, 07/31/2007 -- by Stephen Maher. Subject: Video Jerky

Thank you for your post.

Please answer this question. Why is the video **ONLY** jerky in scala? WinDVD player to which scala say they support for their video playback can play the video perfect! as a stand alone player.. Windows media player also has no trouble at all.

I am fully aware that pages with text and nice transitions between pages requires alot of graphics power.. Video does not..

Im not doing anything fancy with the video.. I dont have overlays or text or whatever over the video.. I just want to play a plain video. The other media players seem to cope.. Why doesnt the scala software?

Maybe this could be potentially be a bug?

Tuesday, 07/31/2007 -- by John Schilling. Subject: No--its NOT a bug...

The issue is "Bandwidth". [Do the math: the theoretical bandwidth of the PCI bus is 132 MB/sec--and the practical bandwidth is in the 60-80 MB/sec range for system memory to video frame buffer copy operations] The PCI-bus simply does NOT HAVE THE BANDWIDTH. [at least not adequate to the task of running an application that performs the memory copy operations such as Scala's]

Examples of:

Windows Media Player,

Anybody's DVD/Video Player,


...ARE IRRELEVANT!

These are not general purpose video frame buffer compositing engines.

[Quake and Half-Life are more appropriate--how well does F.E.A.R. run on this machine???]

The simple video Players blast a single X by Y rectangle of video--mostly using HW Overlay or the VMR. [in fact in IC3 and IC200 you to can use "Hardware Overlay, Required" on your video clips--if you can live with the limitations this imposes--most of our customers can not accept the technical limitations that HWO imposes.]

Get a good sub-$1K machine built to the Approved-HW List.

Save yourself a lot of grief and just purchase a $700 pre-configured EQUUSCS Scala Player. Go live life. Take your kids to the park. Do not waste your time on issues which have been brought up again, and again, and again over the years--for which the only viable solutions are:

Get the right HW and use the correct OS.

--JSS

Wednesday, 08/01/2007 -- by Stephen Maher. Subject: Video Overlay

Once again thank you for your post.

Since we are a non-commercial / non profit organisation we simply cannot splash out 500-700 euro on a new machine. I work in a software development company myself. I understand the nightmare it can be to get a customer to a supported platform. We picked this server for redundancy and high availability. I now understand its inadequate but the system as is works GREAT apart from video playback. All I am concerned about is video playback.

We have another option of putting a PCIe graphics card into the machine.. but it would require us putting it into an 8x slot. I know nearly all PCIe graphics cards are 16X but the machine doesn't support anything above 8. Would such an option work as we can get a converter from 16x to 8x. Also a 16 to 4x slot would also work..

Can you please point me in the right direction of getting video overlay to work as I do believe it is the key to getting videos to work properly. I acknowledge that you say its not acceptable for most clients but it would be suitable for us.

I would be very happy if you could help me understand the reason why video overlay isn't working. Possibly some howtos tutorials etc.

Any help would be really appreciated

Wednesday, 08/01/2007 -- by John Schilling. Subject: What is the form-factor of the slot?

Of course its "stable"--its a very nice entry level Server. Its a solid, conservative, machine. So is a an LKW. However, at the moment you need an F1-racer--or at least an Audi A4...


PCIe is a very interesting bus.

You can have x1, x4, x8, and x16--devices. Both electrically and physically. [...on many motherboads there are PCIeX8 slots _electrically_ that are PCIeX16 slots _physically_--this is your only hope with this particular machine!]

If you have a PCIeX16 physical slot that is PCIeX8 electrically--in theory you can use *any* correctly implemented card. It will only have "X8" data transfer--however this is EIGHT TIMES what you currently have!

***MAKE SURE THAT YOUR "SLOTS" FIT!!!! A PCIxX1 card will operate in a X4, X8, or X16 slot. However--if you actually have a _physical_ X8 slot--you can not place an X16 card in that slot.

If you are only using a single video output--your best option would be an ATi card from the RADEON X1K family.

For you requirements an X1300PRO, about 70 EUROS, should be "just fine".

Use the March 2007--7.3 drivers. [April, May, June drivers had problems and July we have not yet tested]

Avoid X1300 or X1550 cards --64-bit memory. X1600/X1650's are the "price/performance" sweet spot at around 150-EUROS.

[if you are going to drive full screen 1080i content--consider a X1650/512MB on PCIeX16 to be a practical _minimum_!!!]



Your other problem: You are running a Player on Win03. Not good. The default behavior of 03: the disabling of HW-acceleration for video Drivers, the serious incompatibility with many Audio Drivers, and the "CPU-Quanta" settings make this a poorly suited OS for an "Interactive" application.

You best option--find someone in your organization who needs a new Server. Have them buy you the real PC you need--give them your Server.


--JSS

Wednesday, 08/01/2007 -- by Stephen Maher. Subject: Video Overlay

Thank you again John for your response.

The PCIe advice i will certainly look into.. the slot itself is a 8X slot.. Need some sexy adaptor.. If it doesnt fit in the machine.. Ill make it ;-)
http://www.adexelec.com/pciexp.htm#PEXP4-SX-4/1

Anyway..Im still none the wiser on the Video Overlay issue.. Is there anything you could point out to check the cause of the blank screen issue when playing a video file when use video overlay is selected in the designer.. ??

I dont believe it is a hardware limitation as other third party players can play overlay.. I thinking it could be driver related or OS.. ?

Do you have any ideas of the cause?

Many thanks
Stephen

Wednesday, 08/01/2007 -- by Stephen Maher. Subject: 1x Card

Hello again..

I found a 1x PCIe card.. the same model you described..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161017

While it is the model you have stated.. the bus might still be an issue? PCIe slots live on the northbridge.. so in theory it would have faster bandwidth?

Any comments?

(DOH just realised its not a pro version.. sorry ignore this post.. )

Wednesday, 08/01/2007 -- by John Schilling. Subject: Sorry--my initial suggestion still stands...

PCIeX1 is no better than a PCI card. While there might be some trivial reduction in _latency_--effective transfer rates are still worthless.

As for "PRO" or non-PRO--it does not matter in the context of a PCIeX1 card!

As for why HWO is not working for you with your existing card: Drivers and/or the Win03 video driver "Acceleration Settings"--the RADEON 8###'s are rather old-check to make sure that maximum acceleration is set.

Designer and Player are never tested under Win03--its not a supported OS for these products. [Nor would we test any of our current software with a RADEON 7### or 8### graphics chip--there is no point in the exercise.]


Stop shopping at AutoZone or Pep-Boys for auto-chrome and glue-on racing spoilers--you still are not going to convince me that your Ford F150-Pickup Truck is a BMW Z3! Get the Miata and be happy.


:-)

--JSS


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