On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 13:32:17 +0000, Tony Houghton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Shawn Dowler wrote: > > > > > For what it's worth, I was once in a situation similar to yours. I > > started with a Voodoo3 card for my freevo box. It worked, but the > > output was poort at best. I tried Nvidia, but still had problems, > > quality was better, but it needed X to get the job done (too much > > overhead). I realized that I had a DXR3 card lying around so I went > > through the trouble and the hassle of getting that set up. It worked > > well, but the fact that all the data coming through it has to be > > software scaled and reencoded was really not good and I had to resort > > to lowering the encoding quality settings in order to get a faster > > encoding time to keep things in sync (like when there were trees and > > the like in the background) > > That sounds like you were using the Voodoo at 800x600 or 640x480. It > supports that as well as PAL or NTSC and the scaling quality is > terrible. But you can also use PAL or NTSC modes (AFAICT to software it > appears as a 50Hz or 60Hz non-interlaced mode) and then the quality is > quite good. The only trouble I had with it was the interlacing. My CPU > is a 1.2GHz Celeron and it just wasn't quite up to software > deinterlacing, although I was using X with xine, so there may have been > better optimised ways I could have used. Obviously s/w deinterlace is > very CPU intensive. > > With the DXR3 I can happily use MPlayer's lavc filter at the highest > quality setting and it works well with everything I've tried, although I > may need to continue to tweak options to make sure I don't get that > jittering again. I don't seem to need MPlayer's expand options etc > either, so maybe the DXR3 can handle non-standard sizes in hardware > after all? > > -- > > > TH * http://www.realh.co.uk > >
I know for a fact that the DXR3 cannot handle non-standard sizes in hardware. The mplayer dxr3 driver automatically resizes the video to the closest standard aspect ratio before encoding it for mplayer. It may very well be that your machine is fast enough. I am doing all of this on a PIII 733 with only 128 megs of ram. I don't know how much the low memory might affect the playback, but I do know that the CPU wasn't happy when the videos were too complex or when the original was very big (physical simensions-wise). The DXR3 card is no good for anything but video though. It's amazing that freevo developed an OSD that works with it. Good luck with your project though, and let us know what you decide. Shawn. -- Want free stuff? Don't want to work for referrals to get it? - - - - - http://congacircle.com/ Conga CIRCLE for free stuff! - - "The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring." --Douglas Adams, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"
