Workaround for the 29/59 issue

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th83

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Workaround for the 29/59 issue

#1

Post by th83 » Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:52 pm

So, my foray into trying to work around the 29/59 issue has been interesting. I've discovered a bug in the Nvidia drivers that is crashing Media Center due to unchecked growth in the 'handles' for the ehshell.exe process when viewing 29/59 content, found that while the new Radeon cards don't cause WMC to crash, they play 29/59 content very choppy, and finally went back to my internal Intel 4600 GPU on my HTPC, which is by far the best at handling this bug natively (with dynamic contrast and detect film mode disabled). In addition, I've experimented with different decoders to handle the live TV stream, all of which work better at processing 29/59 than the built in MS decoder.

Using LAV decoders corrects choppy video, flicker, and bouncing text in this content, but it also breaks any premium 'copy protected' channels. I am doing this on my home office PC which I just use to watch standard digital channels (where I also could not remove the NVidia card since I need the multiple monitors). If I go to HBO or Starz, I get a message that copying is prohibited, but this doesn't matter in this case. If you don't watch any copy protected channels, this should work.

1. Install LAV filters
2. Open the LAV Video Config
3. Make sure the MPEG-2 decoder is checked, enable adaptive HW deinterlacing for 50/60p, enable high quality processing, set deinterlacing mode drop-down to Force
4. If you are using an NVidia card, you can set the hardware decoder to CUVID
5. In regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Decoder
6. Right-Click the decoder key and export it as a backup
7. Change both the preferred Audio and Video decoder to {171252A0-8820-4AFE-9DF8-5C92B2D66B04}
8. Launch Media Center live TV. If you get a warning that your display is not HDCP compatible, just change media center to Windowed mode then back to full screen and live TV should start playing with no 29/59 issues

SoNic67

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#2

Post by SoNic67 » Tue Aug 26, 2014 12:34 am

You should mention the card type, don't throw all the blame on "NVidia drivers". There are many NVidia cards that work perfectly in the situation described.

th83

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#3

Post by th83 » Tue Aug 26, 2014 12:57 pm

SoNic67 wrote:You should mention the card type, don't throw all the blame on "NVidia drivers". There are many NVidia cards that work perfectly in the situation described.
With both the 730 and 740 cards.

th83

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#4

Post by th83 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 3:49 pm

UPDATE: I have tested a 610 card, and it has the same issue with the newer drivers (handles grow like crazy when viewing 29/59 content). If I roll the driver back to the 334.89 driver, the handles leak goes away and WMC does not crash (had to buy a 610 to test this since my 730 and 740 cards only work with the newer drivers). NVidia has confirmed this issue on their end as well and are working on a fix. I have also been trying to get them to add a 29/59 detection option to their deinterlacing settings to help fix the strange bouncing/pixelating text/logos issues.

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#5

Post by th83 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:02 pm

SoNic67 wrote:You should mention the card type, don't throw all the blame on "NVidia drivers". There are many NVidia cards that work perfectly in the situation described.
By the way, NVidia has confirmed to me that there is a bug in the latest 2 driver releases that causes WMC to crash. It appears they did not link that with the Handles growth issue, but it appears now that they are the same bugs (the handles leak is contributing to the crash issue they are already investigating).

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STC

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#6

Post by STC » Fri Apr 24, 2015 5:05 pm

Bringing up an old thread...

The OP has raised what is actually a very good solution to the problem, thank you :) I was tinkering with it last night.

In an effort to recover bandwidth, for the last couple of months my MSO has been quietly adding the 29/59 'feature' to most of the channels I receive.

The end result for me is shimmering of pixel width images, edges of text, borders etc. most of the decent quality movie channels I get now have the problem and it's become annoying. I can live with the quirks for regular TV shows, but not movies.

All channels we receive are copy free, so using LAV for playback through WMC is possible and all affected recordings play beautifully. Very crisp output visually on par or perhaps even better than the WMC codec AND without the 29/59 issue. For live TV you have to minimize, maximize WMC for the HDCP error to go away but this can all be automated which is something I'll work on tonight hopefully. Most of our watching is recorded, with the occasional live show so the impact is minimal.

This may be the new way we watch WMC recordings. I shall update here.
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#7

Post by richard1980 » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:27 pm

I would like to point out that the OP's solution forces deinterlacing at all times...even on progressive frames. So you won't get a perfect picture, but deinterlacing unnecessarily is less noticeable than failing to deinterlace, so in the end PQ should be improved.

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#8

Post by STC » Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:48 am

^ Yes! "set deinterlacing mode drop-down to Force" :)
Typically I'm using it for 1080i source material. It's very easy to switch WMC back and forth between codecs.

Have you tried? It's pretty much night and day. No noticeable issues compared to glaring ones when 29/59 occurs.
The term workaround holds true - it doesn't fix the problem, just disguises it very well.
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#9

Post by richard1980 » Sat Apr 25, 2015 2:54 am

I have used various 3rd-party tools to evaluate 29/59 content, but unfortunately my cable company loves copy protection...

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#10

Post by STC » Sat Apr 25, 2015 4:15 am

Ahh sorry to hear that.
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#11

Post by IownFIVEechos » Mon Apr 27, 2015 2:19 pm

I finally started to get my new machine live this last weekend. I had always used the cheap video cards until this new build. I am only a day live with it but it has completely removed the bug for me. I am now using Asus Gt640-Dcsl-2Gd3. The PQ is much smoother as well. I went from a Dual Core to a i5 and it seems sooo much nicer. I also used to get macro blocks or whatever they call them when more than two tuners got used. That seems to be gone now too as I watched and recorded on all three without issue. One reason to want Microsoft to allow new versions of windows to run old extenders and mediacenter is that it takes WAY TO LONG to update the thing on initial setup. It takes a day or so just to get up to par on the OS. Couple that with a few redo's and man it is a PITA. I almost wanted to get TIVO!

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#12

Post by STC » Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:22 pm

Interesting comments. With Intel, I have always seen pixel-width shimmer artifacts with 29/59 content. Most noticeable on text and pin point detail, black borders etc. It's subtle but still there. Perhaps I need to investigate more.
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#13

Post by STC » Sat May 02, 2015 1:55 am

I managed to spend some time automating things with Event Ghost this evening.

The # key on my remote now toggles between WMC and LAV codecs. WMC eshell can remain actively running whilst you change between them. It's quick and easy.
One small caveat I've noticed is you cannot RW or FF using LAV. You can skip though.

For liveTV with 29/59, the * key on the remote reduces WMC to 1919x1080 then maximizes it which kills the HDCP error message.
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#14

Post by Sega32bit » Fri May 12, 2023 10:06 pm

th83 wrote: Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:52 pm So, my foray into trying to work around the 29/59 issue has been interesting. I've discovered a bug in the Nvidia drivers that is crashing Media Center due to unchecked growth in the 'handles' for the ehshell.exe process when viewing 29/59 content, found that while the new Radeon cards don't cause WMC to crash, they play 29/59 content very choppy, and finally went back to my internal Intel 4600 GPU on my HTPC, which is by far the best at handling this bug natively (with dynamic contrast and detect film mode disabled). In addition, I've experimented with different decoders to handle the live TV stream, all of which work better at processing 29/59 than the built in MS decoder.

Using LAV decoders corrects choppy video, flicker, and bouncing text in this content, but it also breaks any premium 'copy protected' channels. I am doing this on my home office PC which I just use to watch standard digital channels (where I also could not remove the NVidia card since I need the multiple monitors). If I go to HBO or Starz, I get a message that copying is prohibited, but this doesn't matter in this case. If you don't watch any copy protected channels, this should work.

1. Install LAV filters
2. Open the LAV Video Config
3. Make sure the MPEG-2 decoder is checked, enable adaptive HW deinterlacing for 50/60p, enable high quality processing, set deinterlacing mode drop-down to Force
4. If you are using an NVidia card, you can set the hardware decoder to CUVID
5. In regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Decoder
6. Right-Click the decoder key and export it as a backup
7. Change both the preferred Audio and Video decoder to {171252A0-8820-4AFE-9DF8-5C92B2D66B04}
8. Launch Media Center live TV. If you get a warning that your display is not HDCP compatible, just change media center to Windowed mode then back to full screen and live TV should start playing with no 29/59 issues
This work around worked well for me i had one sky station which is one i watch a lot of had dodgy frame frame like you get when playing a 29fps film in 23fps also i had a weird pulsing - jumping picture which was annoying, changing to lav sorted it so thank you for your work around.

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#15

Post by Megalocade » Fri Feb 09, 2024 2:01 am

This might be of some interest to those using Lav with WMC

Unfortunately when using Lav codec you loose the thumbnails on you recorded content it just shows a blank box with the words of the program, after some fiddling around earlier I found if you update the registry with lav codecs 171252A0-8820-4AFE-9DF8-5C92B2D66B04 for both sound and video but remove these { } from the front and end of the line lav will work just fine and also display the thumbnails properly.

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