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[skeeterfood]

I haven't mentioned this in a while, but can we please get a bit more granular graphics quality control for Theater View.  The current high quality settings really slow down Theater View on my Nvidia 8400GS.  As a workaround, I forced everything to a max of 4x (AA, ...) in the Nvidia control panel, instead of allowing application control, which looks  WAY BETTER than non-high quality mode and doesn't cripple my hardware.

-John

[Matt]

If you use high quality drawing when it's slow, what shows for AA and AF when you press the Pause/Break button a few times in Theater View?

We try to use 16 for each in high quality mode, but windowed rendering seems to cap at 4x AA for all the cards I've tried.  So it's surprising that hard capping at 4x makes it faster.

Also, all the cards around here run fine with high quality in Theater View.  We tried some old ones like an nVidia 6600 and 7600.

Thanks for any additional details.

[fitbrit]

With my 9600GT and my 8800GT, high quality will bluescreen my system after navigating around a little. Started some time during MC13. I've now had to keep it off, but I'll try playing with my nVidia settings like skeeterfood did.

[JimH]

Did you try updating DirectX from Microsoft?

[fitbrit]

Did you try updating DirectX from Microsoft?

Yes, that was suggested previously, and I did do that. I thinkn I'll reinstall everything from scratch, including reformatting, at some point this summer and see if that helps.

[JimH]

The other possibility, of course, is the video driver itself.

[skeeterfood]

If you use high quality drawing when it's slow, what shows for AA and AF when you press the Pause/Break button a few times in Theater View?

We try to use 16 for each in high quality mode, but windowed rendering seems to cap at 4x AA for all the cards I've tried.  So it's surprising that hard capping at 4x makes it faster.

Also, all the cards around here run fine with high quality in Theater View.  We tried some old ones like an nVidia 6600 and 7600.

Thanks for any additional details.

OK, if I restore the NVidia settings to their defaults here's what I get:
Break/Pause 1: Frames/Second ~20 (goal of 60), Miliseconds/draw 10-20 (capable of 30-100 fps)
Break/Pause 2: Texture: 8192x8192 (0x1ECC5)
Break/Pause 3: Anti-aliasing: 8x, Anisotropic filtering: 16x

As you can imagine, at 20fps, it's pretty sluggish.

If I limit Anti-aliasing & Anisotropic filtering (I just realized I can do it per program):
8x: ~37 fps
4x: ~50 fps
2x: ~58.1 fps
NOTE: MC still claims it's running 8x, 16x, but it's obvious it's not.

Actually: Anti-aliasing seems to be the killer on this card, so I can actually set it at 16x Anisotropic filtering and 2x Anti-aliasing for the best performance & quality.

-John

[raym]

For what it's worth, high quality drawing slows tview browsing to a halt on all my machines. All are modern PC/HTPC's with at least ATI 3450 dedicated video cards. I've never been able to utilise this setting successfully, even at reduced frame rates. It just looks bad.

The only thing it could be is that I'm running windows xp - not vista or w7.

[Matt]

Thanks for all the details.  It helps.

One question:

Break/Pause 1: Frames/Second ~20 (goal of 60), Miliseconds/draw 10-20 (capable of 30-100 fps)
Break/Pause 3: Anti-aliasing: 8x, Anisotropic filtering: 16x

If I limit Anti-aliasing & Anisotropic filtering (I just realized I can do it per program):
8x: ~37 fps

I'm confused by that.  What's different between the 20 fps and 37 fps?

[skeeterfood]

Thanks for all the details.  It helps.

One question:
I'm confused by that.  What's different between the 20 fps and 37 fps?

Both Anisotropic filtering and Anti-aliasing set to 8x = 37 fps.  The default 16x Anisotropic filtering, 8x Anti-aliasing = 20 fps.

-John

[glynor]

FWIW, I can't use the HQ setting either, even though I have a PLENTY powerful enough machine (Q9550 @ 3.6GHz and AMD HD4870).  Theater View draws fine and looks better, but it slows Girder performance (up/down/left/right keypress emulation) to a CRAWL, making my remote anything but a joy to use.

[Matt]

FWIW, I can't use the HQ setting either, even though I have a PLENTY powerful enough machine (Q9550 @ 3.6GHz and AMD HD4870).  Theater View draws fine and looks better, but it slows Girder performance (up/down/left/right keypress emulation) to a CRAWL, making my remote anything but a joy to use.

What framerate are you getting?

It's confusing, because I'm using an old ATI X1800 at work and Theater View flies.  That's on Vista x64, although I wouldn't expect that to matter.

[raym]

The fullscreen antialisaing is what's causing the slowdowns for me. If I turn it off and ramp up the anisotropic filtering to 16x, things are fine. The second I introduce fullscreen aa, I get the same problem glynor describes. At this setting, I'm getting a framerate of 40.

[Osho]

I have also experienced that on my E8400 3.0GHz + Nvidia 9600GT (fairly decent CPU+GPU combination) - I can play most games at very good framerates at 1920x1080 resolution but High quality Theater View totally slows down MC significantly.

I will try using the application based control in Nvidia control panel as someone suggested.

Osho

[Matt]

I have also experienced that on my E8400 3.0GHz + Nvidia 9600GT (fairly decent CPU+GPU combination) - I can play most games at very good framerates at 1920x1080 resolution but High quality Theater View totally slows down MC significantly.

I will try using the application based control in Nvidia control panel as someone suggested.

Osho

Please try the latest build.  Disable vertical sync as a start in Options > Theater View > Drawing quality > Custom.

[glynor]

Sorry... I haven't had a chance to record my framerates with the HQ option turned on yet.  I did check them with them off, and it basically can outrun anything you throw at it (as expected).  The capable numbers were in the hundreds, and it was easily hitting the 60fps target.

[fitbrit]

Thanks everyone for the info, and thanks JRiver guys for making it customisable. With AA at 2x and AF at 16x, all looks wonderful, smooth and no bluescreen! I've also turned off the wait for vert sync, but I'll turn it on again later to see if that was the problem.

[raym]

The Theater View Drawing Quality settings have made things more granular and and I now know I can't make use of full screen anti-aliasing. Even at 2x, it causes Theater View animations to stutter like I'm running 2 frames a second. The stupid thing is, on my low powered laptop running with low end Intel graphics, it's fine, even at 16x!!

Maybe this isn't working great on HDMI outputs using ATI cards? This is the only thing in common with the machines I'm experiencing problems with (as far as this feature goes).

[Mike Noe]

Re: ATI HDMI connnections, I have an ATI2600XT connected to an LG HDTV (1080P) via ATI DVI/HDMI (Secondary Monitor - Extended Desktop) dongle and Theater View animations work fine (at max levels, 60fps), no slowdowns whatsoever.  XPSP3 and CCC9.7.

It is interesting to watch load, when Theater View is "running", my CPU load is about 4-5% and the GPU load hovers around 48%.

[rpalmer68]

The Theater View Drawing Quality settings have made things more granular and and I now know I can't make use of full screen anti-aliasing. Even at 2x, it causes Theater View animations to stutter like I'm running 2 frames a second. The stupid thing is, on my low powered laptop running with low end Intel graphics, it's fine, even at 16x!!

Maybe this isn't working great on HDMI outputs using ATI cards? This is the only thing in common with the machines I'm experiencing problems with (as far as this feature goes).

I'm running HDMI output from an ATI 4850 card and don't have any issues (that I have noticed!)

XP SP3

Richard

[leezer3]

Maybe this isn't working great on HDMI outputs using ATI cards? This is the only thing in common with the machines I'm experiencing problems with (as far as this feature goes).

Shouldn't be, a HDMI output is in essence identical to a DVI output with added encryption. (Hence why you can find converters both ways)

Re cards-
I'm not so sure that cards like the ATI 3450 and the Nvidia 8400GS should handle high-quality drawing full-stop. Neither of these are gaming orientated cards, and Theatre View is certainly doing a few fancy things with the GPU as well as the AA/AF. I'd fully expect Matt's X1800 to outperform both of these in most, if not all benchmarks; Newer is not always better
No comment on the Intel side of things, although I wonder if it is *really* doing the 16x that it claims- I know some of the older chips didn't support this.

-Leezer-

[JimH]

Shouldn't be, a HDMI output is in essence identical to a DVI output with added encryption. (Hence why you can find converters both ways)

I'm not an expert in this area, but HDCP encryption is optional over HDMI, and HDMI includes sound.  DVI has no sound. 

[glynor]

I'm not an expert in this area, but HDCP encryption is optional over HDMI, and HDMI includes sound.  DVI has no sound. 

Right.  HDCP is supported optionally on DVI as well.  The digital signaling for HDMI and DVI are the same.  The connector is different and HDMI is able to carry sound, but otherwise the standards are VERY similar.

[glynor]

I'm not so sure that cards like the ATI 3450 and the Nvidia 8400GS should handle high-quality drawing full-stop. Neither of these are gaming orientated cards, and Theatre View is certainly doing a few fancy things with the GPU as well as the AA/AF. I'd fully expect Matt's X1800 to outperform both of these in most, if not all benchmarks; Newer is not always better

The X1800XT can manage roughly 70-90% better performance than the HD3450 in raw pixel pushing power (based on raw 3DMark06 numbers and Oblivion scores).  However, making things worse, the 3450 cards have a well-documented "Achilles heel" when it comes to AA.  All of the ATI R6XX-based cards have broken AA hardware (though AMD refuses to admit this, it is well documented), and they are forced to do AA on the shader hardware using programmable logic.  This is acceptable, though bad, on the high-end cards with shader processing power to spare (like the 2900XT), but on the low-end cards that are already starved for shaders, it can be impossible to get any performance out of them at all with AA enabled.

This AA hardware issue was finally fixed in the RV7XX series of GPUs (which are much better chips all around as well).  Your average mid-level RV7XX card (such as the HD4670) is more powerful than even the upper echelon cards of the previous generation (like the HD3850).  Given the low pricing on the HD4670 cards, I'd be hard-pressed to recommend anything else right now on the low-end.  If you go below that, you're really just shooting yourself in the foot.  If you want to go upwards, then you might as well head for a HD4850 (or at least the HD4830).

[glynor]

FWIW... I checked my framerates using both an older build of MC14 and the latest one, with HQ Drawing enabled (set to High in the current build).  Both versions stay pegged at right around the 60fps target on my machine (around 150 fps capable).  I somewhat expected this result.

However, the new build is FAR more responsive when using my remote keypresses via Girder than the older build (was 14.0.37).  Still not quite as responsive as when I have it set off manually, but still much better (though not quite "usable" I'd say).

Still, one example of the behavior I'm seeing...  When I'm in Theater View and I have a view open with a long list of files or categories showing (such as a Movies view showing a list of all of the movies in my Library), using Lineup View Style.

With HQ Drawing Off (set to Low): I can immediately hold the up and down arrow keys down on my remote and it will "fast scroll" through the list.  When I release the key, it will stop scolling.  EDIT:  If I hold up/down for a long time, or repeat the activity a lot, I still actually see the slowdown described below, but it is much more mild and takes a lot more "scrolling" to occur.

With HQ Drawing On (set to High): If I immediately hold down the up or down arrow key, it will slowly scroll through the list one item at a time, as though I were manually tapping the up/down key one "press" at a time as it goes down or up through the list.  When I release the arrow key, it will keep going for a long, long time until it has "caught up" to all of the keyboard repeats it has been sent.  The longer I leave a particular view open, the more it "calms down" and starts working normally.  After 10-30 seconds, I can get a 4-5 item "fast scroll" before it slows down and again starts going one at a time.  After 45-75 seconds, it starts working mostly "normally" (fast scrolling works and keypresses are responsive), with only an occasional hiccup.  However, if I drill up or down through the view, or change to a different View, then I go back to square one.

Again, this only applies to using my remote control via Girder.  If I use a regular keyboard, it seems to work fluidly either way (though I think I can detect an ever-so-slight lag even with the keyboard, though this could be psychosomatic).

I haven't attempted to address this with various settings tweaked individually, but I did try disabling VSync initially and it didn't seem to help.

BTW... When you are testing this yourselves (Matt et all) do you have Adaptive AA enabled (and set to Quality) in your Video Card drivers, or are you just running them stock?

[skeeterfood]

I just wanted to say thanks for the added control.  My 8400GS was a dirt-cheap HD capable upgrade a year ago and is probably due for retirement, but with 2x AA, 8X Anisotropic, and Vsync on it's back to acceptable performance without jaggy edges.

-John