VMR9: How can I get it to work?!

[Dayvon]

Ok. I've been using the Media Player Classic + FFdShow combo for a while now. I love it but I've always been stuck using the system default (overlay). Now I've never had any problems with that, but everyone recommends VMR9 renderless for MPC. When I try to use VMR9, it plays fine when the zoom is set at 100%, but when I have MPC full screen, frames are dropped like crazy. Does anybody know what I can do to fix this?

Sys Specs: Windows XP sp2 - P4 3.0GHZ - Radeon X800 XT

[videomixer9]

lol I have the same problem for quite some time now, tried lock backbuffer on and off, however it's only this way if I use the 3D method, using pixelshader resizers even make MPC drop down to 3-5fps in fullscreen. With 2d or regular offscreen it works fine, however I got an nvidia card, guess the problem seems to be independant from the gfx card ... hm ... reinstalling and changing drivers didn't help either ... especially funny as I also don't have a PC that should have problems with this and the problem only appeared some weeks ago but since then persisted even when downgrading MPC.

Never got enlightened on how to get rid of this problem, maybe this time someone knows an answer hehe ...

[cjei]

well, i recently found out that vmr9 renderless is not doing a good chroma upsampling for yuv.
Compare to overlay in ati 9550.

[Rash]

That's because VMR9 Renderless is very CPU intensive. If it is dropping frames then it's because your CPU is at 100% and the software is willing for more.

[Dayvon]

VMR 9 is supposed to use your graphics card using DirectX to render the video, correct?

The X800 XT should be able to render this without a problem. I hear of people using 6600's to do VMR 9 without any problems. I'm wondering if there is some setting in MPC that I could change to get more performance. The other thing that is mentionable is that DVD Shrink can use VMR 9, and I have that enabled and it looks great, no problems with fullscreen either. Very weird.

Frankly, I don't see why using VMR 9 is better anyway. I hear people pimiping it all the time as better then overlay, but I don't see it. If you have suggestions on what I might try to get things running properly, I'm all ears.

[breez]

Try disabling "Lock back-buffer before presenting" in MPC options (Output). Also if you are using PS2.0 resizer in MPC, check that you don't have any AA or AF forced in your graphics card's display settings.

VMR9 is good for some people using PC as an HTPC as a TV/projector usually expects 16-235 range while overlay usually expands that to 0-255. On a PC monitor, though, 0-255 is the correct range (unless one wants to calibrate his/her monitor to 16-235 levels).

I use VMR9 on a PC monitor because desktop gamma correction doesn't work in overlay. Also I do colorspace conversion (to RGB32) in ffdshow to get proper levels 0-255 with good quality (reduced banding).

[jared1999]

(On PS2.0 resizer) Try disabling "Lock back-buffer before presenting" in MPC options (Output).
Thanks for the tip! The CPU hit is now gone.

VMR9 is good for some people using PC as an HTPC as a TV/projector usually expects 16-235 range while overlay usually expands that to 0-255. On a PC monitor, though, 0-255 is the correct range (unless one wants to calibrate his/her monitor to 16-235 levels).
This is new to me. Do you have a link to more info?

Frankly, I don't see why using VMR 9 is better anyway. I hear people pimiping it all the time as better then overlay, but I don't see it. If you have suggestions on what I might try to get things running properly, I'm all ears.
I like VMR9 simply because overlay has separate image settings from the desktop, so it's more of a hassle to calibrate. On my setup it doesn't impose much of a performance hit either.

Those reading this thread might also find some interesting bits in this one (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=106111).

[breez]

This is new to me. Do you have a link to more info?

If you are willing to wade through lengthy threads, try searching at AVS Forum (http://avsforum.com/) Some words to try: VMR9, overlay, studio rgb

[Rash]

VMR 9 is supposed to use your graphics card using DirectX to render the video, correct?
I think that's correct for the Windowed mode. The Renderless mode throws all processing to the player software. That's how MPC can enable the internal subtitling engine and throw the image resizing to the Direct3D Pixel Shader processor on your video card.

I need to look for more information on MSDN website, but I am sure I read what I said above somewhere.

[Dayvon]

Ok I'm reviving this thread cause now that I'm messing around with subtitles, not having VMR9 renderless is killing me... Here's a quick update.

Here's my rig:
CPU: 3.0 GHz Pentium 4
MoBo: Jetway PT880 Socket 478
RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR400 PC3200
Video: ATI Radeon X800 XT PE - 256MB Ram
Audio: Creative Extigy - External USB Soundcard
Display: Westinghouse 32" LCD 1360x768 via DVI

Here's my software:
Directx9.0c
Media Player Classic 6.4.8.x
FFdShow
Haali Media Splitter

Now, I want to use Media Player Classic's VMR9 renderless mode. But I can't. Basically if I play whatever video file I want and leave the zoom at 100% or anywhere but fullscreen, it plays back fine. If however I change the size to fullscreen, then half of the frames start dropping. Like 13fps on a 23.976 fps file. Now get this, if I right click on MPC so that the menu comes up, then the movie stops dropping frames!!!!! I do also get "tearing" from no Vsync if I move the mouse around while viewing the frame dropping fullscreen movie.

So now you understand that this is driving me insane. I have changed FFdShow colorspace outputs, I have tried rendering on a 2D or 3D surface, with lock-back buffer on and off, I have tried VMR7 and windowed modes, Bilinear Resizing, Bicubic Resizing... I mean I really can't think of anything else to change.

[foxyshadis]

http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/Media%20Player%20Classic/mplayerc.rev611.2kxp.7z

Try this first.

[Dayvon]

http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/Media%20Player%20Classic/mplayerc.rev611.2kxp.7z

Try this first.

Good try but sadly no go. I've tried multiple builds/versions of MPC and they all act the same. Is it possibly how I'm setting FFdShow, or could there be something in DirectShow or Windows itself I could change to troubleshoot?

[videomixer9]

Ok I'm reviving this thread cause now that I'm messing around with subtitles, not having VMR9 renderless is killing me... Here's a quick update.

Here's my rig:
CPU: 3.0 GHz Pentium 4
MoBo: Jetway PT880 Socket 478
RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR400 PC3200
Video: ATI Radeon X800 XT PE - 256MB Ram
Audio: Creative Extigy - External USB Soundcard
Display: Westinghouse 32" LCD 1360x768 via DVI

Here's my software:
Directx9.0c
Media Player Classic 6.4.8.x
FFdShow
Haali Media Splitter

Now, I want to use Media Player Classic's VMR9 renderless mode. But I can't. Basically if I play whatever video file I want and leave the zoom at 100% or anywhere but fullscreen, it plays back fine. If however I change the size to fullscreen, then half of the frames start dropping. Like 13fps on a 23.976 fps file. Now get this, if I right click on MPC so that the menu comes up, then the movie stops dropping frames!!!!! I do also get "tearing" from no Vsync if I move the mouse around while viewing the frame dropping fullscreen movie.

So now you understand that this is driving me insane. I have changed FFdShow colorspace outputs, I have tried rendering on a 2D or 3D surface, with lock-back buffer on and off, I have tried VMR7 and windowed modes, Bilinear Resizing, Bicubic Resizing... I mean I really can't think of anything else to change.


Now, I still got the same problem as you got too. Oddly when I reinstalled Windows a while back so it only had the old SP2 DirectX 9c in it VMR9 didn't have these problems, then I upgraded to later versions and it started again, when I open the menu it drops frames, generally it drops frames too and if there's e.g. a config window on top like from ffdshow it starts dropping like mad too, same often goes for windowed mode too, only with vsync enabled this disappears. VMR9 windowed mode also suffers from some fun effects though, and WMP11 set to quality renderer oddly seems to also suffer from this effect, guess it uses VMR9 too, Zoomplayer also got the problem.

Whatever, VMR9 is nothing I really wanna use anyways so I just left the problem alone. I have an AMD CPU and nVidia graphics card though, so the problem is definatly not the video drivers. My wild guess is that some changes in later DirectX 9 versions cause this problem.

Another thing I wonder about, do people without this problem also use LCD with DVI output or do people without DVI connection have this problem? ... this is really far fetched but you cannot be amazed enough about some funny effects.

[mike_lee]

Dayvon, do you have hyperthreading turned on? (It should be on)

[check]

If all you want is subtitles, why not just use directvobsub? Then you can go back to Overlay mixer and cut your CPU usage by some crazy value.