ATI 4870 AVIVO Upscaling of DVD's

[ChAoS Overlord]

I just swapped my Nvidia 8800GTS for a 4870 from ATi. As it is, the new UVD2 shoud support upscaling of dvd-material through ATI's AVIVO technology.

I have tons of dvd's (mpeg2) I want to rewatch right now with this nifty feature, but I don't know how to activate this? I don't want to resort to paying for windvd or powerdvd. Could you please assist me, so that I might get the same (or preferably better) video quality that I received when using nVidia's purevideo? (yes, I bought that decoder and used it together with zoom player).

[ranpha]

nVidia PureVideo MPEG2 decoder is probably the best hardware (or even software) decoder out there. Anyway, if you insist on doing hardware acceleration, just play the DVDs via PowerDVD (or the internal MPEG2 decoder in Vista if you use that OS) and play with the post-processing settings in Catalyst control panel applet.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

AFAIK when using the "Overlay" renderer all scaling is done by the graphics hardware (or it's emulated by the driver). So that should be what you need.
I have no idea whether AVIVO has any "special" high-quality scaling mode, which needs a special video renderer to be activated though...

Nevertheless using Haali Video Renderer or a good software scaler (e.g. "Lanczos" methods) should already give good scaling quality without AVIVO.

[blizard]

AFAIK when using the "Overlay" renderer all scaling is done by the graphics hardware (or it's emulated by the driver). So that should be what you need.
I have no idea whether AVIVO has any "special" high-quality scaling mode, which needs a special video renderer to be activated though...

Nevertheless using Haali Video Renderer or a good software scaler (e.g. "Lanczos" methods) should already give good scaling quality without AVIVO.
As Lord Mulder have said, there isn't much point in activate hardware support for AVIVO on ATI/AMDs video card when you can make use of Haalis Video Renderer (and splitter) independent of video card as far as it is Pixel shader capable as almost all new video video card are by now.

Haali Video Renderer will make use of hardware support from video cards GPU. You need Pixel shader 1.1 support or better. It will work for almost all material you need to scale up or down and you don't need to have dedicated MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 decoder to do this as it is the filter chain with splitter and renderer that will do this job.
As you also can see from that part of log file over changes in the development for splitter and renderer from Haali, there is also support for deinterlacing and probably a lot more that is going on in this renderer.

#


# 31/01/2007

* New features:
o Video Renderer now uses multiple passes instead of complex shaders, and works on PS 1.1 hardware. Bicubic scaling and deinterlacing are available staring with PS 1.4.
o Added DTS support in MPEG TS streams.
o Added a much better deinterlacer to the Video Renderer.


From: Haali's website (http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/)

Depending on you usage it might be as good to use Haali as any other hardware support for MPEG-2 on DVD resolution (720 x 576 for PAL or 720 x 480 for NTSC). Above that (all otehr resolution that is defined as HD) it might be more important to make use of UVD2 in hardware, but that is another question. For simple DVD res Haali is as good as the rest and much simpler to get to work. Just go that link above and you should find a splitter/renderer package to install (MatroskaSplitter.exe).

[ranpha]

Haali Video Renderer is not exactly an option for TS ATI card (that ghost line bug with ATI HD cards). But then again, overlay mixer, VMR7/9 renderless and EVR will also allow high quality bicubic hardware upscaling when going full-screen with TS ATI card (or nVidia for the matter). Plus with AVP 2, hardware post-processing can also be done.

[tetsuo55]

ChAoS Overlord,

That feature is not yet supported in any Decoder as far as i know.
Unless the videocard automatically does it when fed a bitstream-mpeg2 stream. i have asked Casimir to enable this in MPC-HC, if you ask him in his thread he can probably use you for testing.

Everyone:

This new feature works as a realtime SD>HD upscaler and as such can not be compared to something like haali renderer/bicubic filtering
This feature is more like using avisynth scripts for realtime upscaling or using a standalone upscaler unit.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Haali Renderer will scale any video of any size to any size you want (including SD -> HD) -- in realtime. The same applies to any other video renderer I'm aware off.
So it's very comparable. And unless that AVIVO uses some scaling method which is superior to Haali Renderer (like "edge directive interpolation"), it is completely useless...

[tetsuo55]

Fair enough.

Ati claims it upscales the image to HD, like the ffdshow method here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=719041

This effectively gives you HD quality. Much like how older movies are upscaled for BluRay releases.

The videocard/haali scaling only reduces the blockyness, it does not restore detail.

Ati already did regular scaling like haali and they did improve it to allow scaling of full-hd to larger than fullhd panels but that has nothing to do with the feature they claim to have implemented

[Sharktooth]

that's not HD... that's upscaled and will never reach the HD quality... never. details can be faked, but they cant be restored if they're not there... in any way.

[tetsuo55]

that's not HD... that's upscaled and will never reach the HD quality... never. details can be faked, but they cant be restored if they're not there... in any way.

Yep, thats not stopping them from advertising "Near-HD quality" though.


And i have to admit that personally i prefer ffdshow upscaled to regular scaling.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Also, very few BluRay / HD-DVD releases are actually upscaled. The vast majority (that I've seen anyway, and I've seen a lot) are quite good, and are re-scans of film.

~MiSfit

[ChAoS Overlord]

I was out for a short while guys, sorry. So isn't there anybody else here who has this card (or its more price friendly sibling, the 4850)? AMD/ATi our spreading word about the unbelievable Video capabilities that AVIVO 2 delivers, but they fail to tell us how to open the goody bag...

[CruNcher]

that's not HD... that's upscaled and will never reach the HD quality... never. details can be faked, but they cant be restored if they're not there... in any way.

I guess they use something more advanced like http://www.motiondsp.com/products/IkenaReveal (takeing motion into account in realtime on the GPU)
to see if their Product really holds up what we can achive with Avisynth you can give it a Spin here http://www.fixmymovie.com/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/31/startup-uses-military-tech-to-fix-low-res-video/
http://www.thedeemon.com/articles/what_is_super_resolution.html
http://www.yuvsoft.com/download/super-resolution/index.html
Practicaly the same what also Toshibas XBE does to conquer Blu-Ray with

And if you guess from the Papers you can be sure the Military is useing this kind of technology already since the late 80s improved version since the 90s and now it found it's way into the Public

[ChAoS Overlord]

I have been able to enable DXVA with the latest MPC Home Cinema edition, but it only seems to decode VC1 & h.264 HD streams this way. Does anybody know of the right way to get it to decode the dvd's at least (even without upsampling), so I can enjoy the advanced pulldown features, as well as the edge enhancement/noise reduction features? What amount of edge enhancement and noise reduction do you people find delivers the best image quality?

Thanks in advance!

[leeperry]

their Product really holds up what we can achive with Avisynth
is there any "true" super-resolution plugin for AVS ?

atm that's what I'm getting from DVD in ffdshow/avisynth :

http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133000_1.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133000_1.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133001_6.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133001_6.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133002_7.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133002_7.png)
http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133003_9.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133003_9.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133004_10.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133004_10.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133005_11.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133005_11.png)

[STaRGaZeR]

atm that's what I'm getting from DVD in ffdshow/avisynth :

I find the lack of detail... disturbing :p

[leeperry]

I find the lack of detail... disturbing :p
well you won't get any further detail from a 720 pixels wide source :p
still after a few mins to get used to it, it's very watchable on a 2 meters wide projection screen :cool:

[Sharktooth]

try using mplayer noise (uniform, averaged, no pattern) with luma strenght 20 and chroma strength 4 or so...

http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/temp/noise.png

[CruNcher]

is there any "true" super-resolution plugin for AVS ?

atm that's what I'm getting from DVD in ffdshow/avisynth :

http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133000_1.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133000_1.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133001_6.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133001_6.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133002_7.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133002_7.png)
http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133003_9.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133003_9.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133004_10.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133004_10.png)http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/t133005_11.png (http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i133005_11.png)

Nope, though for Ati you gonna see it first in Arcsofts TMT it's called SimuHD there and will be released in Q1 i suspect already January. Nothing heared yet about Nvidias Super-Resolution and in which Applications it's gonna get implemented though i guess first here will be either Cyberlink or Arcsoft.
And don't forget we talking about Realtime Super-Resolution :)

[leeperry]

for Ati you gonna see it first in Arcsofts TMT it's called SimuHD there and will be released in Q1 i suspect already January.
interesting! can't find anything about it, though :
http://www.google.com/search?q=SimuHD+ati&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&sa=2

[tetsuo55]

It's called SimHD, it has nothing to do with the feature discussed in this topic.

It is Arcsoft's GPGPU upscaling program. It works on NVIDIA too.

http://www.arcsoft.com/public/press_detail.asp?prID=247
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS131446+25-Aug-2008+BW20080825
http://ati.amd.com/technology/streamcomputing/consumer-entertainment.html

Seems interesting but i would like to see some full resolution screenshots

[leeperry]

gotcha! sound like major bs....like that "UVD2 DVD upscaling" when they can't even progressively upsample chroma http://forum-images.hardware.fr/images/perso/afrojojo.gif

[Maccara]

Heh, I always wondered if some company would implement SR on GPU at some point (simply too slow in software and I gathered it might be doable in realtime with GPU).

Of course, the gotcha is, it won't (can't) work always and for all sources (at least not "perfectly"), as it requires proper temporal matching from the source already and that simply is not always possible.

When it works, the results seem quite good (beats simple bicubic/lanczos + sharpening, at least, when comparing single frames - hardly noticeable difference in motion).

Would be interesting to see some full screen shots at some point, though.

[CruNcher]

It's already done the first where MotionDSP (U.S Intelligence sponsored) with Ikena Reveal www.motiondsp.com the consumer version Carmel is soon going to be released Nvidia Exclusive :)
SR is not new the concept is already 20 years old tough it was hold back for a long time from public use (to much costs so Military and Intelligence use only) now the first commercial Consumer application i remember is a Russians SR implementation though MotionDSP's should be more advanced.

[leeperry]

on the links that tetsuo gave, they don't talk about SR....I guess they'll do some PS sharpening through CUDA(a la All2HD in WinDVD9)

[Maccara]

@CruNcher

Yeah, SR concept isn't anything new. I remember reading about it in the 80s already (wasn't called "SuperResolution" at the time - I believe that term was coined sometime during the 90s).

[leeperry]

i would like to see some full resolution screenshots
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2008/0930/ceatec01_06.jpg

http://www.arcsoft.com/public/press_detail.asp?prID=245

[tetsuo55]

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2008/0930/ceatec01_06.jpg

http://www.arcsoft.com/public/press_detail.asp?prID=245

That image looks pretty impressive, almost no haloing except around the edges of the cake.
We will see what it looks like in real life.

[khagaroth]

Did you try using ffdshow with forced NV12 output (uncheck everything except NV12), that automatically activates other AVIVO processing, so it should work with this too.

[ChAoS Overlord]

Right now I'm using MPC - HC with DXVA accelleration. This works fine, but as soon as I activate de VMR9 mixer feature it starts behaving erraticly. Frames go "jumping" mostly, that is, they get mixed up often. I can enable the hardware acceleration features but not the VMR9 mixing, so I don't get the built in AVIVO image enhancing techniques for MPEG-2 & h264. Anybody else in this case?

Khagaroth, what are the (other) consequences of only using NV12 output?

[Jong]

What build of MPC-HC are you using? If you are using one of the latest builds, this is a bug in MPC-HC. You need to revert to 1137 or before.

[ChAoS Overlord]

Yes, I'm using one of the latest builds (1180). Is this by any chance getting fixed soon? Because I was kinda fond of the improvements made since build 1150. :(

[Jong]

Actually now it is fixed, or shoud be. Try updating to >1188.

[ChAoS Overlord]

Thank you for the tip! You were absolutely right! h.264 encodes get decoded perfectly right now. I don't seem to be able to get mpeg2/dvd streams working with AVIVO acceleration though? What course should I take regarding these types of streams?

[Jong]

The MPC MPEG-2 decoder is not DXVA accelerated. if you need/want DXVA with MPEG2 you need to use another decoder, like Cyberlink, Nvidia etc.