some general MPC settings questions

[THX-UltraII]

Hi guys (and especially the makers of MPC HC, keep up the good work! ), I m using the MPC HC edition for some time now and have to say that I am very pleased with it. Especially because of the Anti-tearing option! It resolved all of my issues I had before.

Still I have some questions about some general options that can be selected in the MPC HC edition. So I hope you guys here can clarify them so I know what they do/what they are for.

In the Options menu of MPC there are the following things I would like to know what they are for. In the Output menu:
- Surface: regular, 2D and 3D. Best to pick?
- Resizer: Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bilinear (PS 2.0), Bicubic A=-0.60 (PS 2.0), Bicubic A=-0.75 (PS 2.0), Bicubic A=-1.00 (PS 2.0)
- YUV mixing: check or uncheck?+what is it for?
- Lock back-buffer: check or uncheck?+what is it for?

Then there is the Audio Switcher
- Enable build-in audio switcher: check or uncheck?+what is it for?

Thanks for all help and sorry for my bad English.

[fastplayer]

Don't cross-post... :rolleyes:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1217002#post1217002

[THX-UltraII]

just hoping for some reaction.

[Pulstar]

- Surface: 3D if you have a modern videocard
- Resizer: Bicubic A=-1.00 (PS 2.0) This one would give you the sharpest picture AFAIK
- YUV mixing: Leave this unchecked (as well as VMR9 mixer mode), since you're not likely to modify renderer controls anyway
- Lock back-buffer: This one is to assist in eliminating tearing ie the jagged image which can happen since monitors refresh the screen much faster than the typical frame rate of video
- Enable build-in audio switcher: Leave it checked.

Oh and if you have an LCD monitor, set the renderer to VMR9 (Renderless) and from the shaders menu pick 16-235 -> 0-255 you'll instantly notice the refined detail in darker areas of the footage.

[THX-UltraII]

- Surface: 3D if you have a modern videocard
- Resizer: Bicubic A=-1.00 (PS 2.0) This one would give you the sharpest picture AFAIK
- YUV mixing: Leave this unchecked (as well as VMR9 mixer mode), since you're not likely to modify renderer controls anyway
- Lock back-buffer: This one is to assist in eliminating tearing ie the jagged image which can happen since monitors refresh the screen much faster than the typical frame rate of video
- Enable build-in audio switcher: Leave it checked.

Oh and if you have an LCD monitor, set the renderer to VMR9 (Renderless) and from the shaders menu pick 16-235 -> 0-255 you'll instantly notice the refined detail in darker areas of the footage.


thanks m8! This clears thing up for me! However, can you go into VMR9 mixer mode? What does this EXATLY do?

And what do you mean by the 'shaders menu' where I should pick the setting 0-255? I cannot find this in the settings of MPC HC.

Thanks again for all help

[Keepitsimple]

Why not use haalis renderer?

[littleD]

I think this (http://lt.dorost.cz/public/installs/MediaPlayerClassic/) old help file for MPC can still be useful :)

[THX-UltraII]

Why not use haalis renderer?


is it better?

[Martin H]

is it better?
Haali's renderer resizes in hardware using bicubic interpolation...

If you have a good GPU then i would recommend Haali's Renderer, and otherwise i would recommend the overlay mixer renderer for best performance and color corectness...

[Leak]

Haali's renderer resizes in hardware using bicubic interpolation...
As does MPC-HC's custom renderer for VMR9 and EVR...

However, can you go into VMR9 mixer mode? What does this EXACTLY do?
It does exactly this... (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms788126(VS.85).aspx) (in short, it's letting DirectShow do the compositioning of video, subtitles and OSD instead of doing it in MPC and/or sending YUV data directly to the graphics card instead of having to convert to RGB in MPC...)

And what do you mean by the 'shaders menu' where I should pick the setting 0-255? I cannot find this in the settings of MPC HC.
Like he said, it's in MPC-HC's menu - "Play > Shaders > ..." (or just "Shaders" if you right-click on the video), if you want to run more than one shader use "Combine...".

np: Gas - Track 5 (Königsforst)

[cyberbeing]

As does MPC-HC's custom renderer for VMR9 and EVR...

Isn't Haali's multipass bicubic still considered better then MPC's singlepass bicubic? Did something change in that respect with MPC-HC? I remember better resizing being one of Haali Renderer's main advantages.

[Martin H]

@Leak

Sorry mate and thanks for the correction. :)

Yeah, as cyberbeing stated, then Haali's Renderer uses two-pass bicubic interpolation for resizing... Also it does colorspace conversion in hardware and has some other small advantages also...

Quote from Haali: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=794290#post794290
What is done differently from other renderers:
* Resizing
* Colorspace conversion
These two above are the things I dislike most of all in stock DS renderers.
* All processing is done on a separate thread, so performance on HT/SMP systems is better, on signle CPU machines it's probably worse.
* Video RAM is used to buffer a lot of decoded frames (amount is adjustable in options).

So the above is why i recomend Haali over VMR9(i myself use overlay mixer because of old/weak GPU)...

I don't really know much about EVR's advantages i must admit, since it's Vista specific and hence not really my cup of tea as a Win2k user(okay it can also run on XP, but i've read that it's not optimal there)

[Leak]

Isn't Haali's multipass bicubic still considered better then MPC's singlepass bicubic? Did something change in that respect with MPC-HC? I remember better resizing being one of Haali Renderer's main advantages.
I don't know what MPC-HC does exactly, but AFAIK the bicubic resizing code for it's custom VMR renderer at one point was pretty much the same as Haali's.

np: Squarepusher - Yes Sequitur (Just A Souvenir)

[Martin H]

Could someone that knows it, then please tell us if MPC-HC's 'VMR9 Renderless' renderer can use two-pass bicubic interpolation for resizing, just like Haali's Renderer does by default?

Just currious :)

[Leak]

Could someone that knows it, then please tell us if MPC-HC's 'VMR9 Renderless' renderer can use two-pass bicubic interpolation for resizing, just like Haali's Renderer does by default?
Actually I meant to write "bicubic" in my last post - I'm not sure how many passes it's using (nor why two-pass should be of higher quality than one-pass), but it definitely does bicubic scaling via shaders.

EDIT: Looking at the MPC-HC code, it calls a method name CDX9AllocatorPresenter::TextureResizeBicubic2pass which falls back to CDX9AllocatorPresenter::TextureResizeBicubic1pass if the hardware doesn't support 2-pass.

(That's the other thing I don't like about Haali's stuff - total lack of source code... :D)

np: Wolfgang Voigt - Das Moor (Gas)

[Martin H]

@Leak

Thanks for the reply, mate!

Yeah, i knew that you meant bicubic before, so i didn't mentioned it...

Anyway, many thanks for the info on MPC-HC now also uses two-pass mode now if supported, but as you say, i don't believe that it affects the quality, but is just supposed to increase performance however...

Quote from Egh: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=793341#post793341
Proper bicubic is supposed to be two-pass process, and as far as I know that's the one of the reasons for a new separate renderer. To simply put it, it wasn't impossible to implement twopass mode via shaders in mpc with VMR9. But, as Haali himself pointed out, that would require some coding from Gabest.... Which he was apparently reluctant to do. To sum up, mpc bicubic resizing in vmr9 mode is supposed to be inferior in speed to Haali renderer (cause in vmr9 it uses single-pass).

Thanks again, mate :)

CU, Martin.

[THX-UltraII]

As for software playback on my HTPC I use Media Player Classic HC with Haali’s Video Renderer (and for .mkv files Core AVC 1.8.5 comes in).

The ‘problem’ I now run into is the so called ‘Luma Range’ in Haali’s Video Renderer (and Input Levels and Output Levels in the Core AVC options). All three (Luma Range, Input Levels and Output Levels) can be set to TV (16-235) or PC (0-255). I do know that it is the color range of the video, but would like to know 2 things:

1. What is the best to pick if you have the ATI HD4350 and a digital projector like me for Luma Range, Input Levels and Output levels?
2. When I select 16-235 the picture that my projector displays becomes more dark and selecting 0-255 makes the picture look more grey and brighter. What should I select?

Thanks for all help!

I use windows XP with sp3 installed on have a ATI HD 4350 video card. My HTPC is connected to my digital projector, the Mitsubishi HC7000 (HDMI out on HD4350 to HDMI1 in on HC7000). I use the latest driver for the 4350, 8.10driver (note that the 8.11 driver does not support the 4350! I ve checked this!).

[THX-UltraII]

what I would like to know is which options will give me better picture quality and blacks and whites (or maybe they are EXACTLY the same!):

1. MPC-HC with the 16-235 -> 0-255 shader and ENHANCED mode for my digital display (0-255 range)
2. MPC-HC without shader and NORMAL mode for my digital display (16-235 range)

In both scenario's the BTB and WTW bars are 'ok' (not seen).

[neoufo51]

- Surface: 3D if you have a modern videocard
- Resizer: Bicubic A=-1.00 (PS 2.0) This one would give you the sharpest picture AFAIK
- YUV mixing: Leave this unchecked (as well as VMR9 mixer mode), since you're not likely to modify renderer controls anyway
- Lock back-buffer: This one is to assist in eliminating tearing ie the jagged image which can happen since monitors refresh the screen much faster than the typical frame rate of video
- Enable build-in audio switcher: Leave it checked.

Oh and if you have an LCD monitor, set the renderer to VMR9 (Renderless) and from the shaders menu pick 16-235 -> 0-255 you'll instantly notice the refined detail in darker areas of the footage.
Thanks for these settings! These eliminated the tearing in my VMR9 playback.