Playback of MP4 video in MPC, blocky...

[ArdenDag]

Howdy all!

I've been searching a solution for this to no avail. It's been a while since I've around in these forums... I am encoding my DVD library, x264 format with MP4 container.

When I play back my video with Media Player Classic, the decoder it uses (whether I use the internal filter in MPC, disable it and change/disable the filters in FFDShow...) it still looks horrible. I get blocky areas in the dark greys/blacks

When I play it back in smplayer it plays fine.

After some research, I figured since my source is clean (dvd rip, fairly HQ encode, with some slight tweaks, 1200 kbps) that the blocking is happening from the playback (especially since the playback from smplayer is fine).

Any idea what my problem is? Is it just the decoder that ffdshow is using isn't deblocking?

Thanks!
Arden

[nurbs]

Blocks in dark areas are pretty normal if your encodes are bad quality. This was an isssue especially before AQ was added to x264. If you denoise the video too much before encoding this can also occur. If you post post your encoding settings, avs script and the x264 revision you use we can probably give advice.
Another possibility is that you turned off inloop deblocking in the decoder, but it's activated by default of course since it is needed to correctly decode the video.

edit: I totally didn't read the first part of your post, sorry, it's late.
In ffdshow under codecs when you select h.264 the "skip deblocking" checkboxes mustn't be ticked. In mpc-hc under the internal filter options for h.264 set "skip deblocking" to default or none.

[ArdenDag]

My encoding should not be the problem, like I said, the video plays absolutely fine in smplayer, but looks blocky in MPC.

Here is a clip using my encoding settings:
(Warning, this is a clip from American History X, lots of not-so-safe-for-family-or-work-language)
American History X - Deleted Scene 2 (http://arden.netfirms.com/AHX-DeletedScene2.mp4)
Also attached is an export of my MeGUI profile

I think my major problem is how MPC is decoding the video.

Thanks for any help you can provide

Arden

[ArdenDag]

In ffdshow, the deblocking checkboxes aren't ticked. I checked that first. Running out of ideas. I am not using the most recent version of MPC (6.4.9.1 unicode build), but if MPC is using ffdshow, it's version shouldn't matter, right? I disabled its internal splitter/filter, so it shows its using ffdshow when I check.

Thanks
Arden

[Inspector.Gadget]

I just downloaded your file. Using the MPC-HC internal decoder (DXVA) with everything on its settings page left to the default and EVR custom renderer, I see no blocking whatsoever on the outdoor night scenes. I think your problem arises from turning off deblocking in your decoder. In order to make MPC use ffdshow, you must make sure that there isn't another H.264 decoder present in your filter chain. What do you see when you go to MPC -> Play ... -> Filters ... with that file open?

[nurbs]

I can see the blocking, but not in the original resolution, only when I go fullscreen on my 1680*1050 monitor. Artefacts are usually much more prominent when you scale up by a lot.
Do the colors look washed out when you play it back in MPC compared to mplayer? If so use the "16-235 -> 0-255 [SD]" shader in MPC. If your build of MPC doesn't support shaders use this one. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145203) Wrong levels happen with some graphics cards and driver combinations and are more often a problem with ATI then with nVidia cards.
Can you post your command line in a CODE box here please. It can take a day or two before attachments get approved.

edit:
I looked at your file with mediainfo and you are using x264 revision 709 to encode. That's almost one and a half years old. It doesn't have AQ, PSY-RD, the improved b-frame decision and it's also slower then the current version. You are missing out on all the quality and speed improvements made in the last year. AQ is especially helpful against blocking and PSY-RD brings a huge quality gain all round.

[ArdenDag]

I actually updated my x264 version after that encode (I updated in MeGUI after), but the encode should still "look ok" I'm going to try your suggestions and come back (getting a little hungry too, LOL) :)

Arden

[ArdenDag]

Here is my command line (I can upload the .zip export to my webserver if preferred).

program --pass 2 --bitrate 1200 --stats ".stats" --ref 5 --no-fast-pskip --bframes 2 --b-pyramid
--weightb --trellis 1 --partitions all --8x8dct --me umh --threads auto --thread-input --progress
--no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input"

After some more poking around (looking for that Luma setting), and looking at the filters, I think part of my problem may have been my video renderer. I switched to Haali's video renderer (and upgraded it to the most recent version), and it comes out much better...

Still going to do some quick testing :)

EDIT: I do think most of my issue was the renderer not using correct luma range. When I switch Haali's range to 16-235 it does drastically change the blocking.

[ArdenDag]

Just for reference (in case someone else has this issue, and searches... ;)), I want to point out that besides not having correct decoding, I was *also* running in 16bit color mode, which made the blocking worse than normal :)

Arden