madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[namaiki]

Originally Posted by reverepink

so i have 2560x1600 30" Dell monitor. what would be the best upscalling method for 720p material? mostly anime. anyone has experience with such setup and can share an opinion?

I'm using spline at the moment as I found that lanczos caused too much ringing to stand out. Haven't "noticed" anything with spine yet.

[dioxholster]

How to activate tearing test? I cant seem to do it with the hotkey and its not available in the context menu. I'm getting tearing between scene transitions, at least i think its tearing. Pixelated vertical lines halfway for a split second with interlaced video forced into film mode. But it could be the video's fault I pretty much get the same thing with wmp. Is there anyway to get rid of it? Oh and im using old path, since the normal one gets glitches.

[6233638]

Originally Posted by reverepink

so i have 2560x1600 30" Dell monitor. what would be the best upscalling method for 720p material? mostly anime. anyone has experience with such setup and can share an opinion?

I have done extensive testing with upscaling content, and I would suggest:

Chroma Upscaling: Mitchell-Netravali. This is objectively better than all other scaling algorithms in most test cases. The other option would be Bicubic 75, which handles fine details better, but can exhibit ringing.

Luma Upscaling: This is based on personal preference. My preference is to have as little ringing or aliasing as possible, which I feel is doubly important with animated content.

So personally, I use SoftCubic 80. It is soft, but it avoids exaggerating any artefacts in the source, or adding any of its own.

From softest to sharpest, I would say that the viable options are:

• SoftCubic 80
• SoftCubic 50
• Mitchell-Netravali
• Bicubic 75
• Spline 3
• Lanczos 3

And of those, I would suggest choosing from SoftCubic 80 (soft) Mitchell-Netravali (aliasing) or Bicubic 75 (ringing) depending on your preference for sharpness, and tolerance for ringing/aliasing, as I feel that those three are the best "balanced" choices. (spline/lanczos add unwatchable levels of ringing in my opinion)

For a more detailed comparison with example images, see this post. (it was done before Bicubic 100 was introduced, but there's far too much ringing with it)

[BatKnight]

6233638, if the scenario would be upsampling 720p to a 46" screen at 1920x1080 would your recommendations be the same? The content would be movies and not anime, in this case.

Thanks
Bat

[6233638]

Originally Posted by BatKnight

6233638, if the scenario would be upsampling 720p to a 46" screen at 1920x1080 would your recommendations be the same? The content would be movies and not anime, in this case.

Thanks
Bat

Personally, I haven't found much reason to use different filters for animated/live action content, or scaling DVDs/720p footage to 1080p or greater, but I do find that animated content tends to highlight ringing artefacts more than films.

At the end of the day though, scaling algorithms are all down to personal preference, but any of the options that haven't been listed in my previous post, are objectively worse and shouldn't be used in my opinion. (because there are better options that give you a similar look with less negative effects)

[Asmodian]

Originally Posted by 6233638

I have done extensive testing with upscaling content, and I would suggest:

Chroma Upscaling: Mitchell-Netravali. This is objectively better than all other scaling algorithms in most test cases. The other option would be Bicubic 75, which handles fine details better, but can exhibit ringing.

Luma Upscaling: This is based on personal preference. My preference is to have as little ringing or aliasing as possible, which I feel is doubly important with animated content.

So personally, I use SoftCubic 80. It is soft, but it avoids exaggerating any artefacts in the source, or adding any of its own.

I think you swapped chroma and luma? SoftCubic 80 is way too soft for luma in my opinion. Why would you need Mitchell-Netravali for chroma but softcubic 80 for luma? Chroma has more issues with artifacts in the source in my experience.

Most people like the sharpness and do not notice the ringing from the sharper resizes but I do agree that once you start noticing ringing it is very unpleasant, especially with animated content. A 3 tap spline doesn't ring too much and I like the sharpness but it is also pretty close to Mitchell-Netravali or bicubic 75.

All the resizers offer tradeoffs and there really isn't an "objectively better" one.

[marsovac]

Is it possible somehow to use madVR by feeding it with a custom presenter interface?

Or at least register some callbacks which get called with the new surface for each frame?

A quick look at the interfaces seem not to have anything.

It actually impedes me from using madVR in my player which presents surfaces on a Direct3D image used as a imagesource in WPF.

WPF is part of .NET (managed world), so to transparently feed it with video while preserving speed surfaces are passed for drawing to the GPU through the native-managed barrier.

For VMR and EVR this is not a problem (allocator/custom presenter)...

For the EVR presenter I'm using feeding the renderer with the following callback:

public int PresentSurfaceCB(IntPtr pSurface)

I would like to do something similar with madVR.

Right now I can use it only with it popping out his own window / no integration with the player

[6233638]

Originally Posted by Asmodian

I think you swapped chroma and luma? SoftCubic 80 is way too soft for luma in my opinion. Why would you need Mitchell-Netravali for chroma but softcubic 80 for luma? Chroma has more issues with artifacts in the source in my experience.

Most people like the sharpness and do not notice the ringing from the sharper resizes but I do agree that once you start noticing ringing it is very unpleasant, especially with animated content. A 3 tap spline doesn't ring too much and I like the sharpness but it is also pretty close to Mitchell-Netravali or bicubic 75.

It wasn't a mistake. Mitchell-Netravali or Bicubic 75 are the only acceptable choices for chroma scaling from my testing. Anything which is softer than MN desaturates the image (particularly fine details) and anything sharper than Bicubic 75 adds too much ringing. SoftCubic is not at all suitable for chroma due to this desaturation, and compression is usually less of an issue with chroma so much as it is noise. (something SoftCubic may reduce, but in the most destructive way possible)

I fully expect most people to dislike SoftCubic 70/80 for Luma scaling, but it avoids adding any ringing to the source, or exaggerating compression artefacts, without blurring detail. After watching content for a while with it, I don't notice the softness, but rather, I can focus on the image. with other scaling algorithms, I am always noticing ringing or aliasing which is distracting me from watching the content itself.

If you prefer sharpness but can tolerate some aliasing, Mitchell-Netravali would be my recommendation for scaling, or if you want sharpness without aliasing, and can tolerate some ringing, then it would be Bicubic 75. Anything sharper (Spline 3 or Lanczos 3) adds considerable ringing for little benefit in my opinion. (there is no more detail to be brought out from the source, you're just exaggerating the edges)

Originally Posted by Asmodian

All the resizers offer tradeoffs and there really isn't an "objectively better" one.

I have to disagree. Any of the other options have similar levels of sharpness, aliasing or ringing to one of the algorithms on my shortlist, but are considerably worse in one (or more) of the three. Catmull-Rom is a poor choice due to (if I remember correctly) high levels of aliasing and quite a bit of ringing. Bicubic 75 or Mitchell-Netravali are objectively better due to similar levels of sharpness, but considerably less aliasing, or ringing, respectively.

[jmone]

There is also a performance advatange to use Mitchell-Netravali over Tap based scalers such as Lanczos. On an Intel i72600K (iGPU 3000) I drop frames using Tap based scalers but it is fine with Mitchell-Netravali

[G_M_C]

Originally Posted by 6233638

It wasn't a mistake. Mitchell-Netravali or Bicubic 75 are the only acceptable choices for chroma scaling from my testing. Anything which is softer than MN desaturates the image (particularly fine details) and anything sharper than Bicubic 75 adds too much ringing. SoftCubic is not at all suitable for chroma due to this desaturation, and compression is usually less of an issue with chroma so much as it is noise. (something SoftCubic may reduce, but in the most destructive way possible)

I fully expect most people to dislike SoftCubic 70/80 for Luma scaling, but it avoids adding any ringing to the source, or exaggerating compression artefacts, without blurring detail. After watching content for a while with it, I don't notice the softness, but rather, I can focus on the image. with other scaling algorithms, I am always noticing ringing or aliasing which is distracting me from watching the content itself.

If you prefer sharpness but can tolerate some aliasing, Mitchell-Netravali would be my recommendation for scaling, or if you want sharpness without aliasing, and can tolerate some ringing, then it would be Bicubic 75. Anything sharper (Spline 3 or Lanczos 3) adds considerable ringing for little benefit in my opinion. (there is no more detail to be brought out from the source, you're just exaggerating the edges)

I have to disagree. Any of the other options have similar levels of sharpness, aliasing or ringing to one of the algorithms on my shortlist, but are considerably worse in one (or more) of the three. Catmull-Rom is a poor choice due to (if I remember correctly) high levels of aliasing and quite a bit of ringing. Bicubic 75 or Mitchell-Netravali are objectively better due to similar levels of sharpness, but considerably less aliasing, or ringing, respectively.

I recognise the above; I use M-N for both luma and chroma. I found the softcubic 70/80 too soft, just as you describe.

I than sought an alternative for softcubic 70/80, that introduced as less artifacts as possible, but was sharper. I ended up with M-N for both chroma and luma, just as you description.

But a question though: Do you use the 'scale in linear light' parameter ?

[Qaq]

Originally Posted by G_M_C

But a question though: Do you use the 'scale in linear light' parameter ?

Originally Posted by 6233638

I would not recommend using linear light upscaling at all

But you better read the whole post carefully.

[ryrynz]

There's already been enough talk about the resizing algorithms in this thread to cover almost anybody's questions.

[ajp_anton]

Originally Posted by Ihmemies

How it is configured then? In MPC-HC all Renderer settings on the right click menu are grayed out.

Edit: seems it was hidden in filters->madvr->edit settings. Very logical :S

Edit2: I was mainly interested in madvr because of the adjustable resizing stuff, very handy when 99,999% of material is below my display's resolution - so decent quality upscaling is a must.

Hey, why ask how to configure it when you've already stated that it can't be configured.
And despite decent upscaling being *a must*, the renderer is still useless. Guess you can never watch movies then.

Just saying, you have some weird first posts on this site...

[Hypernova]

Finally got my 3570K working (Asus forgot to put a jumper in RTC Clock reset, made me unable to power it up. Spend half a day before I tried put one from an old hdd.)

From my initial test, Intel HD4000 handle madVR (chroma: softcubic, luma: spline 3 taps) just fine. I tried 1920x1080@23.976p to 2560x1600@60Hz and having no problem. Now I have no need for discrete graphic aside from gaming. Idle power consumption drop from ~75w to 40w as well. This is nice.

[Plutotype]

Originally Posted by Hypernova

Finally got my 3570K working (Asus forgot to put a jumper in RTC Clock reset, made me unable to power it up. Spend half a day before I tried put one from an old hdd.)

From my initial test, Intel HD4000 handle madVR (chroma: softcubic, luma: spline 3 taps) just fine. I tried 1920x1080@23.976p to 2560x1600@60Hz and having no problem. Now I have no one for discrete graphic aside from gaming. Idle power consumption drop from ~75w to 40w as well. This is nice.

Thanks for the info

[pankov]

Originally Posted by Hypernova

Finally got my 3570K working (Asus forgot to put a jumper in RTC Clock reset, made me unable to power it up. Spend half a day before I tried put one from an old hdd.)

From my initial test, Intel HD4000 handle madVR (chroma: softcubic, luma: spline 3 taps) just fine. I tried 1920x1080@23.976p to 2560x1600@60Hz and having no problem. Now I have no one for discrete graphic aside from gaming. Idle power consumption drop from ~75w to 40w as well. This is nice.

Hypernova,
can you please try some high bitrate 720p 60Hz content both in software and quick sync decode modes?
Is the HD4000 enough?
btw which Asus board are you using? I plan to rebuild my bedroom HTPC and was hoping to avoid the need for a standalone graphics card.

[nevcairiel]

720p60 content works, as long as you don't use the QuickSync decoder. Combining it with madVR is too much for the GPU.

[Hypernova]

Originally Posted by pankov

Hypernova,
can you please try some high bitrate 720p 60Hz content both in software and quick sync decode modes?
Is the HD4000 enough?
btw which Asus board are you using? I plan to rebuild my bedroom HTPC and was hoping to avoid the need for a standalone graphics card.

If you read nevcairiel comment but still want me to try anyway, send me a clip. I don't think I have any 60p video in my collection.
I use P8Z77-V LK, since it's the cheapest Z77 board with DisplayPort available when I shop.

Edit: I tried the Avatar60p clip from the other thread (1080p) and indeed as nevcairiel said, if you use QS+madVR I got drop frames. Not sure if overclocking GPU+Ram will help.

[jmone]

Originally Posted by Hypernova

...., if you use QS+madVR I got drop frames.

I use QS+madVR just fine on a i72600K-3000 with 50/60fps material under Exclusive Mode with just two changes:
- Scaling: Mtichell-Netravali look agread and are less resource intensive than the tap based ones
- Exxclusive mode settings: "run presentation in a seperate thread"

Not dropped frame in sight!

[Hypernova]

Originally Posted by jmone

I use QS+madVR just fine on a i72600K-3000 with 50/60fps material under Exclusive Mode with just two changes:
- Scaling: Mtichell-Netravali look agread and are less resource intensive than the tap based ones
- Exxclusive mode settings: "run presentation in a seperate thread"

Not dropped frame in sight!

Well, it's fine at 1920x1080 (ie. no luma scaling) with my choice of resizer, but my monitor is 2560x1600 which at that point it drops frame. Good suggestion though. I probably won't do it personally since I mostly watch anime, and a little sharpness is good IMO.