madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[Jong]

Thanks Madshi, maybe we are talking of different things I am not sure. But TMT and PDVD both are able to use "Overlay over EVR" - not the old style Overlay, but maybe not your W7 special either I am honestly not sure - and they work with AMD as well as NVidia. The method they use also used to work via VMR9 too. It was Arcsoft support who first used the term "Overlay over EVR" to describe what they were doing.

And thanks for clearing up your intentions regarding FSE and overlay modes. Sounds like FSE is still the way to go for guaranteed smooth playback.

[cyberbeing]

Originally Posted by madshi

If not, you should get a crash report again (media player will be stuck again). Please send me the crash report *and* a debug log from the same situation then. Thanks!

Here you go:
http://www.mediafire.com/?2ztgv6cil2rt4oa

Originally Posted by Budtz

It seems to be working. i tried 20 switches now in FSE mode. seems to be working now

The madVRbudtz build works for me in FSE as well, but it seems to have a side-effect which causes opening, switching, and reloading videos to take a few seconds longer than normal.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Jong

Thanks Madshi, maybe we are talking of different things I am not sure. But TMT and PDVD both are able to use "Overlay over EVR" - not the old style Overlay, but maybe not your W7 special either I am honestly not sure - and they work with AMD as well as NVidia. The method they use also used to work via VMR9 too. It was Arcsoft support who first used the term "Overlay over EVR" to describe what they were doing.

I'm not sure what they're doing exactly. Maybe their way of using Overlay only works in protected mode? Maybe it's the one and only way protected mode works? That would make kinda sense because using Overlay makes it easier to block screenshots etc.

[Pat357]

Originally Posted by madshi

Can you describe this in a bit more detail, please?

You mean the video is not updated? Or the window is not updated? Which zoom setting are you using? Does the problem only occur when downsizing the video window or also when upsizing? It's too bad that screenshots don't work with Overlay. It would be so much easier for me to understand what you mean with a screenshot...

You could make a very short video fragment using Fraps or MSI Afterburner (=free).
Small video fragments have the additional benefit that you can capture things that go away fast (ie. that showing only during a very short time.)

[Pat357]

Wooow, this v0.83.2 is even better :

- Windows resizing looks better (no black windows anymore) and is faster when using the mouse the resize.

- On exiting the player MPC-HC/Potplayer are reacting instantaneous.

Overlay is going to be my default setting as it seems very stable, very fast and goes perfect together with the players's OSD (J.River full screen OSD, Potplayer FS OSD)
I used FSE before, but this didn't go to well together with the Players's OSD.
Overlay is like the best of 2 worlds !!
--
Nvidia GTX-570 / /Latest WHQL 306.23 driver / CPU: i7-Hexacore 970 @3.9GHz / Win7 SP1 all updates

[madshi]

@cyberbeing and @Budtz,

could you please try this build?

http://madshi.net/madVR83anotherTest.rar

Freeze still gone? @cyber, crash gone, too?

[cyberbeing]

So far, so good. That build may have resolved both problems. Opening, switching, and reloading videos is fast again as well.

One small glitch which causes the OSD to show unrealistic 268435456-0 queue values when first opening videos, but that's probably harmless.

[madshi]

Is that glitch reproduceable? Which queue(s) show that values? All of them?

[cyberbeing]

All queues, and it's reproducible most of the time. It goes away as soon as the queues begin to fill.

Correction: The video starts playing while it shows the glitched queues for ~1 second, then it shows empty queues for ~1 second, at which point it jumps directly to showing the queues completely full and functioning normally. As far as I can tell it's a purely cosmetic OSD issue, which doesn't have any effect on playback.

[Budtz]

yup workin here too. and faster opening of videos as well it seems.

[cyberbeing]

It turns out the same queue glitch issue exists in the normal 0.83.2 release build, so it has nothing to do with your recent changes in these test builds.

If I enable 'delay playback start' it follows the same pattern, except it shows 0-0 instead of 268435456-0 during the first step.

Edit: The queue OSD glitch appears to have been introduced in madVR 0.83.0

[madshi]

madVR v0.83.3 released

http://madshi.net/madVR.zip

* maybe fixed: shutdown freezes in certain situations with MPC-HC
* fixed: shutdown crash
* fixed: glitch in the debug OSD
* improved "look" when moving Overlay window with Aero on

[ajp_anton]

Uh, the new seekbar looks horrible, I liked it when it was small =).
Though I also like the timer. Any chance to get a small pop-up when hovering over the seekbar showing the time for that position?
And of course a size option... you should add a new category for appearance options.

[madshi]

Haha, I guess I can't please everybody. Many people asked for a bigger seekbar. And the small bar had no place for a timer. Anyway, many things in madVR are currently not in their final form or state. I don't want to add customization options for something that's not in its final form yet, so that will have to wait...

A popup would be difficult to implement. Possible yes, but no time for that at the moment.

[6233638]

Originally Posted by madshi

(2) The new option "disable GPU gamma ramps" seems to work only in fullscreen exclusive mode. Is that what you guys need? Or do you need/want madVR to disable the gamma ramps in windowed mode, too?

I do not currently have my display calibrated using an ICC profile (normally I would) but I assume that this feature essentially clears the GPU LUT table/calibration so that it does not interfere with madVR's 3DLUT calibration. Is it restored after playback?

Originally Posted by madshi

(3) I've tried to improve the anti-ringing quality further compared to the last test build, but I have been unable to do so. So this build is identical in quality to the last test build. I might look into providing a higher quality option in a future build, which will probably consume quite a bit more GPU power, though.

I regret being unable to help test this for the last month or so. I had to RMA some faulty PC parts, which ended up being one thing leading to another, taking over a month, and I have only just received everything back now. I am still encountering some issues which requires my PSU to go back along with some other hardware though so I will be gone for another few weeks shortly, and still won't have a chance to properly evaluate things in the near future. Other than the video card, basically everything has has been replaced in trying to track down the cause of my issues - if I had known it would be this long, I would have bought new hardware and sold the returned RMA parts.

Originally Posted by madshi

(1) Does it work well for you? (need feedback from all AMD, NVidia and Intel users)

Seems to work well for me (GTX570) as I had not been able to eliminate frame drops in windowed mode for the longest time now.

Originally Posted by madshi

(2) Do you think it should be enabled or disabled by default?

As far as video smoothness and performance is concerned, it definitely seems better. Resizing is perhaps slightly worse, but resizing wasn't great before anyway.

Old windowed mode: frame pauses and is resized with the window.
Windowed overlay: frame pauses and window resizes over the image, with the image being updated only when resizing stops.


Assuming there are no colour/calibration issues (something I don't have the time to check right now) what I'm wondering now, is whether it's worth using Windowed Overlay instead of Fullscreen Exclusive? Going fullscreen with Windowed Overlay is much quicker than switching to Fullscreen Exclusive if you don't need to change refresh rate (30p at 60Hz) and it seems to perform well, avoid tearing/dropped frames.

Originally Posted by madshi

(4) Is there anybody who still needs the "old exclusive mode path" (which is what you get when enabling exclusive mode and disabling the option "prerender multiple frames in advance")? I'm asking because I'd like to remove the old exclusive mode path.

Nvidia's WHQL drivers have been able to work around the presentation glitches for a while now, and the latest drivers now seem to work without any changes from the madVR defaults, so I'd have no issue with it being removed.


Thanks for adding the times to the seekbar in fullscreen exclusive mode. It's been so long now that I had gotten used to it, but it's very nice to have it back.
I'm not keen on the appearance of the big seekbar now, but that's only a minor cosmetic issue.

I have run into a strange issue when evaluating Windows 8 though. madVR is only switching to 59.94 and 23.976 in Fullscreen Exclusive mode, not 60.0 and 24.0 as specified. It reports that it is running at 60/24 on the desktop in the new windowed overlay mode though.

Also: none of the current workarounds to get DVD playback working with madVR seem to be working for me on Windows 8 so I am getting Macrovision errors again. I realise this is a low priority issue for you though.

Originally Posted by Keiyakusha

by the way I found microsoft's images used for calibration to be low quality and inacurate... there is similar tests that give me quite better results
for example this image is better than their circles which makes my eyes bleed http://i.imgur.com/EB4hT.gif
when you go far enough from display so you no longer can distinguish black and white lines - square should be exactly the same color as area around it.

This type of test is completely inaccurate on flat panel displays. (and barely accurate on CRTs)

Originally Posted by n3w813

See the color tracking of my TV below. Is there anyway I can use tools(?) or manually build a 3DLUT to be used in MadVR to fix the non-linear saturation points of the primaries and secondaries?

http://www.avsforum.com/content/type/61/id/67453/

I don't see any reason why the yCMS 3DLUT format shouldn't be able to correct this, other than it not offering the controls required to create a suitable LUT.

[Budtz]

Originally Posted by madshi

madVR v0.83.3 released

http://madshi.net/madVR.zip

* maybe fixed: shutdown freezes in certain situations with MPC-HC
* fixed: shutdown crash
* fixed: glitch in the debug OSD
* improved "look" when moving Overlay window with Aero on

seems this version works for me. nice work thx. Would be nice if it was possible to get freezes when opening closing switching videos 100% stable. but maube mpc-hc is buggy?

also what does that gamma ramp setting do? when is it usefull and when should it be disabled?

[Shii]

I remember this problem from some time ago. It was a bug in an old ZP version and got fixed a long time ago. I don't think this is likely to be a madVR bug. But Blight would have to comment on that?

Fixed with latest 0.83.3 build. Thanks!

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Budtz

Would be nice if it was possible to get freezes when opening closing switching videos 100% stable.

Thought this was stable for you now?

Originally Posted by Budtz

also what does that gamma ramp setting do? when is it usefull and when should it be disabled?

It's only useful if you have calibrated your display by using an ICC profile or some of the OS calibration functionality.

Originally Posted by Shii

Fixed with latest 0.83.3 build. Thanks!

Oh, I'm surprised about that. But good to hear...

[mark0077]

madshi, using the new 0.83.3. I got a popup just now as I was testing it for the first time, asking did I want to send the bug report but it wouldn't send so I clicked on close program. I don't see any log on the desktop.

mpc-hc is set to go to fullscreen (madVR FSE) immediately, but as the video was starting to play I double clicked to try to get it into windowed overlay mode, and then this immediately happened. Is going from FSE to overlay windowed known to be like this or is it useful for me to turn on debugging and try to reproduce and send on? This is nVidia GTX 295 with the latest WHQL drivers.

EDIT: Yeah starting a clip immediately into fullscreen exclusive, and as its loading, going to windowed overlay I can reproduce every time now by the looks of it. Is this something you can reproduce an issue with on your end. Otherwise I can send on anything thats of help.

[madshi]

A crash report (press Ctrl+C to get it into the clipboard) plus a matching debug log would help. Thanks!