madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[jmonier]

Originally Posted by madshi

I've very carefully implemented the network protocol according to specification, of course with full handshake and stuff. I've also had this all tested by an X500 user and he had no problems at all.

I'm sending 0x21 0x89 0x01 0x50 0x57 0x31 0x0A (after handshake) to turn the projector on. Do you send something different?

That's exactly what I send

After you've sent your power on command, do you wait for a reply from the projector? (You should.)

My software ALWAYS waits for an acknowledgement before sending the next command in the queue.

Well, as I said, a logic bug could be involved, too. Can you confirm (once more) that my test tool works perfectly and 100% reliable (!!) if you turn your projector on via remote? And at the same time madVR does *not* work correctly under the same circumstances? If you can confirm that, I'll spend some time to add logging to madVR, so we can see what madVR tried to do (and why), and whether it succeeded or not. Don't want to invest that time before getting 100% confirmation about the test tool working perfectly. Because if the test tool doesn't work perfectly reliable, either, then it's hard to be sure where a specific problem comes from, and logging would not help.

Here's what I did:

Shut down everything and unplugged the JVC to reset it. Shut down my control program completely.

Started up everything locally starting with the projector then Denon and finally computer.

Started Zoomplayer (via mouse) then used the keyboard to start a 2.39 video playing. Auto zoom did NOT work and no pause. (At this point madVr should have been the only thing controlling the JVC via TCPIP or RS232 since it was plugged in).

Tried your test program at this point and it did NOT work (reported "emergency" for power state).

Shut down computer, it still did not work.

Shut down Denon and the test program started working.

Powered up Denon and computer, test program still working.

Started up Zoomplayer to the point where the next keystroke would start the video, test program still working.

Started the video, auto zoom did NOT work and no pause.

The test program was still working after this.

Are you confused? I certainly am.

I'd already written a JVC simulator that works 100% with your test tool. It is not connected to the projector, but it does report power on correctly. I've then run my system normally with madVR pointed to the simulator.

What happens is this:

I play a video that should activate a different lens memory so I can be sure that madVR should do something.

The first time I play the video, madVR sends a Power Inquiry (PW) followed by INML2. It also pauses the video, but it never comes out of pause. Is it expecting any response other than an acknowledgement of each command and a Power On response from the inquiry?

If I then stop playback and then restart it, it does nothing (no pause, no PW, no INML2). If I close the player and then restart it, it will work as above once (but only once).

It seems from this that it's expecting some other response that the test tool doesn't check for.

I'm wondering if the only way this will work reliably is if I get the simulator to work correctly with madVR and then use it as an interface between madVR and my JVC control program. What do you think?

[agustin9]

Originally Posted by madshi

At least some screenshots would be nice, so that I could see what you're talking about.

Ok, here they are...

xysubfilter - 0 bottom margin:


internal mpc - 0 bottom margin:


xysubfilter - 20 bottom margin:


internal mpc - 20 bottom margin:


xysubfilter - 60 bottom margin:


internal mpc - 60 bottom margin:


On xysubfilter is always at the same position, I even tried some high numbers like 150...

[6233638]

When switching from D3D11 windowed to 10-bit FSE mode, I just had a video start flickering frames back-and-forth, which I think is the first time I've seen that happen on Windows 8.1 - at least in recent memory.
Smooth Motion was not on, as the video was 30 fps at 60Hz.
So whatever changed recently does not seem to have fixed it and may in fact have caused this issue to appear on my system.
If nothing else, I can say that it is infrequent as this is the first time that I've seen it happen so far.

I actually have had a number of issues when switching between FSW and FSE modes ever since D3D11 was introduced, which I think I mentioned at the time (black screens, frames dropping until I do another switch between FSW/FSE, exclusive mode failing) but have not had the time to fully investigate them as I have been unable to reliably reproduce any of them.

[nijiko]

Originally Posted by CiNcH

The problems got pretty severe after 0.88.16 with the introduction of Stop/Pause rendering. DXVA errors, crashes, freezes...

Me too, when use DXVA, pausing or resizing may cause black screen or red screen for a while (a few frame). But it doesn't affect using.

[CiNcH]

Yeah, this is being reported by several Intel users. Unfortunately my HD4000 doesn't show this problem, for some weird reason. Might depend on the OS and GPU driver, I'm not sure. I'll probably get an Intel laptop sooner or later and hope to be able to reproduce the problem then.

I am still using Windows 7 (32-Bit) on my TV PC to prevent potential driver issues. Intel GPU drivers I tried several. Currently I am on the latest official one.

I might move to Windows 10 soon though.

[dansrfe]

I'm confused by the bar chart comparison between super-xbr and NNEDI3 for chroma upscaling.

It seems as if super-xbr is superior in all parameters and faster compared to NNEDI3. Is this true? Are there other parameters which influence the quality of scaling which are not shown in the chart?

[madshi]

Originally Posted by aufkrawall

I did a quick search and found this image:
http://www.shaderhacker.com/wp-conte...2-08-39-58.png
It looks extremely different when linear light downscaling is used or not.

Looks somewhat psychedelic. Might be a test candidate, but I think it would be better to use a screenshot from Mononoke or some other Anime Blu-Ray. And then in addition to that some image where there are also white lines.

Originally Posted by DigitalLF

Only thing missing now would be to be able to move the search bar and OSD into active picture area!

It's already there! Check the option "move OSD into active video area" in the screen config page. It affects the madVR fullscreen exclusive mode seekbar, and *tries* to move other OSD elements, too. But depending on which media player you're using, it may or may not affect the media player's OSD. If your media player's OSD does not react to this option, please complain to the media player devs. I've written a PDF for them that explains how they can make it work:

http://madshi.net/89notesForDevs.pdf

Originally Posted by DigitalLF

and "Go back to 16:9 on exit".

Maybe later.

Originally Posted by DigitalLF

When i start a movie and go into fullscreen mode and exit fullscreen back to window mode and then try to go back into fullscreen mode again the movie plays very wierdly ut stutters until i reopen in the same file in MPC-HC BE is it MadVR or a MPC-HC BE related?

Please create a debug log for this problem. For the debug log, please reproduce this problem, then let it stutter for 20 seconds, then close the media player immediately (Alt+F4) without switching to windowed mode again, or doing anything else.

Originally Posted by jmonier

Here's what I did:

Shut down everything and unplugged the JVC to reset it. Shut down my control program completely.

Started up everything locally starting with the projector then Denon and finally computer.

Started Zoomplayer (via mouse) then used the keyboard to start a 2.39 video playing. Auto zoom did NOT work and no pause. (At this point madVr should have been the only thing controlling the JVC via TCPIP or RS232 since it was plugged in).

Tried your test program at this point and it did NOT work (reported "emergency" for power state).

Shut down computer, it still did not work.

Shut down Denon and the test program started working.

Powered up Denon and computer, test program still working.

Started up Zoomplayer to the point where the next keystroke would start the video, test program still working.

Started the video, auto zoom did NOT work and no pause.

The test program was still working after this.

Are you confused? I certainly am.

I'd already written a JVC simulator that works 100% with your test tool. It is not connected to the projector, but it does report power on correctly. I've then run my system normally with madVR pointed to the simulator.

What happens is this:

I play a video that should activate a different lens memory so I can be sure that madVR should do something.

The first time I play the video, madVR sends a Power Inquiry (PW) followed by INML2. It also pauses the video, but it never comes out of pause. Is it expecting any response other than an acknowledgement of each command and a Power On response from the inquiry?

If I then stop playback and then restart it, it does nothing (no pause, no PW, no INML2). If I close the player and then restart it, it will work as above once (but only once).

It seems from this that it's expecting some other response that the test tool doesn't check for.

I'm wondering if the only way this will work reliably is if I get the simulator to work correctly with madVR and then use it as an interface between madVR and my JVC control program. What do you think?

Thanks!

Writing a simulator sounds like a lot of work. And it would only make it work for you, but not for other X500 users. Still wondering why the other X500 user had no problems at all, though.

Anyway, wouldn't it make more sense to use a network sniffer like e.g. WireShark to compare how our two tools differ? E.g. in the situation in which my tool doesn't work, you could capture my network traffic, and yours. There should be a noticable difference then.

Or we could also exchange source code for the ip config stuff. Maybe you can see something wrong in my code, or I can see something I've missed in your code?

My tool does wait for a reply when changing lens memories. With my X35 this reply comes with many seconds delay, exactly when the activation of the lens memory has completed. This is very nice because it tells me exactly when the lens memory activation has completed. I'm using that to pause and resume video playback at exactly the right times. Works perfectly here. I suppose maybe the X500 behaves differently there? Would be strange, though, the network protocol is pretty clear about what should be sent by either side...

Originally Posted by agustin9

Ok, here they are...

On xysubfilter is always at the same position, I even tried some high numbers like 150...

Ah, thanks, I see what you mean!

The bottom margin option is a private subtitle renderer value which madVR doesn't know about. But the moving of the subtitles is done by madVR, so madVR doesn't use that "bottom margin" option because it doesn't even know it exists, or which value it's set to.

Are you not happy with madVR's positioning? Looking at your screenshots, I think the madVR position is by far the best one. Do you find it too high or too low?

Originally Posted by 6233638

When switching from D3D11 windowed to 10-bit FSE mode, I just had a video start flickering frames back-and-forth, which I think is the first time I've seen that happen on Windows 8.1 - at least in recent memory.
Smooth Motion was not on, as the video was 30 fps at 60Hz.
So whatever changed recently does not seem to have fixed it and may in fact have caused this issue to appear on my system.
If nothing else, I can say that it is infrequent as this is the first time that I've seen it happen so far.

I actually have had a number of issues when switching between FSW and FSE modes ever since D3D11 was introduced, which I think I mentioned at the time (black screens, frames dropping until I do another switch between FSW/FSE, exclusive mode failing) but have not had the time to fully investigate them as I have been unable to reliably reproduce any of them.

If you find a way to reliably reproduce this issue, please let me know.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by CiNcH

I am still using Windows 7 (32-Bit) on my TV PC to prevent potential driver issues. Intel GPU drivers I tried several. Currently I am on the latest official one.

I might move to Windows 10 soon though.

I'll try the latest driver, maybe I can reproduce it then. I will probably move my dev PC to Windows 10 sooner or later, too.

Originally Posted by dansrfe

I'm confused by the bar chart comparison between super-xbr and NNEDI3 for chroma upscaling.

It seems as if super-xbr is superior in all parameters and faster compared to NNEDI3. Is this true? Are there other parameters which influence the quality of scaling which are not shown in the chart?

The size of the "ringing" bar is probably misleading. The difference in ringing is bigger than that bar suggests. Also NNEDI3 produces rather nice thin lines, while super-xbr produces thicker lines, which is not visible in any of the bars. Overall I consider NNEDI3 superior in image quality. Mainly due to lower ringing and producing thinner lines.

[ionutm80]

Originally Posted by madshi

Yeah, this is being reported by several Intel users. Unfortunately my HD4000 doesn't show this problem, for some weird reason. Might depend on the OS and GPU driver, I'm not sure. I'll probably get an Intel laptop sooner or later and hope to be able to reproduce the problem then.

Hi Madshi, can you share with us what are your settings for HD4000 or point me to a thread where you already did that?

Thanks a lot in advance.

[CiNcH]

I'll try the latest driver, maybe I can reproduce it then. I will probably move my dev PC to Windows 10 sooner or later, too.

I also still have the problem with way higher GPU usage compared to EVR when purely using DXVA and other enhancements disabled (dithering a.s.o.). So something is for sure different.

Do you have Windows 7 on that machine or Windows 8/8.1?

[madshi]

Originally Posted by ionutm80

Hi Madshi, can you share with us what are your settings for HD4000 or point me to a thread where you already did that?

I don't have any specific settings for HD4000. I'm changing settings all the time, depending on what problems users are reporting.

Originally Posted by CiNcH

I also still have the problem with way higher GPU usage compared to EVR when purely using DXVA and other enhancements disabled (dithering a.s.o.). So something is for sure different.

Do you have Windows 7 on that machine or Windows 8/8.1?

Windows 8.1 x64. Do you have the Windows 7 Platform Update installed?

[CiNcH]

Windows 8.1 x64. Do you have the Windows 7 Platform Update installed?

I don't even know what it is. But I will do some research on it . I think the Windows version is indeed the key to all that.

[madshi]

Yep, I also think the OS is key, although I've seen some Windows 7 users report same GPU consumption as EVR, while others have much higher GPU consumption when using madVR. But so far all reports from Windows 8.1 users seem to indicate similar GPU usage to EVR.

[ionutm80]

@madshi
But from your testing so far what would be the best bang for buck with this Intel iGPUs (especially Ivy HD4000, Haswell HD44000 - seems similar in performance though after reading several tests on the net)? For the moment I have the following:

- DXVA Copy-Back in LAV Video
- debanding: off
- image enhancements: none
- Chroma: Bicubic 75 AR (although in "trade quality for performance" I have also checked "use DXVA chroma upscaling ...")
- Image Up: DXVA
- Luma Doubling: None
- Image Down: DXVA
- general settings: enable automatic fullscreen mode, use a separate device for presentation checked
- queues size: default (16 CPU, 8 GPU)
- windowed mode: 3 frames presented in advance
- exclusive mode: 4 frames presented in advance
- smooth motion: off
- dithering: none (ordered dithering set in LAV Decoder)
- trade quality for performance: first 6 options checked up to "don't analyze gradient angles for debanding"

OS: Win 10
Target: 1920x1080, 23,976 Blu-Ray rips and 720x576, 25,000 DVD rips

Thanks a lot for your time and apologize in advance for insisting.

[SweetLow]

Originally Posted by madshi

Yep, I also think the OS is key, although I've seen some Windows 7 users report same GPU consumption as EVR, while others have much higher GPU consumption when using madVR.

Win 7 x86+HD2500 / Win 7 x64+HD4000 - with completely disabled madVR processing results of madVR vs EVR in FS are nearly equal. More to say, on first system with DX11 FS Exclusive madVR consumption is lower then EVR FS (21% vs 25% for example). But in window mode the things are different
P.S. One near question - can we have different paths in FS Exclusive vs other modes? For example DX11 in FS Exclusive and DX9+overlay in other?

[aufkrawall]

Originally Posted by madshi

Looks somewhat psychedelic. Might be a test candidate, but I think it would be better to use a screenshot from Mononoke or some other Anime Blu-Ray. And then in addition to that some image where there are also white lines.

This one is nasty:
http://image1.masterfile.com/getImag...hite-lines.jpg
I think it's clear that gamma correct boosts white lines and linear light black ones (not high enough resolution for a ground truth comparison, unfortunately).
Those low-res line pictures also show strong differences when changing the radius. When upscaling the images with NNEDI3, it seems to filter away the aliasing, which SuperRes of course reintroduces. Now question is, is a radius of 0.66 closest to the source in terms of aliasing?
I could imagine that a less aliased look is mostly preferred, so probably a higher radius would be better as a default setting (e.g. 0.75 or 0.8).

Are averaged calculations not possible? As a layman, I'd assume that the average brightness of linear light and gamma correct would be closest to the source.
That game screenshot from above shows crucial differences with LL on and off downscaling, so probably both are far off the original brightness.

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by aufkrawall

Are averaged calculations not possible? As a layman, I'd assume that the average brightness of linear light and gamma correct would be closest to the source.
That game screenshot from above shows crucial differences with LL on and off downscaling, so probably both are far off the original brightness.

Linear Light practically just means using Gamma 1.0. I suppose its theoretically possible to try to do it at some intermediate Gamma value between 1.0 and 2.2/2.4 or whatever Gamma your video currently has, however if that yields the results you want is another question entirely.

[chros]

Originally Posted by madshi

I'll probably get an Intel laptop sooner or later and hope to be able to reproduce the problem then.

Probably you (and I) have to wait for the next gen intel chipsets and cpus and nvidia gpus to support 10 bit output and proper 4k hevc acceleration (next summer or even later).

Originally Posted by ionutm80

what would be the best bang for buck with this Intel iGPUs (especially Ivy HD4000, Haswell HD44000 - seems similar in performance though after reading several tests on the net)?
- general settings: enable automatic fullscreen mode, use a separate device for presentation checked
- queues size: default (16 CPU, 8 GPU)
- windowed mode: 3 frames presented in advance
- exclusive mode: 4 frames presented in advance

Have you tried out FSE old path yet? For me it's way faster then the rest of the mode. You have to uncheck 'present frames in advance' checkbox for that. (and you can check whether it's working by reading the top rows of the OSD).

[Ruya]

I installed the platform update, but it's still using D3D9 Exclusive and not D3D11.

Do I HAVE to have Aero enabled, even for Full-Screen Exclusive mode? I prefer to use classic themes and have all of the aero stuff disabled.

I tried enabling Desktop Composition (and the DWM service) but it still presented with D3D9. I can't enable the actual Aero themes themselves because I removed them from this install of Windows with NTLite.

"Present several frames in advance" is checked.

**EDIT**

Yeah, it seems to be an issue with my configuration/DWM not being available. I've reverted to 0.88.1 for the time being and D3D11 is working perfectly now.

[ionutm80]

Originally Posted by chros

Have you tried out FSE old path yet? For me it's way faster then the rest of the mode. You have to uncheck 'present frames in advance' checkbox for that. (and you can check whether it's working by reading the top rows of the OSD).

Damn, I've never thought about that ...I'll try tonight and revert with feedback. What I did noticed is that lowering the frames from 8 to 3/4 it improved playback.