madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[noee]

Originally Posted by madshi

Please double check that you are really testing with v0.26, because what you're describing sounds like v0.25 to me.

Yup, that was first thing I checked. Here is how to duplicate it with the icon hover on the desktop.

(with a movie playing on secondary)
- on primary, hover the mouse over a couple of icons on the desktop, on after the other.

- Then, click on one of the icons, setting focus

- then, hover back to the previous icon and it switches to windowed on the playback (sec)

- upon moving the mouse again (apparently the timer resets) and 3 seconds later it switches back to exclusive.

Frankly, it's not a big deal, when I start a movie, I generally don't interrupt or do other things, but well, we are testing, heh? Obviously not a showstopper, but a nit.

[pie1394]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Please not remove it, I like it that way. Maybe make it (yet another) option.

Actually I wish there can be some extra options about the madVR OSD statistics:

1. Hide the OSD automatically after some time like 3~5 seconds.
2. OSD Font size can be overridden.

My eyes are not good enough to see it clearly 3m away from 42" TV at 1920x1080 mode. My eyes' limit is about the 15-pt Tahoma Bold font of 125 DPI at such distance.

[racerxnet]

Madshi,

Just to let you and others know regarding my crash issue situation, I looked at my 2D power settings and raised the GPU to 450Mhz. Prior setting was 300Mhz. This has solved the problem and this seems to be common with the ATI cards. There has been no fix other than modifying the bios as I have done, or changing the values in the XML file on your OS. ATI's Powerstate function has had issues for many others.

ATI 3870 is my present card. I will have a 4850 with DDR5 in a couple of days.
XP SP3


Thanks,

MAK

[JarrettH]

how am i supposed to test? and don't tell me with my eyes, i want to know what they do!

[namaiki]

Originally Posted by JarrettH

how am i supposed to test? and don't tell me with my eyes, i want to know what they do!

You need to test with your eyes like everybody else. If there was one theoretically perfect algorithm that was better than the others, we would already be using it, and then there would not be a selector. Note that for high vs normal, you should probably only notice a difference when the refresh rate of the screen is ~2.3x(can't remember) or more than the fps of the video.

[andybkma]

Originally Posted by madshi

madVR v0.26 released

Requests:
(1) Please report if there are any problems left, especially with automatic fullscreen exclusive mode. If you do still have problems, please report your GPU, OS, monitor setup (1 or 2 screens, playback on primary/secondary etc) and media player.

XP SP3, GPU Nividia 8600M-GS & 8600M-GT, using 1600x900 external monitor or 1280x720 projector, playback on primary monitor, Zoom Player 7 Max

1) After reading the changenotes for madVR .26, and doing my testing, everything seems to be working as advertised. Just one thing to note: I prefer to use Zoom Player's control bar since it's bigger & easier to see from across the room while using my projector (no offense). I don't mind that if I bring up ZP's control bar that I drop out of exclusive mode. However, when it goes back to exclusive mode from windowed mode, after 3 seconds there is a heavy stutter in any video I am playing as it switches back to exclusive. Can this be rectified somehow?

2) Also, can you please make the madVR settings pane horizontal instead of vertical? When I am using my 1280x720 projector I can't make any madVR setting changes because I can't get to the "Ok, Cancel & Apply" buttons

3) Oh and yes please if you could make the "exclusive" and "windowed" OSD popups an option instead of mandatory. That would be awesome...

Thank you very much for your attention, sir madshi

Edit: Ok, I went back and re-read every post since .24 was introduced. All my questions have already been answered by reading madshi's earlier comments. The quick stutter cannot be helped and I guess a new madVR settings pane is already on the to-do list. Much thanks!

[Hypernova]

0.26 fixed all the problems I listed before. Great job madshi!

@andybkma

I think madshi said in 0.24 release post that it will stutter/drop frames/etc. when changing mode, and this can't really be fixed.

[Mr Alpha]

Full screen elusive mode is broken for me. It is practically unwatchable.

Windows 7 64-bit
ATI Radeon HD 5970 with Catalyst 10.7
Single monitor at 60Hz
MPC-HC

I'm not exactly sure what is causing the issue I'm seeing. I can't capture it in a screenshot. It sort of looks like it is showing the frames in the wrong order. When I'm playing some 24p@60Hz the motion flicker back and forth, as if it was jumping back and forth between frames rather than just showing the same frame multiple times to get up to 60fps. This happen in all versions that have the exclusive mode, but only when playback is in exclusive mode. Windowed mode works fine.

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by Mr Alpha

Full screen elusive mode is broken for me. It is practically unwatchable.

you may wanna use the debug version and upload the log that'll show up on your windows desktop on mediafire.com

[makakam]

I've been using aero model so far but I changed it to normal when I saw that madshi wants to get rid of that timing model option and I can confirm that it works like a charm, no problems at all with tearing or smoothness.

[fps]

Originally Posted by madshi

Those of you with high rendering times in exclusive mode, can you try setting *all* flush settings to "flush & wait (loop)"? Does that change anything?

madVR 0.25

First of all I'm talking about v0.25. I definitely didn't have smooth playback in exlusive mode any more, so not only the rendering times were worse at that time.
Don't remember all the settings at that time, though (got a bit late ).

madVR 0.26

Anyway I've watched one entire 1080p movie with 0.26 now (standard flush settings, timing model normal) and I didn't have any smoothness problems this time.
The rendering times decreased a bit at the same time (could be because it was another video, didn't check for that), but were still considerably higher than in fullscreen windowed mode.
Well then I tried to change the flush settings as you suggested.
On my HTPC config (see signature) nothing really changed.
Changing the flush settings on my workstation improved things a lot, though.
The only real difference is I got a 4830 instead of the 5670 there and resoulution is 1680x1050 and no A/V receiver.
Rendering times in exlusive mode decreased a lot and were not that much higher than in windowed mode anymore.

Back at my HTPC where the flush settings didn't have an impact, I noticed some other things.

First, with a higher refresh rate rendering times decrease. So it's the worst @24p playback.
Second, if the queues (not decoder) don't fill up completely (happens pretty much after every seek, but sometimes even from the beginning of playback), rendering times increase pretty much.
Third, presentation times improved a lot with exlusive mode. I almost always have something like 0.xxx ms now, whereas before I sometimes had 25ms in windowed mode (not with every material though, sometimes I also just had 0.xxx).

[Mr Alpha]

Originally Posted by leeperry

you may wanna use the debug version and upload the log that'll show up on your windows desktop on mediafire.com

Here is a few seconds long log of the problem.

[pie1394]

Have tried 0.26, and the OSD bar issue w/o focus does have been fixed under Win7 when the video is started in Full-screen mode.

One curious thing is still the OSD bar's displayed position at Full-screen mode. If the 16:9 content is displayed on 4:3 screen, the OSD bar appears at bottom of video, instead of screen bottom like EVR/VMR9.

[memmerson]

Hi Madshi,
I have a projector and a 2.35:1 screen. I have no anamorphic lens and no real desire to buy one, so I zoom a 2.35:1 image to fill the screen. The problem is, with most media players, the time slider therefore sits off screen about a foot down onto my black wall!

It would be really slick if you could build in some sort of logic that could automatically determine the AR and move the time slider accordingly.

I wouldn't ask if I thought this was some me-only/obscure request, but there are a lot of folks out there zooming 2.35:1 movies onto cinemascope screens and their numbers are growing...

p.s. Thanks for MadVR.

[janos666]

I always have low fps and high CPU utilization (two of the four cores are fully loaded and the movie is a slide show) with madVR 0.26 and extended desktop mode. It occurs with windowed (the window position doesn't matter) and FS mode (when the picture is always shown on my primary display) as well.
Win7 x64, HD5850 + 10.6a (SC2 hotfix driver), two 1920x1200@60Hz displays.

EDIT: Sorry, this is not related to extended desktop modes. The playback was smooth after I disabled my secondary display but it occurred again. I will make a log file.

http://www.tar.hu/janos666/madVRlog.rar

[nlnl]

Originally Posted by fps

madVR 0.25

First of all I'm talking about v0.25. I definitely didn't have smooth playback in exlusive mode any more, so not only the rendering times were worse at that time.
Don't remember all the settings at that time, though (got a bit late ).

madVR 0.26

Anyway I've watched one entire 1080p movie with 0.26 now (standard flush settings, timing model normal) and I didn't have any smoothness problems this time.
The rendering times decreased a bit at the same time (could be because it was another video, didn't check for that), but were still considerably higher than in fullscreen windowed mode.
Well then I tried to change the flush settings as you suggested.
On my HTPC config (see signature) nothing really changed.
Changing the flush settings on my workstation improved things a lot, though.
The only real difference is I got a 4830 instead of the 5670 there and resoulution is 1680x1050 and no A/V receiver.
Rendering times in exlusive mode decreased a lot and were not that much higher than in windowed mode anymore.

Back at my HTPC where the flush settings didn't have an impact, I noticed some other things.

First, with a higher refresh rate rendering times decrease. So it's the worst @24p playback.
Second, if the queues (not decoder) don't fill up completely (happens pretty much after every seek, but sometimes even from the beginning of playback), rendering times increase pretty much.
Third, presentation times improved a lot with exlusive mode. I almost always have something like 0.xxx ms now, whereas before I sometimes had 25ms in windowed mode (not with every material though, sometimes I also just had 0.xxx).

Here I have very close problems http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?...postcount=3941
Config: AMD 5400, W7, 10.7, MPC

The root is AMD 5***?

[mark0077]

Hi madshi, using 0.26. Have three slight niggles.

1) When I right click, madVR now comes out of exclusive mode (great) but I need to right click again to see the menu. Only a small thing but can this be worked around to make using exclusive more seamless.
2) I switched back and forth to fullscreen mode quickly as a test, and am now in windowed mode, and the seek bar is still visible, aswell as the normal mpc-hc controls. I assume this isn't supposed to be. Its not disappearing either now that its visible in windowed mode unless I go back to fullscreen mode.
3) When switching to fullscreen mode, the seekbar and the "Exclusive" info box appear, and although I would want the seekbar visible when I manually move the mouse, I wouldn't want either of these appearing in my final HTPC setup. My aim is always to go from XBMC -> to fullscreen mpc-hc movie playing, with no visuals of desktop, icons, info boxes, seekbars etc etc. I currently can't avoid getting the "Exclusive" box to appear with madVR, but can workaround the seekbar becoming visible temporarily through the option for it but this isn't ideal either...

Great work though.

[midiboy]

Hi Madshi,

really great thanks from my part to you for automatic Exclusive Mode. This is the best thing that happened to my htps in years. Finally I am getting smooth playback without the hassles.

One small thing ...
In exclusive mode in Zoom Player 7 (fullscreen on second monitor, Windows 7 x64, ATI 4770 card with CAT 10.7 drivers) your search bar is visible all the time, I cannot get it to disappear. If I move the mouse away from the screen it disappears for a few seconds but comes back right away.

Other than that I am VERY HAPPY !
Thanks !

Alex

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Luv

I just wanted to know:do I need to undo the fix in ZP with 0.26 ?

Which one? The bad one (setting AR to a bad value) or the "good" one (activing that overlay option in the ZP settings)? I wish people would be more clear about what they're asking. You don't need the bad fix, anymore, but the good fix is needed, and will always be needed, because without the good fix ZP doesn't size the madVR rendering window to the full screen.

Originally Posted by pankov

I'm controlling ZP with a Harmony remote and I don't use a mouse. I've configured one button on the remote (called "Info") to show the current playing position using ZP's control bar which I've configured to show "current time"/"total time" "media file name". Also when I seek/jump in the file (again with the remote) I've configured ZP to show it's control/seek bar so I can see where I've reached. At present this forces madVR to go out exclusive mode which is very unpleasant in a dark room on a 80" screen. If you add the interface I'm requesting I can ask Blight to use it and show madVR's seekbar with additional text for the "media file name" ... and another for the current position + total time if you don't implement it yourself ... again using madVR's interface and not leave exclusive mode at all.

Ok, I see. It makes some sense to me now. Next time please try to explain your feature requests right in the first post, ok?

Not sure if I will implement it. I'll have to think about it. The problem is that many of the feature requests that are coming in right now collide with future plans I have. You guys are just seeing what there is today and you want this and that to make it work better. But you don't know what future madVR versions will bring. Remember you trying to convince me that I need to invest time into working around those weird composition rate problems in your two-monitor-setup?

So basically I'd very much prefer to totally ignore any and all feature requests right now and come back to that later when madVR has reached version 1.0. Right now adding all those fancy feature wishes just puts brakes on madVR 1.0.

Originally Posted by ExtraEye

Well at first MPC HC would hang when I tried 0.26. But now after what you said I tried deleting the settings.ini file and it worked. Now I tried running the same video and it doesn't work. I completely removed MadVR and reinstalled and this persisted.
Switching to 0.25-24 problem remains.
Now with 0.23 - no more hanging.
If there's anything else to try I'll be glad to do it
For now I'll enjoy my videos with 0.23.

You can disable the "automatic fullscreen exclusive mode" in the madVR settings dialog. That should make version 0.26 work for you just as well as 0.23. However, I'd like to know why things don't work for you. But for that I need for information. You're just saying "it doesn't work" which is as unspecific as possible. Could you please be more (much much much more) specific about what is "not working". What is happening? Blue screen? Reboot? Black screen? Does the media player still react to mouse/keyboard input? Do the media player menus still work? Which is your OS, your GPU, etc? What is your monitor setup? One or two monitors? Which exact graphics mode are you using? Are you using PowerStrip? And finally: A log would be helpful...

Originally Posted by noee

Here is how to duplicate it with the icon hover on the desktop.

(with a movie playing on secondary)
- on primary, hover the mouse over a couple of icons on the desktop, on after the other.

- Then, click on one of the icons, setting focus

- then, hover back to the previous icon and it switches to windowed on the playback (sec)

- upon moving the mouse again (apparently the timer resets) and 3 seconds later it switches back to exclusive.

Frankly, it's not a big deal, when I start a movie, I generally don't interrupt or do other things, but well, we are testing, heh? Obviously not a showstopper, but a nit.

Can anybody reproduce that? My win7 HTPC is only single monitor, so I can't really test that. My XPSP3 PC doesn't show this problem.

Anyway, the next build might have this fixed. If not, please rereport the problem then. Thanks.

Originally Posted by pie1394

Actually I wish there can be some extra options about the madVR OSD statistics:

1. Hide the OSD automatically after some time like 3~5 seconds.
2. OSD Font size can be overridden.

My eyes are not good enough to see it clearly 3m away from 42" TV at 1920x1080 mode. My eyes' limit is about the 15-pt Tahoma Bold font of 125 DPI at such distance.

Options like that may be available later.

Originally Posted by racerxnet

Just to let you and others know regarding my crash issue situation, I looked at my 2D power settings and raised the GPU to 450Mhz. Prior setting was 300Mhz. This has solved the problem

Glad to hear that.

Originally Posted by JarrettH

could you clarify what the refresh settings are for again? normal, high, and aero. my monitor is set to 60hz

Originally Posted by JarrettH

how am i supposed to test? and don't tell me with my eyes, i want to know what they do!

If the default setting works fine for you then there's no reason to change it. These "tweaking" options are only there for you to play with, if you have stuttering or other problems with the default options.

Originally Posted by andybkma

I don't mind that if I bring up ZP's control bar that I drop out of exclusive mode. However, when it goes back to exclusive mode from windowed mode, after 3 seconds there is a heavy stutter in any video I am playing as it switches back to exclusive. Can this be rectified somehow?

Depends on where the stuttering is coming from. Maybe it's a consequence of the switching and maybe I can't do anything about it. I do plan to revisit the frame drop logic, though, that might slightly improve the situation...

Originally Posted by andybkma

3) Oh and yes please if you could make the "exclusive" and "windowed" OSD popups an option instead of mandatory. That would be awesome...

After I've redesigned the settings dialog.

Originally Posted by Mr Alpha

Full screen elusive mode is broken for me. It is practically unwatchable.

I'm not exactly sure what is causing the issue I'm seeing. I can't capture it in a screenshot. It sort of looks like it is showing the frames in the wrong order.

That's interesting. Your GPU is dual chip? Maybe the madVR threaded rendering confuses the driver somehow. But don't worry, I plan to redo the fullscreen rendering path, and I think that the final solution will work fine for your GPU, too.

Originally Posted by fps

The rendering times decreased a bit at the same time (could be because it was another video, didn't check for that), but were still considerably higher than in fullscreen windowed mode.
Well then I tried to change the flush settings as you suggested.
On my HTPC config (see signature) nothing really changed.
Changing the flush settings on my workstation improved things a lot, though.
The only real difference is I got a 4830 instead of the 5670 there and resoulution is 1680x1050 and no A/V receiver.
Rendering times in exlusive mode decreased a lot and were not that much higher than in windowed mode anymore.

Back at my HTPC where the flush settings didn't have an impact, I noticed some other things.

First, with a higher refresh rate rendering times decrease. So it's the worst @24p playback.
Second, if the queues (not decoder) don't fill up completely (happens pretty much after every seek, but sometimes even from the beginning of playback), rendering times increase pretty much.
Third, presentation times improved a lot with exlusive mode. I almost always have something like 0.xxx ms now, whereas before I sometimes had 25ms in windowed mode (not with every material though, sometimes I also just had 0.xxx).

Interesting. But I think we should now all stop worrying about rendering stats. Yes, they appear to be sometimes higher in exclusive mode compared to windowed mode. I'm not sure why that is the case. But I tend to think that this is not really reflecting the true rendering times, but that it's a mis-measurement or something like that. Anyway, the final exclusive mode rendering path will work differently, anyway. So please guys, stop worrying about rendering stats for now, ok?

Originally Posted by pie1394

One curious thing is still the OSD bar's displayed position at Full-screen mode. If the 16:9 content is displayed on 4:3 screen, the OSD bar appears at bottom of video, instead of screen bottom like EVR/VMR9.

That's the way it is. Might be changed in a future version, but not too soon.

Originally Posted by memmerson

I have a projector and a 2.35:1 screen. I have no anamorphic lens and no real desire to buy one, so I zoom a 2.35:1 image to fill the screen.

I have exactly the same setup, so I know exactly what you're talking about. Special handling for CIH screens is on my to do list, but there are more important things I need to do first, so it might take a while until I get to that...

Originally Posted by janos666

I always have low fps and high CPU utilization (two of the four cores are fully loaded and the movie is a slide show) with madVR 0.26 and extended desktop mode. It occurs with windowed (the window position doesn't matter) and FS mode (when the picture is always shown on my primary display) as well.
Win7 x64, HD5850 + 10.6a (SC2 hotfix driver), two 1920x1200@60Hz displays.

EDIT: Sorry, this is not related to extended desktop modes. The playback was smooth after I disabled my secondary display but it occurred again. I will make a log file.

http://www.tar.hu/janos666/madVRlog.rar

You never had this problem before, had you? Could you please check if going back to an older build fixes the issue? If so, please check with which exact madVR version the problem was introduced. Also please try to disable exclusive mode. Does that solve the problem?

Originally Posted by mark0077

1) When I right click, madVR now comes out of exclusive mode (great) but I need to right click again to see the menu. Only a small thing but can this be worked around to make using exclusive more seamless.

This was already reported by pankov, but I can't reproduce it here. Remind me, what is your GPU and your OS and your monitor configuration?

I won't be able to do anything about this problem, if I can't find a way to reproduce it on my PCs...

Originally Posted by mark0077

2) I switched back and forth to fullscreen mode quickly as a test, and am now in windowed mode, and the seek bar is still visible, aswell as the normal mpc-hc controls. I assume this isn't supposed to be. Its not disappearing either now that its visible in windowed mode unless I go back to fullscreen mode.

Also already reported by pankov and will be fixed in the next build.

Originally Posted by mark0077

3) When switching to fullscreen mode, the seekbar and the "Exclusive" info box appear, and although I would want the seekbar visible when I manually move the mouse, I wouldn't want either of these appearing in my final HTPC setup. My aim is always to go from XBMC -> to fullscreen mpc-hc movie playing, with no visuals of desktop, icons, info boxes, seekbars etc etc. I currently can't avoid getting the "Exclusive" box to appear with madVR, but can workaround the seekbar becoming visible temporarily through the option for it but this isn't ideal either...

Neither the seekbar nor the "exclusive" info box appear if you start MPC HC directly in fullscreen mode, with the mouse well above the lower 3rd of the screen. At least they don't appear for me in that situation. The "exclusive" info box only appears if MPC HC starts in windowed mode and then switches to fullscreen mode after movie playback has already started. And the seekbar should always only appear if the mouse cursor is in the very bottom of the screen.

Try activating the "Playback -> Fullscreen -> Launch files in fullscreen". That should at least take care of the "exclusive" info box.

Originally Posted by midiboy

really great thanks from my part to you for automatic Exclusive Mode. This is the best thing that happened to my htps in years. Finally I am getting smooth playback without the hassles.

Glad you like it!

Originally Posted by midiboy

In exclusive mode in Zoom Player 7 (fullscreen on second monitor, Windows 7 x64, ATI 4770 card with CAT 10.7 drivers) your search bar is visible all the time, I cannot get it to disappear. If I move the mouse away from the screen it disappears for a few seconds but comes back right away.

That's weird. Doesn't happen for me. Oh wait. It's possible that it reappears if you move the mouse to the primary monitor and if the mouse coordinates are lower than the seekbar pos on the secondary monitor! I'm currently not checking on which monitor the mouse is. Could that explain the problem? I should change that, of course...

[pankov]

madshi,
thank you very much for your patience.
I promise I'll try to explain things better in the future.
For the moment I'll try to live without the seek bar when jumping through the file with the kbd/remote.
It's just that since my upgrade to Windows 7 six months ago it was a total struggle to get smooth playback and now that you've made my dream come true I'm starting to get greedy and want total perfection

it's your fault that we want more ... you and your great work are spoiling us

keep up the good work

....
btw
if you share some of your thoughts of the future of madVR we can try to be more subtle in our requests and let you do your work without so much distraction