madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[James Freeman]

@6233638

To each their own. This is the opposite of what I prefer. Aliasing is the first thing that takes me out of the experience.

Agreed, to each his own.

As I stated, I like the sharper look even if it has visible aliasing.

This is very strange, and I wonder if it's something to do with the source.

No, the source is a capture of the original image HD with pristine 4:4:4 and 1:1 pixel resolution.

In the real world, there is very little difference - but again, Jinc 3 AR is going to guarantee there is less chance of aliasing than Lanczos 3 AR.

Again,
I care for aliasing less than what I care for sharpness and lack of artifacts.

And currently Jinc3/4+AR giving me artifacts and soft image at any chroma resolution.



In my post I have attached the sample videos so that people can judge for themselves.

I can attach a 720p and 1080p versions if anyone cares.

[James Freeman]

All three versions (480p, 720p, 1080p) are up for download in my big post:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...58#post1650858


EDIT:

After doing some more comprehensive video viewing and Upscaling comparisons.

I conclude (yet again) that:

1. No movie is ever going to reach the clarity and uniformity of the patterns in the test charts (already stated by 6233638).
2. The difference between Upscalers in real video content is so minute (even between Bilinear and Jinc),
that worrying about the smallest detail in the test pattern is ridiculous and ignorantly a time wasting hobby.

In which, the upscaler settings should be "set it and forget it" type of tweak.
If your machine is strong enough just leave it at Jinc3+AR or Lanczos3+AR and forget it.

[Rinzler]

guys, what to choose?

[James Freeman]

Originally Posted by Rinzler

guys, what to choose?

Using a PC monitor?
PC 0-255

PC -> TV through DVI/VGA cable?
PC 0-255

PC -> TV through an HDMI cable?
TV 16-235


Nvidia or ATI?
Use your TV as a PC monitor?
OR connect once in a while to watch some movies?

[Rinzler]

Using PC monitor mostly. Sometimes connect TV to watch movie. Don't have discrete graphics card, using CPU integrated video HD 4000.

[James Freeman]

@Rinzler

Use PC 0-255.


EDIT:
Sorry for that.

[Rinzler]

What if watching a movie from an external HDD drive connected to the TV through USB port? What happens in this case?

[dansrfe]

I still don't understand why the legacy 16-235 option still exists in driver control panels. This was originally created for CRTs, was it not?

[e-t172]

Well I could agree that 16-235 does not really have any raison d'être anymore, but it's still the standard for video (for better or for worse), so of course it should be a driver option since most projectors and HDTVs do expect 16-235.

[turbojet]

6233638: I meant while using avgDif and maxDif. For instance is there any video that looks noticeably better at 2.0/4.0/4.0 then 2.0/4.0/2.0? I've found some that look much worse but none that necessarily look better, just less detail.

Ever since re-installing windows 7 I'm having an issue switching from a 50 or 72hz display to a 60hz display. The composition rate is detected as 24 or 25 hz by madvr and there's a lot of dropped frames. The only thing that fixes it is to switch to another video renderer, which plays fine, then switching back to madvr. Things that haven't worked; opening multiple madvr sessions, closing and reopening the player, reinstalling madvr, resetting madvr defaults. This used to happen rarely on old windows 7 installation but now it happens every time. Does anyone else experience this? Any other ideas to try?

[Razoola]

Originally Posted by James Freeman

The official solution is to do the following:

To set 0-255 over HDMI:
Nvidia CP -> Adjust desktop size and position -> Scaling ->
Perform Scaling On: GPU

To set 16-235 over HDMI:
Perform Scaling On: Display


When selecting GPU for scaling you'll see in the "Change Resolution" section that all UHD,HD,SD resolution are now under PC resolution and they retain 0-255 range.

When selecting Display for scaling you'll see in the "Change Resolution" section that all UHD,HD,SD resolution are now separated and they retain 16-235 range.

Are you 100% sure about this? On my system I do not have an option for GPU in that box for my plasma display (driver version 331.65). I only have that choice on the primary monitor display. Also, how does that affect custom resolutions.

I set to 0-255 by altering the INF before install. Does this no longer work for the newer drivers also?

[James Freeman]

Originally Posted by Razoola

Are you 100% sure about this? On my system I do not have an option for GPU in that box for my plasma display (driver version 331.65).
I only have that choice on the primary monitor display. Also, how does that affect custom resolutions.

I set to 0-255 by altering the INF before install. Does this no longer work for the newer drivers also?

No, sorry for that, I take that back.
Apparently its more complicated than that.

The Nvidia Range changes does not work with my setup (3770K, GTX660, v327.23).


Some findings:

* Choosing resolutions from the "Ultra HD,HD,SD" section is fixed to 16-235 signal.
But it will still include all the information without clipping it (only squeezing it to 16-235).

* Choosing resolutions from the "PC" section will send 0-255.
This is what we want, but sometimes not all wanted resolutions are available here.
We can create custom resolution to force it to PC range 0-255.


HDMI can send 2 types digital formats YCbCr444 and RGB.
They are both lossless.

RGB behaves like a VGA cable would (255,255,255).
YCbCr sends Chroma and Luma separately (video signal).


Digital Format (RGB, YCbCr444) & Resolution Section (HD, PC)
Together will determine the behavior and range of the HDMI signal.

1. UHD,HD,SD Resolutions + RGB format.
This option will send 0-255 signal to the TV, but squeeze all the information to 16-235 range*.
So the actual TV black point is at 0, but the signal blacks are at 16 and will look brighter (no BTB & WTW).
Not a useful option, In fact this is what we are complaining about.
* Unless you switch to 0-255 mode with madNvLevelsTweaker, then it becomes Full RGB signal like DVI/VGA.

2. UHD,HD,SD Resolutions + YCbCr444 format.
This option will send 0-255 signal to the TV, and not squeeze anything.
The actual black point is at 16 and white is at 235, so the picture looks good.
It will treat 0-15 as BTB & 235-255 as WTW.
So the picture looks perfect (like a standalone Blu-Ray Player would) and no information is lost.
Use your TVs Brightness & Contrast controls to calibrate the clipping points.

3. PC Resolutions, are always in 0-255 range like with DVI/VGA.
But you'll need a custom resolution if your desired resolution is not apparent in the PC resolutions section.


Note:
Most PC monitors only want to see RGB format (not YCbCr444) through the HDMI interface.
So you'll be forced to create Custom Resolution (if non existent in the PC section) to send 0-255 through HDMI.

But, most TVs will like the YCbCr444 format signal more,
as it exactly what a Blu-Ray/DVD player would send.


Hope this help.
I also hope I'm right this time.

[Werewolfy]

To force PC levels (0-255), there is a level tweaker included in the MadVr folder. It doesn't work anymore for you? On my config, it seems I have no problem with that.

And I think that madshi has always advised to output RGB and not YCbCr.

[James Freeman]

Originally Posted by Werewolfy

To force PC levels (0-255), there is a level tweaker included in the MadVr folder.

This one works.
Thank you.

And I think that madshi has always advised to output RGB and not YCbCr.

I can't quite agree about the RGB being better than YCbCr in a TV setup.

YCbCr has native Luma of 16-235, which we does not need to be converted and dithered to 0-255 with MadVR.
A TV (not a PC monitor) natively supports YCbCr through HDMI, so why not use that?

Setting YCbCr444 in Nvidia Contol Panel will output an HDMI signal exactly as a DVD/BR player would,
without the need to convert to RGB 0-255 or do any signal processing to the video content.

If one is connecting a PC through HDMI to watch a movie without leaving it as a permanent RGB monitor,
a YCbCr with 16-235 range in MadVR and calibrated Brightness & Contrast is the way to go (IMO).

If the TV is intended to replace a PC monitor, by all means go with RGB full range 0-255.

On the other hand, why would anyone want to use RGB 16-235 for anything?
Video (YCbCr) is 16-235, RGB is 0-255.
What RGB 16-235 is for, beats me.

[Werewolfy]

Originally Posted by James Freeman

I can't quite agree about the RGB being better than YCbCr in a TV setup.

YCbCr has native Luma of 16-235, which we does not need to be converted and dithered to 0-255 with MadVR.
A TV (not a PC monitor) natively supports YCbCr through HDMI, so why not use that?

Setting YCbCr444 in Nvidia Contol Panel will output an HDMI signal exactly as a DVD/BR player would,
without the need to convert to RGB 0-255 or do any signal processing to the video content.

If one is connecting a PC through HDMI to watch a movie without leaving it as a permanent RGB monitor,
a YCbCr with 16-235 range in MadVR and calibrated Brightness & Contrast is the way to go (IMO).

If the TV is intended to replace a PC monitor, by all means go with RGB full range 0-255.

On the other hand, why would anyone want to use RGB 16-235 for anything?
Video (YCbCr) is 16-235, RGB is 0-255.
What RGB 16-235 is for, beats me.

Because MadVr outputs only in RGB So if tou tell your video card to output in YCbCr, there is one more conversion needed.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by leeperry

Hi madshi, so I got a 2GB HD7850 updated to the latest 10/13 drivers(AMD didn't drop XP support despite of the hearsay) and when I open a movie in PotP, it opens in 960*540(as I set in my default PotP profile) but if I have FRC enabled, the video blinks like hell? Once I go FS and then windowed again, it doesn't blink anymore and it never does if FRC is disabled.

This problem doesn't happen if I have mVR's OSD enabled.

Refresh rate is properly detected as far as mVR's OSD can tell and this problem doesn't occur at all when I have a custom 3DLUT PS script enabled(a mirroring custom PS script gives some mirrored psychedelic effect), very strange...I'll hit you with log files in case you would like to investigate the problem but this is a non-blocking issue for me so no rush/biggy at all.

Also, the new rendering path is a GPU hog that goes all the way to 100% load but no biggy again as I've always been happy with the old one

The blinking sounds weird. Nobody else has ever reported that before, so it might be something specific to your PC, or maybe it's a driver issue or something. Don't know. The new rendering path works best on Windows 7 or Windows 8. XP really doesn't have any good rendering path, IMHO. The old FSE mode works "ok", but it's not really great.

Originally Posted by Werewolfy

I was wondering, is there a reason why in this kind of scene it debands so little? There is so little difference between debanding off and my current medium preset (the low preset doesn't do anything) and I have to increase every values very (too) much to obtain a good result.

I'm not sure. Sometimes things look different to a computer algorithm, compared to what our eyes see. I can investigate if you want, but I'd need a video sample for that.

Originally Posted by dansrfe

I'm not sure if the answer to this is obvious, but why does a calibration shift over a period of time? I calibrated my monitor's using madshi's method in the madVR and ArgyllCMS thread on AVS and the gamma and color temperature shifts a bit only after around a week of usage. Is this due to aging of the actual LCD crystals or the variability of power delivered by the LCD pixel board?

I doubt your monitor shifted that much in such a short time. On my computer monitor the calibration is different depending on which corner of the display I'm measuring. Maybe you measured a different part of your screen compared to last time. Or maybe it was something related to warm up. Don't know...

Originally Posted by Razoola

I have a plasma that can accept both limited and full range through HDMI via a receiver.

If I set the panel to accept full range signal I get the following results using AVSHD basic patterns.

PS3 set to 'Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr' (superwhite off) with full output over HDMI (for reference my PS3 shares same HDMI input on panel through my AV receiver as my PC which runs madVR)
- black = 16
- white = 235
If I set the PS3 super white on.
- black = 16
- white = 242

Now for MadVR with PC set to output YCbCr444 or RGB fullrange.

MADVR with PC levels 0-255
- black = 16
- white = 235

MADVR with PC levels 16-235
- black = 2
- white = 253

Not sure I understand this. Where do you get the 16, 235, 2 and 253 numbers from?

Originally Posted by Razoola

The only way I can get WTW output via the PC and madVR is to use custom output levels in MadVR

Then something is wrong somewhere.

Originally Posted by TheElix

Something legendary is cooking in this thread right now.

What d'you mean?

Originally Posted by LilScrappy

i have problem with editing the setting after play video all is good but no have icon to edit,
When restart PC first play i have shans to edit but second play again have this error message, any from here to know how to fix ?

That's quite weird. I'd suggest that you re-download madVR to make sure that the madHcCtrl.exe is not damaged in any way.

Originally Posted by sebdelsol

I've stumbled upon another weird thing on my ATI. I've begun to code a more responsive OSD with IOsdServices::OsdSetRenderCallback. It works great.
Yet on this ATI computer, any call using the madVR d3d device fails with D3DERR_INVALIDCALL.
It only works when Exclusive mode is enabled AND "present several frames in advance" is disabled...
I've tried to revert back to older driver with the same result. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong...

Sounds weird. What calls do you make to the d3d device? Have you tried something simple like GetDeviceCaps()? Does that fail, too?

Originally Posted by James Freeman

I have tested the Upscaling Algorithms.

I have found that Jic3+AR gives me artifacts in HD and lower Chromas, whether Jinc3 (no AR) or Lanczos+AR did not.
And Anti-Ringing IS important, so Jinc without AR is a No-Go.

I can reproduce the artifacts. Not sure why they occur, maybe I'll look at that later. In any case, testing with artificial computer graphics test patterns should always be taken with a pinch of salt. Real movie content never has a cyan pixel right next to a red pixel. Why not? Because in real movie content lines are almost never ever perfectly vertical or horizontal. If you had such a high pixel contrast (red pixel next to cyan) with diagonal or curved lines, there'd be tons of extreme aliasing artifacts. This never happens with filmed content, due to several reasons, lens MTF being one of them. Linear resampling algorithms were never written for computer graphics. They were made for filmed content. And for such content they work much better than they work for computer graphics. Still, testing with computer graphics may help to get an idea of how a resampling algorithm deals with specific problems. But the usefulness is limited. The real test is true movie content.

Those artifacts you're seeing in that test pattern, nobody has ever reported or seen them yet. Neither in another test pattern, nor in a movie. So I doubt it's a common issue. Probably nothing to worry about.

Originally Posted by James Freeman

For image upscaling I have concluded that I'd rather have a little aliasing instead of lost detail.
Therefor Lanczos 3/4+AR wins here in every resolution especially lower ones like DVD.

Why would you think that you lose detail when using Jinc? You're not. That test pattern with the black/white pixel on/off dither patterns does not represent "detail". You never have such a pattern with filmed content. You may have such patterns sometimes in print magazines, but not with filmed content. Jinc does not lose any detail. It might not always be as sharp as Lanczos, but that's not due to lost detail, that's due to lower aliasing.

Look here for a comparison with a real movie (Monsters AG Blu-Ray) which shows why many users prefer Jinc:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1442663/which-hd-would-be-sufficient-for-madvr/120#post_23643869

Originally Posted by James Freeman

I see NO difference what so ever in real videos.

Differences can be very small. Of course the bigger the scaling factor, the bigger the difference. Try some SD anime content, then look at jaggies in curved/diagonal hair lines. That sometimes shows the differences in aliasing rather clearly.

Originally Posted by turbojet

Ever since re-installing windows 7 I'm having an issue switching from a 50 or 72hz display to a 60hz display. The composition rate is detected as 24 or 25 hz by madvr and there's a lot of dropped frames. The only thing that fixes it is to switch to another video renderer, which plays fine, then switching back to madvr. Things that haven't worked; opening multiple madvr sessions, closing and reopening the player, reinstalling madvr, resetting madvr defaults. This used to happen rarely on old windows 7 installation but now it happens every time. Does anyone else experience this? Any other ideas to try?

Do you let madVR change display modes or do you use some other software? The composition rate is often not properly updated by other display mode changers, while madVR can usually do it properly.

Originally Posted by James Freeman

YCbCr has native Luma of 16-235, which we does not need to be converted and dithered to 0-255 with MadVR.
A TV (not a PC monitor) natively supports YCbCr through HDMI, so why not use that?

Because Windows itself thinks and works in RGB. If you tell your GPU to output YCbCr, it will take the renderer's RGB output, convert it to YCbCr behind the renderer's back and then output it via HDMI. This is really bad because the GPU is likely to do the conversion is low quality.

Originally Posted by James Freeman

Setting YCbCr444 in Nvidia Contol Panel will output an HDMI signal exactly as a DVD/BR player would,
without the need to convert to RGB 0-255 or do any signal processing to the video content.

Nope. Setting YCbCr444 in Nvidia Control Panel means that still everything is rendered in RGB, but the final RGB output will then be converted to YCbCr by the GPU driver.

There's one exception: When using hardware overlay, depending on GPU, driver, OS and renderer, it might eventually be possible to output untouched YCbCr. But e.g. AMD does not even support hardware overlay. And most renderers don't use hardware overlay at all. And I kinda doubt that the GPU drivers really support untouched YCbCr output properly.

Originally Posted by James Freeman

On the other hand, why would anyone want to use RGB 16-235 for anything?
Video (YCbCr) is 16-235, RGB is 0-255.
What RGB 16-235 is for, beats me.

Computer monitors usually expect RGB 0-255 by default. However, consumer eletronic TVs and projectors are different. If you feed them with RGB, they usually expect 16-235 by default. Some TVs can be switched to expect RGB 0-255, but not all support this.

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by madshi

The blinking sounds weird. Nobody else has ever reported that before, so it might be something specific to your PC, or maybe it's a driver issue or something. Don't know. The new rendering path works best on Windows 7 or Windows 8. XP really doesn't have any good rendering path, IMHO. The old FSE mode works "ok", but it's not really great.

OK, no biggy at all. I actually managed to make the AMD driver BSOD when rolling PS scripts so I've now created different profiles in PotP and roll profiles instead, so far so good

Anyway, I finally have a fully working rig with a 0.04cd/m² black and 3500:1 CR 4:4:4 A-MVA Sammy LCD TV, it simply looks out of this world with J3AR scaling and FRC

I would have prefered that you add a TOTL denoiser for upscaled SD instead of debanding as the latter would appear to always kill small details, but I reckon that some videos can look quite posterized sometimes so be it...I'm sure we'll all find a good use for it on otherwise hopeless videos and I'll keep looking for a denoising PS script.

OK got it, I've installed W7 in a VM, it looks quite good so I'll keep testing....at least no crazy tiles, skydrive integration and all that bs I'm really not ready to deal with.

[turbojet]

Originally Posted by madshi

Do you let madVR change display modes or do you use some other software? The composition rate is often not properly updated by other display mode changers, while madVR can usually do it properly.

I let madvr change at playback start but not at end. 80%+ of what's watched is 24fps. Changing it to 60hz at the end does fix the issue but another way I found is restarting dwm. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to do it without admin or logging off/on. One way it could be done is calling sc stop/start with a program that stores admin credentials but that's a security risk, although it might be what I end up doing. How does madvr disable/enable composition?

Madvr could resolve the issue by restarting composition when display and composition rates do not match. Is this something that sounds reasonable?

[Razoola]

Originally Posted by madshi

Not sure I understand this. Where do you get the 16, 235, 2 and 253 numbers from?


Then something is wrong somewhere.

Sorry about that. The numbers represent the physical colour bar I see on my display as black or white using the test pattern I mentioned (on the AVS-HD disk).

Like you say from my findings something some thing is going wrong somewhere but I'm not saying its the fault of madVR. I'm was just trying to point out to people that sometimes these issues are totally non madVR related.

That still leaves the question of how you want the pattern in question to look.

Some people say you want black at bar 16, white at 235 while I've seen others say you want black at 16 and white at about 20% over 235 (around 242). The calibration videos included say you want white right up to 254 if you can (see from 20:30 in this video http://revision3.com/hdnation/calibratepart2#rev3Player). Everything I have heard agree you want black at 16 but there is a large difference in opinions at where you want white to be. That is why I included ps3 info I get.

By playing with my setting (TV, gfx card and madVR) I can achieve all three of those situations without setting anything custom in madVR or making the picture washed out as a result. But to be honest I don't know which is the best. I can see the idea that black at 16, white at 235 is the spec. At the same time white over 235 means a larger color scale and can result in less white clipping.

[sebdelsol]

Originally Posted by madshi

Sounds weird. What calls do you make to the d3d device? Have you tried something simple like GetDeviceCaps()? Does that fail, too?

Sorry, It was the CreateVertexBuffer call that failed actually. I should check more thoroughly ALL the return values
It works fine, since I've put all the ressources in a default pool instead of a managed one.
Only the drawText call fails, so I'll have to handle font rendering on my own it seems.
I guess that madVR uses a IDirect3DDevice9Ex ?