madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[huhn]

it's using 4:2:0 for 4k 60 fps but laeve it at this.

[Ceremony]

I've got an issue with madvr on my new laptop (i5-4210, HD4400 or GTX850M, 8GB RAM):

When watching, I get frame drops after a minute or so. The backbuffer queue (all other queues are full!) is suddenly empty and causing dropped frames till i restart the player for another minute of flawless playback. I tried every option in madVR there is. Using either the integrated HD4400 GPU or the dedicated GTX850M doesnt seem to make a difference either. Exclusive fullscreen mode doesnt change anything either.

Overall resource usage is very low while watching and with frames taking merely up to 10ms to render, i doubt raw power is the issue... HELP!

[Asmodian]

It sounds like something is going into a low power mode? Check all your advanced power management options or try a "High Power" preset for testing. Try renaming the video player's exe? I don't think this is really a madVR issue, maybe open a new thread so we can discuss possibilities without clogging up this thread with general (video playback) PC support. Maybe link to it from here?

[Ceremony]

Originally Posted by Asmodian

It sounds like something is going into a low power mode? Check all your advanced power management options or try a "High Power" preset for testing. Try renaming the video player's exe? I don't think this is really a madVR issue, maybe open a new thread so we can discuss possibilities without clogging up this thread with general (video playback) PC support. Maybe link to it from here?

mhh yeah i will, once i tried that power thingy - though it also happens when im on AC, so i somewhat doubt it. also, render queue also drops. ignore my previous statement^^

[JarrettH]

Originally Posted by Asmodian

I did a madVR performance test on my Titan with Jinc3+AR/Jinc3+AR, smooth motion on, debanding low/low, ordered dithering. 4 frame rendering buffer, 1 present queue, windowed mode (new path), Windows 8.1. SLI Off.

1080p24 -> 3840x2160@60Hz, 17.5ms

While playing Nvidia Inspector says:
GPU 41-52%
MCU 10-14%
GPU CLK 549-679 MHz
RAM 1429MB

Assuming performance is directly proportional to shaders*MHz a stock GTX650Ti has 39% of the GPU performance of a Titan @ 679 MHz. It also has 28% of the memory bandwidth of my Titan, well above the 14% I used.

This works out to at worst a 25.9ms rendering time on a GTX650Ti at 90% GPU usage; fine for 30fps or lower but not 60fps (16.6ms).

If I use Bicubic75+AR for chroma scaling and Jinc3 for image it changes to a 15.6 ms rendering time with at most 44% GPU usage. Scaling to a 19.5ms rendering time on a GTX650Ti @ 928MHz and 90% usage. Still not enough for 60 fps but plenty of headroom for 30 fps (33.3ms).

These are worst case estimates though, I wouldn't be surprised if the GTX650Ti had the GPU power for Jinc3 Image and Bicubic75 chroma for 1080p60. Sadly the memory bandwidth is probably insufficient.

Memory usage is a major issue though; if I turn the buffers down to 4 rending and 1 present I still hit 1429MB of GPU memory used and 4/1 is the minimum.

Edit: I was able to get memory usage down to 958MB with Jinc3+AR chroma and Jinc3+AR image by turning on most of the trade quality for performance options (10 bit instead of 16 bit) and turning off debanding and smooth motion.

Speaking of rendering times, how do I know what to aim for? My refresh rate is 60 hz. Where did 16.6 ms come from?

[Stereodude]

Originally Posted by JarrettH

Speaking of rendering times, how do I know what to aim for? My refresh rate is 60 hz. Where did 16.6 ms come from?

1/60= ?

[Asmodian]

Originally Posted by JarrettH

Speaking of rendering times, how do I know what to aim for? My refresh rate is 60 hz. Where did 16.6 ms come from?

In addition to what Stereodude said; it isn't based off of your screen's refresh rate but the frame rate of the content you want to watch. Also madVR reports the rendering times you need to be below as "movie frame interval" in its OSD.

[seiyafan]

How do you show real rendering time? After the last NNEDI3 improvement my rendering times were all in the 1-2 ms.

[Anime Viewer]

Originally Posted by seiyafan

How do you show real rendering time? After the last NNEDI3 improvement my rendering times were all in the 1-2 ms.

My guess is that something has disabled NNEDI3 in madVR/MPC (or whatever you may be using in place of MPC...like Potplayer, etc). Have you changed anything in madVR settings recently (like setting image upscaling to DXVA2)?

[madshi]

Originally Posted by innocenat

It's already disabled, and GPU queue and pre-presented is at 8 -- should I lower it?

That probably won't help. Playing games works alright on your laptop, using the NVidia GPU? I've no idea what's going on there, to be honest. Probably a driver issue of some sort...

Originally Posted by James Freeman

Blu-Ray is encoded and stored on the disc as Ycbcr 4:2:0, then madVR converts YCbCr to RGB and does all the processing and output in RGB, correct?

Well, madVR first upscales chroma to get from 4:2:0 to 4:4:4, and then converts to RGB, but other than that: Yes.

Originally Posted by James Freeman

I have read on AVSForums that most TVs convert incoming RGB signal back to YCbCr for processing unless we choose a special option to tell the TV to skip the conversion and output pure RGB.
On a Panasonic this option called "1080 Pixel Direct".

Quite true. However, usually this converting back to YCbCr is done in more than 8bit and with some better TVs also in 4:4:4. If done that way it's not too much of a problem. But if the display processes in 4:2:2 or 4:2:0, then obviously you're losing quality. If you have a "pure" mode, that is a good mode to use. However, some displays are fixed to 60Hz in that mode. So there's no simple recommendation that would be valid for every TV.

Originally Posted by omarank

In my Optimus enabled laptop with GT650m graphics, I can use NNEDI3 upscaling (with no frame drops for SD videos) by adding a registry key to force NVIDIA gpu for OpenCL processing; but I am not able to use any of the error diffusion algorithms due to frames getting dropped when they are enabled. I was wondering if this was due to intel igpu being used for directcompute processing. If this is a possibility, can a registry key be added similarly to force the NVIDIA gpu for directcompute processing?

That's technically not possible, unfortunately. I can choose the GPU for OpenCL processing, but I can't choose the GPU for Direct3D. Have you tried renaming your media player? Reportedly sometimes that helps to activate the NVidia GPU instead of the Intel one.

Originally Posted by wikita

i was under the impression that onboard graphics is more than sufficient for video playback, but the little time spent reading up on madvr so far has proven me wrong. i know plenty about audio related matters but not so much video, hence this is doubly confusing for me

where do you think the law of diminishing returns kicks in with regards to settings used and GPU power?

A good current onboard graphics is powerful enough for madVR to beat any other renderer out there in quality, and most external video processors and Blu-Ray players etc, too. However, madVR also contains some very power hungry algorithms which are able to squeeze out another few percent of added quality. I can't tell you whether your eyes would see/notice the difference or not, or whether the improvement is worth the added price of a dedicated GPU for you. I just try to give you the best quality I can provide for any GPU power you can offer. Now it's your job to decide whether you're satisfied with very good (if so, just get a good onboard GPU), or whether you want to pay more dollars for a few percent more quality.

Originally Posted by Vyral

EDIT : I've changed the settings with 1080p60 and 1080p59. It seems to work because the refresh rate is changed during playback but it's either 60Hz or 59.9Hz.

Actually that is correct! 1080p59 is a weird name for "1080p with 59.940Hz". Basically 1080p59 is "60Hz / 1.001".

USA NTSC and ATSC use this weird 1.001 factor, which is why for video playback it's usually better to use 24/1.001 instead of 24, and 60/1.001 instead of 60.

Originally Posted by huhn

as far as i know repeated or dropped frame forced by vsync are not shown in the OSD.

They should be, I think?

Originally Posted by DarkSpace

Not even in LAV, but in ffdshow... and I find it interesting that madVR specifies that the fullrange information comes not from upstream, but specifically from ffdshow, too.

Cool, eh?

Originally Posted by Stereodude

Also, I know you're officially not taking feature requests, but have you given any thought to adding a masking step in the processing pipeline. Something where a custom number of pixels on each edge could be masked/replaced with black? Something like the equivalent of crop + addborders in Avisynth. This would allow people with fixed pixel displays who are running with 1:1 pixel mapping to hide unwanted artifacts from the edges of content. Thanks!

Some media players already have a feature like this, e.g. J.River MC. However, I do plan to add masking features in a future version. It's mainly intended for front projection, though (CIH etc).

Originally Posted by nikola

Be aware that nVidia is actually using chroma downsampling (4:2:2 if I recall correctly) to squeeze 4K into the bandwidth constraints of HDMI 1.4. Which defeats the whole purpose of madVR's RGB processing.

Originally Posted by huhn

it's using 4:2:0 for 4k 60 fps but laeve it at this.

^ Yes. AFAIK NVidia uses 4:2:0 for 4Kp60, because that's the only way you can send 4Kp60 with the HDMI 1.4 bandwidth. Framesrates of 30p and lower should not be affected, IIRC.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by NicolasRobidoux

Mathias: Sigmoidization was definitely pointing you in the wrong direction. It's dead. (Apologies.)
On the other hand, I'm pretty excited about this: http://www.imagemagick.org/discourse...113483#p113483

Hmmmm... Sounds interesting. I'm not familiar with the ImageMagick scripting language, though. Could you do me the favour of describing in a few words how the algorithm works exactly? E.g. I don't understand the exact meaning of "-evaluate-sequence mean -colorspace gray -auto-level" and of "-delete 0 -compose over -composite". Thanks!

[DarkSpace]

Originally Posted by madshi

Cool, eh?

Indeed it is! And although I don't use ffdshow myself, I wonder if it makes sense to select profile rules based on the upstream filter, or at least based on whether or not the upstream filter is ffdshow, since madVR can obviously detect that

[dansrfe]

madshi, I've discovered that my iGPU -> 750M problem is resolved when I select "System Default", "VMR 7 (Renderless)", or "Overlay Video Renderer" with "High-performance NVIDIA processor" selected for a renamed mpc-hc.

Strangely, I had only tried EVR and VMR 9 (Renderless) other than madVR and both of the others also gave the same black screen result as madVR. Should I open a bug report for this on the tracker and/or would you need me to provide more information? Thanks.

[Asmodian]

Have you tried "enable windowed overlay" in the rendering options of madVR? It is interesting that only the old renderers work for you.

[dansrfe]

Originally Posted by Asmodian

Have you tried "enable windowed overlay" in the rendering options of madVR? It is interesting that only the old renderers work for you.

When I select overlay mode in madVR I get "Overly mode not supported on this GPU".

Furthermore, when madVR or any other unsupported renderer (EVR/VMR9) is selected then no activity is shown for the 750M in GPU-Z. While the other mentioned renderers utilize the 750M.

[lansing]

don't know if it's a bug or something that I missed, I'm using version 0.87.10. I wanted to play my video at its native 24fps, but turning deinterlacing off in madvr's setting doesn't do anything, the video still plays at 60fps.

[Flux]

madVR 0.87.4 + MPCHC (Windows 7 SP1 64-bit)

Chroma upscaling: NNEDI3 (32 neurons)
Image upscaling: Jinc (3 taps) + anti-ringing filter
Smooth motion: enabled
Trade quality for performance: all unticked except "use random dithering instead of OpenCL error diffusion"
Exclusive mode: enabled

AMD R9 280 3GB GPU (940 MHz / 1250 MHz) with Catalyst 13.12 drivers.

I'm playing 1080p24 10-bit videos and rendering times hover around ~ 22 ms with GPU usage ~ 50% (~ 70ms with error diffusion and ~90% GPU usage).

It is normal that I can't use error diffusion with this GPU? There is tons of dropped frames. Rendering times are correct for this GPU?

[sneaker_ger]

Upgrade to the latest version of madVR.

[Flux]

I thought it was latest. Now I'm using 0.87.10 version.

0.87.4

I'm playing 1080p24 10-bit videos and rendering times hover around ~ 22 ms with GPU usage ~ 50% (~ 70ms with error diffusion and ~90% GPU usage).

0.87.10

I'm playing 1080p24 10-bit videos and rendering times hover around ~ 19 ms with GPU usage ~ 43% (~ 20ms with error diffusion and ~47% GPU usage).

Well, I guess that noticeable difference with error diffusion

Thanks for correcting this simple mistake

[James Freeman]

I am currently experimenting with my Panasonic ST60 plasma and MadVR, contrast ratio is superb (above 10,000:1), and colors are perfect (sub 2 dE with built in CMS).

First, with this particular model the madLevelsTweaker does nothing, but on my other displays it has effect; It appears the the GPU outputs 0-255 no matter what (like PC mode) when it detects this TV,
In RGB or YCbCr444 modes (nVidia card). I also use the "Pixel Direct" to get 4:4:4 Chroma.

To get a band-less picture I have to use the RGB Limited setting on the TV, and output 16-235 from madVR, this clips the OS shades but it does't matter for me.
When using the RGB Full setting & 0-255 with madVR, the TV creates minor banding like its compressing the incoming 0-255 to 16-235 then stretches back to 0-255.
Its' definitely not MadVR or Nvidia that creates the banding, it appears that the TV's processor only accepts 16-235 steps for bandless picture.

All in all, I preserve BTB and WTW using the RGB Limited on the TV & 16-235 with MadVR, and without any banding.
In effect madVR use one less dithering step because the image does not need to be stretch to 0-255, it stays at the native 16-235.

Bottom line is: 0-255 is not always best; it depends on the display device.
I use the Greyscale Ramp from the AVS709HD disc, and engage the "Reduce Banding Artifacts" in madVR for maximum smoothness, then I select the setting on the TV that looks smoothest/bandless.
I suggest you do the same, to know what's the native range the TV processor expects at the input; it may accept 0-255 and show all shades perfectly but create banding as a side effect.

One question remains; Can madTPG use 16-235, or is it locked to 0-255?