madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[mark0077]

Originally Posted by leeperry

hah...in what player? w/ ffdshow on top of it? Mark0707 seemed to suggest that ffdshow was at cause somehow ?!

and w/ the m$ DVD Navigator?

ffdshow HAD many many dvd menu problems which have all been fixed by haruhiko over the past few months. Any problems with menu's are surely haali's problem. I always have menu problems with haali.

[noee]

fwiw, I have DVD menus working here with FFDshow (2880), HR and jRiver MC13....

[cyberbeing]

Originally Posted by leeperry

hah...in what player? w/ ffdshow on top of it? Mark0707 seemed to suggest that ffdshow was at cause somehow ?!

and w/ the m$ DVD Navigator?

All I know is DVD menus have always worked with Haali Renderer for me (for at least the past 2 years) with MPC or MPC-HC, but occasionally they do get 'stuck', so it's not flawless. Even when they do get stuck, you can usually get them 'unstuck' with a bit of fiddling.

Just now I tested it with ffdshow rev2857, the internal MPC-HC mpeg2 decoder, and the NVIDIA PureVideo MPEG2 software decoder with Haali Renderer (built February 1st, 2009) + MS Navigator, and all seem to work fine, like they always have. I never really used ffdshow for watching DVDs in the past (I always used NVIDIA's decoder), so if it was somehow the cause, I wouldn't have known of it.

Leeperry, I have no idea what is causing menus not to work for you with HR, but I would guess it has something to do with all the extra stuff you always have going on for post-processing.

[Mike5]

DVD Menu, renderers and OS. For me:

Renderer Overlay, VMR7/9: Menu work both in XP SP3 and Win7

Renderer EVR: Menu don't work in XP SP3 (in the sense they are not responsive to mouse) but work perfectly in Win 7

Renderer madVR: Menu don't work both in XP SP3 and Win7 (DVD doesn't open: Macromedia Fail)

Renderer HR: Menu don't work in XP SP3 (in the sense they are not responsive to mouse); I haven't tried in Win7

So, in a way, renderer (and OS too) has to do with menu navigation, while I don't have a clue about how.

Further, the Macromedia error in madVR misleads to thinking about something to do with protection, but it hasn't anything to do with protection, because I can always see a single VOB file inside a protected DVD, and even a m2ts file inside a protected BD, with AnyDVD HD in background.

Is anyone able to explain these behaviours ?

[FoLLgoTT]

@madshi
In the screenshots of the grey ramp in your first post I noticed that the gradient of madVR differs to the gradients of the other renderers. It looks like clipping black and white on the left and right, as if the levels in the LUT were not set up correctly or something like this.

Beside that the smoothness is absolutely stunning!

[madshi]

Originally Posted by FoLLgoTT

In the screenshots of the grey ramp in your first post I noticed that the gradient of madVR differs to the gradients of the other renderers. It looks like clipping black and white on the left and right, as if the levels in the LUT were not set up correctly or something like this.

Argh, my fault. I originally intended to do these screenshots with PC levels, cause the conversion YCbCr (video) -> RGB (PC) produces more noticeable banding, especially with ffdshow. But then I didn't manage to get ATI VMR9 to do PC levels. So I changed my mind and used video levels for the comparison screenshot - but forgot to redo the madVR screenshot. I've now updated the madVR screenshot to video levels (see first page).

For your interest, here is a comparison with PC levels:

http://madshi.net/madVR/ffdshow 2867...lramp (PC).png
http://madshi.net/madVR/madVR 0.4 - smallramp (PC).png

Ouch...

[FoLLgoTT]

No big problem.

Originally Posted by madshi

I originally intended to do these screenshots with PC levels, cause the conversion YCbCr (video) -> RGB (PC) produces more noticeable banding, especially with ffdshow. But then I didn't manage to get ATI VMR9 to do PC levels.

This is possible using the brightness and contrast sliders in CCC. A time ago I managed to find the right values, but I forgot them. For overlay you have to set brightness at 126% and contrast at 86%. Maybe it is the same with VMR9...

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by Mike5

Renderer EVR: Menu don't work in XP SP3 (in the sense they are not responsive to mouse)

Renderer madVR: Menu don't work both in XP SP3

Renderer HR: Menu don't work in XP SP3

yes, apparently either the player or the renderers don't play nice w/ the m$ DVD Navigator filter...but it's prolly the player so it will never work.

[Casshern]

I think its a matter of preference,

the ideal function for reconstruction can easily be derived from the shannon-whittaker sampling theorem - it corresponds to the sinc function. All other just try to approximate this function (with lanczos being the closest), but many of the assumptions of the theorem, while reasonable, do not really describe reality (infinite windows etc.). So basically there is not a right or wrong here. I personally am a little bit on follgotts side, and like details if the ringing is not overly pronounced. But i also understand that some people like a silky smooth picture. The real problem was ATIs horrendous chroma upsampling. Glad that has been solved (ffdshow, mpc hc shader, madvr etc).

I would love an integration of reclock and the video renderer, much like gothplayer has done. Also his integration into the VMR9 renderer allows for using DXVA decoding. Any plans madshi?

regards,

Casshern

Originally Posted by FoLLgoTT

I admit in this example the additional ringing inside the fonts is clearly visible and annoying. Thank you for the example!
But is it really visible inside of text lacking movie scenes? I never saw it.

On the other hand if you look at these shots from the same movie you can see much less aliasing on the inner side of the mirror (very annoying in moving scenes), but no additional ringing.

And if we analyze the picture a bit closer with the h-sweep pattern and a waveform analyzer:

It is obvious that the higher frequencies are transported better with Lanczos10 and that this algorithm acts as a better low pass, because beats (aliasing) gets less. The h-sweep looks cleaner and very slightly more detail is visible.
Of course if you look at the sides of the h-sweep (hard edges, square wave) there is additional ringing introduced by the scaling algorithm. But these areas content high spatial frequencies which movies *usually* don't (or as I learned only rarely), because of the necessary low pass filtering.

Anyway, you are right. Because everything is just a big compromise it is just a matter of preference. Less aliasing and more detail (Lanczos8) or less ringing (e.g. Catmull-Rom).

[flanger216]

I'm also getting the wierd 'color bug' when I use ffdshow to resize to my native resolution...

[madshi]

Originally Posted by Casshern

I would love an integration of reclock and the video renderer, much like gothplayer has done. Also his integration into the VMR9 renderer allows for using DXVA decoding. Any plans madshi?

Definitely no for VMR and DXVA. That will never happen. Integration of ReClock and video renderer? Most probably no. I don't like the general concept of manipulating audio in order to achieve smooth video playback. I think there are better ways to solve the underlying problem which nobody has implemented yet. And no, I will not tell you what I have in mind. I generally don't like talking about things I have not implemented yet. I prefer to do it the other way round. Which is also the reason why I avoid any discussion about smooth video playback at this point in time.

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by madshi

I don't like the general concept of manipulating audio in order to achieve smooth video playback.

hope it'll still allow 25@24 and 23.976@24

and HR is very presenter-dependent(works fine in MPC/KP, pretty badly in ZP6)....I guess all video renderers are?

[madshi]

Originally Posted by flanger216

I'm also getting the wierd 'color bug' when I use ffdshow to resize to my native resolution...

Why do you resize with ffdshow? Anyway, can I see a screenshot, please? Which resolution is the source and which is your native resolution? Which ffdshow resize options are you using?

Originally Posted by leeperry

hope it'll still allow 25@24 and 23.976@24

Of course if you want to change 25 movies or 23.976 movies to 24.000, you will have to resample them. If you want that, that's fine with me, although personally I play 23.976 with 23.976. Resampling one movie framerate to another framerate is not the part I dislike. What I dislike is the general idea of using resampling (with varying frequencies) to make the audio clock match the video clock.

Originally Posted by leeperry

I guess all video renderers are?

I don't know. Too early to talk about that...

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by madshi

Of course if you want to change 25 movies or 23.976 movies to 24.000, you will have to resample them. If you want that, that's fine with me, although personally I play 23.976 with 23.976. Resampling one movie framerate to another framerate is not the part I dislike. What I dislike is the general idea of using resampling (with varying frequencies) to make the audio clock match the video clock.

I don't know. Too early to talk about that...

1) your audio is resampled by windows anyway...except if you enable rewire to ASIO in your audio drivers, or use Reclock in pass-through mode w/ a bitperfect audio renderer...so to most ppl, it doesn't matter at all. but we already discussed that..

well ar-jar was implying that when we output 23.976@48Hz in his gothplayer, the audio is not resampled, but its pitch is modified by DirectX....losslessly? that's the question

2) yeah OK, anyway MPC HC's presenter seems to work just fine....and soon the CMS will be fully functional(identical to ddcc in realtime I mean) so I'll be able to run more real world tests, but so far it looked great!

[madshi]

Originally Posted by leeperry

your audio is resampled by windows anyway... [...] so to most ppl, it doesn't matter at all.

That is not a good argument. I'm here to realize perfection, not just something slightly above the average. If you're satisfied with what "matters to most people" then you're in the wrong thread...

Obviously, the perfect overall HTPC playback solution will include an audio renderer (not written by me) which bypasses the kernel mixer. And of course best audio will be realized by (1) bypassing the kernel mixer and (2) *not* doing resampling.

Now you may be happy with perfect video and manipulated audio. Personally, I'm not. Resampling audio results in a measureable hit on audio quality.

Originally Posted by leeperry

well ar-jar was implying that when we output 23.976@48Hz in his gothplayer, the audio is not resampled, but its pitch is modified by DirectX....losslessly? that's the question

I'm not sure if it really works the way ar-jar is thinking. Maybe it is, maybe not. The problem is that it seems to me that he's relying on what Windows/DirectX hopefully does in the background. And in my experience it's better to take things into your own hands instead of relying on Windows to get things right. I'm not saying that his solution doesn't work. Maybe it's the perfect solution. It's just difficult to check. How do we know what really happens in the background with the way he's doing things? How do we know what DirectX does if you play around with the audio clock? Will Windows modify the clock of the DAC in realtime? Will it just send audio data with a high jitter rate to the DAC and rely on the DAC to smoothen things out? What will the DAC do? Will it do some internal correction method to smooth out the data? Will that still be lossless? What happens with digital transport? Will HDMI just stop sending audio samples for a few nano/milliseconds if ar-jar is doing his magic? Or will HDMI loop samples or send zero samples? What will the receiver do? Or will audio/video sync slightly drift away for a while, until the sync mismatch is getting too big, at which moment DirectX might decide to finally do something (e.g. loop or drop audio samples)? Will every audio card behave the same way? Will every OS behave the same way? Will every media player behave the same way? Will every audio driver behave the same way? So many questions about what happens in the background and so few answers...

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by madshi

That is not a good argument. I'm here to realize perfection, not just something slightly above the average. If you're satisfied with what "matters to most people" then you're in the wrong thread...

well a very high percentage of HTPC's users couldn't care less about CMS & bit-perfect audio...can't deny that

Originally Posted by madshi

Obviously, the perfect overall HTPC playback solution will include an audio renderer (not written by me) which bypasses the kernel mixer. And of course best audio will be realized by (1) bypassing the kernel mixer and (2) *not* doing resampling.

perfection exists, it's called RME or Lynx....for a measly thousand bucks

and it very much works(thanks to yesgrey again) :
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=27610

Originally Posted by madshi

Now you may be happy with perfect video and manipulated audio. Personally, I'm not. Resampling audio results in a measureable hit on audio quality.

well 23.976 audio is 1% slown down...I don't call this perfection. and for 25fps PAL stuff, if you don't have a RME/Lynx souncard you're SOL anyway. I prefer correct pitch and resampling, each to his own

Originally Posted by madshi

I'm not sure if it really works the way ar-jar is thinking. Maybe it is, maybe not.
[...] So many questions about what happens in the background and so few answers...

indeed, Windows is not really known to care about quality and it might go crazy over HDMI

[Casshern]

I am anxious to see what you have in mind. Is it something like gothplayer does when he manipulates the Powerstrip timings in real time? Does it interpolate the two critical frames? Does it find the perfect tear by anayzing picture content? As it doesn't involve the audio, the options are limited. Does it wait for the next fade to black to maybe skip a frame or repeat one while the screen is black? What if the stream doesn't have any? If i would be forced to guess, i would say you have this in mind: analyze picture content and if its static, blank or content you do a premature flip so that the tear is not visible.

bye,
Casshern

Originally Posted by madshi

Definitely no for VMR and DXVA. That will never happen. Integration of ReClock and video renderer? Most probably no. I don't like the general concept of manipulating audio in order to achieve smooth video playback. I think there are better ways to solve the underlying problem which nobody has implemented yet. And no, I will not tell you what I have in mind. I generally don't like talking about things I have not implemented yet. I prefer to do it the other way round. Which is also the reason why I avoid any discussion about smooth video playback at this point in time.

[ice25]

Originally Posted by leeperry

well 23.976 audio is 1% slown down...I don't call this perfection.

Gotta agree there, i'd rather have a movie with a slight audio resampling to the correct speed of 24.000, than playing it at the native slowed down 23.976fps. It's probably a matter of preference though, do u want perfect audio or video playback..

[STaRGaZeR]

Originally Posted by madshi

Why do you resize with ffdshow? Anyway, can I see a screenshot, please? Which resolution is the source and which is your native resolution? Which ffdshow resize options are you using?

Your renderer uses the video resolution that comes from the previous filter. If he has resized SD video to HD in ffdshow leaving it in YV12 it'll be converted to RGB using BT.709 instead of BT.601. I experienced this myself too with madVR and when the graphics card drivers are used to convert to RGB. Is there any way of getting the resolution directly from the splitter instead of the decoder?

[Jong]

Originally Posted by ice25

Gotta agree there, i'd rather have a movie with a slight audio resampling to the correct speed of 24.000, than playing it at the native slowed down 23.976fps. It's probably a matter of preference though, do u want perfect audio or video playback..

Yes. I do not see how there can be a "perfect" solution to this. There is no magic way to change the playback speed, even slightly and leave the audio untouched and at the right pitch. I think ar-jar, in this one instance, just hasn't had this is a priority to look into and is hoping somewhat "blindly" that Windows will fix all. It's not a criticism, given everything else he has had to work on, but I'd be surprised if I were not right!

Mind you, just to throw a spanner in the works, do we know they bother to pitch correct the audio 0.1% down when encoding @23.976 and if they do the same thing consistently from disc to disc? I would be surprised, as they rarely, but sometimes(!), bother to correct the 4% pitch error on PAL DVDs!

Madshi, have you listened to audio sampled by Reclock using its recently improved resampler (speed and quality) in "excellent" mode. It is quite practical to use this now and I think Yesgrey believes it is effectively lossless (yes I know that is oxymoron). With your keen ear I'd be interested in your thoughts.