Haali Renderer

[Rash]

Anyway, this one image helps much in spotting color conversion errors (kudos to leeperry):

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/7717/barsmatrixqh9.th.jpg (http://img138.imageshack.us/my.php?image=barsmatrixqh9.jpg)
Really great picture! :)

About the VMR9 and EVR discussion, it seems that with new NVIDIA drivers the EVR convertion is smarter here. Actually working. The only real problem I have is that EVR still adds grey bars (16, 16, 16) no matter what video is playing. So when I watch HD content I have blacks in video and grey bars. That is just awful.

[zgx]

I'm not sure this is the correct thread but here goes.

I'm currently using VMR9 Renderless in ZoomPlayer 5 mainly because I want to get subtitles working. I get bad tearing when playing x264 encoded content (E6750, 8600GT, Windows XP).

If I use reclock 1.6 and VSYNC the tearing is gone and that's great and all. But when I play high bitrate x264 content I get the audio slighly out of sync. If I remove ReClock the audio is in sync but the tearing is back.

Have tried different decoders (CoreAVC, Cyberlink and ffdshow) but nothing works.

Is Haali renderer something that would help me in some way? Does it work with subtitles?

Any other idead how to get no tearing and still having synced audio?

[Kado]

Try Media Player Classic Homecinema (http://tibrium.neuf.fr/), along with Haali splitter and Haali renderer (http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/). Haali renderer supports subtitles and has several other features and settings, you won't know until you try, requires GPU with shader model 1 but you may get better results if your GPU has shader model 2 or better.

[KoD]

As far as I can remember, using the integrated subtitler of MPC is a bad idea for two reasons:
1. .ass subtitles have horizontal scaling to account for the difference between the frame aspect ratio and the display aspect ratio (subs are compressed horizontally; for instance, when the frame is 720x480 pixels but display resolution must be 852x480), but MPC's internal subtitler draws on top of the 852x480 frame, not on the 720x480 one
2. for same reasons as above, positioning is completely wrong when using .ass subtitles

That's why everybody that is involved in the process of creating .ass subs recommends to use vsfilter and not MPC's internal subtitler.

[zgx]

Thanks for your feedback Kado and KoD.

I tried Haali Renderer out but at first it didn’t help. But thanks to the OSD feature I could see how the “jitter” changed when I was using ReClock. It started out at a few ms but quickly rised to ~20 ms and then after a few seconds it was back to a few ms and then quickly up to ~20 ms again. This jitter is most likely what was causing the slight audio sync problem.

When not using reclock I think the tearing was slightly better with Haali but far from perfect. With relock the tearing was gone.

After a lot of experimentation I changed my refresh rate from 24 Hz to 60 Hz and Haali then showed that the “jitter” was lower and more stable at around 5-7 ms all the time. I could probably change “time shift” in AC3Filter or ffdshow to compensate for 6 ms or something like that but it seams this jitter is only appearing in some high bitrate encodes.


I’m going to give Haali Renderer a good try to see if I can do without WMR9. Thinking about what kind of settings I should use.

- I'm mostly viewing HD material.
- I have 512 MB memory on an Nvidia 8600GT and 2 GB RAM.
- The display is an Epson TW1000 projector (1920x1080) (DVI-HDMI cable used).

1. BT.709 for HD material right?
2. 128MB buffer or can/should I use more?
3. How many frames should I set it to? (someone recommended 120)
4. Will TV range give me more correct black levels and colors?
5. Sharpness does not affect playback when there is no scaling?
6. What’s suitable sharpness value for upscaling 720p to 1080p?

[Kado]

@zgx
1=>Correct in most occasions.
2=>128mb is enough but this is only to help in avoiding frame drops in case the CPU can't cope with the decoding, I use 128mb and have 6800gs 256mb, in my case using higher settings gives worse results under heavy load.
3=>That recommendation was probably from my post, this setting is more a limit because you can only fit about 32 frames with 1920x1080 resolution and YUV2 color space even if you set it to 120 frames using 128mb of buffers.
4=>Most videos use TV range so yes.
5=>Yes.
6=>Well that's really up to your taste so try various settings, but remember that -1 is the most sharp possible.

@KoD

Could you provide some screenshots displaying those issues if possible?

[rijnton]

@zgx

4=>Most videos use TV range so yes.



Athough it was not my question, I am a bit confused now,
How is this to reconcile with kutjong's answer tp my question on the previous page of this thread ?
Quote: "Yes. Consider the luma range options as options for input. E.g if your video material is in TV range, you would normally want to do the TV->PC conversion, then you select TV as "input".
But in your (and my) case, we're getting the correct luma output by calibrating our display, so that means we have to choose PC as "input" so that no conversion is made".

[kutjong]

For most people, calibrating the display for correct luma is not a practical solution, since that'll make everything that is in PC range look too dark, mostly this includes everything else but video in TV range. Therefore it's just easier to make a TV->PC conversion.

But if you have a HTPC and only watch movies on it, you usually get better results by calibrating the display than doing the conversion. This looks better for me.

[rijnton]

@kutjong: I sent you a pm.

[KoD]

@KoD

Could you provide some screenshots displaying those issues if possible?
If I find time, yes. But it would be easier to do it yourself.

Just take any anamorphic encode (and encode whose frame aspect ratio is not the display aspect ratio), then use Aegisub to make a subtitle file. Load the video in Aegisub so you can easily position each sub line. You can edit the style to use a font that would really look distorted when horizontally compressed.

[rijnton]

Finally I have read this complete thread.
One question though. A few pages back I read about the 3D settings of the driver when using HR, but it's not completely clear to me which settings I should use.
Could you give me some recommendations ? FWIW, I have the Geforce 8800GTX with 163.75 drivers.
TIA.
Ton

[mjrweed]

I see this too and maybe MY question, as a new member of this forum and a noob IS stupid:
Does that mean that without any additional settings and when playing in fullscreen, I only get half of the reolution ?
Or in other words, is 640x360 in fact "blown up" to 1280x720 ?
(I have a HD-ready LCD TV as display and resolution set to 720p fwiw and use HR in MPC)


No, only the initial window size is affected.

Okay, so the fact that when i click properties in MPC homecinema in fullscreen mode, and it still shows 640x360 is nothing to worry about? I`m still seeing a 1280x720 image even though mpc is telling me the image is 640x360??

[Kado]

@mjrweed
Check the size of the video with the renderer OSD (ALT GR + O).

[rijnton]

Finally I have read this complete thread.
One question though. A few pages back I read about the 3D settings of the driver when using HR, but it's not completely clear to me which settings I should use.
Could you give me some recommendations ? FWIW, I have the Geforce 8800GTX with 163.75 drivers.
TIA.
Ton

Nobody know an answer ?

[kutjong]

Nobody know an answer ?
Just leave the settings at application-controlled. Haali renderer then chooses the optimal AF samples and enables v-sync for itself, no need to force them yourself.

[rijnton]

Just leave the settings at application-controlled. Haali renderer then chooses the optimal AF samples and enables v-sync for itself, no need to force them yourself.

And are V-sync and AF the only settings that are of importance ? And should I leave the others at default ?
And what about AA ? Is it best to force it OFF ?

[Kado]

@rijnton
Just leave everything application controlled. You´ll probably only get worse results by tweaking the settings manually.

[lstepnio]

I'm using the latest version of the Haali Media Splitter and Video Renderer for playback of HD x264/MKV media files using the CoreAVC 1.5 decoder.

Haali Media Splitter
AC3Filter
CoreAVC 1.5 (1.6 removes skip deblocking so I'm still running 1.5)
Haali Video Renderer

The problem is related to having the "switch resolution on fullscreen" enabled in Zoom Player when using the Haali Video Renderer. This will causes Zoomplayer to lockup most of the time when closing the application while the video is playing. Testing shows that if the video is stopped prior to closing the application the lockup does not occur. If I switch to VMR or Overlay for the renderer the application lockup does not occur. If I disable "switch resolution on fullscreen" in the application the issue does not occur.

I'm guessing this is a timing issue with the renderer still holding resources while the Zoomplayer application is switching resolutions back to the desktop settings when exiting. I'm not sure if this should be handled by ZP or by Haali. I haven't tried to replicate with another DS player.

[leeperry]

hey guys I got a h264/dts/mkv movie that gives judder to hell with HR.

http://www.badongo.com/file/5547139

problem doesn't seem to come from the splitter, because I've tried both Haali's Media Splitter and KMP MKV Splitter and the problem remains exactly the same.

If I use Reclock, it's perfectly smooth.

HR is at fault ?!

[red5goahead]

hey guys I got a h264/dts/mkv movie that gives judder to hell with HR.
http://www.badongo.com/file/5547139
problem doesn't seem to come from the splitter, because I've tried both Haali's Media Splitter and KMP MKV Splitter and the problem remains exactly the same.
If I use Reclock, it's perfectly smooth.
HR is at fault ?!

Confirm . that file has stuttering. My refresh rate is 75 HZ and the file have 25 fps. I try it under ZP with coreavc as video decoder and dscaler as audio decoder (for dts). If I switch to evr (xp version) no stuttering is present. But the problem could be the audio decoding because with gabest mpa or ffdshow audio the play is smooth but slow..It's weird.

[leeperry]

hey red5 ;)

you run EVR on XP ?!?!?!?!

I've always thought that Reclock was aimed at snobby people, but obvisouly it's useful......even with HR :o

and doing "paltruspeed" by lowering to 23.976 with Reclock is not only smooth as butter, but also gives the right sound pitch.

Here's my config in KMPlayer :

[Primary Filtergraph]
0) - KMP Matroska Reader
1) - KMP AVI<->AC3/DTS Transform
2) - ffdshow Video Decoder
3) - InterVideo Audio Decoder
4) - KMP Video Transform
5) - Haali's Video Renderer
6) - DirectSound: SB X-Fi Audio [C080]

[red5goahead]

try Ac3 filter for dts decoding

[Primary Filtergraph]
0) - Chaos.mkv
1) - AC3 Filter for DTS
2) - CoreAVC Video Decoder
3) - KMP Audio Transform(Copy)
4) - Haali's Video Renderer
5) - Default DirectSound Device

no stuttering with ac3 filter ad decoder audio for dts
obviolsy no reclock.

[kutjong]

hey guys I got a h264/dts/mkv movie that gives judder to hell with HR.

http://www.badongo.com/file/5547139

problem doesn't seem to come from the splitter, because I've tried both Haali's Media Splitter and KMP MKV Splitter and the problem remains exactly the same.

If I use Reclock, it's perfectly smooth.

HR is at fault ?!
That clip plays back fine on my system, I use MPC 6.4.9.1, CoreAVC 1.5, Haali splitter, Haali renderer and AC3filter with SPDIF enabled so that my Audigy 2 ZS does the DTS decoding in hardware. :)

The clip plays back with about 5 ms jitter and Haali buffers 97 frames ahead. I have the buffer set to 128 mb and 120 frames, I have a 256 mb geforce 7600 Go graphics card.

Maybe you should try AC3filter or/and bigger buffer with Haali renderer?

[leeperry]

I have 200/200 set as buffer in HR, seems to be smoother than 256/256 on my HD2600XT PCI-E

gotcha red5! Intervideo audio filter seems to be at fault :D

problem also seems to be gone if I use CinePlayer Sonic HD DVD pack 4.3 for DTS

I'll try on my HC3100 this evening, thanks for your help fellas ;)

and BTW, that BT.601/709 is driving me nuts, I'll post some screenshots and you'll tell me.

I mainly watch mkv 720p files, and I'm always wondering about the colorspace.

simple rules seem to be that if ppl look too green in 709, it's 601
and if colors look washed out with reds being too dark in 601, it's 709

[kutjong]

I have 200/200 set as buffer in HR, seems to be smoother than 256/256 on my HD2600XT PCI-E

gotcha red5! Intervideo audio filter seems to be at fault :D

problem also seems to be gone if I use CinePlayer Sonic HD DVD pack 4.3 for DTS

I'll try on my HC3100 this evening, thanks for your help fellas ;)

and BTW, that BT.601/709 is driving me nuts, I'll post some screenshots and you'll tell me.

I mainly watch mkv 720p files, and I'm always wondering about the colorspace.

simple rules seem to be that if ppl look too green in 709, it's 601
and if colors look washed out with reds being too dark in 601, it's 709
I'm not suprised that 200 mb is smoother than 256 mb, 256 dries your graphics card completely since that's all the ram it has, and there should be some ram for windows GDI, too. ;)

Oh, and about colorspace, I wonder what's the case with BT.470 encoded material? When I play some mpeg files through dgindex, they all have BT.470-2 colorimetry. Is BT.470-2 just a standard for analog video? Is BT.601 identical to 470-2 but just digital? And for last, does Haali renderer play back 470-2 correctly?

[leeperry]

BT470-2 = BT601 AFAIK

so anyone's got tips to find out whether a movie is 601 or 709 ?

BTW my file seems to be stuttering a bit with CinePlayer Sonic HD DVD pack 4.2(4.3 refuses to output DTS for sum reason...)

I think I will always use Reclock from now on when I watch movies on my pj ;)

[kutjong]

BT470-2 = BT601 AFAIK

so anyone's got tips to find out whether a movie is 601 or 709 ?

BTW my file seems to be stuttering a bit with CinePlayer Sonic HD DVD pack 4.2(4.3 refuses to output DTS for sum reason...)

I think I will always use Reclock from now on when I watch movies on my pj ;)
I would also like to know a solution for this 601 and 709 mess. Currently I just use 601 for everything<720p and 709 for all that is >720p and hope it to be correct. Trying to detect those color errors is quite tiresome.

Anyway, what do you use for DTS decoding? A receiver, software or your X-Fi card? Software should be your last choice.

[leeperry]

a lot of DVD's actually run 709.
you can check it with DGIndex.

well my X-Fi card is supposed to have some DTS decoding capabilities, but I still need some software decoder I think ?!

any idea how to use the X-Fi decoder within a DS player ?

I've compared all the AC3/DTS decoders I have(AC3filter, Intervideo, Cyberlink, Sonic) and Sonic is the most natural one.
The others sounds dull or too "computer"-like.

I use a pair of MDR-CD3000 SONY headphones and I used several DTS96/24 DVD's to run the test ;)

[Shakey_Jake33]

a lot of DVD's actually run 709.
you can check it with DGIndex.

Which means they look wrong on a TV then, surely?

[kutjong]

well my X-Fi card is supposed to have some DTS decoding capabilities, but I still need some software decoder I think ?!

any idea how to use the X-Fi decoder within a DS player ?
To use your X-Fi for AC3/DTS decoding, you still need a a directshow filter to pass the stream to your soundcard for processing. You do this by enabling SPDIF in that filter, this will make the filter forward the stream to your soundcard for decoding. The important part is not to enable SPDIF in your X-Fi's options, though.

I don't know though if X-Fi supports DTS96/24 decoding. I've noticed that DTS-HD isn't supported by my Audigy 2 ZS... It'll try to decode it but it sounds like garbage. In this case I have to use software decoding with AC3filter. :o

How do you use DGIndex to check DVDs? It won't accept .vob.

[leeperry]

so i need to choose SPDIF output in my DS player, then disable SPDIF in the X-Fi drivers ?

I'll give it a shot then :D

well, last time I tried it did accept .vob, just make sure to have AnyDVD in the back so it's not CSS encrypted ;)

Which means they look wrong on a TV then, surely?

¿ Qué ?

[kutjong]

so i need to choose SPDIF output in my DS player, then disable SPDIF in the X-Fi drivers ?

I'll give it a shot then :D

well, last time I tried it did accept .vob, just make sure to have AnyDVD in the back so it's not CSS encrypted ;)
I don't know if you have to enable SPDIF in the media player, but you certainly have to do it in the directshow filter that you use for AC3/DTS decoding.

With anydvd, vobs now work with DGIndex... I've gone through about 8 DVDs (both PAL and NTSC) with DGIndex and apparently all are in BT.709?? I thought that DVDs were mostly in BT.601, not 709.
Autodetect in Haali renderer would be a very nice feature.

Anyway, I have to use VMR9 to get those nice purevideo features (which need DXVA), so currently I'm not using Haali renderer for DVDs.

[Sharc]

......I've gone through about 8 DVDs (both PAL and NTSC) with DGIndex and apparently all are in BT.709?? ......

I assume you checked with DGIndex 1.4.9? A change has been introduced from DGIndex 1.5.0 beta 12 onwards, see for example
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1063746#post1063746 and related discussions on colorimetry.
* When a stream does not declare the colorimetry, matrix_coefficients=1 is assumed for HD video and matrix_coefficients=5 is assumed for SD video.

[kutjong]

I assume you checked with DGIndex 1.4.9? A change has been introduced from DGIndex 1.5.0 beta 12 onwards, see for example
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1063746#post1063746 and related discussions on colorimetry.
* When a stream does not declare the colorimetry, matrix_coefficients=1 is assumed for HD video and matrix_coefficients=5 is assumed for SD video.
Yeah, I was using 1.4.9. With the new beta it shows *BT.470-2 on those DVDs. I suppose that this means that there is no colorimetry flag that tells what colorspace it uses, and DGIndex assumes then that it's 470-2.

[leeperry]

so DGIndex is useless then.

there's another tool that can check the colorspace, but only if it's been commented in the stream.

if anyone knows of such tools ?

anyhow, automatic detection in HR is most likely impossible....

[kutjong]

Hm, I think I've found a bug. If I play DVDs with Haali renderer, the renderer will always go to default setting on the frame buffer. It also seems that Haali renderer doesn't react to changing the buffer on-the-fly, but the problem is that the renderer always defaults the frame buffer if you restart it! This happens with all mpeg-2/DVD decoders.

It is quite annoying since Haali renderer isn't capable of smooth frame doubling deinterlacing with a 4 frame buffer, I think. If I go fullscreen with a 29,97 fps DVD, Haali renderer isn't capable of rendering 60 fps, it only goes to about 50 fps and there is about 900 ms jitter, which isn't smooth. If I am not in fullscreen, Haali renders 60 fps perfectly, so I think a bigger buffer is needed but it's currently impossible to set a higher frame buffer than 4 since the renderer doesn't remember that setting!

If you want to use Haali's deinterlacing, in ffdshow you have to set interlace flag in output media type to "bob". You'll find this in the output tab. Also, you have to use libmpeg2 decoder, with libavcodec the interlace flag doesn't work.

[foxyshadis]

so DGIndex is useless then.

there's another tool that can check the colorspace, but only if it's been commented in the stream.

if anyone knows of such tools ?

anyhow, automatic detection in HR is most likely impossible....

Automatic detection of what? The only difference between the colormatrices is that one is slightly oranger; it can be decoded perfectly validly either way. If no information is present in the source stream, no other tool can help. (601/470 is supposed to be default in the absense of a flag, though.)

Which means they look wrong on a TV then, surely?
Pretty much. Not many DVD players even bother to read the flag.

[leeperry]

well yeah, that's what I meant.

we're teh screwed, it can't be auto-detected.

so we need easy rules to see it by eye...

simple rules seem to be that if ppl look too green in 709, it's 601
and if colors look washed out with reds being too dark in 601, it's 709

would be pretty cool if Haali could set a hotkey to switch :D

[leeperry]

just wanted to add that once your display is D65 calibrated with some serious equipment(I used a spyder2pro), BT601 or 709 becomes crystal clear :D

that's when you have a non-calibrated device that it's just a choice between 1)crappy colors or 2)crappy colors :D

[rijnton]

Hm, I think I've found a bug. If I play DVDs with Haali renderer, the renderer will always go to default setting on the frame buffer. .

I noticed that too. Does that mean that Haali's renderer actually is not suited for dvd playback ?
And can Haali confirm that it is a bug ?

[kutjong]

I noticed that too. Does that mean that Haali's renderer actually is not suited for dvd playback ?
And can Haali confirm that it is a bug ?
I sent him a PM about it yesterday. Still waiting for a reply...

[KoD]

My guess would be that when playing DVDs, the renderer can not use buffering because menu display would not work properly anymore.

[rijnton]

My guess would be that when playing DVDs, the renderer can not use buffering because menu display would not work properly anymore.

I also asked about it in the CCCP forum and according to the link, given in the last reply, that seems to be right.

[TheFluff]

It is indeed correct according to Haali himself. Quote from this thread, 20 pages back or so:
In DVD graphs queue size is limited to the minimum, otherwise interactive menus are impossible to use.
(http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=974020&postcount=535)

[kutjong]

Damn, this means there's no way to use Haali's deinterlacing with dvds.. A 4 frame buffer just isn't enough to render 30 fps as 60 fps.

[Shakey_Jake33]

I'm not sure what the problem is, I use Haali renderer with DVD's, using Haali's to deinterlace, with no problem.

[kutjong]

I'm not sure what the problem is, I use Haali renderer with DVD's, using Haali's to deinterlace, with no problem.
Hm, on my desktop PC deinterlacing is smooth, steady 50 fps with only 4-5 ms jitter. My source is a PAL DVD.
On my laptop, the deinterlacing works well also, as long as the video doesn't go fullscreen. When I go fullscreen, only 40 fps is achieved, causing jitter and stuttering.
On my laptop, I have a Core 2 Duo T7200, 2048 MB RAM and a Geforce 7600 Go 256 MB graphics card. My desktop is: Pentium 4 3.2E GHz, 1024 MB RAM and a X800 XT graphics card.

Is the graphics card on my laptop the bottleneck? How fast does your graphics card need to be for smooth deinterlacing??

Edit: My laptop's native resolution is 1680x1050, while on my desktop PC I used 1280x1024, so scaling on my laptop would of course require much more resources. So I changed the resolution on my laptop to 1280x720 and now deinterlacing worked better, 50 fps is achieved, but there is about 20-50 ms jitter (it keeps changing all the time within this range)... On my desktop it was only 4 ms. Do you think this is a problem? I didn't see any stuttering or something like that anyway.

[Shakey_Jake33]

My spec is a Core2 Extreme X6800, 2GB DDR2 and a GeForce 7900 GTO, desktop resolution 1360x768. No idea what would be the cause for the problems for you tbh, because it just plays DVD's exactly the same as any other media, .vob files too.
I get constant 8ms jitter on everything, all file formats, which is fine.

I am using ffdshow for Mpeg2, with the 'Set interlace flag in output media' ticked and set to bob.

[kutjong]

I am using ffdshow for Mpeg2, with the 'Set interlace flag in output media' ticked and set to bob.
I'm using the same procedure.

Maybe I should just try different drivers. I'm currently using the 93.71s. Do you recommend any specific drivers for 7000 series?

[Shakey_Jake33]

Well, I'm using 169.25 =P Quite a fair bit higher.