Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) - DXVA!

[Shinigami-Sama]

i was told elsewhere that L5.1 H264 videos do not comply with DXVA which explains things. so is there any tool that will quickly change L5.1 H264 to L4.1?

I suppose it may be possible to 'smart render' it, but something will probably break that
but I really doubt anyone would go through the trouble

[rahzel]

i guess its possible with 720 l5.1 videos by extracting with mkvextract, changing the profile level to 4.1, then merging it back to mkv with mkvmerge. however, this method doesn't seem to work with 1080p videos. :(

so for my 1080p videos, looks like ill be stuck using CoreAVC for now.

[tetsuo55]

i was told elsewhere that L5.1 H264 videos do not comply with DXVA which explains things. so is there any tool that will quickly change L5.1 H264 to L4.1?

take a look here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132924

[rahzel]

take a look here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132924
yeah, i tried h264info, but it doesn't seem to support 1080p video... it looked all messed up when i put it through and changed it to 4.1.

i have coreavc, but this particular video has one part that is very intense; so intense that even coreavc struggles in this one particular scene. another issue that came up, though, is using CoreAVC, using VMR9 introduces a lot of screen tearing (using XP, so no EVR adjusting for me). i locked the back buffer and it seemed to have helped, however it increased the CPU usage by around 10%. using system default for the renderer uses low CPU, but the image looks far too dark (darker than my desktop which is calibrated).

since i have coreavc, and its just this one particular video/scene that is struggling, transcoding is out of the question... it takes far too long to do full length movies.

hopefully someone comes up with a way to convert 1080p from l5.1 to l4.1 without transcoding. if there is a way, please let me know.

[tetsuo55]

yeah, i tried h264info, but it doesn't seem to support 1080p video... it looked all messed up when i put it through and changed it to 4.1.

i have coreavc, but this particular video has one part that is very intense; so intense that even coreavc struggles in this one particular scene. another issue that came up, though, is using CoreAVC, using VMR9 introduces a lot of screen tearing (using XP, so no EVR adjusting for me). i locked the back buffer and it seemed to have helped, however it increased the CPU usage by around 10%. using system default for the renderer uses low CPU, but the image looks far too dark (darker than my desktop which is calibrated).

since i have coreavc, and its just this one particular video/scene that is struggling, transcoding is out of the question... it takes far too long to do full length movies.

hopefully someone comes up with a way to convert 1080p from l5.1 to l4.1 without transcoding. if there is a way, please let me know.

Thats impossible

[rahzel]

well thats not what i wanted to hear. :(
oh well... i guess CoreAVC will suffice.

[ACrowley]

i was told elsewhere that L5.1 H264 videos do not comply with DXVA which explains things. so is there any tool that will quickly change L5.1 H264 to L4.1?

Newer encodes from x264 are DXVA Complaint in Level 5.1(+) too, so far it follows the Reference Frames standard for Level 4.1

1920x816= 5 Ref Frames...... its DXVA Complaint with MPC-HC or .ax

[Kado]

The cause for no DXVA acceleration is because of the number of reference frames only but video corruption may come with other encoding settings.
If rahzel was having 10% cpu usage he was using dxva with the sample I provided, to see the stats click "View=>Display stats (CTRL+J)".
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/kado/dxva_evr.png
I have a 1080p video that can use DVXA for decoding because it only has 1 ref frame.

[rahzel]

sorry, this is all over my head... dunno much about this stuff.
so is there anyway to modify the number of ref frames in a video? and what are ref frames for that matter?

[clsid]

No, you can't change some value. You would need to re-encode the file.

You need to simply accept that some files can't be played using DXVA.

[Kado]

You'd have to re-encode the files with dxva compilant settings.
Info on H264 here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Features).

[alexins]

Media Player Classic HomeCinema (x86), svn 729 (http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/168/1/)
Media Player Classic HomeCinema (x64), svn 729 (http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/167/1/)

Supported languages: CN, CZ, DE, ES, FR, HU, IT, KR, PL, RU, SK, TR, UA

Updated FFmpeg

Changes log (http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/7/17/)

[tetsuo55]

Currently depending on your OS,videocard and driver files will either work or will not.

A 1920x1080 file can either have 4 ref frames and no b-pyramid or 3 ref frames and b-pyramid.

4 ref frames and b-pyramid will only work if you're very lucky

[STaRGaZeR]

ctrl+j didn't bring anything up.

is it possible that some videos were encoded wrong, so that you can't use HA on them?

What renderer are you using? Try VMR9 Renderless, even if the file is not DXVA compliant you should see some info.

[ADude]

You'd have to re-encode the files with dxva compilant settings.

DXVA is cute fun, but is certainly not practical for playing videos.

Why spend thousands and thousands of hours dealing with it, when a CPU that can play any existing video is cheaper than a spindle of 100 DVD-Rs ?

[Shinigami-Sama]

DXVA is cute fun, but is certainly not practical for playing videos.

Why spend thousands and thousands of hours dealing with it, when a CPU that can play any existing video is cheaper than a spindle of 100 DVD-Rs ?

exactly
hell this POS p4 can play 720...
why waste time on something like DXVA...

[STaRGaZeR]

exactly
hell this POS p4 can play 720...
why waste time on something like DXVA...

Heat, power consumption, image quality and having the CPU free for other tasks are my reasons ;)

[gngn]

my Athlon64 x2 heats up quite nicely with the stock-cooler, while with DXVA the GPU heats up by just 2 degrees Celsius. also having the CPU free is another bonus (try encoding and watching a HD movie at the same time without DXVA and you get the point). another reason: because its possible.
for laptop-users the reduced heat and powerconsumption will surely increase the life-span of the laptop.
DXVA with MPC-HC is practical at this moment, from the few dozen different files i have, only 2 or 3 files need manual intervention(5 seconds job) in the players settings (turn/force DXVA off), so it's not "thousands and thousands of hours". not for the users, anyway (it's another story with the developers, but it's not like theyre work is in vain).

[rahzel]

any decent computer will play 720p fine... its 1080p i'm concerned about.

[Aleksoid1978]

I think that need add MPC-HC icon(first from .exe) for Register File Association - to distinguish which files associate whith MPC-HC, which not ??? (maybe in future add Icon library in .dll)

[STaRGaZeR]

I think that need add MPC-HC icon(first from .exe) for Register File Association - to distinguish which files associate whith MPC-HC, which not ??? (maybe in future add Icon library in .dll)

Yeah, the generic icon sucks hard.

[Aleksoid1978]

It should be more views about "add default MPC icon for associated files" ...

[Shinigami-Sama]

Heat, power consumption, image quality and having the CPU free for other tasks are my reasons ;)

image quality is the same
you can't post-process on dxva1...
and you can get better quality out of your encodes if you don't have to follow L4.1, even if its minor


so...

[dZeus]

image quality is the same
you can't post-process on dxva1...
and you can get better quality out of your encodes if you don't have to follow L4.1, even if its minor


so...

everybody who has a slower PC should suffer, because you are part of a select group of users that has a CPU fast enough not to need DXVA?

[tetsuo55]

image quality is the same
you can't post-process on dxva1...
and you can get better quality out of your encodes if you don't have to follow L4.1, even if its minor


so...

This is not true, all purevideo2/UVD videocards have post-processing to some degree.

Now with ATI's UVD2 the postprocessing has had a major update. One of the best things is SD-to-HD upscaling. Supposedly ATI is now able to output DVD's at HD upscaled resolution, almost Bluray quality.

MPC-HC doesn't support all the new decoders ati has yet, it also has a divx hardware decoder, i'm not sure if it does the upscaling too.

Casimir, last time i requested this feature i was not able to give a good reason this time i can:

UVD2 has extensive post processing for both SD and HD content. Even better it upscales MPEG2 video 2 fullHD(near bluray quality), not 100% sure if it does the same for MPEG1 and DIVX, could you please add these codecs to MPC-HC?

Ofcourse MPEG2 is the most important one due to there being HD mpeg2 content out there

everybody who has a slower PC should suffer, because you are part of a select group of users that has a CPU fast enough not to need DXVA?

i agree, the quality increase from breaking DXVA limits is less than 5%.
With current advancements with x264 the only reason to break DXVA limitations is "animation", and even that is getting better and better within DXVA limits

[Mercury_22]

I think that need add MPC-HC icon(first from .exe) for Register File Association - to distinguish which files associate whith MPC-HC, which not ??? (maybe in future add Icon library in .dll)

Yeah, the generic icon sucks hard.

Yes ! I agree too and I know i've said this before but the 64-bit's icon should be different from the 32-bit version and like clsid said it's possible

The same code is used for both 32/64 builds. So your proposed changes must be made conditional (using the preprocessor).

[alexins]

Media Player Classic HomeCinema (x86), svn 732 (http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/172/1/)
Media Player Classic HomeCinema (x64), svn 732 (http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/173/1/)

Supported languages: CN, CZ, DE, ES, FR, HU, IT, KR, PL, RU, SK, TR, UA

FIX : Format & File Associate - "Image File" now not include by pressing "Video" button on all language, Correct show non associated formats, Add MPC-HC default ICON for associated formats; Update Traditional Chinese translation for internal filters.

Changes log (http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/7/17/)

[ranpha]

This is not true, all purevideo2/UVD videocards have post-processing to some degree.

Now with ATI's UVD2 the postprocessing has had a major update. One of the best things is SD-to-HD upscaling. Supposedly ATI is now able to output DVD's at HD upscaled resolution, almost Bluray quality.

MPC-HC doesn't support all the new decoders ati has yet, it also has a divx hardware decoder, i'm not sure if it does the upscaling too.

Casimir, last time i requested this feature i was not able to give a good reason this time i can:

UVD2 has extensive post processing for both SD and HD content. Even better it upscales MPEG2 video 2 fullHD(near bluray quality), not 100% sure if it does the same for MPEG1 and DIVX, could you please add these codecs to MPC-HC?

Ofcourse MPEG2 is the most important one due to there being HD mpeg2 content out there


I think you overestimate what UVD2/AVP2 can do. The only difference between UVD and UVD2 is that UVD2 can do dual streaming (picture-in-picture) and also full hardware acceleration for MPEG2 videos (UVD1 surprisingly do not do that). And UVD/UVD2 never do post-processing in ATI cards, that will be done by AVP 2.0 in pixel shaders. And AVP 2.0 only do hardware deinterlacing, pulldown detection, edge-enhancement and denoiser, no upscaling AFAIK. Anyway, upscaling by hardware can be done by the renderer.

[Vorenus]

There has been a bug in this version of MPC since I first started using it a year or so ago. I'm using Vista, and as you can see from the screenshots I'm using Aero with the EVR renderer.

The bug is when I'm using the "normal" display preset and I double click the video to full screen, the double click once more to bring it back to "normal" there is a lingering flickering. This flickering is 2px wide and surrounds the whole video.

When I switch to the "minimal" preset (by pressing '1') the flickering goes away.

Is anyone else seeing this? Is this a known bug?

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/406/mpcflickerbugnp2.png

So I take it no one else is seeing this problem?

[STaRGaZeR]

image quality is the same
you can't post-process on dxva1...
and you can get better quality out of your encodes if you don't have to follow L4.1, even if its minor


so...

In Vista (DXVA2) I can see the difference between DXVA and software decoders. I've tried to use screenshots to tell the difference, but I couldn't. That's like other member in another topic, saying EVR renderer gives better contrast but you can't see it in screenshots. It's just a feeling. That is with plain DXVA2 with an ATI card, add to that the post-processing options regarding color and contrast we can select in CCC. ffdshow can also do post-processing, I've tried everything and I like ATI more.

The L4.1 is a limitation yes, but that's the limit of actual hardware. You can still encode in higher levels and a software decoder will be used if needed. This is a win-win situation, DXVA is used when it can be used, and it gives all the things I've said. If I'm encoding something the PC can perfectly play Blu-ray movies or whatever having 0 impact in perfomance, which is NICE.

[pjo]

Hello. I am a newbee on MPC Home Cinema.
I have an .m2ts with AAC5.1. When it is played the video is fine but the audio is just noise.
A file with AAC2ch is played ok.

Please advise what settings should be aspplied.
Or does MPC-HC support AAC5.1 with ffdshow ?
Or please advise how to set up ffdshow to play AAC5.1.

pjo

[tetsuo55]

I think you overestimate what UVD2/AVP2 can do. The only difference between UVD and UVD2 is that UVD2 can do dual streaming (picture-in-picture) and also full hardware acceleration for MPEG2 videos (UVD1 surprisingly do not do that). And UVD/UVD2 never do post-processing in ATI cards, that will be done by AVP 2.0 in pixel shaders. And AVP 2.0 only do hardware deinterlacing, pulldown detection, edge-enhancement and denoiser, no upscaling AFAIK. Anyway, upscaling by hardware can be done by the renderer.

I don't overestimate it. What i said is basically a copy-paste from the ATI UVD specification sheet. So what i said is all true.
You forgot that both ati and nvidia also does sharpening/softening.
The "upscaling" to HD is an official feature and is something completely different from regular "scaling".

-Upscaling = remastering the image to FullHD or higher resolution using various filters.

-scaling = resampling the pixels of the original image to look better on a larger resolution screen.

An upscaled image looks like HD, more detail is visable, colorspaces have been converted. ATI claims their hardware reaches near-hd-quality.
A Scaled image looks exactly like the original image, but less pixelated than it would have looked without scaling. The image has not been enhanced/digitally restored in any way.

Now i'm not saying this stuff actually helps at all. ATI could be talking out of its ass for all i know.

I do know that upscaling using the FFdshow+Avisynth scripts sometimes beats the official HD releases in image quality.

[clsid]

You are falling for another marketing stunt. Search the web and you will find some reviews were they tested this 'feature' by comparing an upscaled DVD with its Bluray version. Result: the upscaled image is nowhere near the same quality as the bluray version.

[tetsuo55]

You are falling for another marketing stunt. Search the web and you will find some reviews were they tested this 'feature' by comparing an upscaled DVD with its Bluray version. Result: the upscaled image is nowhere near the same quality as the bluray version.

So there are finally reviews in which they where actualy able to see a difference (the older reviews i read did not have the driver that enabled the feature yet)

Although i did it myself its pretty useless to compare a upscaled dvd to a bluray release. However the feature is VERY usefull, i don't know what it looks like in real life yet but i do know how ffdshow+avisynth look.

Here are some facts from my personal experience:

-The upscaled DVD always looks better than the original scaled DVD. It seems like there is more detail and the image resembles a bad bluray disk which is still a lot better than a good dvd. I know its mostly mindtricks its all psy-improvements.

-I have The lord of the rings special extended edition on DVD, i also have the fullhd version that i recorded from satelite.
The upscaled DVD looks way better than the fullhd-ts, the DVD scaled looks worse than both.

-Some upscaled DVD's look better than commercial Bluray's (upscaled superbit dvd version of the fifth element looks better than the original bluray version)
-Most bluray releases look better than upscaled dvd's(like the re-remaster re-release of the fifth element)

Most HD satelite/cable streams have been upscaled with expencive hardware, so have a lot of bluray and HDDVD releases. This hardware is a lot more capable than a realtime ffdshow+avisynth script.

A full HD remaster can never be beat no matter what you try. But upscaling will always be closer to that than doing nothing at all.

(What i'm trying to say is that not everyone has the bluray version of a partical piece of film, the upscaled version of the piece of film will almost always look better than doing nothing)

[ranpha]

The "upscaling" to HD is an official feature and is something completely different from regular "scaling".

-Upscaling = remastering the image to FullHD or higher resolution using various filters.

-scaling = resampling the pixels of the original image to look better on a larger resolution screen.

I do know that upscaling using the FFdshow+Avisynth scripts sometimes beats the official HD releases in image quality.

ATI AVIVO 2 (UVD 2 + AVP 2) did not have such feature, and AFAIK ATI never claim that they have advertised it. Such a good feature will be trumpeted all around if it exists.

And I do think upscaling is just the same as resizing (either bicubic/bilinear in renderers or via ffdshow).

And unless a Blu-ray movie attain a Tier 5 - Coal rating at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=10733385&postcount=1 upconverted DVD is not a match for the equivalent Blu-ray version.

[Shinigami-Sama]

everybody who has a slower PC should suffer, because you are part of a select group of users that has a CPU fast enough not to need DXVA?

P4 northwood HT @ 3ghz
pre PCI-E
plays 720p fine...
hardly anything I'd call fast
my singlecore laptop plays it even better too...

I'd just much rather see work get done on the stability side before stuff like dxva

[arfster]

1) UVD2 cards scale no differently than UVD1.

2) All scaling to a higher resolution is upscaling, by definition.

3) Upscaled DVDs, even maxxed bitrate superbit ones, will never look anywhere close to a decent Bluray.

[Kado]

The DXVA will be around until someone makes a CUDA based video decoder, then all DXVA limitations will be gone, the decoding process will still be offloaded to the GPU while the CPU can do something else.
The purpose of DXVA was to help the cpu with the decoding and post-processing task optimizing the whole computer usage and now all decoding is done within the GPU. A similar thing happened with the transition from DX9.0c to DX10, the usage of systems with multi-core or multi cpu's and I could go on giving optimization examples.

Anyway some think DXVA is not needed while other want it, I want it. The only thing that bugs me in MPC HC is the issue with the internal subtitles renderer when buffering is set to zero and the memory usage after a bunch of videos have been opened (I have seen MPC HC use 1gb of ram while playing one 720p video), otherwise the player works great.
And my cpu can handle even 1080p videos (Pentium D 4GHz).

[pjo]

Hello. I am a newbee on MPC Home Cinema.
I have an .m2ts with AAC5.1. When it is played the video is fine but the audio is just noise.
A file with AAC2ch is played ok.

Please advise what settings should be aspplied.
Or does MPC-HC support AAC5.1 with ffdshow ?
Or please advise how to set up ffdshow to play AAC5.1.

pjo

Please advise where this question should be posted.

pjo

[saint-francis]

Please advise where this question should be posted.

pjo

There isn't really enough information there for anyone to properly answer you. So the AAC track is just noise. Does it play before it's muxed or is it noise then too? As far as anyone can tell from reading your post you might just have a bad audio track.

[rica]

If you have a reliable AAC decoder (i have no idea) then open MPC and under external filters select it and select merit value "prefer".
Edit: Don't forget to leave "aac" unticked under internal filters option.

[ghostonline]

special effect sub + 1080p anime will cause video slow down on a 4Ghz 45nm quad with less than 50% utilization. dxva will drastically reduce the symptom. dxva give you a better play under certain conditon, even on a quad.


btw, load two same special effect subs on one 1080p anime will choke the very same quad without max out it.

[pjo]

There isn't really enough information there for anyone to properly answer you. So the AAC track is just noise. Does it play before it's muxed or is it noise then too? As far as anyone can tell from reading your post you might just have a bad audio track.

VLC plays that AAC5.1 perfectly OK.

[pjo]

If you have a reliable AAC decoder (i have no idea) then open MPC and under external filters select it and select merit value "prefer".
Edit: Don't forget to leave "aac" unticked under internal filters option.

rica, Thanks.
By changing the filter setting, now AAC5.1 is played ok.
AAC was not checked. But AAC 2 ch was played ok before.
I am wondering why.

pjo

[rica]

nVidia owners,

I've found the way of watching VC1 files with arcsoft video decoder on MPC-HC.

If your demuxer is haali, you can't get rid of DMO; so you have to uninstall haali first.

Set the merit of the arcsoft mpeg demux to 008000FF.

Untick "MPEG/PS/TS/PVA" and "Matroska" under "Source Filters" and "VC1 dxva", "VC1 ffdmpeg" under "Transform Filers" of intenal filters option,

Select "arcsoft video decoder" and "arcsoft audio decoder hd" and set their merits "prefer" under external filters option.

Enjoy.

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/3254/vc1kc1.th.png (http://img375.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vc1kc1.png)

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/7354/mpcgraphuo3.th.png (http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpcgraphuo3.png)

[rica]

rica, Thanks.
By changing the filter setting, now AAC5.1 is played ok.
AAC was not checked. But AAC 2 ch was played ok before.
I am wondering why.

pjo

I think MPC's internal filter was active before which creates 2 ch only.

[ooferomen]

nVidia owners,

I've found the way of watching VC1 files with arcsoft video decoder on MPC-HC.

If your demuxer is haali, you can't get rid of DMO; so you have to uninstall haali first.

Set the merit of the arcsoft mpeg demux to 008000FF.

Untick "MPEG/PS/TS/PVA" and "Matroska" under "Source Filters" and "VC1 dxva", "VC1 ffdmpeg" under "Transform Filers" of intenal filters option,

Select "arcsoft video decoder" and "arcsoft audio decoder hd" and set their merits "prefer" under external filters option.

Enjoy.

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/3254/vc1kc1.th.png (http://img375.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vc1kc1.png)

i can't get the arcsoft codecs to work in MPC, is it because i am using the trial version?

[Kurtnoise]

Hey,

There is something wrong with the latest builds. I cannot load sub files anymore with the VMR9 renderless :

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/2939/mpchcsettingsyn3.th.png (http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpchcsettingsyn3.png)

http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/3064/mpchcsettings02cn5.th.png (http://img377.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpchcsettings02cn5.png)

OS: XP SP3
DirectX: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
input: AVI (xvid & mp3)

All is fine with the Haali's renderer. What's wrong ?

[rica]

i can't get the arcsoft codecs to work in MPC, is it because i am using the trial version?

No, i don't think so; i was using the codecs of the trial before.
You must have been missing something.

Are you sure you made the arcsoft demux default (you can use Radlight); check opening any ts file on graphedit.

[alexins]

Hey,

There is something wrong with the latest builds. I cannot load sub files anymore with the VMR9 renderless :

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/2939/mpchcsettingsyn3.th.png (http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpchcsettingsyn3.png)

http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/3064/mpchcsettings02cn5.th.png (http://img377.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpchcsettings02cn5.png)

OS: XP SP3
DirectX: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
input: AVI (xvid & mp3)

All is fine with the Haali's renderer. What's wrong ?

Hi! Everything is reproduced well.

http://s44.radikal.ru/i105/0808/8e/0249a35f9aa8t.jpg (http://radikal.ru/F/s44.radikal.ru/i105/0808/8e/0249a35f9aa8.jpg.html)
http://s61.radikal.ru/i174/0808/62/28199db3f138t.jpg (http://radikal.ru/F/s61.radikal.ru/i174/0808/62/28199db3f138.png.html)
Try to make upgrade DirectX (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en)