"Proper" playback

[Demi9OD]

I recently purchased a Pioneer 4280HD Plasma and have been playing around with mpeg4/mpeg2 playback all weekend. My video card is an ATI 1900xt, using 7.7 drivers and no CCC. I am outputting to the TV with a DVI->HDMI cable at 1360*768. ATM I am using MPC HC 1.0.9.0, with the suggested SeeSaw settings from AVS forums, YV12 all the way through, VMR9 renderless. Windows XP SP2.

I've noticed some pretty significant black crush on certain sources, mainly Xvid files, and while accurate color rendition is important to me, I really want to make sure I am getting 100% "true to source" levels output. I want my blacks to be the complete absence of any light, I want my whites to be as bright and white as my TV is possible of displaying, and I want everything in between to look exactly as the director intended it to look as far as levels/gamma/brightness are concerned.

Since I don't own an upscaling or HD DVD player I don't really have a reference point. One note of interest is the color space input on my TV. It can be set to 4:2:2, 4:4:4, RGB 16-235, and RGB 0-255. It was initially set to auto, which chose RGB 16-235, and the black crush and shadow detail both improved allot on DVD playback when forcing RGB 0-255. 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 both transform the entire screen to green. The TV also has a video/pc input toggle, but those make no visual difference that I can tell.

So whats the best way to insure perfect output? Is there something behind the scenes going on that is limiting my levels range? Should I correct it with the levels filter, or use a different renderer like Haali or EVR? Will a single set of FFDshow filters work for all sources or do I need to have different profiles for DVD/Xvid?

[Atak_Snajpera]

Try to use RGB32 instead of UV12

[Demi9OD]

I downloaded a small test pattern encoded to vobs today, read through LOTS of AVS threads, and discovered some interesting things.

VMR9, no FFDShow filters: Washed out DVD playback with TV input set to 0-255 input, clearly visible "whites" (actually grey) above 235. Correctable by lowering TV brightness and increasing contrast OR setting TV input to 16-235.

VMR9, Lanczos Resize in FFDshow or Avisyth: Applied 16-235 "expansion", resulting in completely crushed whites/blacks with TV input set to 16-235. Setting TV to 0-255 resulted in good test patterns.

Haali: Same results as VMR9 regardless of resize, very slightly (1-2/255) darker image than VMR9.

I don't really know whats right, but I do know how to get the best picture regardless of output now, which is useful.

[Demi9OD]

On another note, one of my test DVDs today was "Rescue me", a television show, and I started getting into deinterlacing. I played with basically every deinterlacer available through FFDshow (allowing libmpeg2 to decode mpeg2), MPC built in mpeg-2, and blend shader with VMR9. Every decoder resulted in either small jaggies (around moving lips was most apparent), or pulses from blended frames.

I fired up PowerDVD and was blown away by how smooth AVIVO hardware deinterlacing was. Frame stepping in PDVD showed 3:2:3 solid frames, which I am assuming were doubled to 60fps to achieve such smooth playback.

Is there any way at all to accomplish this same effect in MPC? I don't want to lose the ability to do SeeSaw and Lanczos resize that I have in MPC, but the deinterlacing PDVD+AVIVO offers is just so much smoother. I tried forcing Cyberlink external mpeg2 filters into MPC, and I got the DVD to playback fine, but it was obviously using Cyberlink's software solution and not AVIVO based deinterlacing.

[Kado]

ffdshow does not support hardware video acceleration (decoding). and to have hw accel in mpc you have to use vmr9 (or evr, maybe) and a compatible video decoder, like nvidia pure video decoder, cyberlink's, etc.

[Demi9OD]

Yeah, I realized that after about 7 hours of reading, installing, uninstalling, and tinkering around with settings. Is there any chance the "Holy Grail" of FFDShow + HW Accel will ever see the light of day?

Till then I guess I'm turning off FFDShow for Interlaced sources.

[foxyshadis]

ffdshow does not support hardware video acceleration (decoding). and to have hw accel in mpc you have to use vmr9 (or evr, maybe) and a compatible video decoder, like nvidia pure video decoder, cyberlink's, etc.

Hardware decoding and hardware deinterlacing are totally different things. There's an option called "set interlace flag in output media type", which does part of the job, but I don't think ffdshow & mpc have all the required parts to get hardware deinterlacing in all circumstances. It's worked for me before though, with AVIVO.

It works quite well with CoeAVC, as far as I can tell, although the one I tried to play got incredibly choppy. I don't know which flags ffdshow isn't sending, it's weird.

[wozio]

I think output color space must be set to NV12 to get HW deinterlacing to work with ffdshow. As far as I know drivers internally work in this color space for video processing.

[Demi9OD]

NV12 doesn't make any difference. Adding FFDShow in the chain disables HW deinterlacing no matter what. Even with no filters enabled at all in FFDShow.

Software DEI (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y167/Demi9OD/softwaredei.jpg)

Hardware DEI (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y167/Demi9OD/hardwaredei.jpg)

[wozio]

For me it does work but when ffdshow is only filter in the chain (decoding mpeg2). Look at the screenshot, VMR9 is in hardware deinterlacing mode:

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/8108/ffdshowvmr9deinterlaceep4.th.jpg (http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ffdshowvmr9deinterlaceep4.jpg)

As far as I know ffdshow postprocessing works best when operating on progressive frames so using it together with hardware based deinterlacing is problematic.

[Demi9OD]

How did you get your VMR9 filter properties to look like that? Mine doesn't have any tabs or configurable options. I think my reluctance to believe I couldn't use FFDshow with hardware deinterlacing was because filter order effects filter abilities. For instance, mpeg2 splitter->purevideo decoder->vmr renderless yields different settings in purevideo decoder than mpeg2 splitter->purevideo decoder->ffdshow->vmr.

The Purevideo settings, while earlier in the filter chain than ffdshow, are actually just passing values to VMR, and cannot do that with FFDshow in the way.

So here is another question, if I must forgo FFDshow for interlaced content, are there any other options for hardware post processing or resizing better than the default "fullscreen" mode in MPC?

[wozio]

It is just like that since I remember :) Try graphedit to control and check your filters.

When usign ffdshow, hardware acceleration can't be used (when using acceleration, decoders put video frame into graphics card memory, it can't be accessed from ffdshow) that is why you have differrent options when purevideo decoder is connected directly to renderer or via ffdshow, in latter it is in software mode.

But you must split hardware accelerated decoding from hardware deinterlacing. Basically you can use software decoders (like dscaler5, ffdshow for mpeg2 or coreavc for avc) together with hardware deinterlacing. Decoder just must output correct format to vmr9 (best nv12 with interlaced flag set).

[CruNcher]

Yep NV12 works for that but be carefull differen't Forceware drivers show different Quality of the Motion Adaptive Deinterlacer Nvidia uses, best is to use the latest oficial ones to be sure the Motion Adaptive Deinterlacer works as expected on the Geforce 7 series (speed and work @ all) you get the same Quality as with Yadiff Bob with Nvidias Deinterlacer their is even a better version of the Deinterlacer after the newest official driver that works, but it's slow as hell on this old Hardware but it shows even better results then YADiff on Geforce 7 Hardware :) the Driver revision im talking about is 97.94 (im not sure if anyone knows about this so see this as a Doom9 exclusive if it was never talked on the Net about this ;) ), but as i said the implemented Motion Adaptive Deinterlacer in this version takes alot of power my 7600 GS isn't able to even playback Interlaced PAL stuff fullscreen with this in realtime HD is slow as hell :P but the quality is even better as in the current 94.24 official Forceware driver (i think it was a test for the Geforce 8 series), i think it's the same quality Deinterlacer they use for the Geforce 8 now it's really advanced ( better quality then YADIFFs bob mode).

[arfster]

It is just like that since I remember :) Try graphedit to control and check your filters.


You have proppage.dll registered. It comes with graphedit, but needs to be registered or it won't add those property pages.

Useful for telling what deinterlacing mode is in use.