madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[Sunspark]

Are you able to revert to the previous version of madvr you were using?

[Zoltrix]

Are you able to revert to the previous version of madvr you were using?

I did do that initially. But eventually that older version stopped working. You get the messages in MPC-BE telling you a newer version is available, and then the old one stops working altogether. I am guessing that is by design, not sure if there is a way to override or disable that?

[Alexkral]

It seems that madVR 0.92.17 has stopped working for me, the PC becomes unresponsive when seeking video and if I don't restart it I finally get a blue screen with different messages.
I don't know which particular setting is causing the problem because I've gotten bored of restarting the PC to confirm that madVR is indeed the cause of the problem.
The latest Test Build seems to work fine though, not that I like having to worry about having to update it when it stops working, but unfortunately some shaders I use regularly don't work well with the other renderers, not sure why .
The only good news is that it is not a hardware problem, which is what worried me at first.

EDIT: I just remembered that you have to select the floating point format to use the shaders with the other renderers, so goodbye madVR, I think the only thing I'm going to miss is debanding.

[Sunspark]

It must be a video driver or OS update issue.. I am still on .92.17 and no issues, but my video driver hasn't been updated in years and my OS is frozen too.

However, don't be so sure that you don't have a hardware problem. A couple years ago I did have a RAM issue which I only noticed when backups weren't completing properly.. after fully testing the memory and replacing the problematic stick backups were then fine again.

[Siso]

Use beta 112 or 113, they don't have expiration date. Also IMHO I wouldn't ditch madvr for any other video renderer. The alternatives are not that good at all.

[huhn]

It seems that madVR 0.92.17 has stopped working for me, the PC becomes unresponsive when seeking video and if I don't restart it I finally get a blue screen with different messages.
I don't know which particular setting is causing the problem because I've gotten bored of restarting the PC to confirm that madVR is indeed the cause of the problem.
The latest Test Build seems to work fine though, not that I like having to worry about having to update it when it stops working, but unfortunately some shaders I use regularly don't work well with the other renderers, not sure why .
The only good news is that it is not a hardware problem, which is what worried me at first.

EDIT: I just remembered that you have to select the floating point format to use the shaders with the other renderers, so goodbye madVR, I think the only thing I'm going to miss is debanding.

but a blue screen is never a software issue at least not a software like madVR or a video player.

that's an issue with the GPU driver or the OS.
a video renderer does not trigger a blue screen the blue screen should not happen. a crash would be different.

the deband in madVR should be pretty much the same as in mpv they are both based on the same deband algorithm.

[ng4ever]

Stupid question but what are the best settings with MadVR software with a RTX 4090 ?

[Schwartz]

It's subjective. Depends on source material and screen size also.

NGU for doubling, Spline for downsizing, Jinc for upsizing and Bilateral for Chroma are good baselines though.
For low-quality and SD stuff you can also do softer scalers, then add some post-processing.

Error Diffusion isn't worth it for how expensive it is (IMO).

[Alexkral]

but a blue screen is never a software issue at least not a software like madVR or a video player.

that's an issue with the GPU driver or the OS.
a video renderer does not trigger a blue screen the blue screen should not happen. a crash would be different.

the deband in madVR should be pretty much the same as in mpv they are both based on the same deband algorithm.

Well, it's not the first time I got a blue screen just a little after Windows became unresponsive, for different reasons and on different hardware, so that also seems like a reason for the OS to trigger it. In this case the message was sometimes WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR and other times Unexpected Store Exception. I have checked the SSD, the RAM and the rest of the hardware without finding any errors. I was using an old GPU driver but updating it didn't fix the issue. So yes, an OS update for sure. Everything seems to work fine now, except when I specifically use the MPC-HC seek bar with madVR.

As for mpv, I am convinced that it is the way to go for multiple reasons, but first I'll need to port my shaders to the mpv format.

[Zoltrix]

Use beta 112 or 113, they don't have expiration date. Also IMHO I wouldn't ditch madvr for any other video renderer. The alternatives are not that good at all.

Thanks for the tip. I found a download of madVRhdrMeasure113, is that what you are referring too?

I'm assuming that is quite old?

I did try the Reinhard tone mapping in VLC as an alternative to MadVR, and it looked pretty good.

[Siso]

Thanks for the tip. I found a download of madVRhdrMeasure113, is that what you are referring too?

I'm assuming that is quite old?



It may be old but it is working without the expiration date, if you want new use the latest beta until it expires...

[Zoltrix]

It may be old but it is working without the expiration date, if you want new use the latest beta until it expires...

Thanks, yes you correct, 113 doesn't expire, just did a quick test. I'll give it a go and see if that gets rid of the black flashing again.

Are there any major downsides to staying on an old version?

[Siso]

Thanks, yes you correct, 113 doesn't expire, just did a quick test. I'll give it a go and see if that gets rid of the black flashing again.

Are there any major downsides to staying on an old version?

If you are obsessed with hdr to sdr via pixel shaders, then yes you will need the latest beta, if not then you are ok.

[Zoltrix]

If you are obsessed with hdr to sdr via pixel shaders, then yes you will need the latest beta, if not then you are ok.

Yep that is the only reason I use it, for the HDR to SDR via pixel shaders.

[Sunspark]

@Alexkral What happens with the mpc-be seek bar and madvr?

[Alexkral]

@Alexkral What happens with the mpc-be seek bar and madvr?

I put the 0.92.17 files back in and now it seems that the issue is gone with mpc-hc as well, strange because it was happening with different movies. Meanwhile, the only thing that has changed is the update of the GPU driver, but I also checked it right after updating the driver and then it was still happening. It may be that madVR files or settings were corrupted.

[ng4ever]

Will MadVR make simple YouTube videos look better or not really ?

[Amuat]

Seems that nobody can tell me what to do with display modes, but I also have another question: my monitor identification in madVR says that dynamic metadata is still not supported, even though I now have HDMI 2.1 connection and a monitor that supports both HDR10+ and DolbyVision. The latter requires a special program to work on Windows as I understand, but shouldn't the former at least be supported without any such program?

[Charky]

Madvr does not support Dolby Vision and, IIRC, HDR10+.

TBH, for the last 6+ years, madvr development has been virtually stopped (people pixel-peeping at endless color variations of the same 10 screenshots for 6 years and 19K posts don't count).

Unless you desperately need something other renderers don't have, maybe consider switching to something more recent, more robust, and with active development, like Nevcairiel's JRVR (in JRiver), MPC Video Renderer (in MPC-HC and BE), or, if you like obscure text conf files, mpv, all of them being able to play Dolby Vision files, albeit in an unconventional way.

[Amuat]

Madvr does not support Dolby Vision and, IIRC, HDR10+.

TBH, for the last 6+ years, madvr development has been virtually stopped (people pixel-peeping at endless color variations of the same 10 screenshots for 6 years and 19K posts don't count).

Unless you desperately need something other renderers don't have, maybe consider switching to something more recent, more robust, and with active development, like Nevcairiel's JRVR (in JRiver), MPC Video Renderer (in MPC-HC and BE), or, if you like obscure text conf files, mpv, all of them being able to play Dolby Vision files, albeit in an unconventional way.

Thank you for your advice. I quite desperately need reduce compression artifacts coupled with cranking up sharpness on my monitor to be honest, works almost like magic in eliminating ugly noise in the background while still keeping the image sharp where it needs to be. So unless that can be accomplished with those other renderers, dynamic HDR is not worth it for me. Anyway the videos that support it are just a fraction of what I watch, so maybe I'll just use another player for those, without any fancy processing. Could I just use something like VLC for those, or what would be the most simple, decent player supporting the technology?

[Charky]

I generally only use high quality sources so slight sharepning aside, I don't feel the need to use any fancy shader.

So I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure you can find efficient deblockers and denoisers out there as shaders you can use with any player that supports them. You'll probably need a bit of trial & error though. And alas, I admit that won't be as easy as ticking a box in madvr.

[ryrynz]

Will MadVR make simple YouTube videos look better or not really ?

Yes, but the same could be said of other renderers as well.

[Megalith]

Are all of the recent developments/improvements related to SDR > HDR conversion only? I think my version is outdated, but I already have a TV that can do native HDR, so...

[Zoltrix]

I ended up giving MPC Video Renderer a go, but have switched back to the old madVRhdrMeasure113. Even though I guess it's old, it still looked better to me. And I am mainly using it for HDR to SDR tone mapping.

[ryrynz]

Gave it a go myself multiple times but madVR just somehow displays smoother, even without Smooth Motion enabled. Probably use it for another ten years at least..

[Charky]

I fail to see how one of these renderers could be "smoother" (whatever that means), provided they are both properly configured.

[ryrynz]

Smoother is literally less jarring panning and general frame presentation. There's nothing to "set up" in other renderers, so nothing is set "incorrectly" thanks.

[tp4tissue]

The gamma correction option BT.709/601. Is this essentially converting from whatever the setting is under "this display is already calibrated"--> into the SRGB 2.2 tone curve?

Calibrating to the SRGB tone curve (the one that goes shwoop into black) looks almost identical to using this setting when calibrated to purepower 2.4

This seems to be useful on alot of old blurays which may have been graded on CRTs and look way too dark in the shadow regions. Heck, alot of modern bluray shadows look way too dark for purepower 2.4, but this might be because they're grading to a black floor that's not purepower all the way down?

Thoughts guys? NE SRGB proponent/haters want to chime in?

[huhn]

should be the bt 709 gamma curve that is used no where outside of how camera record. it has an effective gamma of around 2 not like sRGB which is around 2.22

sRGB is not close to CRT response BT 1886 is supposed to be.

[tp4tissue]

Unfortunately the tpg doesn't allow me to measure the 709/601 tone curve option, I can't say for sure what's happening.

I've read alot of conflicting information around BT1886. There was no agreement to use it among colorists until as recently as 2016+. And alot of material was graded on CRT throughout the years, which May or May-Not have been calibrated to SRGB.

Overall, opinions seem to say 1886 is pretty new as far as standards go. With older blurays/ DVDs, you can definitely see these were not meant for 1886. No idea what the colorists used, but it was not 1886, simply too much crush with flat 2.4, I've personally tested this on both CRTs and qdoled calibrated to purepower 2.4

Huhn, have you tried the 709/601 option with these older material? The shadow details pop right out, and it definitely looks more correct.

[huhn]

https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bt/R-REC-BT.1886-0-201103-I!!PDF-E.pdf
have a nice read.

the important part is there focus on CRT. so it'S supposed to be used event through we clearly know they didn't look at bt 1886 well we also know they did because bt 1886 is gamma 2.4 on perfect black displays. and on none perfect black display like CR 1000 it is even brighter in black parts then sRGB is.

i can tell you they didn't use the bt 709 curve (they are not supposed to they where using what ever they want) the spec even warns about using it for an EOTF:
https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bt/R-REC-BT.709-6-201506-I!!PDF-E.pdf
In typical production practice the encoding function of image sources is adjusted so that the final picture has the
desired look, as viewed on a reference monitor having the reference decoding function of Recommendation
ITU-R BT.1886, in the reference viewing environment defined in Recommendation ITU-R BT.2035.


it's an encoding function anyway not a decoding function like gamma 2.2.

[tp4tissue]

Let me give you a solid example huhn.

https://ibb.co/NV3DcNG
https://ibb.co/dLfQLdh

This frame from the outlaw star bluray. My display is calibrated for 2.4 pure power. I've tried 2.2 pure, 2.1, but the entire bluray series has tons of crush.

UNTIL you either use srgb, or the bt709/601 gamma option. Then the details on the pipes just pop right out. Viewing the image in madvr, press play, or else the gamma function won't shift during pause.

I've tried this on all my LCDs calibrated to pur 2.4, none of them look right. ALOT of older blurays exhibit this problem. I think this is what someone posted about a long time ago on this forum, green crush, where pure 2.4 is NOT the intended target curve of older grades?

[huhn]

i can only check with an ycbcr file.

this looks like wrong levels old anime doesn't have a perfect black in the first place. i'm not blaming you for the wrong levels. levels in master is not that rare.
try the newest beta and press control+shift+alt+print
there should be a video screenshot on the desktop RawScreenshots.
you also need ffmpeg in the madVR folder.

just to be clear relative 2.4 or absolutely?

here is sRGB:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1360huoMc9KhQloIpKoVDRVAHCh6xdfcY/view?usp=sharing
there is a chance it is used.

green should be the issue the difference between gamma and sRGB is linear in terms of color.

[tp4tissue]

Huhn, I'm not disputing that bt1886 2.4 "is" the standard, and is "most probably" the correct default.

My point of discussion here is that "where-ever" the mismatch occurred, mastering-hardware, colorist, compressionist, etc, such "mis-matches" are so incredibly common among the published material, that, it may be likely for these odd-curves to line up serendipitously as the correct display offset on our end^?

The screen shot is accurate as far as demonstrating the effect I'm talking about, it's from an untouched file. I'll look into this new beta, still on 113.

But can you take a look at the dark values, the difference between the shadow detail is rgb 0.1.1 and 3.5.4. That is barely anything. On purepower 2.4, you can not see that difference as detail, especially if the APL of the scene is enough to triggers your eyes to shutter.

Is it not crushed on your calibrated setup?

[huhn]

i don't know i don't have the ycbcr image.

the RGB are very close to be dead on my oled on my LCD screen it is fine.
i have relative not absolute gamma on the LCD.

on at 1000 CR bt 1886 should elevate the black even more then sRGB.

and if they are from a BD then they are remastered to the standard used at the time the BD is released.

i would just old something like the sRGB 3d LUT i would clearly not use bt 709. sRGB is an actually used spec.

with a ycbcr file i may have a better idea what is actually happening. maybe this is far from a guarantee.

[Siso]

The secret of gamma has always carried with it a mystery. We must learn its riddle. We must learn its discipline.

[tp4tissue]

I don't have any 1000cr lcds up and running at the moment, on my crt and oled, the shadow detail is completely crushed as you say. rgb 111 and 555 are less than 0.01 nits @ 120 nit peak sdr. Unless shadow detail is brought up to around 0.03-0.05 nits, you almost can't see it unless the scene APL is very low with almost no bright elements. I'd say it's a challenge to even see 0.05, if there were brighter scenes immediately before the dark scene, you'll miss the detail completely. 5% rgb 131313, 0.1 nit, is imho the cut off for immediately obvious, it's shadow it's detail.

3 possible scenarios. #1, the colorist messed up. #2, they were trying to hide grain shimmer of dark areas. #3 they deliberately wanted an over the top contrast look.

#4, they used a CRT. Maybe even IPS, although, I don't if that was a thing for pros.

[tp4tissue]

The secret of gamma has always carried with it a mystery. We must learn its riddle. We must learn its discipline.

:p well put Siso, I suspect they just had some intern guy take a swing, although this was a pretty big deal show to remaster for the fans.

Do you think they remastered on CRT 2013-2015ish ?

[Siso]

Maybe on lcd, who knows...

[tp4tissue]

Maybe on lcd, who knows...

They did that on 2013 ipses?

[Sunspark]

It's going to get to the point that we're going to need a wheel dial to adjust the gamma and turn it every time to compensate for bad grading.

I sort-of have one, though not in the same sense. What I ended up doing was I set the monitor gamma, then I set a compensation level a little higher (because it's not calibrated but I can see by eye it needs just a little bit more adjustment). So this sets the baseline that is decent. I have bias lighting (wall sconces behind the screen and a dim lamp to the side), so if it's the evening, I will start the show, then adjust the lighting in the room to a level that makes the colours and blacks snap-in more well-defined. You have to adjust the dimmer reasonably quickly, because the eye adjusts fast.

[tp4tissue]

I use the source black level option alot. You got 255 rgb values, +5 is typically enough to bring out most crush, 5 is only about 1.5%. At least with madvr, you can do this without making the black bars worse since they can crop and not be part of the image.

I also suspect they might be using a black floor instead of true blacks to account for the behaviors of consumer LCDs.

[Zoltrix]

Hi all,

Been using MadVR for a while with no issues. One of the recent software updates introduced occasional black flickering. See video clip below (around the 7-6 sec mark as the video counts down) for an example. Nothing at all changed on my setup, just an update to MadVR. Since then, I rebuilt the HTPC (fresh OS install), tried a different video card, using Potplayer instead of MPC-BE. Issue still exists.

I can go into more detail. But based on the video clip shown, is there a setting or something to eliminate this flicker?

https://imgur.com/a/R05GPPr

Ok finally found what it was. It was the "Contrast Recovery" setting. Once disabled the white flickers are gone. I found this post which seems to suggest that setting is broken:

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/improving-madvr-hdr-to-sdr-mapping-for-projector-no-support-questions.2954506/page-668#post-60873397

[tp4tissue]

Another good example of Gamma Malfeasance.

Can you see the Arches ceiling beams, or the Daisy plant pot in the left corner, NO YOU CAN'T, but they're there.

https://i.postimg.cc/kVk3mFFQ/ce.png (https://postimg.cc/kVk3mFFQ)

https://i.postimg.cc/tZW0CZ2L/p.png (https://postimg.cc/tZW0CZ2L)

[Siso]

In general, we are not supposed to see everything in a film, it is decided by the director mostly. Sometimes there is black crush by intent, sometimes it is a mastering error.

[tp4tissue]

But how do we tell which is which?

[ryrynz]

You don't. You adjust it to how you want it to look. Director's intent be damned, bring those low blacks into the light.

[Sunspark]

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/why-movies-so-dark-hard-to-see-batman-1235195535/

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-tv-shows-movies-look-so-dark_uk_66263ef5e4b0167f7bf5c8fd

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake3j5/why-does-everything-on-netflix-look-like-that

https://www.polygon.com/23661749/why-movies-look-dark-cinematography

Honestly, I hate it. Probably one of the most infamous semi-recent examples was that episode in S08 of GoT where they had the night battle. Apparently a lot of people couldn't see anything almost the entire episode.

[mclingo]

I don't think brightness and darkness are a problem really because people can just set that so how they prefer it, It's all very well watching it with the artist Intent but if there's a lot more enjoyable with a higher or lower gamma setting then who cares really anyway. A bigger problem is compression, using game of Thrones as an example it was completely unwatchable in some scenes even on a supposedly high bit rate stream I've since watched it on Blu Ray and where it's better there are still lots of compression artefacts which are just completely unnecessary especially on Blu Ray.

[QBhd]

GoT: The Long Night was totally awesome in HDR... It's actually my go to for testing banding. But as for being watchable, it was absolutely amazing in HDR. It's actually a perfect example of why HDR is really needed in film and TV.

QB