madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[ForceX]

Chapters and ordered chapters of matroska are not the same thing. Ordered chapters allow you to combine different files into one playable video. This is useful for, say anime, where you have the same opening/ending video for about 12 episodes, so you can cut that part out into separate files, and only have the main content on other 12 files. When you play any of the 12 files, the opening and ending video will be automatically spliced in the timeline and play like one constant video (at least in theory). This can help you shave off about 50-100 MB per episode depending on your encoding. Better explanation here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99489

Unfortunately only Haali's splitter and mplayer2 support ordered chapters.

[madshi]

You have certainly a good reason, but I'm a bit surprised by this choice. Indeed, Haali seems not to be very "talkative" and not to really work on his splitter. The opposite of Nevcairiel in fact.

Have you already talked with Nevcairiel on the issues bothering you in LAV Filters (ffmpeg limitations ?) ?
All my movies are remuxed to MKV and I've been playing them with the Haali Media Splitter with zero issues for years. Would could I possibly gain by changing a perfectly working splitter? Probably the LAV Splitter would work just as fine, but I won't change something if there isn't any chance of improvement.

That said, I'm using the LAV Splitter on my main PC for all sorts of other container formats.

[zeroo]

Hmmmm... That looks weird. It seems that the presentation threads gets stuck, trying to present a frame (by calling Direct3D). I'm not totally sure where it's stuck exactly, but it could be stuck directly in Direct3D itself.

You seem to have the option "run presentation in a separate thread" activated. Is there a specific reason for that? That option should only be used if you absolutely need it. Try whether the problem maybe goes away if you disable that option.

No specific reason for the separate thread. I disabled that option and the picture doesn't freeze anymore. Thanks.

[djsolidsnake86]

any news for fix green videos?

[mark0077]

Hi madshi, very impressed with the "delay playback start until render queue is full". Absolutely gorgeous seeing 0 frame drops from the very start even with frame interpolation avisynth scripts that usually makes any renderer stutter for a few seconds at start of playback.

Just wondering is it much work to also extend similar functionality to any time playback is about to "re"-start, like when going from windowed to exclusive and vice-versa. Those occurances seem to still stutter for perhaps 0.5-1.0 seconds while the buffers fill back up, which of course isn't the end of the world. I know audio has to continue in the background so madVR can't do the same type of "delay" technique to video and audio but maybe madVR could not begin to render any frames until the buffers are full again to avoid the 0.5 - 1 second of juddery rendering. Nice work anyways.

[dansrfe]

I'm getting a screen like this when I play FLV files with a 16/9 aspect ratio:

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6042/greenlines.png

I tried changing FLV splitters but I have the same problem.

[namaiki]

I'm getting a screen like this when I play FLV files with a 16/9 aspect ratio:

I tried changing FLV splitters but I have the same problem.

Could you post a video sample? Also, what video decoder is being used?

[dansrfe]

Could you post a video sample? Also, what video decoder is being used?

All the 16/9 videos I play are straight from YouTube.

Latest ffdshow video/audio decoders, MPC-HC w/ all internal filters disabled except for FLV and MPEG TS/PS. Windows 7 x64.

EDIT: I see this in a couple of the 4/3 FLV videos I'm playing from YouTube too...I'm not sure what is triggering this but it is definitely isolated around FLV files.

[namaiki]

All the 16/9 videos I play are straight from YouTube.

Could you link one in particular?

edit: I can reproduce. Here's a log:
http://www.mediafire.com/?14zq7wwnx1subo7

Here's a log for v0.66 where the issue is not present:
http://www.mediafire.com/?62qz884ckup0dp8

[dansrfe]

^ I agree. I can't see the issue in v0.66.

[nevcairiel]

Its a bug in 0.67, and madshi said it'll be fixed in the next release.

[TheElix]

All my movies are remuxed to MKV and I've been playing them with the Haali Media Splitter with zero issues for years. Would could I possibly gain by changing a perfectly working splitter? Probably the LAV Splitter would work just as fine, but I won't change something if there isn't any chance of improvement.You may want to try AVSplitter (http://avmedia.su/system/files/avsplitter_x86_1.1.6.8.exe), you'll definitely see improvement in speed of loading, seeking and stream changing. You may also find interesting that you're able to create presets to set priorities for each container/codec combo you have, like this (http://rghost.ru/15399321/image.png). The only thing Haali has in advantage is linked segments support (ordered chapter), but void says he'll implement its support in the future versions. This splitter is magic :)

[pankov]

All my movies are remuxed to MKV and I've been playing them with the Haali Media Splitter with zero issues for years. Would could I possibly gain by changing a perfectly working splitter? Probably the LAV Splitter would work just as fine, but I won't change something if there isn't any chance of improvement.

That said, I'm using the LAV Splitter on my main PC for all sorts of other container formats.
--- Off topic start ---
I do agree with your preference and that's exactly the way I think too.
There is only one small issue with Haali's splitter - it doesn't support huge number (35 or so) of subtitle tracks in .mkv.
:(
and I also like nev's way of audio/language automatic selection and the "fake" forced subs support so now I'm torn apart between these things and Haali's "ordered chapters" support.
--- Off topic end ---

[italospain]

You may want to try AVSplitter (http://avmedia.su/system/files/avsplitter_x86_1.1.6.8.exe), you'll definitely see improvement in speed of loading, seeking and stream changing. You may also find interesting that you're able to create presets to set priorities for each container/codec combo you have, like this (http://rghost.ru/15399321/image.png). The only thing Haali has in advantage is linked segments support (ordered chapter), but void says he'll implement its support in the future versions. This splitter is magic :)

Hi TheElix

nice find and it is really fast but i dont get subtitles working with zoom player ( both directsubvob and ffdshow doesnt show subtitles).
Can you give me a hint

[TheElix]

Hi, italospain. I've never used zoom player so I have no idea, sorry. I use MPC-HC and PotPlayer and subtitles work everywhere for me. Both MPC-HC and PotPlayer have internal subtitle renderers (ffdshow/DirectVobSub has/is an external subtitle renderer), I don't know about zoom player.

[Pix]

This sounds like a hardware problem to me. Don't know what else to say. I've never seen madVR producing an image with lines like that, nor have I ever heard of anyone having a similar problem.

Yes, I've thought about that too but it never happened with a different renderer. I switched to the newest version and happened to me once near the end of a 2:30 long movie but it was just a blank screen.
Well, I'll try with a different graphics card and see if there's any changes.

[dansrfe]

Bug Report:

When I play a video on Monitor 1 and play it in fse and then go back to windowed and drag the video to Monitor 2 and go to fse the current frame freezes until I go back to windowed mode.

[andybkma]

Hi TheElix

nice find and it is really fast but i dont get subtitles working with zoom player ( both directsubvob and ffdshow doesnt show subtitles).
Can you give me a hint


AV Splitter seems to work rather nice with asf files but caused my ZP to crash numerous times when seeking mov and mp4 files. But then again I use CoreAVC as my H264 decoder so maybe that's the reason. AV Splitter might play better with other H264 decoders. I'll be sticking with Haali as the splitter for mov & mp4 also. It just works really great with CoreAVC.

Also caused crashes and seeking issues when using it to play flv files with ffdshow as the decoder. AV Splitter shows promise but I don't think it's ready for primetime yet.

[TheElix]

AV Splitter seems to work rather nice with asf files but caused my ZP to crash numerous times when seeking mov and mp4 files. But then again I use CoreAVC as my H264 decoder so maybe that's the reason. AV Splitter might play better with other H264 decoders. I'll be sticking with Haali as the splitter for mov & mp4 also. It just works really great with CoreAVC.

Also caused crashes and seeking issues when using it to play flv files with ffdshow as the decoder. AV Splitter shows promise but I don't think it's ready for primetime yet.The author will soon open English forum where you'll be welcome to leave feedback. This splitter was tested mostly with MPC-HC. What's with all that ZP-users all of a sudden?

[Hprd]

I've tried the av splitter too. It works really well for the most part, aside from not being able to open ".m2t" files (and well other files i'm sure that're not listed) as well as the playback being corrupt on one file (tons of dropped frames), it was pretty good, and i think i'll replace haali with it for now (as i love the way way faster seeking). Subtitles were kinda finicky though, on first start up of the file, they won't show up, i would have to seek somewhere to get them to work, and switching (on one file for example) from ass to srt subtitles didn't work, unless i quickly changed it to srt while mpc-hc was starting up (maybe there's some way to configure the splitter that i'm not aware of to get subtitles to work properly? like haali for example which has no problem switching in realtime or on first startup).

So like andybkma said, pretty good, but not quite ready for primetime yet. It would seem just a few simple updates might be all it needs though.

[madshi]

@Guys, can we stop discussing splitters in this thread now, please? Thanks!

[Hprd]

Yeah i thought just that when i made my post, lol. :o

[andybkma]

@Guys, can we stop discussing splitters in this thread now, please? Thanks!


Ah, sorry. And here I thought we were agreeing with you to stick with Haali's. hehe ;-)

[madshi]

No worries, Hprd and andybkma, just thought it was enough OT discussion now... :)

[Vern Dias]

What's with all that ZP-users all of a sudden?Lack of any kind of user adjustable size and blanking presets that can be invoked from user defined hotkeys in MPC-HC may account for the interest in ZP, which has user definable size and blanking presets that can be invoked from keyboard shortcuts....

MPC-HC's usability leaves much to be desired for any kind of constant height / constant area HT installs. With MPC-HC, although you can define multiple height / width presets, you have to start MPC-HC in a window, bring up the context menu, select the DVD / file you want to play, switch to fullscreen, bring up the context menu again, select pan and scan, and then choose your preset. Meanwhile you are already 30 seconds into the movie. That's not what most HT enthusiasts with front screen projection constant height installs are looking for. With ZP, you press a key to start DVD playback and you press another key to adjust the image size to a user defined height and width. madVR gives a ZP user an alternative to VMR9 and EVR with far superior image quality, and there is no question in my mind that madVR delivers the best possible DVD image. In fact, thanks to madVR / MPC-HC I am rewatching many of my DVD's and enjoying them as never before.

Another alternative is Theatertek which performs the same type of AR control functions and allows 24 user definable presets.

YXY and aspect ratio controller are two other pieces of software that will do the same to almost any media player window, but then you don't get exclusive mode.

Vern

[JarrettH]

How are you getting DVDs to play Vern? I can't play DVDs at all, ever, in madvr :devil:

I get copy-protect fail when I do Open DVD or just a blank screen and Paused

[madshi]

Hi madshi, very impressed with the "delay playback start until render queue is full". Absolutely gorgeous seeing 0 frame drops from the very start even with frame interpolation avisynth scripts that usually makes any renderer stutter for a few seconds at start of playback.

Just wondering is it much work to also extend similar functionality to any time playback is about to "re"-start, like when going from windowed to exclusive and vice-versa. Those occurances seem to still stutter for perhaps 0.5-1.0 seconds while the buffers fill back up, which of course isn't the end of the world. I know audio has to continue in the background so madVR can't do the same type of "delay" technique to video and audio but maybe madVR could not begin to render any frames until the buffers are full again to avoid the 0.5 - 1 second of juddery rendering. Nice work anyways.
Glad you like it! Unfortunately doing this for windowed <-> exclusive switches wouldn't work that well, IMHO, because with some setups the switch works well enough that the audio runs through without pause. If I actually pause playback at such switches, audio would stop for half a second or so.

Well, I'll try with a different graphics card and see if there's any changes.
If you have the chance to do that, that sounds like a good plan to me.

Bug Report:

When I play a video on Monitor 1 and play it in fse and then go back to windowed and drag the video to Monitor 2 and go to fse the current frame freezes until I go back to windowed mode.
Can I get a log? Please keep it frozen for 10 seconds. After that kill the media player via task manager. That will make sure that the end of the log shows exactly the freeze and not the recovery after going back to windowed mode. Thx.

[mark0077]

Glad you like it! Unfortunately doing this for windowed <-> exclusive switches wouldn't work that well, IMHO, because with some setups the switch works well enough that the audio runs through without pause. If I actually pause playback at such switches, audio would stop for half a second or so.

np at all, not a huge deal anyways, I suppose if you wanted to really have the user see no stutter when queues are filling up, rather than pausing playback completely, if madVR could even render completely black frames or something like that until the queue filled up, it might mean madVR doesn't show any judder at all during any action it takes, like, start of playback (I see no stutter at all here now with your new feature), switching windowed <-> fullscreen, etc. All with the goal of the user seeing no stutter but I doubt many people would be crying out for something small like this, I could be wrong. If madVR only counted real frame drops (that wern't these blank / black frames - indicating how much stutter someone would actually see), I bet the number would be 0 or 1 no matter what situation the renderer was in, nice.. :D

Again, I don't want to waste you're time asking silly questions when you have more important thinsg to be thinking about, but if you have time to answer, what situations does madVR still have to unpause the audio? Theres only some rare occasions when my audio stops for a second, I guess theres nothing that can be done about these situations or anything that we can do on our end to stop it happening?

[madshi]

np at all, not a huge deal anyways, I suppose if you wanted to really have the user see no stutter when queues are filling up, rather than pausing playback completely, if madVR could even render completely black frames or something like that until the queue filled up
That falls under "minor cosmetical improvements", and thus has very low priority at the moment.

what situations does madVR still have to unpause the audio? Theres only some rare occasions when my audio stops for a second, I guess theres nothing that can be done about these situations or anything that we can do on our end to stop it happening?
madVR itself doesn't stop audio from playing, not even if you activate the "delay playback start..." option. Audio stop is caused by either Direct3D or the GPU driver.

[madshi]

madVR v0.68 released

http://madshi.net/madVR.zip

* added support for all primaries referenced by h264, VC-1, MPEG2 and MS
* added support for all decoding matrices referenced by h264, VC-1, MPEG2 & MS
* primaries, matrix and range are now read from VC-1, MPEG2 and h264 headers
* ffdshow RGB output levels are now automatically detected and handled properly
* added support for primary, matrix and range info via DirectShow media type
* improved primary and matrix guesses, if no detailed information is available
* primaries, matrix and range are auto set to what the source requires
* VC-1, MPEG2, h264 headers are read from external decoders, without their help
* Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I toggles input levels (source = full range or not)
* added info to OSD about video bitstream and madVR raw video input formats
* improved internal decoder seeking behaviour
* video bitstream AR is used now if no container AR is available
* libav decoder is now automatically used if Intel decoder can't handle a file
* Intel decoder is now automatically used for interlaced VC-1 content
* fixed: some new problems with external decoders, introduced in v0.67
* fixed: crashes with Intel decoder during playback or when seeking
* fixed: libav/ffmpeg decoder crashed with full_range h264 videos
* fixed: bad timestamps with internal libav/ffmpeg decoder
* fixed: libav/ffmpeg VC-1 decoder showed corruption at the bottom of the image
* fixed: graphical corruption with internal decoders in certain situations
* fixed: connection to 4:2:2 h264 streams is now declined
I think the internal decoders should be very usable now (for progressive content). If you find any more remaining issues, please let me know.

[Wile-E-Coyote]

How are you getting DVDs to play Vern? I can't play DVDs at all, ever, in madvr :devil:

I get copy-protect fail when I do Open DVD or just a blank screen and Paused
The copy-protect fail has nothing to do with macrovision-fail. For some reason something (MPC? Directshow? Windows?) believes you are about to rip the DVD you're trying to watch on your hardware. Using a software that gets rid of copy-protections solved this issue for me (can't say more than that here I'm affraid).

As for the blank screen, I've never had this issue so I can't really tell.

Here's the filters I use to play DVDs in MPC-HC with madVR.

LAVSplitter (prefer)
LAV Audio Decoder (prefer)
NVidia Video Decoder (default merit)
ffdshow Audio Processor (prefer)

You can replace NVidia Video Decoder with ddfshow, it works too. I use NVidia's for hardware acceleration, but if LAV Cuvid worked with DVDs I'd be using that.

@madshi : I'll be testing 0.68 and report back if the gree screen problem is still present

[dansrfe]

Can I get a log? Please keep it frozen for 10 seconds. After that kill the media player via task manager. That will make sure that the end of the log shows exactly the freeze and not the recovery after going back to windowed mode. Thx.

Wow I gess I didn't wait long enough for madVR to correct the FSE when switching monitors. I think it takes about 5-10 seconds.

EDIT: Sometimes it still gets stuck for more than 10 seconds...maybe the transition needs to be smoothed out slightly.

[TheElix]

madVR v0.68 released
Thanks. And sorry for the splitters off-topic.

[Wile-E-Coyote]

OK, tests done.

Good news is : no more green screen. As far as individual video files are concerned, it works great.

Bad news is : it won't read DVDs. I didn't touch anything on my filters settings, I uninstalled madVR 0.66, intalled 0.68, kept all settings to default and when trying to launch a DVD it is set to pause and can't be played. I reverted back to 0.66 and DVDs launch fine.

EDIT : test was done on MPC-HC 1.5.2.3446

[kostik]

Thanks Madshi for the new Version.
What are internal decoders for?
And what colorspace is best to choose in FFDSHOW?
Thanks.

[dlb76]

found some small cosmetic bug in madVR 0.68
dont know if its in any previous versions too
audio tracks part in madVR tray icon gets ruined while it creates new lines possibly because of those '|' symbols or so
http://pastebin.com/iV5fES2q

[madshi]

Bad news is : it won't read DVDs. I didn't touch anything on my filters settings, I uninstalled madVR 0.66, intalled 0.68, kept all settings to default and when trying to launch a DVD it is set to pause and can't be played. I reverted back to 0.66 and DVDs launch fine.
Can I have a small log with both 0.66 and 0.68 from the same DVD playback situation?

What are internal decoders for?
Hmmmm... For decoding? :p

And what colorspace is best to choose in FFDSHOW?
You mean the output FourCC (like YV12, NV12, RGB32 etc)? I'd suggest to have all checkboxes set so that ffdshow can output the best matching format.

found some small cosmetic bug in madVR 0.68
dont know if its in any previous versions too
audio tracks part in madVR tray icon gets ruined while it creates new lines possibly because of those '|' symbols or so
http://pastebin.com/iV5fES2q
Thanks, will put that on my to do list to fix.

[Wile-E-Coyote]

There you go, I let the dvd go for a couple of seconds with both versions. Hope it's not too big, I don't know what in there is useful and what is not.

[madshi]

Oh well, attachments to this forum sometimes take weeks to be approved. You better upload them somewhere else... ;)

[madshi]

madVR v0.69 released

http://madshi.net/madVR.zip

* fixed: (again) timestamp for libav/ffmpeg decoders
* another seeking improvement
I noticed that timestamps in v0.68 were broken again, although I had had them working already. So I've decided to replace v0.68 with v0.69 quickly.

[Wile-E-Coyote]

Oh well, attachments to this forum sometimes take weeks to be approved. You better upload them somewhere else... ;)

There you go (http://petiflo.free.fr/madvr_log.zip) :)

[JarrettH]

The copy-protect fail has nothing to do with macrovision-fail. For some reason something (MPC? Directshow? Windows?) believes you are about to rip the DVD you're trying to watch on your hardware. Using a software that gets rid of copy-protections solved this issue for me (can't say more than that here I'm affraid).

As for the blank screen, I've never had this issue so I can't really tell.

Here's the filters I use to play DVDs in MPC-HC with madVR.

LAVSplitter (prefer)
LAV Audio Decoder (prefer)
NVidia Video Decoder (default merit)
ffdshow Audio Processor (prefer)

You can replace NVidia Video Decoder with ddfshow, it works too. I use NVidia's for hardware acceleration, but if LAV Cuvid worked with DVDs I'd be using that.

@madshi : I'll be testing 0.68 and report back if the gree screen problem is still present

How are you getting NVIDIA video decoder to appear in the external filters list? I mean the only one I know of is the ancient PureVideo one which was an application to install. :thanks:
Good observation though...the macrovision error doesn't happen anymore

[madshi]

There you go (http://petiflo.free.fr/madvr_log.zip) :)
Ok, I can see one small bug that creeped in, but I somehow doubt that it causes this problem. Anyway, let's give it a try. Here's a special build:

http://madshi.net/madVR69test.zip

Does that fix the problem? If not, try deactivate the option "delay playback start until render queue is full". Does that help?

[Wile-E-Coyote]

How are you getting NVIDIA video decoder to appear in the external filters list? I mean the only one I know of is the ancient PureVideo one which was an application to install. :thanks:

Well yeah that's the one, I installed the application and added the filter to my external filter list.

[Wile-E-Coyote]

Ok, I can see one small bug that creeped in, but I somehow doubt that it causes this problem. Anyway, let's give it a try. Here's a special build:

http://madshi.net/madVR69test.zip

Does that fix the problem? If not, try deactivate the option "delay playback start until render queue is full". Does that help?

Installing 0.69 didn't help, but ticking off "delay playback start until render queue is full" did. Should've tinkered a bit before screaming for help :(

[kostik]

Thanks Madshi for your response. But still what is the need in internal decoder if we use ffdshow or other decoders :\ I am confused .

[dansrfe]

Thanks Madshi for your response. But still what is the need in internal decoder if we use ffdshow or other decoders :\ I am confused .

I second that

[fairchild]

Thanks Madshi for your response. But still what is the need in internal decoder if we use ffdshow or other decoders :\ I am confused .

It's for something up-and-coming he has with the renderer which he is not ready to talk about. If you feel like using the decoders to test you can. One of the NOW benefits you get from using his internal decoder is that it will properly decode 10-bit 4:4:4 x264 clips. (I get artifacts with ffdshow) It's not that common yet, but I verified that with the internal libav codec I can play a demo 10-bit 4:4:4 x264 clip glitch free. The example clip I'm referring to is:

BBB444p10.mkv

from http://x264.nl/developers/Dark_Shikari/

[ForceX]

madVR is giving black screen if color/gamma correction is enabled with RGB32 video input.

[cyberbeing]

Fixed Bug: The subtitle sample I gave you is now fixed in 0.69.

Old Bug: The frozen black screen when using the refresh rate changer and the internal decoders still exists in 0.69.
http://www.mediafire.com/?c5oud6irdlgoxcg

New Bug: Black screen with RGB32 output from FFDShow
http://www.mediafire.com/?lgw6yrkwe0mvjy6

Other: madVR [benchmark] is still 0.67.

Status Update: It appears the MPC-HC internal subtitle renderer is what is causing the madVR render queue (upload queue as well in cases of high CPU load) to fluctuate and produces a high number of delayed frames using 1920x1080 @120hz. Anything you can do about that?