madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[madshi]

Running something in between doubling and quadrupling can make things a lot more complex. If doubling and quadrupling can be done "uninterrupted", I can do it directly in OpenCL without having to involve D3D in between. If shaders need to be run in between, there's a lot of interop back and forth going on. That might explain the performance difference. In any case, as I said before, the plan for the "final" sharpening solution will be to run all sharpening on the fully upscaled video and not in between. But the algos need some improvements to make that work well for big upscaling factors.

[Warner306]

I think I have settled on the following settings for 1080p -> 1080p content using image enhancements:

Sharpen Edges (0.2)
Enhance Detail (0.5)

These settings result in small but noticeable enhancement. Sharpen Edges leads to less noticeable edge enhancement than Crispen Edges due to its thicker lines, which better blend into the background. However, Sharpen Edges is far too expensive for my system, so I will wait for an updated version.

[truexfan81]

I think I have settled on the following settings for 1080p -> 1080p content using image enhancements:

Sharpen Edges (0.2)
Enhance Detail (0.5)

These settings result in small but noticeable enhancement. Sharpen Edges leads to less noticeable edge enhancement than Crispen Edges due to its thicker lines, which better blend into the background. However, Sharpen Edges is far too expensive for my system, so I will wait for an updated version.

same here, looks great but Sharpen Edges is too expensive right now

[Asmodian]

same here, looks great but Sharpen Edges is too expensive right now

I like sharpen edges too but it doesn't seem that expensive to me. Which card are you using?

I see an approximately 4.6 ms hit from using sharpen edges at 3412x1920. This is higher than any of the other refinement options but still very useable. Of course performance improvements are always welcome. :)

[MistahBonzai]

Wow..what changed in 'sharpen edges' in 'upscaling refinement' between 89.14 and 89.16 which would introduce a large performance hit? Without 'sharpen edges' GPU = 31%, With 'sharpen edges' GPU = 80%. With no changes on my part other than the usual uninstall-copy files-install procedure my HD-7850 GPU usage went from 58% to 80%. Rendering went from ~5ms w/o sharpen edges to ~13.2ms with it.

I've rechecked settings and reset/retested however 'sharpen edges' is now a major performance heavy hitter for me :( That's a shame for as far as I'm concerned it was the most valuable sharpening algro introduced in 89.14 - enough so that I disabled SuperRes [2] to gain the necessary GPU headroom to run 'sharpen edges' and keep GPU useage with "720p" (1080p screen) below 70% (I settled on 58%).

EDIT: *Shaking my head* Just went back and reinstalled 89.14 and 'sharpen edges' is still a performance heavy hitter :( I could have sworn... My sincere apology for the incorrect performance assessment.

[Warner306]

I like sharpen edges too but it doesn't seem that expensive to me. Which card are you using?

I see an approximately 4.6 ms hit from using sharpen edges at 3412x1920. This is higher than any of the other refinement options but still very useable. Of course performance improvements are always welcome. :)

I am using a GTS 450. Sharpen Edges is much more expensive than SuperRes upscaling refinement.

[Warner306]

Wow..what changed in 'sharpen edges' in 'upscaling refinement' between 89.14 and 89.16 which would introduce a large performance hit? Without 'sharpen edges' GPU = 31%, With 'sharpen edges' GPU = 80%. With no changes on my part other than the usual uninstall-copy files-install procedure my HD-7850 GPU usage went from 58% to 80%. Rendering went from ~5ms w/o sharpen edges to ~13.2ms with it.

I've rechecked settings and reset/retested however 'sharpen edges' is now a major performance heavy hitter for me :( That's a shame for as far as I'm concerned it was the most valuable sharpening algro introduced in 89.14 - enough so that I disabled SuperRes [2] to gain the necessary GPU headroom to run 'sharpen edges' and keep GPU useage with "720p" (1080p screen) below 70% (I settled on 58%).

It was like that from the beginning. I don't think the performance has degraded.

[truexfan81]

I like sharpen edges too but it doesn't seem that expensive to me. Which card are you using?

I see an approximately 4.6 ms hit from using sharpen edges at 3412x1920. This is higher than any of the other refinement options but still very useable. Of course performance improvements are always welcome. :)

GTX 650 on a motherboard that is so old it only has PCIe 1.0 sadly
maybe one of these years i'll be able to upgrade, but right now i just don't have the $

[AngelGraves13]

imho fonts or emblems look too blurry with 1080p -> WQHD without SR. Especially true for fine white fonts.

I'm not a fan of artificial sharpness. I even set the sharpness on my TV to 0.

[AngelGraves13]

madshi, deinterlacing seems to be broken again. Using latest build.

I'm trying to play a DVD file (remuxed into mkv) and it says DXVA deinterlacing, but the interlacing lines are clearly visible, so it's not working. If I set it to Film, it works, but then any sequences that are not film have lines.

UPDATE: Reset to defaults and set all the settings back to my usual values and it seems to be fixed.

[MistahBonzai]

FYI AMD users. I recall at least one report of queues failing to fill in 'fullscreen exclusive mode' while working fine in windowed mode. While chasing such an issue I made the following discovery the hard way.

If you have set the CCC->Performance-Frame Rate to your display refresh rate (or there abouts) in an effort to reduce power consumption be aware that you have capped the frame rate. Therefore 'fullscreen exclusive mode' can't catch-up when the 'render queue' empties however it continues to work just fine in fullscreen window mode.

[dansrfe]

Is there a whitepaper on how the NNEDI3 algorithm roughly works? I'm not sure how to quantify the difference in quality between NNEDI3 32 and NNEDI3 16 on both chroma upscaling and luma doubling, but I can definitely hear/see a difference in the fan speed and utilization of the GTX 670 going from 1280x720 -> 2560x1440

Also, why is the image upscaling algorithm used for chroma upscaling in addition to the selected chroma upscaling algorithm in some instances? Two "chroma > ..." entries are shown in the OSD. I thought that the chroma upscaling algorithm would be used alone or in conjunction with a selected chroma doubling/quadrupling algorithm, if needed.

[FreeFall]

madshi,

Are you using the current official LAV version, or a newer nightly build? Newer nightly builds now send the subtitles to madVR instead of burning them into the decoded image. This has the advantage of madVR getting full control over the subtitle drawing and positioning.

When using a newer nightly LAV build, madVR should be able to move the subtitles either into the black bars or into the active video area. However, these are bitmap subtitles, which means that for optimal quality madVR has to draw them onto the decoded video image before doing any scaling, because only this way the subtitles will get the full quality benefit of the scaling algorithm you've selected. Having to draw the subs before scaling means that if you tell madVR to actually crop the black bars away, there's no black bars left for madVR to draw the subtitles into. So if you want the subs to be drawn into the black bars, you have to deactivate the option "crop black bars" in the zoom control settings. (Please note that this only applies to bitmap subtitles.)

Sorry about the confusion, I'm using the latest nightly LAV build 0.66.0-33. I have re-tested using madVR 0.89.16 and MPC-HC nightly build 1.7.9.202. and everything is working fine using this setup.

Zoom Player 11.1 beta2 Max behaves strangely for some reason with the new test DVD, set to use the default AR, derived (recommended).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ifrmre5xlbtnmk/testdisc.zip?dl=0

Zoom Control Settings: (these are the only options I have enabled)

move subtitles, to bottom of the screen / window.
automatically detect hard coded black bars.
notify media player about cropped black bars, no more than once every 2 sec.
keep black bars visible if they contain subtitles, forever.

Here is the result.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ij9asv9tqa5pien/zoom1.jpg?dl=0

If I disable the option notify media player about cropped black bars it works as expected, showing the subtitles rendered into the black bars.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/84h1atoxsd2vtrn/zoom2.jpg?dl=0

Is Zoom Player causing the problem?

[mcn]

Hmmm... And both embedded and external ones are SRT? Can you maybe make a small sample of that video available to me, with the external subtitle file? (You can use PM for that.)

While I was preparing your sample file I noticed something interesting.

Apparently the issue is related to tags like <i>...</i>.
This happens also with <b> and <u>.
The tags have the desired effect, the text is visually modified as it should.

However when encountering the first line with a tag the subtitles are not shown anymore in the bottom black bar but on the active video area.

Hence if the .srt starts with a line that has tags all the subs are shown in the active video area.

If the line with tags is in the middle then the subtitles are displayed in the bottom black bar until said line is encountered.
Then the subtitles begin to be shown in the active video area.
After this happens if I go back with the video the subtitles that were previously correctly shown are now displayed in the active video area too.

At this point I think you can easily reproduce this behaviour yourself.
If not I will upload the sample.

Thanks for your time!

[Thunderbolt8]

I still have stuttering in windowed mode with my mobile nvidia card. no such problems on my AMD laptop though. does anyone know the reason for that?

[videonerd]

Would it be possible to ad gpu and maybe cpu load to the madvr stats window?

I second this feature request! Thank you!

[XRyche]

FYI AMD users. I recall at least one report of queues failing to fill in 'fullscreen exclusive mode' while working fine in windowed mode. While chasing such an issue I made the following discovery the hard way.

If you have set the CCC->Performance-Frame Rate to your display refresh rate (or there abouts) in an effort to reduce power consumption be aware that you have capped the frame rate. Therefore 'fullscreen exclusive mode' can't catch-up when the 'render queue' empties however it continues to work just fine in fullscreen window mode.

Excellent find. Thanks, this definitely corrected my queue fill issue.

[kasper93]

Would it be possible to ad gpu and maybe cpu load to the madvr stats window?
madVR is not a system monitoring tool...

[leeperry]

In the next build SuperRes will always only be applied once, because it simply doesn't make sense any other way. SuperRes has no benefit from being applied multiple times.
I'd swear I prefered having it applied after every 2X step before :o

Will run more tests but with sxbr25/50 I find the picture less sharp/appealing now, much like having it applied only once at the end in older builds and the new options don't make up for the PQ decrease as far as I can see =(

I guess you expect us to crank up sharpness in sxbr or the new features when I seemingly prefered having SR applied several times in a row, any chance for a dirty hack to have it applied after every 2X step just like before please? something like a "2X step SuperRes" directory in mVR's folder would work if any possible please.

:thanks:

[dimitrik]

Sorry to digress, but I would really appreciate some advice on this.

I'm thinking of getting a GTX 970 for my HTPC (currently with a Radeon 7850).

I hope to get improved nnedi3 performance from my 7850 (currently getting 32 neurons on doubling but cannot do quadrupling) and I would also like to output 10-bit color as I have a 10-bit capable TV.

I can do this today with my AMD card but I've read some dubious comments about nvidia's 10-bit output.

Can anyone advise me, or better yet does anyone do this today?

Thanks a lot!

[AngelGraves13]

I still have stuttering in windowed mode with my mobile nvidia card. no such problems on my AMD laptop though. does anyone know the reason for that?

Have you limited your frames to render ahead to 1 in the control panel?

[iSeries]

Quick question regarding MadVR's gamma processing. My TV has 3 gamma modes, 1.8, 2.2 & 2.4. I've used 2.2 and find shadows too bright, however 2.4 is somewhat odd because it comes out of black just as quickly as 2.2 but is much darker overall. I've found a pleasant compromise with setting the TV to the default 2.2, and setting MadVR to apply a gamma change to 2.35. Nothing is clipped and it comes out of black slowly as it should. Is there any drawback to doing this, quality-wise?

[Warner306]

Is there a whitepaper on how the NNEDI3 algorithm roughly works? I'm not sure how to quantify the difference in quality between NNEDI3 32 and NNEDI3 16 on both chroma upscaling and luma doubling, but I can definitely hear/see a difference in the fan speed and utilization of the GTX 670 going from 1280x720 -> 2560x1440

Also, why is the image upscaling algorithm used for chroma upscaling in addition to the selected chroma upscaling algorithm in some instances? Two "chroma > ..." entries are shown in the OSD. I thought that the chroma upscaling algorithm would be used alone or in conjunction with a selected chroma doubling/quadrupling algorithm, if needed.

The chroma layer must first be upscaled to match the luma resolution. This is due to chroma subsampling.

After upscaling the subsampled chroma, the luma and chroma are resized together to match the target resolution. This is image upscaling. Image doubling such as NNEDI3 double the luma and chroma separately, which is why you end up with two entries for the chroma channel: one to account for chroma subsampling, and one to account for image upscaling.

[onyx76]

Sorry to digress, but I would really appreciate some advice on this.

I'm thinking of getting a GTX 970 for my HTPC (currently with a Radeon 7850).

I hope to get improved nnedi3 performance from my 7850 (currently getting 32 neurons on doubling but cannot do quadrupling) and I would also like to output 10-bit color as I have a 10-bit capable TV.

I can do this today with my AMD card but I've read some dubious comments about nvidia's 10-bit output.

Can anyone advise me, or better yet does anyone do this today?

Thanks a lot!


I do 10 bit output madVR + 12 bit output Nvidia CP -> Sony 10 bit capable TV. Everything works with 0 problems!

My OCed GTX 970 can do Nnedi3 64 neurons doubling & quadrupling + ED2 + sharpen edges 0.2 + enhance detail 0.5 = SD -> 1080P = 18 ms render time.
= 720P -> 1080P = 21 ms render time.

Good choice on the GPU (GTX 970 is almost silent + low power usage), hope the upgrade goes well!

[onyx76]

I think I have settled on the following settings for 1080p -> 1080p content using image enhancements:

Sharpen Edges (0.2)
Enhance Detail (0.5)

These settings result in small but noticeable enhancement. Sharpen Edges leads to less noticeable edge enhancement than Crispen Edges due to its thicker lines, which better blend into the background. However, Sharpen Edges is far too expensive for my system, so I will wait for an updated version.

Same here, looks great!!! (replaced SuperRes -> Sharpen Edges + Enhance Detail)

[Warner306]

Same here, looks great!!! (replaced SuperRes -> Sharpen Edges + Enhance Detail)

You think this combination is better than SuperRes? I haven't tried it with upscaled sources.

[Magik Mark]

Be warned, the new image enhancement is taking a toll on SVP. I have to sacrifice Sharpen & Thin edges. Frame rendering is still low at 14ms. But you could see frame dropping like a stop watch. Turning those 2 off solves it.

[QBhd]

the 4 new refinements are working wonderfully here. There is little to no impact on performance with my R9 270X. All content I watch pushes the GPU to it's limits (except 1080p24) and enabling all 4 refinements still fit in without any sacrifices. So far I have only left the 4 at the default setting of 1 and I am very pleased with the results. Everything looks fantastic, crisp (but not artificially so) and clean.

Here is my settings if anyone is curious:

Target Window = 1024x768 (rectangular pixels) @ 72Hz
Content 720p24:
Artifact Removal = med/high
Image Enhancements = ALL OFF
Zoom Control = ALL OFF
Image Downscaling = Catmull-Rom AR LL
Image Upscaling = Jinc AR (Not used)
Upscaling Refinement = sharpen, crispen, thin and enhance all set to 1 AND SuperRes set to 4 with LL
Chroma Upscaling = NNEDI3 64
Image Doubling = always double luma NNEDI3 128 AND always double chroma NNEDI3 64
Dithering = Ordered Dithering with colored noise checked and change dither unchecked

Keep up the awesome work madshi, I love what madVR can do. And I will be front of the line when you start accepting donations.

QB

[Warner306]

the 4 new refinements are working wonderfully here. There is little to no impact on performance with my R9 270X. All content I watch pushes the GPU to it's limits (except 1080p24) and enabling all 4 refinements still fit in without any sacrifices. So far I have only left the 4 at the default setting of 1 and I am very pleased with the results. Everything looks fantastic, crisp (but not artificially so) and clean.

Here is my settings if anyone is curious:

Target Window = 1024x768 (rectangular pixels) @ 72Hz
Content 720p24:
Artifact Removal = med/high
Image Enhancements = ALL OFF
Zoom Control = ALL OFF
Image Downscaling = Catmull-Rom AR LL
Image Upscaling = Jinc AR (Not used)
Upscaling Refinement = sharpen, crispen, thin and enhance all set to 1 AND SuperRes set to 4 with LL
Chroma Upscaling = NNEDI3 64
Image Doubling = always double luma NNEDI3 128 AND always double chroma NNEDI3 64
Dithering = Ordered Dithering with colored noise checked and change dither unchecked

Keep up the awesome work madshi, I love what madVR can do. And I will be front of the line when you start accepting donations.

QB

I don't think all of the sharpeners are designed to work together at the same time. You would save a lot of performance by turning some of them off.

[ryrynz]

I don't think all of the sharpeners are designed to work together at the same time. You would save a lot of performance by turning some of them off.

Everything has it's own niche and will work together fine. In some cases it may be better to scale one up rather than have another enabled.. but then someone enabling all of these likely has compared the image quality with things on and off anyway. If you have the performance available might as well use it, I can't imagine someone would just tick things and set values haphazardly.

[dimitrik]

I do 10 bit output madVR + 12 bit output Nvidia CP -> Sony 10 bit capable TV. Everything works with 0 problems!

My OCed GTX 970 can do Nnedi3 64 neurons doubling & quadrupling + ED2 + sharpen edges 0.2 + enhance detail 0.5 = SD -> 1080P = 18 ms render time.
= 720P -> 1080P = 21 ms render time.

Good choice on the GPU (GTX 970 is almost silent + low power usage), hope the upgrade goes well!

That's great thank you very much!

[Warner306]

Everything has it's own niche and will work together fine. In some cases it may be better to scale one up rather than have another enabled.. but then someone enabling all of these likely has compared the image quality with things on and off anyway. If you have the performance available might as well use it, I can't imagine someone would just tick things and set values haphazardly.

I can accept that. But over-sharpening is possible, and this is known to reduce not improve picture quality. The purpose of madVR is to improve picture quality. It can be a misnomer to turn everything on because it is purported to improve the quality of the image.

[madshi]

I think I have settled on the following settings for 1080p -> 1080p content using image enhancements:

Sharpen Edges (0.2)
Enhance Detail (0.5)

These settings result in small but noticeable enhancement. Sharpen Edges leads to less noticeable edge enhancement than Crispen Edges due to its thicker lines, which better blend into the background. However, Sharpen Edges is far too expensive for my system, so I will wait for an updated version.
same here, looks great but Sharpen Edges is too expensive right now
When ignoring performance, do you like "sharpen edges" better than AdaptiveSharpen?

I'm not a fan of artificial sharpness. I even set the sharpness on my TV to 0.
The sharpness control in TVs often has very low quality so it's highly recommend setting it to "neutral" (usually but not always 0). The quality of the madVR sharpening algos is much higher than what your average TV does.

Of course it's all a matter of preference. If you prefer not turning madVR's sharpening algos on, that's perfectly fine.

FYI AMD users. I recall at least one report of queues failing to fill in 'fullscreen exclusive mode' while working fine in windowed mode. While chasing such an issue I made the following discovery the hard way.

If you have set the CCC->Performance-Frame Rate to your display refresh rate (or there abouts) in an effort to reduce power consumption be aware that you have capped the frame rate. Therefore 'fullscreen exclusive mode' can't catch-up when the 'render queue' empties however it continues to work just fine in fullscreen window mode.
Good find!!

Is there a whitepaper on how the NNEDI3 algorithm roughly works? I'm not sure how to quantify the difference in quality between NNEDI3 32 and NNEDI3 16
With some sources you might not see a difference at all between 16 and 32 neurons. Power consumption is nearly twice as high with 32 neurons. Quality can be higher with 32 neurons, depending on which angles the lines in the source have. 32 neurons produces a bit less artifacts than 16 neurons, and reproduces some line angles better than 16 neurons.

Sorry about the confusion, I'm using the latest nightly LAV build 0.66.0-33. I have re-tested using madVR 0.89.16 and MPC-HC nightly build 1.7.9.202. and everything is working fine using this setup.

Zoom Player 11.1 beta2 Max behaves strangely for some reason with the new test DVD, set to use the default AR, derived (recommended).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ifrmre5xlbtnmk/testdisc.zip?dl=0

Zoom Control Settings: (these are the only options I have enabled)

move subtitles, to bottom of the screen / window.
automatically detect hard coded black bars.
notify media player about cropped black bars, no more than once every 2 sec.
keep black bars visible if they contain subtitles, forever.

Here is the result.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ij9asv9tqa5pien/zoom1.jpg?dl=0

If I disable the option notify media player about cropped black bars it works as expected, showing the subtitles rendered into the black bars.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/84h1atoxsd2vtrn/zoom2.jpg?dl=0

Is Zoom Player causing the problem?
Not sure, will have a look at that next weekend.

While I was preparing your sample file I noticed something interesting.

Apparently the issue is related to tags like <i>...</i>.
This happens also with <b> and <u>.
The tags have the desired effect, the text is visually modified as it should.

However when encountering the first line with a tag the subtitles are not shown anymore in the bottom black bar but on the active video area.

Hence if the .srt starts with a line that has tags all the subs are shown in the active video area.

If the line with tags is in the middle then the subtitles are displayed in the bottom black bar until said line is encountered.
Then the subtitles begin to be shown in the active video area.
After this happens if I go back with the video the subtitles that were previously correctly shown are now displayed in the active video area too.
Good catch! Will have a look at that. Probably I'll have to create another XySubFilter patch to fix this... :(

I still have stuttering in windowed mode with my mobile nvidia card. no such problems on my AMD laptop though. does anyone know the reason for that?
What does the OSD (Ctrl+J) say? Any queues getting (near) empty? Any frame drops/glitches listed? Have you tried resetting madVR to default settings, as a test to see if that fixes the problem?

I'd swear I prefered having it applied after every 2X step before :o

Will run more tests but with sxbr25/50 I find the picture less sharp/appealing now, much like having it applied only once at the end in older builds and the new options don't make up for the PQ decrease as far as I can see =(

I guess you expect us to crank up sharpness in sxbr or the new features when I seemingly prefered having SR applied several times in a row, any chance for a dirty hack to have it applied after every 2X step just like before please? something like a "2X step SuperRes" directory in mVR's folder would work if any possible please.
Have you activated any other sharpening algo in addition SuperRes? If yes, running everything at every 2x step might produce different results. But if you're only using SuperRes without any additional sharpening, then (the last time I checked) running SuperRes only once produces identical or slightly better results than running it on every 2x step. If you have a different opinion (when just using SuperRes, no other sharpeners), please show me comparison screenshots that proof your point, thanks.

Quick question regarding MadVR's gamma processing. My TV has 3 gamma modes, 1.8, 2.2 & 2.4. I've used 2.2 and find shadows too bright, however 2.4 is somewhat odd because it comes out of black just as quickly as 2.2 but is much darker overall. I've found a pleasant compromise with setting the TV to the default 2.2, and setting MadVR to apply a gamma change to 2.35. Nothing is clipped and it comes out of black slowly as it should. Is there any drawback to doing this, quality-wise?
If you don't have a meter for proper calibration, I guess all you can do it trust your eyes. From madVR's point of view there's no downside to modfying gamma curves, as long as you don't disable dithering.

the 4 new refinements are working wonderfully here. There is little to no impact on performance with my R9 270X. All content I watch pushes the GPU to it's limits (except 1080p24) and enabling all 4 refinements still fit in without any sacrifices. So far I have only left the 4 at the default setting of 1 and I am very pleased with the results. Everything looks fantastic, crisp (but not artificially so) and clean.

Here is my settings if anyone is curious:

Target Window = 1024x768 (rectangular pixels) @ 72Hz
Content 720p24
Good to hear you like it! Hmmmm... 720p at 1024x768 is half upscaling half downscaling, right? To be honest, I don't know right now if SuperRes and upscaling refinement becomes active in that situation? If you see a difference with these algos turned on, obviously they must be active, of course.

I don't think all of the sharpeners are designed to work together at the same time. You would save a lot of performance by turning some of them off.
Everything has it's own niche and will work together fine. In some cases it may be better to scale one up rather than have another enabled.. but then someone enabling all of these likely has compared the image quality with things on and off anyway. If you have the performance available might as well use it, I can't imagine someone would just tick things and set values haphazardly.
I can accept that. But over-sharpening is possible, and this is known to reduce not improve picture quality. The purpose of madVR is to improve picture quality. It can be a misnomer to turn everything on because it is purported to improve the quality of the image.
These algos do work together nicely, because they all do slightly different things. In my tests I'm getting the best quality when activating all 4 at the same time - but of course at reasonable strengths! You can oversharpen when using just one algo, if you use too high strength. At the same time you can achieve no oversharpening when using all 4. It all depends on the chosen strengths. Add to that that after upscaling the algos are less effective, so higher strengths after upscaling makes sense compared to the strengths you should use for image enhancement.

I'm not sure yet whether I would activate all 4 together with SuperRes, though. Will need to do some more tests to clarify that question. "thin edges" and "enhance detail" should definitely match well together with SuperRes. Not sure about the other two. From what I've seen SuperRes might already do something similar to a combination of "sharpen + crispen edges". But then, if the source is already rather soft, SuperRes alone might not suffice to produce a reasonably sharp final image because SuperRes' aim is not to produce a sharp image - but to produce an image faithful to the original unscaled source image. If the source image is soft, SuperRes' output will be soft, too. In that case using all 4 algos might make sense once again.

[QBhd]

Good to hear you like it! Hmmmm... 720p at 1024x768 is half upscaling half downscaling, right? To be honest, I don't know right now if SuperRes and upscaling refinement becomes active in that situation? If you see a difference with these algos turned on, obviously they must be active, of course.

Unless this is a case of Placebo effect, I would say yes, they are active in my odd-ball situation. I am sure that with the downscaling nature of my settings (ultimately that is the final step) SuperRes and the 4 new refinements do have a noticeable impact since downscaling does tend to make things a little softer (unless I am mistaken in that assumption).

It does seem like overkill but there is a very noticeable improvement when they y is doubled and then downscaled compared to just using Jinc to upscale it directly.

I too am still just testing these settings out. I will see what all 4 look like without SuperRes... heck I will even go way back and look at Jinc again as a direct upscale for the y (it has been a long time since NNEDI3 was introduced) :)

QB

[iSeries]

If you don't have a meter for proper calibration, I guess all you can do it trust your eyes. From madVR's point of view there's no downside to modfying gamma curves, as long as you don't disable dithering.


Thanks Madshi, I checked with the AVSHD patterns, bar 17 barely flashes and it ramps up nicely from there. With MadVR outputting the video 'as is' and setting the TV to 2.4 bar 17 flashed very brightly, in fact 17-20 all flashed as brightly as each other. I was just wondering if MadVR applying a gamma curve, and then the TV applying it's own gamma curve would have a detrimental effect on quality (dithering is enabled in madVR).

[chros]

With MadVR outputting the video 'as is' and setting the TV to 2.4 bar 17 flashed very brightly, in fact 17-20 all flashed as brightly as each other.
Interesting. With my setup, I have to raise the power curve gamma level in MadVR (at least to 2.05) to be able to see bar 17 on the TV.
But this functionality raised new possibilities (I have just discovered not a long time ago): both my TV and my laptop display crush black level.
On the laptop display I have to raise madvr gamma level (power curve) to 1.80 to be able to see the 18 bar :)
My choice is for the TV: I set gamma on TV to 2.4 and set power curve gamma to 2.15 in madvr. It still clips bar 17 but the rest look good, and since I mostly watch TV during evenings/nights I vote for the darker picture with more depth.
I have tried out on the TV: if I set gamma to 2.4 on TV and 2.00 (power curve) in madVR then the result will be (almost) the same as I had chosen 2.2 on the TV and left gamma on default in madvr.

[huhn]

don't change the gamma to fix crushed blacks. use the custom levels for it. way more effective and it "doesn't" change the gamma of the picture

[Thunderbolt8]

What does the OSD (Ctrl+J) say? Any queues getting (near) empty? Any frame drops/glitches listed? Have you tried resetting madVR to default settings, as a test to see if that fixes the problem?present queue was empty, render queue almost empty and I had lots of dropped/delay frames or glitches. but resetting to default settings fixed it :thanks:

don't change the gamma to fix crushed blacks. use the custom levels for it. way more effective and it "doesn't" change the gamma of the picturewhere can I find the custom levels setting?

[iSeries]

don't change the gamma to fix crushed blacks. use the custom levels for it. way more effective and it "doesn't" change the gamma of the picture

In my case, on my TV I find 2.2 too bright overall, and 2.4 (even though it comes out of black very quickly, shadow areas are far too bright with both 2.2 and 2.4) a bit too dark overall and a bit too contrasty. Setting the TV to 2.2 and having MadVR apply a 2.35 gamma curve seems just about perfect.

[huhn]

where can I find the custom levels setting?

devices -> "device name" properties -> the display expects the following RGB output levels.

[har3inger]

I can accept that. But over-sharpening is possible, and this is known to reduce not improve picture quality. The purpose of madVR is to improve picture quality. It can be a misnomer to turn everything on because it is purported to improve the quality of the image.

How much sharpening is good depends also on screen size, view distance, and observer preferences. There is no one-size fits all.


@madshi: The new sharpen algorithm is better than the old adaptive sharpen, because it feels cleaner and more consistent. It's also better than crispen edges because it doesn't alias very much at all. (However, it's wtf expensive right now, hopefully that will change by a lot. It's not worth the performance hit at all, since it costs about the same as switching from superxbr to nnedi3)

[leeperry]

Have you activated any other sharpening algo in addition SuperRes? If yes, running everything at every 2x step might produce different results. But if you're only using SuperRes without any additional sharpening, then (the last time I checked) running SuperRes only once produces identical or slightly better results than running it on every 2x step. If you have a different opinion (when just using SuperRes, no other sharpeners), please show me comparison screenshots
Fair enough, well I'm still experimenting with the four new features and I would thoroughly enjoy the ability to try them in combo with 2X SR in order to decide where that gets me so I would still enjoy a way to force it if any possible please :o

It might just be that 2X SR alone actually oversharpened the picture, which would also explain why sxbr25 was all it took sometimes but there's really only one way to find out how that would react in combo with the new options and I might have already reached videophool territories at this point coz PQ kills anyway heh.

:thanks:

[Warner306]

Sharpen Edges is preferable to AdaptiveSharpen because it is less artificial in appearance.

[Warner306]

So all four sharpeners can be used at the same time? I am already using such low values. Obviously, my threshold for artificial sharpening is very low.

[madshi]

Unless this is a case of Placebo effect, I would say yes, they are active in my odd-ball situation. I am sure that with the downscaling nature of my settings (ultimately that is the final step) SuperRes and the 4 new refinements do have a noticeable impact since downscaling does tend to make things a little softer (unless I am mistaken in that assumption).

It does seem like overkill but there is a very noticeable improvement when they y is doubled and then downscaled compared to just using Jinc to upscale it directly.

I too am still just testing these settings out. I will see what all 4 look like without SuperRes... heck I will even go way back and look at Jinc again as a direct upscale for the y (it has been a long time since NNEDI3 was introduced) :)
Great, let us know what you find!

The new sharpen algorithm is better than the old adaptive sharpen, because it feels cleaner and more consistent. It's also better than crispen edges because it doesn't alias very much at all. (However, it's wtf expensive right now, hopefully that will change by a lot. It's not worth the performance hit at all, since it costs about the same as switching from superxbr to nnedi3)
Ok, thanks. Yes, I know performance sucks atm, but there's significant room for improvement there. Consider the current build a "proof of concept", not an optimized implementation.

Fair enough, well I'm still experimenting with the four new features and I would thoroughly enjoy the ability to try them in combo with 2X SR in order to decide where that gets me so I would still enjoy a way to force it if any possible please :o

It might just be that 2X SR alone actually oversharpened the picture, which would also explain why sxbr25 was all it took sometimes but there's really only one way to find out how that would react in combo with the new options and I might have already reached videophool territories at this point coz PQ kills anyway heh.
I think you didn't understand me: Running SuperRes every 2x upscaling step simply doesn't do anything. It looks pretty much the same as running it only once after upscaling is complete. So it's a total waste of performance to run it after every 2x upscaling step. As I said, if you think I'm wrong then please provide screenshot proof, using an older madVR build (please keep AdaptiveSharpen/FineSharp/LumaSharpen disabled for those screenshots).

I'm not willing to spend any time on adding hacks for something that I'm sure is useless. So you'll have to provide some evidence to make me change my mind. Providing screenshot proof should cost you less time than it would cost me to add a hack for you. So if you're not willing to provide proof, then I'm not willing to add a hack. Sounds fair?

Sharpen Edges is preferable to AdaptiveSharpen because it is less artificial in appearance.
Thanks, I like to hear that.

So all four sharpeners can be used at the same time? I am already using such low values. Obviously, my threshold for artificial sharpening is very low.
Yes, you can use them all at the same time. They change different attributes of the image, so they don't compete against each other very much (maybe "crispen edges" competes a bit with "sharpen edges"). It's very important to differ between image enhancement and upscaling refinement, though. Upscaling makes the image rather soft (even when using NNEDI3), so after upscaling you can apply a lot more sharpening than you can before upscaling. I would be careful which algos to enable by default before upscaling (= image enhancements) at which strengths. There's much more room for sharpening in upscaling refinement.

[Thunderbolt8]

so when using both image enhancement and upscaling refinement, are both sharpeners then used twice? one time as general image enhancement and a 2nd time after upscaling? or how would this work?
and if you ticked one sharpener for image enhancement and a different one for upscaling refinement, would both then used? or is one of them disgarded? (e.g. the one with image enhancement in case image enhancement would get disabled if upscaling refinement is used as well at the same time)

[madshi]

Image enhancement is applied before scaling, upscaling refinement is applied after upscaling. So yes, if you activate both, and then upscale, both will be applied separately ("twice"). At least that's the case atm. I have some ideas how to maybe streamline the whole thing, but the algos will need improvements before I can do that.

[huhn]

they "stack". i just totally destroyed a image using 4.0 thin edges 4.0 on both.

for better quality you should stick to upscaling refinement only.

[har3inger]

I think that we should probably not use image enhancements if there's any upscaling (and especially superres) involved, but that it can look pretty good at low strength for native pixel material. I'm using different profiles (srcWidth=1920 or not) to manage which set of settings gets applied.

[DragonQ]

I have a pretty general question about scaling which I think people in this thread are likely well positioned to answer, but apologies if this goes too far off topic. Basically, I'm wondering if you have an HD source which itself has been upscaled from SD but using a poor algorithm (e.g. bilinear), is there likely to be any benefit in downscaling it back to SD and re-upscaling it using a better algorithm? Or would it always look worse?